The Western is the quintessential American movie genre. Its iconography has been seared into our collective conscious: the solitary cowboy riding the endless frontier, towns struggling to survive in a lawless land, the quick-drawing gunfighter. Generations of filmmakers have engaged with those symbols, building an entire cinematic language on a genre that began with the simple premise of good “white hats” vs. bad “black hats.” In doing so, they have created mythologies, torn down legends and subverted what it means to be an American.
My exposure to the West began in the living room of my parents’ house. My father, a Sephardic Jew born and raised in Greece, shared with me the movies he loved as a child. Over the years my enthusiasm for the genre only grew as I became a history buff, a lover of myths, and eventually a filmmaker. In interviews, I’m often asked to name my favorite Western,...
My exposure to the West began in the living room of my parents’ house. My father, a Sephardic Jew born and raised in Greece, shared with me the movies he loved as a child. Over the years my enthusiasm for the genre only grew as I became a history buff, a lover of myths, and eventually a filmmaker. In interviews, I’m often asked to name my favorite Western,...
- 12/14/2017
- by Jared Moshé
- Indiewire
'Beat Takeshi' goes rogue cop in his first self-directed feature, as Takeshi Kitano. It's excellent, a brutal tale with a fascinating lead character and a directorial style that compels one to watch -- it's never easy to know what will happen next. Violent Cop Blu-ray Film Movement 1989 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Sono otoko, kyobo ni tsuki / Street Date October 11, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Beat Takeshi, Maiko Kawakami, Makoto Ashikawa, Shiro Sano, Shigeru Hiraizumi, Mikiko Otonashi, Hakuryu. Cinematography Yasushi Sasakibara Film Editor Nobutake Kamiya Original Music Daisaku Kume Written by Hisashi Nozawa, Takeshi Kitano Produced by Shozo Ichiyama, Toshio Nabeshima, Takio Yoshida Directed by Takeshi Kitano
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I'm always on the lookout for certain movies I've heard recommended, or that have descriptions that intrigue me. When I saw a reference to Takeshi Kitano's Violent Cop, I knew I'd want to take a look. As happens so often with Japanese pictures,...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I'm always on the lookout for certain movies I've heard recommended, or that have descriptions that intrigue me. When I saw a reference to Takeshi Kitano's Violent Cop, I knew I'd want to take a look. As happens so often with Japanese pictures,...
- 10/11/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The conflicted Paul Schrader works out some hellacious personal issues, in a feverish tale of a Michigan Calvinist searching for his daughter in the porn jungle of L.A.. A disturbingly dark modern-day cross between The Searchers and Masque of the Red Death, it was meant to be even darker. Hardcore Blu-ray Twilight Time 1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 108 min. / Street Date August, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley, Dick Sargent, Leonard Gaines, David Nichols. Cinematography Michael Chapman Production Designer Paul Sylbert Art Direction Edwin O'Donovan Film Editor Tom Rolf Original Music Jack Nitzsche Produced by Buzz Feitshans, John Milius Written and Directed by Paul Schrader
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I'm not sure that the word 'controversial' has the same meaning it once had. There has to be a consensus on what is 'normal' in society for some topics to become edgy. These...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I'm not sure that the word 'controversial' has the same meaning it once had. There has to be a consensus on what is 'normal' in society for some topics to become edgy. These...
- 9/2/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
By Todd Garbarini
This weekend of August 12 through 14th, the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Los Angeles will be presenting a series of classic western films that will also feature special guests who are scheduled to come and speak about their work in the films. We strongly suggest checking with the theatre’s schedule to see which other guests are added.
From the press release:
Anniversary Classics Western Weekend
August 12-14 at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills
5 Classic Westerns with special guests throughout the weekend
Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents our tribute to the sagebrush genre with the Anniversary Classics Western Weekend, a five film round-up of some of the most celebrated westerns in movie history. The star-studded lineup features John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Kevin Costner, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef and others.
This weekend of August 12 through 14th, the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Los Angeles will be presenting a series of classic western films that will also feature special guests who are scheduled to come and speak about their work in the films. We strongly suggest checking with the theatre’s schedule to see which other guests are added.
From the press release:
Anniversary Classics Western Weekend
August 12-14 at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills
5 Classic Westerns with special guests throughout the weekend
Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents our tribute to the sagebrush genre with the Anniversary Classics Western Weekend, a five film round-up of some of the most celebrated westerns in movie history. The star-studded lineup features John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Kevin Costner, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef and others.
- 8/9/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
It’s getting to be the Fourth of July and so it’s apropos to think about this country, what it is, what defines it, what makes it America. Those are somewhat large topics for an essay of 500-700 words (which is where I usually clock in) so we’ll just confine ourselves to one small area.
We deal with pop culture here at ComicMix so let’s think of pop culture icons, those things that we use as symbols of this country. We’re going to focus on one – American movie star/icon John Wayne. Marion Robert Morrison (Wayne’s borth name) made gobs of movies, usually westerns, war movies and detective films. He was a star in the old fashioned Golden Age of Hollywood sense of the word. No one was bigger.
Everybody and his/her brother does an impression of Wayne. My brother does one and I have different versions.
We deal with pop culture here at ComicMix so let’s think of pop culture icons, those things that we use as symbols of this country. We’re going to focus on one – American movie star/icon John Wayne. Marion Robert Morrison (Wayne’s borth name) made gobs of movies, usually westerns, war movies and detective films. He was a star in the old fashioned Golden Age of Hollywood sense of the word. No one was bigger.
Everybody and his/her brother does an impression of Wayne. My brother does one and I have different versions.
- 7/3/2016
- by John Ostrander
- Comicmix.com
The following text is an excerpt from an essay commissioned by the specialist publishing house Hatori Press (Japan) for a tribute to the great critic, scholar and teacher Shigehiko Hasumi on the occasion of his 80th birthday (29 April 2016). Other contributors to this book (slated to appear in both Japanese and English editions) include Pedro Costa, Chris Fujiwara and Richard I. Suchenski. Beyond Prof. Hasumi’s many achievements in criticism and education (he was President of the University of Tokyo between 1997 and 2001), his ‘method,’ his unique way of seeing and speaking about films, has served as an immense inspiration for a generation of directors in Japan including Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama. The online magazines Rouge (www.rouge.com.au) and Lola (www.lolajournal.com), co-edited by Martin, provide the best access to Hasumi’s work in English (see references in the notes below).Leos Carax and Shigehiko Hasumi. Photo by Michiko Yoshitake.
- 3/30/2016
- by Adrian Martin
- MUBI
The films of writer-director Jeff Nichols are all about characters, ordinary men and women pushed to the limit by forces outside of their control. Again and again, Nichols trains his eye on the themes of family, its bonds and hardships: his films often about not only what it means to be a father, but also what it means to be a son or daughter. The setting is usually classically American small towns and back roads, where a person can look up at the sky and find an ocean of stars. Under those stars, Nichols lets his dramas —Mud, Take Shelter, and Shotgun Stories — play out, some darker and more bloody than others.
His newest film, Midnight Special, is out this week in limited release. Its plot follows a father forced to go on the run with his young son, a boy possessing mysterious powers, to escape a team of ruthless government agents.
His newest film, Midnight Special, is out this week in limited release. Its plot follows a father forced to go on the run with his young son, a boy possessing mysterious powers, to escape a team of ruthless government agents.
- 3/17/2016
- by Tony Hinds
- The Film Stage
What’s the purpose of making a movie inspired by another movie? Usually it’s best to remake an imperfect film in order to refine some brilliant nugget left unexamined in the original. But remaking a masterpiece seems bound to failure (Let Gus van Sant’s Psycho forever stand as the monument for this inauspicious strategy). So I was worried when I first heard about this film: a modern-day French homage to The Searchers, one of my favorite movies? In the John Ford original, a father-like figure spends years obsessively hunting down a girl who was kidnapped by Comanches; in Thomas Bidegain’s Les cowboys, a father spends years obsessively hunting down his daughter who ran away to become a Muslim fundamentalist.That being said, Les cowboys is a really good movie—I’ll get to that—but it raises questions about what it is, exactly, that you’re paying...
- 9/30/2015
- by Doug Dibbern
- MUBI
Bruce Campbell just came across the most amazing thing he's ever seen and wants to share it with you. But is it literally the most amazing thing he's ever seen? It's hard to know! This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. #AshvsEvilDead https://t.co/CmftXf0OPF — Bruce Campbell (@GroovyBruce) July 2, 2015 "What if Sam Raimi directed Bruce Campbell as Ash as John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in 'The Searchers'?" Well, what if? You're about to find out thanks to this YouTube video. After watching, let us know if it's the most amazing thing you've ever seen in the comments. Or if it's not, let us know that too!
- 7/2/2015
- by Chris Eggertsen
- Hitfix
With Terminator Genisys on the way, Ryan analyses what might just be the most powerful shot in James Cameron's The Terminator...
"...the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight..."
You can tell a lot about how effective a movie scene is by watching it again with the sound turned off. Stripped of its dialogue, sound effects and music, can the sequence still communicate its message?
James Cameron's The Terminator, blessed though it is with a superb score by Brad Fiedel and numerous quotable lines, could work almost as well as a silent movie. So much of Cameron's feature debut (discounting Piranha II: The Spawning, from which he was fired after just two weeks) is told through body language and skilful shot composition.
Watch The Terminator's opening again without sound, and you'll see just how effective and lean its visual storytelling is.
"...the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight..."
You can tell a lot about how effective a movie scene is by watching it again with the sound turned off. Stripped of its dialogue, sound effects and music, can the sequence still communicate its message?
James Cameron's The Terminator, blessed though it is with a superb score by Brad Fiedel and numerous quotable lines, could work almost as well as a silent movie. So much of Cameron's feature debut (discounting Piranha II: The Spawning, from which he was fired after just two weeks) is told through body language and skilful shot composition.
Watch The Terminator's opening again without sound, and you'll see just how effective and lean its visual storytelling is.
- 6/29/2015
- by ryanlambie
- Den of Geek
There’s a rich (and bloody) tradition of avenging angels in Westerns, from Harmonica in Once Upon A Time In The West to Ethan Edwards in The Searchers and Josey Wales. Add Mads Mikkelsen’s character in The Salvation to that number. He’s all cold-blooded business, as this exclusive new clip from the film reveals. brightcove.createExperiences();Mikkelsen’s prairieland badass is a Danish settler, Jon, whose family is brutally murdered by a crew of rowdy horsemen during one ill-fated stagecoach ride. Jon exacts instant revenge on the perpetrator, only to discover that, like Old Man Clanton in My Darling Clementine, there’s more badness where he came from. Cue Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Delarue, the gang leader’s and now also on the hunt for revenge. Basically everyone here is on a revenge mission, hardly the recipe for a relaxing afternoon in an up-and-coming part of the Old West.
- 4/2/2015
- EmpireOnline
Anthony Mann
As much as any other filmmaker who found a niche in a given genre, in the 10 Westerns Anthony Mann directed from 1950 to 1958 he carved out a place in film history as one who not only reveled in the conventions of that particular form, but also as one who imbued in it a distinct aesthetic and narrative approach. In doing so, Mann created Westerns that were simultaneously about the making of the West as a historical phenomenon, as well as about the making of its own developing cinematic genus. At the same time, he also established the traits that would define his auteur status, formal devices that lend his work the qualities of a director who enjoyed, understood, and readily exploited and manipulated a type of film's essential features.
Though he made several fine pictures outside the Western, Mann as an American auteur is most notably recognized for his work in this field,...
As much as any other filmmaker who found a niche in a given genre, in the 10 Westerns Anthony Mann directed from 1950 to 1958 he carved out a place in film history as one who not only reveled in the conventions of that particular form, but also as one who imbued in it a distinct aesthetic and narrative approach. In doing so, Mann created Westerns that were simultaneously about the making of the West as a historical phenomenon, as well as about the making of its own developing cinematic genus. At the same time, he also established the traits that would define his auteur status, formal devices that lend his work the qualities of a director who enjoyed, understood, and readily exploited and manipulated a type of film's essential features.
Though he made several fine pictures outside the Western, Mann as an American auteur is most notably recognized for his work in this field,...
- 1/26/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- MUBI
The Searchers radically reinvented every wild west trope, the critics said. Trouble is, no one told John Wayne or John Ford
• More most overrated films
The Searchers is a landmark Hollywood western from John Ford, probably the best of the bunch. It’s a Technicolor marvel in shades of psychological grey, a revisionist take on the myth of manifest destiny. It’s full of savagery and tragedy, blood and thunder. I know this because I’ve read all about it and this made me feel I knew the film in advance. But either the critics were wrong or I had bamboozled myself. The Searchers was my all-time favourite western until the moment I saw it.
Ford’s 1956 film casts foursquare John Wayne in the role of foursquare Ethan Edwards, a civil war veteran on the trail of murderous Comanche. Edwards is in pursuit of his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), who...
• More most overrated films
The Searchers is a landmark Hollywood western from John Ford, probably the best of the bunch. It’s a Technicolor marvel in shades of psychological grey, a revisionist take on the myth of manifest destiny. It’s full of savagery and tragedy, blood and thunder. I know this because I’ve read all about it and this made me feel I knew the film in advance. But either the critics were wrong or I had bamboozled myself. The Searchers was my all-time favourite western until the moment I saw it.
Ford’s 1956 film casts foursquare John Wayne in the role of foursquare Ethan Edwards, a civil war veteran on the trail of murderous Comanche. Edwards is in pursuit of his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), who...
- 11/17/2014
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
The Searchers radically reinvented every wild west trope, the critics said. Trouble is, no one told John Wayne or John Ford
• More most overrated films
The Searchers is a landmark Hollywood western from John Ford, probably the best of the bunch. It’s a Technicolor marvel in shades of psychological grey, a revisionist take on the myth of manifest destiny. It’s full of savagery and tragedy, blood and thunder. I know this because I’ve read all about it and this made me feel I knew the film in advance. But either the critics were wrong or I had bamboozled myself. The Searchers was my all-time favourite western until the moment I saw it.
Ford’s 1956 film casts foursquare John Wayne in the role of foursquare Ethan Edwards, a civil war veteran on the trail of murderous Comanche. Edwards is in pursuit of his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), who...
• More most overrated films
The Searchers is a landmark Hollywood western from John Ford, probably the best of the bunch. It’s a Technicolor marvel in shades of psychological grey, a revisionist take on the myth of manifest destiny. It’s full of savagery and tragedy, blood and thunder. I know this because I’ve read all about it and this made me feel I knew the film in advance. But either the critics were wrong or I had bamboozled myself. The Searchers was my all-time favourite western until the moment I saw it.
Ford’s 1956 film casts foursquare John Wayne in the role of foursquare Ethan Edwards, a civil war veteran on the trail of murderous Comanche. Edwards is in pursuit of his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), who...
- 11/17/2014
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
(Howard Hawks, 1948; Eureka!, U)
The first of Howard Hawks's five westerns, Red River is the epic story of a post-civil war cattle drive up the Chisholm trail. It's alandmark filmthat brought a new psychological complexity to the genre and gave John Wayne the first truly challenging role of his career. Anticipating his unsympathetic Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Wayne plays Tom Dunson, a middle-aged Texas land baron acting with equal ruthlessness whether dealing with his Mexican neighbours in Texas or the hired hands he employs on the hazardous journey to a railhead up north.
The film introduced to the screen Montgomery Clift, one of the greatest American actors of his time, as Matt Garth, Dunson's quiet, gentlemanly adopted son. He revolts against his increasingly brutal father halfway through the journey and takes the herd on a different, less dangerous route. The film is a transposition to the American west of Mutiny on the Bounty,...
The first of Howard Hawks's five westerns, Red River is the epic story of a post-civil war cattle drive up the Chisholm trail. It's alandmark filmthat brought a new psychological complexity to the genre and gave John Wayne the first truly challenging role of his career. Anticipating his unsympathetic Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Wayne plays Tom Dunson, a middle-aged Texas land baron acting with equal ruthlessness whether dealing with his Mexican neighbours in Texas or the hired hands he employs on the hazardous journey to a railhead up north.
The film introduced to the screen Montgomery Clift, one of the greatest American actors of his time, as Matt Garth, Dunson's quiet, gentlemanly adopted son. He revolts against his increasingly brutal father halfway through the journey and takes the herd on a different, less dangerous route. The film is a transposition to the American west of Mutiny on the Bounty,...
- 10/26/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
With the passing of Lau Kar-leung (the common Cantonese spelling, he was also often credited in Mandarin as Liu Chia-liang), one of the great chapters of Hong Kong cinema comes to a close. Justly famous as martial arts choreographer and action director for many kung fu and wu xia films—the last was Tsui Hark's Seven Swords (2005), in which he also acted—Lau was also one of the outstanding filmmakers of Hong Kong cinema. His most important period was during the final heyday of Shaw Brothers, Asia's biggest studio: In the late 70s and early 80s, before Shaw Bros. closed their doors, Lau proved himself the biggest proponent of the martial arts tradition in Hong Kong cinema, as well as its chief modernizing force, hiding sublime layers beneath ultra-robust exterior appearance. (Fittingly, in 2003 he also directed the studio's comeback movie, more or less coinciding with the inauguration of belated...
- 7/1/2013
- by The Ferroni Brigade
- MUBI
This week marks the 57th birthday of John Ford's seminal western "The Searchers" (1956), which came in 7th in Sight and Sound's most recent critics' poll. In recognition, director Martin Scorsese reviews the classic film in THR: "First, apart from being an American epic, 'The Searchers' also is a John Wayne Western; for many, even at this late date in film history, that's still an excuse to ignore it. Secondly, it doesn't go down quite as easily as the pictures mentioned above. Like all great works of art, it's uncomfortable. The core of the movie is deeply painful." The American Film Institute has also posted an enlightening clip from the archives on its YouTube page (below) in which Scorsese recounts seeing the Civil War-set film for the first time as a boy: "This lonely character comes out of the desert,” Scorsese says of John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards,...
- 3/14/2013
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
This week I didn't have a chance to watch any movies at home, though I did continue reading Glenn Frankel's "The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend", which I mentioned in last week's "What I Watched". Last week I was only a few pages in to the film, now I'm about 125 pages deep and it continues to get increasingly fascinating as Frankel has gone so deep into the history of the people that inspired the film and tells their story in such a compelling way it is very hard to put down. This past week Martin Scorsese actually wrote about the book and the film for The Hollywood Reporter, here's a snippet: Ethan also is genuinely scary. His obsessiveness, his absolute hatred of Comanches and all Native Americans and his loneliness set him apart from any other characters Wayne played and, really, from most protagonists in American movies.
- 3/10/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
The Conqueror
Written by Oscar Millard
Directed by Dick Powell
USA, 1956
How bad a film is Howard Hughes notorious disaster, well it only managed to kill John Wayne is all. No not Wayne’s career, Wayne himself. The film was shot on location near St. George, Utah (obviously for its uncanny resemblance to that of northeast Asia), 137 miles from above-ground nuclear weapons testing. The filmmakers knew about the testing but were assured by the federal government that they caused no hazard. 91 out of the 220 cast and crew were diagnosed with some form of cancer within 15 years of filming and the death toll included the film’s director Dick Powell as well as the leads Pedro Armendáriz, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and of course The Duke himself. Producer Hughes so regretted his decision to film near a hazard site that he bought every copy of the film for $12 million and locked...
Written by Oscar Millard
Directed by Dick Powell
USA, 1956
How bad a film is Howard Hughes notorious disaster, well it only managed to kill John Wayne is all. No not Wayne’s career, Wayne himself. The film was shot on location near St. George, Utah (obviously for its uncanny resemblance to that of northeast Asia), 137 miles from above-ground nuclear weapons testing. The filmmakers knew about the testing but were assured by the federal government that they caused no hazard. 91 out of the 220 cast and crew were diagnosed with some form of cancer within 15 years of filming and the death toll included the film’s director Dick Powell as well as the leads Pedro Armendáriz, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and of course The Duke himself. Producer Hughes so regretted his decision to film near a hazard site that he bought every copy of the film for $12 million and locked...
- 3/3/2013
- by Matthew Younker
- SoundOnSight
As Sound on Sight’s Western month reaches its conclusion, two of the hosts of your favorite Disney movie podcast, Mousterpiece Cinema, Josh Spiegel and Gabe Bucsko met in the show’s vaunted and secretive HQ to discuss and debate what many people would claim is the greatest Western of all time: the 1956 John Ford film The Searchers. One of your hosts considers that claim perfectly accurate, and the other one is Josh. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Can this debate ever be settled? It’s up to Josh and Gabe to answer these hard questions, so read on for the answers!
Josh: I don’t remember much about my freshman year in college–thanks more to an unfailingly poor memory than to partying, I assure you–but one clear memory is that of my fall-semester film professor blowing his gasket when I told him I hated one of his favorite movies.
Josh: I don’t remember much about my freshman year in college–thanks more to an unfailingly poor memory than to partying, I assure you–but one clear memory is that of my fall-semester film professor blowing his gasket when I told him I hated one of his favorite movies.
- 1/28/2013
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
Billed as a Barack Obama election fillip, Kathryn Bigelow's tale of the hunt for Bin Laden quickly became political dynamite
When the Obama re-election machine began gearing up last winter, its presumed winning formula had the brevity of a high-concept Hollywood pitch: "General Motors is alive, Osama bin Laden is dead."
The mantra's first part received an unexpected iteration during half-time at the Super Bowl when, in an ad promoting the Us car industry, no less an icon than Clint Eastwood told the huge TV audience that Detroit had weathered the Great Recession and was coming back. (Apparently unaware he'd been cast as Obama's surrogate, the star would make amends by grotesquely lecturing the president during the Republican convention.) Meanwhile, the mantra's second part was also in the works, in the form of Kathryn Bigelow's big-budget thriller about Bin Laden's assassination; not yet named Zero Dark Thirty, the...
When the Obama re-election machine began gearing up last winter, its presumed winning formula had the brevity of a high-concept Hollywood pitch: "General Motors is alive, Osama bin Laden is dead."
The mantra's first part received an unexpected iteration during half-time at the Super Bowl when, in an ad promoting the Us car industry, no less an icon than Clint Eastwood told the huge TV audience that Detroit had weathered the Great Recession and was coming back. (Apparently unaware he'd been cast as Obama's surrogate, the star would make amends by grotesquely lecturing the president during the Republican convention.) Meanwhile, the mantra's second part was also in the works, in the form of Kathryn Bigelow's big-budget thriller about Bin Laden's assassination; not yet named Zero Dark Thirty, the...
- 1/19/2013
- by J Hoberman
- The Guardian - Film News
There are few more tragic losses in the history of Hollywood film than the disappearance of the western. Once one of the most popular genres in cinema, the myth of the west has been replaced with box-office focused action movies which dedicate more time to explosions than to character development or setting the scene. The true magnitude of this loss cannot be appreciated without seeing the John Ford 1956 classic The Searchers.
The Searchers is the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), who, along with his adopted nephew Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), goes on an arduous, years-long quest to find his kidnapped niece Debbie (played first by Lana Wood, then elder sister Natalie). Whilst this may sound like the standard cowboys and Indians fare (and much of the film is), there’s also a significant amount going on under the surface, not least in the sense that Ethan’s highly questionable...
The Searchers is the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), who, along with his adopted nephew Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), goes on an arduous, years-long quest to find his kidnapped niece Debbie (played first by Lana Wood, then elder sister Natalie). Whilst this may sound like the standard cowboys and Indians fare (and much of the film is), there’s also a significant amount going on under the surface, not least in the sense that Ethan’s highly questionable...
- 5/10/2012
- by Matt Clough
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Inspired by Cowboys & Aliens, James comes up with a few other potential sci-fi/western-themed buddy movies…
The title doesn’t lie. Cowboys & Aliens contains cowboys and aliens. Jon Favreau’s latest film has Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and Sam Rockwell wearing Stetson hats, and has extra-terrestrials invading the nineteenth century American Old West.
If you like cowboys and aliens, this is clearly a movie you’ll want to see. It’s unambiguous and upfront about what it’s offering unlike, say, Super 8. (“Who are these Super 8? Is this going to be like X-Men?”)
As a minor quibble, though, the title would be more accurate if it were Cowboys vs Aliens, seeing as it’s a story about conflict between humans and hostile organisms from outer space. A versus title is justified, because it’s a high-concept film based around a core premise of combat between two elements already...
The title doesn’t lie. Cowboys & Aliens contains cowboys and aliens. Jon Favreau’s latest film has Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and Sam Rockwell wearing Stetson hats, and has extra-terrestrials invading the nineteenth century American Old West.
If you like cowboys and aliens, this is clearly a movie you’ll want to see. It’s unambiguous and upfront about what it’s offering unlike, say, Super 8. (“Who are these Super 8? Is this going to be like X-Men?”)
As a minor quibble, though, the title would be more accurate if it were Cowboys vs Aliens, seeing as it’s a story about conflict between humans and hostile organisms from outer space. A versus title is justified, because it’s a high-concept film based around a core premise of combat between two elements already...
- 8/11/2011
- Den of Geek
A scene from Cowboys & Aliens
Photo: DreamWorks Pictures / Universal Pictures Why did Cowboys & Aliens fail to light the box-office on fire this weekend? Sure, it sold more tickets than The Smurfs, which is neck-and-neck with Jon Favreau's genre stew thanks to 3D, but it still fell well short of expectations for a film budgeted north of $163 million.
One site is already asking "Do People Still Care about Westerns?" which is sort of a silly question if you ask me with Paramount scoring twice with Westerns in the last eight months with Rango ($123 million) and Best Picture nominee True Grit ($171 million). Rango's success recently continued onto Blu-ray where it held the #1 sales position for the last two weeks in a row. So I don't think it's a matter of whether audiences still care about Westerns, but I do believe they need to look at a movie and see something worth anticipating.
Photo: DreamWorks Pictures / Universal Pictures Why did Cowboys & Aliens fail to light the box-office on fire this weekend? Sure, it sold more tickets than The Smurfs, which is neck-and-neck with Jon Favreau's genre stew thanks to 3D, but it still fell well short of expectations for a film budgeted north of $163 million.
One site is already asking "Do People Still Care about Westerns?" which is sort of a silly question if you ask me with Paramount scoring twice with Westerns in the last eight months with Rango ($123 million) and Best Picture nominee True Grit ($171 million). Rango's success recently continued onto Blu-ray where it held the #1 sales position for the last two weeks in a row. So I don't think it's a matter of whether audiences still care about Westerns, but I do believe they need to look at a movie and see something worth anticipating.
- 8/1/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Olivia Wilde and Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Aliens
Photo: Universal Pictures The alien craze continues and this time it isn't the military called on to take the invaders out, it's a posse of cowboys led by a mysterious high plains drifter and a grouchy cattle rancher. Director Jon Favreau has tossed aside his Iron Man shackles and made way for another comic book adaptation, bringing sci-fi flavor to the Wild West with Cowboys and Aliens.
Set in 1873 in the hot and dusty Arizona Territory, we meet a nameless man (Daniel Craig) who wakes to the sun beating down on his face and a metal bracelet wrapped around his left wrist. Who he is and how he got there not even he knows, but as he stumbles into the nearby town of Absolution he soon learns that while he may not know who he is, others certainly know him. Fortunately for him,...
Photo: Universal Pictures The alien craze continues and this time it isn't the military called on to take the invaders out, it's a posse of cowboys led by a mysterious high plains drifter and a grouchy cattle rancher. Director Jon Favreau has tossed aside his Iron Man shackles and made way for another comic book adaptation, bringing sci-fi flavor to the Wild West with Cowboys and Aliens.
Set in 1873 in the hot and dusty Arizona Territory, we meet a nameless man (Daniel Craig) who wakes to the sun beating down on his face and a metal bracelet wrapped around his left wrist. Who he is and how he got there not even he knows, but as he stumbles into the nearby town of Absolution he soon learns that while he may not know who he is, others certainly know him. Fortunately for him,...
- 7/29/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Alamo’s Rolling Roadshow has travelled the globe to hold special screenings in places significant to the movie being shown. This year Alamo is keeping the show in their home state of Texas showing Texas films set in Texas. Even better they have also created custom posters for the films showing which include The Searchers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Blood Simple, Hud, Red River, Bonnie and Clyde, Tender Mercies, No Country for Old Men, Giant, and The Last Picture Show. Hit the jump to check out the posters. The 2011 Rolling Roadshow begins Friday, June 3rd.
Posters via Apple.
Here is the schedule with descriptions from the press release.
June 3 – The Searchers in Fort Parker, Texas – Old Fort Parker – Inspired by the true story of a young girl’s kidnapping during a Comanche raid on Fort Parker in 1836, director John Ford’s iconic tale of mercenary obsession has been called “the...
Posters via Apple.
Here is the schedule with descriptions from the press release.
June 3 – The Searchers in Fort Parker, Texas – Old Fort Parker – Inspired by the true story of a young girl’s kidnapping during a Comanche raid on Fort Parker in 1836, director John Ford’s iconic tale of mercenary obsession has been called “the...
- 6/2/2011
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Here are some cool minimalist posters for Alamo Drafthouse's 2011 Rolling Roadshow. This year the roadshow is celebrating films that were set in Texas. This years films include, Blood Simple, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Searchers, Red River and more. Check out the posters done by Jason Munn via Apple.com.
Here is the full schedule and film descriptions:
June 3 – The Searchers in Fort Parker, Texas – Old Fort Parker – Inspired by the true story of a young girl’s kidnapping during a Comanche raid on Fort Parker in 1836, director John Ford’s iconic tale of mercenary obsession has been called “the most influential film in American history”. John Wayne stars as anti-hero Ethan Edwards, a man consumed by longing, hatred and a destructive quest for vengeance.
June 4 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Kingsland, Texas – Junction House – Join us where it all began. Tobe Hooper’s great American classic still packs a punch of feral,...
Here is the full schedule and film descriptions:
June 3 – The Searchers in Fort Parker, Texas – Old Fort Parker – Inspired by the true story of a young girl’s kidnapping during a Comanche raid on Fort Parker in 1836, director John Ford’s iconic tale of mercenary obsession has been called “the most influential film in American history”. John Wayne stars as anti-hero Ethan Edwards, a man consumed by longing, hatred and a destructive quest for vengeance.
June 4 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Kingsland, Texas – Junction House – Join us where it all began. Tobe Hooper’s great American classic still packs a punch of feral,...
- 6/1/2011
- by Tiberius
- GeekTyrant
Texas is known for being flat, minimalistic but still incredibly beautiful and that's certainly the theme of the posters for the 2011 Rolling Roadshow. This year, instead of going all across the country, the Alamo Drafthouse is keeping things close to home as they'll travel across the Lone Star State and show Texas films set in Texas [1]. Films such as Blood Simple, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Searchers, Red River and more. The posters premiered on Apple.com and, much like happened last year with Olly Moss [2], this year they were all done by one artist: Jason Munn. We've got all the images and schedule after the jump. Thanks to Apple.com for these images [3]. Last year, Olly Moss went for a specific theme and this year is the same, one artist, one theme. [gallery columns="2"] And here's the schedule with descriptions from the press release. June 3 – The Searchers in Fort Parker, Texas...
- 6/1/2011
- by Germain Lussier
- Slash Film
Taxi Driver returns to the big screen this week. John Patterson, who has seen it many times, says this American parable is ever more relevant today
I first met "God's Lonely Man" at the end of the 70s, the night before I moved to the United States. It was just something to pass the time before getting myself to the airport, but after Taxi Driver's climactic whorehouse massacre, which leaves blood, brains and hair on many a wall, I began to wonder whether this whole moving to America business was such a good idea after all.
Cut to three years later, June 1982: I take my father to a double-bill, this time in Washington DC, about four blocks from the White House. First up was a thinly attended screening of The Deer Hunter, which I and my father, a military man, concurred was utter bollocks; but before Taxi Driver...
I first met "God's Lonely Man" at the end of the 70s, the night before I moved to the United States. It was just something to pass the time before getting myself to the airport, but after Taxi Driver's climactic whorehouse massacre, which leaves blood, brains and hair on many a wall, I began to wonder whether this whole moving to America business was such a good idea after all.
Cut to three years later, June 1982: I take my father to a double-bill, this time in Washington DC, about four blocks from the White House. First up was a thinly attended screening of The Deer Hunter, which I and my father, a military man, concurred was utter bollocks; but before Taxi Driver...
- 5/6/2011
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Nobody — nobody — has worked with the British writer/director Mike Leigh more often than the British actress Lesley Manville. They first met in 1978, when he was 35 and she was 22, and have collaborated on no fewer than nine times over the 32 years since — a radio play, a stage production, and seven feature films. Over this time, Leigh has become an internationally known auteur and six-time Oscar nominee; Manville, however, has toiled in relative obscurity, often taking on small parts and even voiceover work, sometimes for years at a time, while awaiting her next call from Leigh. As she entered her fifties, it couldn’t have seemed likely that the future of her career would be brighter than its past, but then Leigh called again, this time looking to build a project entirely around her, and the resulting film has all but assured that that will indeed be the case.
In “Another Year” (Sony Pictures Classics,...
In “Another Year” (Sony Pictures Classics,...
- 11/21/2010
- by Scott Feinberg
- Scott Feinberg
Stagecoach Directed by: John Ford Written by: Dudley Nichols Starring: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Andy Devine With comic book movies and fantasy films ruling the box office, it's safe to say that the 'B movie' is now 'the A movie'. While the idea of the blockbuster is nothing new, there seems to have been a shift in the quality of talent that have attached themselves to films that years ago might have been considered substandard (actually, most of it still is substandard). Similarly, the western was once considered pure pulp filmmaking until John Ford's Stagecoach set a standard that legitimized the American western and turned a B movie actor (John Wayne) into a legend. While the plot of Stagecoach is pretty straightforward, the characterizations are fairly subversive considering this was Ford's first 'talkie' western. The first act of the film takes its time setting up the multitude...
- 5/27/2010
- by Jay C.
- FilmJunk
Welcome back to Western Wednesdays’ properly scheduled day and time. In honor of its return to normalcy, I’ve chosen the weightiest film I could outside of Unforgiven: John Ford’s The Searchers.
I’ve been anxious to revisit The Searchers. I haven’t seen it in years, and it’s the kind of film that’s referenced so often that it practically buries an individual memory. Am I remembering actual film, or simply George Lucas or Quentin Tarantino’s visual quotation of it? The lines can really blur. So when it popped up on Netflix Instant, I grabbed the chance to watch it again.
This is a fascinating film, though I’m not sure it’s a particularly enjoyable one. It goes without saying that it’s visually stunning — the sunsets, the famous door frame shots, those endless expanses of Monument Valley, a snowbound herd of buffalo. You’ve...
I’ve been anxious to revisit The Searchers. I haven’t seen it in years, and it’s the kind of film that’s referenced so often that it practically buries an individual memory. Am I remembering actual film, or simply George Lucas or Quentin Tarantino’s visual quotation of it? The lines can really blur. So when it popped up on Netflix Instant, I grabbed the chance to watch it again.
This is a fascinating film, though I’m not sure it’s a particularly enjoyable one. It goes without saying that it’s visually stunning — the sunsets, the famous door frame shots, those endless expanses of Monument Valley, a snowbound herd of buffalo. You’ve...
- 1/13/2010
- by Elisabeth Rappe
- The Flickcast
It may be an advertising grab if there ever was one, but that doesn't make Empire's Picture Perfect: Iconic Movie Stills feature any less impressive. The popular British film magazine's online arm has assembled 50 of the most memorable scenes from the history of film and delivered them in a glorious high resolution gallery. After browsing through much of the gallery, I clipped one of my personal favorites -- from the opening T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park -- to share with all of you above. Other great moments include one of the more beautiful shots from Hitchcock's The Birds, Al Pacino sitting in his throne-like arm chair in The Godfather Part 2 and the savage Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) heading out toward the fringes of life in The Searchers. Just to name a few. Head over to Empire and see the entire gallery for yourself, then come back and let me know which pics are your favorites in...
- 11/16/2009
- by Neil Miller
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
The Searchers isn't just a movie -- it's a kind of mythos that has influenced countless others that have followed it. Especially the films of screenwriter Paul Schrader. Originally a critic, Schrader penned the screenplay for Taxi Driver in one week in Los Angeles, using the yellow cab as a metaphor for urban loneliness. His model: Ford's movie. Both main characters -- Ethan Edwards (John Wayne, in The Searchers)...
- 3/7/2009
- AMC Future of Classic: Westerns
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