Clint Eastwood deserves all of the accolades he’s received for the movie Unforgiven, including a Best Picture Oscar and Golden Globe, but a brand...
Unforgiven
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Western Movies
Why Did Cowboys & Aliens Fail… Or did it?
The 2011 summer blockbuster film turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments, if you listen to Hollywood. With the brain trusts of Steven...
REX RIDEOUT
Making his movie debut as the cowboy fiddler in last year’s Cowboys & Aliens, Rex Rideout is a 19th-century music historian who can often be...
The Lone Rango
One film that touched everyone—from the kiddies to us grizzled veterans—was 2011’s Rango. We enjoyed it more because we understood all the inside...
Clint The Icon of a Generation
Clint Eastwood is a mystery. He’s been a cowboy, a cop, a National Geographic photojournalist, a clown, a honky-tonk singer, a jazz DJ and a...
Call of the Canyon
In 1906, novelist Zane Grey visited the Arizona Territory for the first time. The Southwestern landscape fired his imagination; after a few return...
1959’s No Name on the Bullet
About 30 years ago, my younger sister Pam had to write an essay on a “hero” for NYU. She chose Bruce Springsteen. I said, “I like Bruce, but he even...
The Bloody Benders
Scare master John Carpenter, who created the Halloween franchise, wants to make a picture about The Bloody Benders, a German family of serial...
Meek’s Cutoff
Director Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff is not an action picture or a conventional Western, any more than The Assassination of Jesse James was a...
Treasures 5: The West, 1898-1938
The National Film Preservation Foundation has dedicated an entire three-DVD collection to the American West and the Western. For hardcore fans, this...
Butch is Back!
We’ve seen them ride off into the sunset at the end of the story, but what happens when the heroes and outlaws, the men of myth and grand adventure,...
From Deadwood to Hollywood
Sopranos creator David Chase is working with HBO on a new miniseries, Ribbon of Dreams, about the early days of Hollywood. The two principal...