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Tales of the Old [Westerns]
Posts
I'm going to have to watch this film now. That is an incredible song.
Thank you Western Thread. You have, implausibly, made me both want to watch a genre I didn't really care about; and made me so, so excited for Red Dead Redemption on friday.
Enrico Morricone did the scores for just about all of Leone's films and the music in all of them is simply brilliant. Even a weaker Leone film like Duck, You Sucker still has an amazing score.
As far as movies go, I know a lot of people hate on it, but I quite enjoyed Open Range.
The Sackett miniseries based on the L'Amour novels was great as well. Absolute dream cast for the time. Actually any of the made for tv L'Amour stuff is pretty fun.
So how bout modern westerns? No Country has been mentioned, and I agree. I'll toss this out there. Way of the Gun.
Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
I like that movie, in large part because it has one of my favorite extended shootout scenes in recent memory. Some parts of the film are pretty cheesy, but it's enjoyable nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq3zjTmVLbM
a fading melody - my indie platformer for the xbox 360
Was interesting, made me want to watch more Kurosawa films.
I really enjoyed No Country for Old Men, but I don't really consider it to be a Western, per se. No Country for Old Men was essentially a Greek tragic play set in the West. (Why, yes, I am a literature nerd.) It's incredibly true to the tragic conventions and needs, right down to the hubris and Tommy Lee Jones as the Chorus. This is why I think a number people I know who love Westerns did not like this movie. They expected the American Epic that is the classic Western and got a Greek tragedy instead. Personally, I thought it was brilliant.
McLintock is fun for so many reasons, not in the least because of the homage to The Taming of the Shrew. I mean, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara? What's not to like?
You stole my input. haha I thought Open Range was a nicely done Western. Robert Duvall plays such a great cowboy. The movie has quite well used silences as well that worked well.
I grew up reading and watching Westerns myself. It's hard to beat Louis L'Amour. He had such a sense of the West, both the real West and the idealized West. The Sacketts is good stuff: good story, great cast.
I know it might seem cliché, but I really like High Noon. It's probably about my favorite.
Do you have any idea how popular Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill were in Brazil around the 80's?
We loved those dudes. Trinity was the coolest guy ever.
edit - I enjoyed the proposition, and while it isn't so recent there is a Depp film called I think Dead Man from maybe 1992 that I believe would or could be considered a western which is quite interesting.
ah, 1995, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ Jarmusch
They've been set all over the place. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid takes place partly in Bolivia. The Ostern is the Soviet equivalent that was made to be the mirror image of the Western for propaganda and is usually set in the steppes of Asia. The Good, the Bad and the Weird is set in Mongolia. Quigly Down Under is set in Australia.
I understand most of the Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in at a place called Almaria in Andalusia. They even have a small tourist industry built around the old sets! I was going to visit it last year while I was in the region but then I had second thoughts as it seemed a little corny
See I'd love that.
Check out The Proposition for a somewhat recent Australian 'western'.
Also, if Deadwood gets to be mentioned, Lonesome Dove deserves a shoutout too.
'Get your fucking finger on the wookie'
Well perhaps corny was the wrong word. I had a week in the area and I had a lot of other things I wanted to go see that I valued more. The area is full of pre Roman, Roman, Visigoth, Arabic/Muslim and then Medieval sites of interest and I am a bit of a history geek.
Yes but the film history there...
I was torn! I may have to go back, it is pretty cheap to fly there from London, perhaps under $100 return if I time it right. Then hostels for 3 or 4 nights would be about that as well. Goddam it is cheap to be a tourist in Europe
This is where I went instead: Granada
Dead Man is one of the most fantastic movies I've ever seen, but it's definitely not a straight western by any stretch of the imagination. While its external elements are standard western fare, internally, it is so far out of whack Most of the movie is like a disjointed acid dream, albeit an amazingly executed disjointed acid dream. Alfred Molina and Crispin Glover are both totally amazing, not to mention Depp and Gary Farmer.
I watch them every year.
I tried to limit the OP to the very influential Westerns. El Topo could be argued onto the list because it basically caused the creation of the Acid Western, but I was tired and I really didn't want to explain it. It also has a history of being damn near impossible to get a hold of. Has a DVD been released for it yet? The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford doesn't make the influential part of the list and it's not really on the required watching list.
Apparently there was an official DVD release in 2007. I'll add it to the list a little bit later.
I remember seeing it on TV long, long ago.
Our open plains were completely devoid of people, back then.
The entire action was going on in the Northeast Semi-Arid regions. There is a lot of hard, thorny low vegetation over there. There were gangs of "Cangaceiros", cangs of men and women armed to the teeth and clad in hard leather, who roamed the countryside like the plague. They were feared and idolized. Most were wiped out by the police, but there are plenty of awesome tales. The biggest and most famous was Lampião ("Oil Lantern").
There's also the horrid true story of Canudos, a city-theocracy founded by a crazy prophet who railed against the newly formed republic. They were attacked several times by the army, and beat them back. Every single person in Canudos was slaughtered in the end, down to the last man, woman and child. A Brazilian writer/journalist of the time wrote a book about it, after he saw it happen (Os Sertões) and Mario Vargas Llosa also wrote about it.
All those tales would make great fucking western movies.
You know, one of the reasons I fell completely in love with Firefly from the first episode was what a fun Western it was...just set in space.
Speaking of Australia and Westerns, although it is slightly campy and also slighty cheesy, I always liked Quigley Down Under. A less campy and cheesy Western-in-Australia that I haven't watched in years but did enjoy when I saw it was The Man from Snowy River.
Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
My dad always says that one is even better, but I'm ashamed to admit I have yet to see it.
I like True Grit. I don't think it's Wayne's best role or his best Western but it's a fine and solid choice. I'm somewhat annoyed it's being remade. The Cohen brothers are an interesting choice but I'm really not sure how Jeff Daniels is going to do in Wayne's shoes.
Hud
Hombre
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Taxi Driver
One of the things I love about that scene is something Wayne did in a lot of his movies. That Winchester's lever was modified for his big hands, you'll note that it's almost a circle rather then the long oval of a normal one. The increased size lets him do the twirl with it when he works the lever. It's got almost a sword like feel when he does that.
"Get the hell out of Dodge."
The Snowy River films were pretty huge back in the day. I really should watch them again, to see if my adult self thinks the child self's tastes were anygood
This movie will forever be more important to me for what it didn't do than what it did.