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wesleywillis posted:Why are so many characters in westerns named "Ringo" or "Johnny Ringo" Watch The Gunfighter (1950) with Gregory Peck for a good movie with a main character named Jimmy Ringo!
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Feb 17, 2024 17:45
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Michael Biehns character in Tombstone is Johnny Ringo.
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Feb 17, 2024 18:22
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PlushCow posted:Watch The Gunfighter (1950) with Gregory Peck for a good movie with a main character named Jimmy Ringo! That might have been one of the ones I've seen on Grit a time or two.
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Feb 21, 2024 03:07
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Goddamn, the new 5 Card Stud blu absolutely rips. Would be a good proto-Slasher double feach with And God Said to Cain.
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Feb 25, 2024 05:42
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Curious—rewatchind Dead Man and it made me wonder, what are some of the more realistic depictions of the Wild West? Whether it's about how brief and rare gun violence actually was, or how diverse the mix of people was racially, or any other aspect of the Wild West that is otherwise generally mythologized otherwise
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Mar 7, 2025 03:30
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Unforgiven is probably the classic "revisionist" Western, and a big part of that revisionism is being more realistic.
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Mar 7, 2025 03:41
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feedmyleg posted:Curious—rewatchind Dead Man and it made me wonder, what are some of the more realistic depictions of the Wild West? Whether it's about how brief and rare gun violence actually was, or how diverse the mix of people was racially, or any other aspect of the Wild West that is otherwise generally mythologized otherwise This is a tricky one because the history of revisionist Western films must be longer than the original at this point, but they're usually still big on action, stylisation, and/or white guys. I'd suggest The Homesman (which is more interested in the fate of women than the name implies) and The Assassination of Jesse James. I think it's also the sort of angle Kelly Reichardt is working in with Meek's Cutoff and First Cow, but I only know those by reputation. For older stuff I would think of films like Warlock or Day of the Outlaw are classic era Westerns that seek to complicate the relationships between outlaw and townsfolk. For New Hollywood, McCabe and Mrs Miller dips into frontier town brothel management and I'm a big fan of how it handles gunplay.
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Mar 7, 2025 15:36
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The Assassination of Jesse James could work because it's not even a western, which I don't mean to be exclusionary, it's just that it's so far removed from the mythology and so much more concerned with people and their psychological interior. But if you rare but genuine violence, it's a good choice.
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Mar 7, 2025 15:52
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Jack B Nimble posted:Unforgiven is probably the classic "revisionist" Western, and a big part of that revisionism is being more realistic. “Realism” is a bit of a slippery term. Unforgiven is still a pretty operatic yarn; I think the revisionist element is more in its examination of what the archetypal Western hero would actually be like (which is to say, in Unforgiven’s appraisal, a sociopath and a raging alcoholic in an environment that happened to select for those traits).
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Mar 7, 2025 16:03
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General Dog posted:“Realism” is a bit of a slippery term. Unforgiven is still a pretty operatic yarn; I think the revisionist element is more in its examination of what the archetypal Western hero would actually be like (which is to say, in Unforgiven’s appraisal, a sociopath and a raging alcoholic in an environment that happened to select for those traits). Yeah, it's slippery, but it's also the term the OP used, but you're highlighting exactly the things that made me recommend Unforgiven; whether or not it's what they want when say they Realistic, I'm not sure. I can't actually think of a movie with realistic depictions of people that's also centered around a non white cast. I mean, is Buck and Preacher the thing to recommend because the characters are black? It's still a pretty over the top western.
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Mar 7, 2025 16:21
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McCabe & Mrs. Miller has some elements that you might consider to be more "realistic" than most Westerns. I saw in the Criterion special features where Altman had once described his idea for the movie as "a Western without cowboy hats", because it's not a traditional Western setting and the characters are dressed much more practically based on the region they're in. You don't see a lot of Westerns that take place in the Pacific Northwest, but not everything in that time period happened in Monument Valley.
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Mar 7, 2025 16:33
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Jack B Nimble posted:The Assassination of Jesse James could work because it's not even a western, which I don't mean to be exclusionary, it's just that it's so far removed from the mythology and so much more concerned with people and their psychological interior. But if you rare but genuine violence, it's a good choice. I think I get where you're coming from, but putting aside for a moment what parameters there are to a Western and whether you can revise your way right out of them, surely there's no more mythologised figure of the Wild West than Jesse James.
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Mar 7, 2025 16:37
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feedmyleg posted:Curious—rewatchind Dead Man and it made me wonder, what are some of the more realistic depictions of the Wild West? Whether it's about how brief and rare gun violence actually was, or how diverse the mix of people was racially, or any other aspect of the Wild West that is otherwise generally mythologized otherwise IMO outside of singing cowboys in the 1930s, almost all Westerns are somehow about reality clashing with the mythology. To use one of your examples, Shane is a great illustration of brief and rare gun violence. I think going back as far as 60s counterculture, artists were convinced they were blazing new narrative trails about the frontier when the majority of them were just making worse versions of John Ford films. That's not to say that there hasn't been innovation, but tbh it's such a broad question that it's hard to know where to begin. The more Westerns I see, the more convinced I am that Peckinpah is one of the pillars, and his work might be what you're looking for if you haven't seen them. Wild Bunch is the one people mention the most but I tell ya, I am so stuck on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Might be my favorite Western, but I'm afraid to commit.
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Mar 7, 2025 18:24
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Hopping back in for a double-post because I felt like that may have been too much of a drive-by. The questions posed brought out a lot of thoughts I have and rarely try to clarify. I think that Westerns, especially pre-New Hollywood ones, get a bad rap in the 21st century because of the belief that they are built upon a flawed historiography centered around manifest destiny. To be sure, that's a part of it all, but that's also just the truth. The frontier was tamed by people who believed in that. And all the stories we tell about those times are usually about the transition from the time it was wild and lawless, to the time it became what it is now. And it was an ugly time. Despite that, there's something romantic and dramatic about it, because of the stakes I mentioned. So while it's tempting to ascribe a linear way of thinking about realism, social progression, and historical perception, I think there's been a lot of give and take over the years. As an example, the filmmakers of the first decades of the genre had parents and grandparents who were alive when the Wild West actually occurred. They had living memory to contend with. And while that probably clouded certain elements of realism to be found in their work, there's an authenticity there that new artists can't hope to emulate. Everything made later was essentially a simulation of their simulation. And the good artists, the ones we still talk about, weren't propagandists. Their movies are full of essential truths about life, war, hate, and struggle. Did John Ford make a lot of cavalry movies where they look cool riding out to trumpet fanfare? Yes, but I don't think I single one of them failed to express how much the Indian Wars were hosed up. I guess I'm just trying to say that the genre has a tension about Myth that is essential to understanding it, but it is always an incomplete notion.
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Mar 9, 2025 19:11
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I was watching Rio Bravo today. Dean Martin was holding some beer bottles in swing top bottles. It struck me as an odd detail. Would they have had swing top bottles when the movie took place? The stopped was strikingly white, looked like plastic, but they might have been painted cork?
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Apr 7, 2025 05:32
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Detective No. 27 posted:I was watching Rio Bravo today. Dean Martin was holding some beer bottles in swing top bottles. It struck me as an odd detail. Would they have had swing top bottles when the movie took place? The stopped was strikingly white, looked like plastic, but they might have been painted cork? I'm not sure exactly when it was set but most westerns seem to be late 1800s or at least after the civil war (or before, or during), but yeah, ceramic swing tops have been around a while so 1859 for the first kinds and 1874 for the more modern one you usually see on Grolsch (although they've been discontinued I learned while looking this up): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-top I tried some swing tops from amazon for homebrewing but they didn't hold the carbonation in as well as good old PET bottles with lids similar to 1 or 2 liter soda bottles.
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Apr 7, 2025 06:16
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I figured they’d existed back then. My issue was the plastic looking stopper. I was looking into it last night and found a forum post on a homebrewer forum of someone who had the exact same question in 2009 after watching Rio Bravo. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/how-old-is-the-swing-top-bottle.133000/ Someone replied with a link to the history of antique soda and beer bottles but the link is dead. Along with a vintage use of the word “internetz.” A more innocent time. Does Alex Cox’s Walker count as a Western? I watched it a couple weeks ago and was blown away. I’d seen Ed Harris in things before but before he was always the guy I thought was Peter Weller but actually wasn’t. He was so good in Walker. He was like a more comical Charles Foster Kane.
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Apr 7, 2025 16:15
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all Alex Cox movies are Westerns
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Apr 7, 2025 16:40
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Detective No. 27 posted:Does Alex Cox’s Walker count as a Western? I watched it a couple weeks ago and was blown away. I’d seen Ed Harris in things before but before he was always the guy I thought was Peter Weller but actually wasn’t. He was so good in Walker. He was like a more comical Charles Foster Kane. I feel like Walker is an important adjunct to Westerns because even after however many decades of Revisionism as the norm, the genre proper tends to passively treat white Anglo settlement of the western US as a natural fact and not something that was steamrolled over the continent with extralegal force. Walker is one of the only opportunities to see the psychotic jingoism/ruthless opportunism of the paramilitary filibuster play out, and while it failed in that instance it's basically the same thing that produced the Republic of Texas and Republic of California and so on.
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Apr 8, 2025 00:05
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Last week I read True Grit with the intent of watching the original and remake back to back. I saw the remake in theaters back when it came out but that was a while ago, I think I’ll watch it again tonight. I watched the original last night. I really liked it, and it was extremely faithful to the book, but I found it a bit too whimsical near the end. The book and from what I remember of the remake was a lot more bittersweet, with the consequences of revenge. Also, I get the sentiment but telling someone you want them buried in your family plot came out as a lot weirder than the book/remake where she has him interred after a long search. If I had a nickel for every John Wayne movie I watched where his costar was a musical pop star I’d have two nickels. It did make me wonder if they had any musicians in mind for La Bouef before going with Matt Damon.
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Apr 8, 2025 15:16
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For bonus points check out 1970’s Norwood; with Glenn Campbell and Kim Darby reuniting just a year later for another adaptation of a Charles Portis novel. (Or don’t, it’s not very good)
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Apr 8, 2025 15:25
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Detective No. 27 posted:I watched the original last night. I really liked it, and it was extremely faithful to the book... Except for killing La Bouef which was an odd choice for it having been so faithful otherwise.
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Apr 8, 2025 15:30
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Sand Monster posted:Except for killing La Bouef which was an odd choice for it having been so faithful otherwise. Oh yeah. My friend told me about that change, and then when La Bouef got that last hit in on Chaney, I sent him a text calling him a liar. And then a couple minutes later I retracted my accusation.
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Apr 8, 2025 15:41
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Here's a linked list of free excellent Westerns on Tubi right now: Stagecoach (1939) d. John Ford The Lusty Men (1952) d. Nicholas Ray The Naked Dawn (1955) d. Edgar G. Ulmer Forty Guns (1957) d. Samuel Fuller The Tall T (1957) d. Budd Boetticher Man of the West (1958) d. Anthony Mann The Big Country (1958) d. William Wyler Ride Lonesome (1959) d. Budd Boetticher The Magnificent Seven (1960) d. John Sturges Comes a Horseman (1978) d. Alan J. Pakula The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982) d. Robert M. Young Straight to Hell (1987) d. Alex Cox Meek's Cutoff (2010) d. Kelly Reichardt
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Apr 8, 2025 15:48
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I've had a regular Western night with friends for a few months now. We've mostly been sticking with 70s and older films, but we (re)watched Tombstone last night since Kilmer passed. It left me wondering—are there any other 90s or newer Westerns which achieve that same tone? Bombastic, mythic, operatic, almost cartoony, but still rough-and tumble. Most 90s Westerns I've seen are either really camp, or have that overly-sincere almost schmaltzy feel, and post-2000 everything seems to be a reaction to that and leans into the grim. I guess kinda Quick and the Dead? But it's much sillier. Tombstone seems to have a very unique tone to me. Like, maybe Deadwood is the closest I can think of.
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Apr 8, 2025 17:41
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The 3:10 To Yuma remake might be close enough to what you're looking for. Great cast, definitely serious but not overly serious.
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Apr 8, 2025 17:47
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Sand Monster posted:Except for killing La Bouef which was an odd choice for it having been so faithful otherwise. I would guess that since Maddie doesn’t lose her arm and doesn’t get novel’s rather bittersweet epilogue portraying her in adulthood, the screenwriters felt there had to be some other narrative cost of success. I think True Grit 1969 is a fine western in its own right and a very fun John Wayne performance, but as an adaptation it does seem to either miss the novel’s sense of humor or have no idea how to translate it to the screen. General Dog fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 8, 2025 |
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Apr 8, 2025 18:07
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For a Tombstone-like, I'd basically have to cheat by going back to the 80s and say Silverado is the only comparison that matches it in both style and quality
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Apr 8, 2025 18:12
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Tombstone is $5 on Apple right now.
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Apr 8, 2025 18:22
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feedmyleg posted:I've had a regular Western night with friends for a few months now. We've mostly been sticking with 70s and older films, but we (re)watched Tombstone last night since Kilmer passed. It left me wondering—are there any other 90s or newer Westerns which achieve that same tone? Bombastic, mythic, operatic, almost cartoony, but still rough-and tumble. Quigley Down Under maybe.
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Apr 9, 2025 09:40
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I just watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. That one is an all timer. Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne are brilliant foils.
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Apr 14, 2025 03:31
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Detective No. 27 posted:I just watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. That one is an all timer. Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne are brilliant foils. Rad for sure! Definitely my fav Wayne flick, and always a Stewart head.
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Apr 14, 2025 04:31
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Yeah, I know Stewart did a few Westerns, I gotta track them down. I got the 4K of Winchester ‘73 and loved it. I might have to rewatch it alone as I watched it with a friend and we have a tendency to talk through entire movies. Oh yeah, and I watched Hour Of The Gun this week. James Garner is one of my favorite actors, and he’s got quite the Western background, but I had no idea he played Wyatt Earp until said friend told me about it. That might be the most stone cold role I’ve seen him in. It did get me thinking, did Tombstone become too definitive for a new OK Corral/Wyatt Earp movie to get made? I know these’s a Costner Wyatt Earp movie that came out the next year (I have the DVD sitting on my watch pile), but I’m guessing that was either already in production when Tombstone came out or became greenlighted as a response to, and just never got that cultural zeitgeist.
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Apr 14, 2025 04:51
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The man from Laramie is a must watch Stewart western, the far country is also fun!
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Apr 14, 2025 06:12
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Just watched The Big Gundown (1967). Picked it up totally blind. I've been on a western kick. Was at my local nerd store looking for any old western. Saw the box for the fancy new Blu-ray boxset featuring Lee Van Cleef in furs and cowboy hat brandishing a six shooter on a stark red background. The film is basically a buddy cop film except one of the buddies is a bounty hunter and the other a Mexican outlaw and they're actively trying to kill each other for most of the film. Also it has a Morricone soundtrack that's largely just him doing his usual schtick but it's a really good schtick. One highlight is during a duel with a comically evil and comically German baron where he works Beethoven's Für Elise into the theme . Which rules. Loved it.
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Apr 19, 2025 03:03
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Detective No. 27 posted:Yeah, I know Stewart did a few Westerns, I gotta track them down. I got the 4K of Winchester ‘73 and loved it. I might have to rewatch it alone as I watched it with a friend and we have a tendency to talk through entire movies. Costner's Wyatt Earp started filming before Tombstone, but took longer to finish and get it out there, and there's an anecdote that Costner's movie had rented all the western-themed costumes in Hollywood and Tombstone couldn't get any, and they had to import costumes from the Italian film industry, which ended up being a plus for Tombstone since those costumes were more colorful. Tombstone just overshadowed Wyatt Earp when it came out later. And Tombstone may be most peoples' favorites but Costner's Wyatt Earp is imo a good biopic if you're interested in the history, from all I've read about Earp that movie gives a more earnest picture of the historical man. There's a lot to like in both films, though Tombstone is more fun. I really like the scene in Wyatt Earp of Wyatt's and Doc's first meeting. I'm also big fan of James Garner, his charm is on full display in Support Your Local Sheriff; also the Maverick TV show for the seasons he's on are great.
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Apr 19, 2025 03:45
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Kull the Conqueror posted:Here's a linked list of free excellent Westerns on Tubi right now: Quoting for later, I have seen some of these but not all. Big shoutout to The Big Country, incredible movie, I love it so much. A top 5 western for me. A long movie but doesn't feel like it at all, one that I thought about a long time after watching.
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Apr 19, 2025 03:47
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It's not easy to find but I'd recommend seeking out The Ox-Bow Incident. It's a quick watch, barely over an hour, and feels ahead of its time. One of those movies that sits with you for days.
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Apr 19, 2025 13:18
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I may have mentioned this before, but if any of you get your TV by antenna, there is a TV channel called Grit https://www.grittv.com/ That shows nothing but westerns. Tv and movies. And also infomercials in the middle of the night. There's a page on there where you can search by zip code to see if you can pick it up locally. I think it might be on a few cable carriers too if you're in to that as well.
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Apr 20, 2025 00:32
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PlushCow posted:Costner's Wyatt Earp started filming before Tombstone, but took longer to finish and get it out there, and there's an anecdote that Costner's movie had rented all the western-themed costumes in Hollywood and Tombstone couldn't get any, and they had to import costumes from the Italian film industry, which ended up being a plus for Tombstone since those costumes were more colorful. Tombstone just overshadowed Wyatt Earp when it came out later. Oh I’m a big fan of the Maverick show. I actually liked the ‘80s revival show too. It was done by the Rockford Files production team in between seasons. I gotta watch the ‘90s movie soon. I loved Local Sheriff but I heard Local Gunfighter wasn’t as good.
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Apr 20, 2025 00:37
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