Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.

This week, Intern Anastasia reviews semi-obscure Western flick The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, best known today as the movie where Clint Eastwood made cowboy hats look (sort-of) hot. Why? She's not really sure, actually. But she gives it her best shot anyhow (or at least half-asses it) by delivering her unfiltered thoughts over that crazy, newfangled medium called instant message.

Intern Anastasia: hey. I don’t know what to write for this jossip thing
ActualFilmStudent: hm. what movie are you doing?
Intern Anastasia: the good, the bad, and the ugly
ActualFilmStudent: the western? dude, why?
ActualFilmStudent: even I haven’t seen that!
Intern Anastasia: I don’t know, it’s in the IMDB top 250? and it says on wikipedia quentin tarantino called it “the best-directed film of all time”
ActualFilmStudent: tarantino? eww
ActualFilmStudent: why don’t you do casablanca?
ActualFilmStudent: or l’avventura. it’s pretentious enough
Intern Anastasia: it’s too late now, I watched three hours of sergio leone [note: the director] and I have to write about it
Intern Anastasia: it’s like we get it, sergio, you REALLY like close-ups
Intern Anastasia: the music’s good though. you’d know the theme music if you heard it, look it up on itunes or something
ActualFilmStudent: yeah, ennio morricone [note: he composed the soundtrack]
Intern Anastasia: also I think clint eastwood’s kind of hot in this movie, is that weird?
ActualFilmStudent: um. YES.
Intern Anastasia: but he’s got like skinny black jeans on. he’s OG hipster
ActualFilmStudent: if you say so
Intern Anastasia: his acting basically consists of squinting a lot. and he’s always smoking mini cigars. he’s like the fucking marlboro man
Intern Anastasia: not that that’s hot
ActualFilmStudent: right. is there a plot or is it just three hours of clint eastwood squinting?
Intern Anastasia: um, both? ok, eastwood’s this guy named blondie, he’s the “good” (except he’s not totally good, hooray moral ambiguity). and then there’s angel eyes, who’s the “bad,” and tuco, who’s the “ugly.”
ActualFilmStudent: ok
Intern Anastasia: the movie starts with angel eyes shooting this guy he was hired to kill, but not before the guy tells him someone named bill carson buried $200,000 in gold in a cemetery somewhere. completely unrelatedly, blondie and tuco have this scheme: tuco’s wanted for $2,000, so blondie brings him in to different towns and collects the reward. then, when tuco’s about to be hanged, blondie shoots down the rope and they escape.
Intern Anastasia: but then blondie decides the scheme’s over and dumps tuco in the desert 70 miles from town. tuco walks back to town, then gets revenge on blondie by forcing him to walk through the desert. he’s about to shoot him when a runaway carriage with dying confederate soldiers appears.
ActualFilmStudent: confederate soldiers?
Intern Anastasia: this takes place during the civil war for some reason. bill carson’s one of the soldiers, and he tells tuco he buried $200,000 in gold in a cemetery, but he won’t tell him which grave until tuco gets him water. when tuco runs to get water, blondie crawls over to bill, and bill tells him which grave it is. then bill dies. now tuco can’t kill blondie, if he wants the $200,000
ActualFilmStudent: that’s a lot of coincidences
Intern Anastasia: I know, and of course tuco couldn’t just shoot blondie, he had to force him to walk through the desert first. it’s like he’s a james bond villain
Intern Anastasia: anyway, now blondie, tuco and angel eyes all know about the gold, and they’re all searching for it but somehow they end up joining the union army…
Intern Anastasia: it just gets really convoluted
Intern Anastasia: the ending is awesome though. tuco, blondie and angel eyes all have a mexican standoff in the middle of the cemetery. there’s lots of close-ups of gun holsters and their shifty eyes. blondie shoots angel eyes, then forces tuco to dig up the gold from the grave at gunpoint
Intern Anastasia: then he hangs a noose from the tree above the grave, and makes tuco stand on the crappy wooden headstone and put his head in. he also leaves tuco half the money. then he rides away.
Intern Anastasia: it seems really pointless and you think he’s going to let tuco die, but then he stops his horse, gets out a rifle and shoots down the rope from really far away. yay! happy ending!
Intern Anastasia: you’re im-ing someone else at the same time, aren’t you?
ActualFilmStudent: close. I’m trying on my wonder woman costume
Intern Anastasia: for halloween? I decided I’m going as winehouse
ActualFilmStudent: blood
ActualFilmStudent: lots and lots of blood
ActualFilmStudent: that’s all I have to say
Intern Anastasia: what do I do about my jossip post?
ActualFilmStudent: I don’t know, send them our IMs?

Fin.