In the opening scene of the 1957 western The Tall T, a man on horseback is spotted from afar by a boy and his father, prompting the elder homesteader to fetch his rifle. The audience shares their uncertainty, seeing this figure through a telephoto lens from a great distance, but when the stranger gets closer to the ranch, he’s recognized by the boy as an ally.
It’s the film’s hero, Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott), a fellow rancher, and the gun is therefore set aside. The Tall T is the first in a series of westerns grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) that director Budd Boetticher made in the late ’50s and concluded with the release of Comanche Station in 1960, and in this inaugural scene, Boetticher establishes a crucial theme and visual pattern of this spiritually unified set of potboilers.
It’s the film’s hero, Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott), a fellow rancher, and the gun is therefore set aside. The Tall T is the first in a series of westerns grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) that director Budd Boetticher made in the late ’50s and concluded with the release of Comanche Station in 1960, and in this inaugural scene, Boetticher establishes a crucial theme and visual pattern of this spiritually unified set of potboilers.
- 10/2/2023
- by Carson Lund
- Slant Magazine
Biker movies are almost a subgenre of films unto themselves, beginning with Marlon Brando’s The Wild One in the early ’50s and then through all those Aip exploitation titles of the ’60s including The Wild Angels, Hells Angels on Wheels and many more, notably Tom Laughlin’s predecessor to Billy Jack called Born Losers, all culminating with Easy Rider with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, which became the Citizen Kane of biker cinema.
It has been awhile since we have seen a major big-screen return to the world of biker culture, but with Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, which had its world premiere Thursday at the Telluride Film Festival, this long-lost era is back. But its filmmaker has distinctly different ideas and motives in reviving it. Basically, Nichols tells a period story set in the ’60s and ’70s world of the earlier efforts but applies contemporary themes of...
It has been awhile since we have seen a major big-screen return to the world of biker culture, but with Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, which had its world premiere Thursday at the Telluride Film Festival, this long-lost era is back. But its filmmaker has distinctly different ideas and motives in reviving it. Basically, Nichols tells a period story set in the ’60s and ’70s world of the earlier efforts but applies contemporary themes of...
- 9/1/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Editor’s note: Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing are co-authors of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box-Office Became a National Obsession. Hayes is Deadline’s Business Editor and Bing is Chief Communications Officer at Vice Media Group.
The more things change, the more the Hollywood studios stay the same. At least that’s one of the surprising lessons of Barbenheimer, Sound of Freedom, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Fast and the Furious 10, and the other big-budget summer box office bets trying to help the movie business pull off a historic comeback.
Twenty years ago, we wrote a book, Open Wide, about a battle at the multiplex on the weekend of July 4, 2003, for the hearts, minds and dollars of the American public. In some respects, nothing has changed. The showdown that July weekend two decades ago pitted pink against black, and a sparkly self-actualized blonde heroine against a grim avatar of thermonuclear war.
The more things change, the more the Hollywood studios stay the same. At least that’s one of the surprising lessons of Barbenheimer, Sound of Freedom, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Fast and the Furious 10, and the other big-budget summer box office bets trying to help the movie business pull off a historic comeback.
Twenty years ago, we wrote a book, Open Wide, about a battle at the multiplex on the weekend of July 4, 2003, for the hearts, minds and dollars of the American public. In some respects, nothing has changed. The showdown that July weekend two decades ago pitted pink against black, and a sparkly self-actualized blonde heroine against a grim avatar of thermonuclear war.
- 8/18/2023
- by Jonathan Bing and Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
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