Arthur Penn’s under-appreciated epic has everything a big-scale western could want — spectacle, interesting characters, good history and a sense of humor. Dustin Hoffman gets to play at least five characters in one as an ancient pioneer relating his career exploits — which are either outrageous tall tales or a concise history of the taking of The West.
Little Big Man
Region B Blu-ray
Koch Media
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 139 147 min. / Available from Amazon.de / Street Date September 14, 2017 / Eur 17.99
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan, Jeff Corey, Aimée Eccles, Kelly Jean Peters, Carole Androsky, Ruben Moreno, William Hickey, Jesse Vint, Alan Oppenheimer, Thayer David.
Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.
Production Designer: Dean Tavoularis
Art Direction: Angelo P. Graham
Special Makeup: Dick Smith
Special Effects: Logan Frazee
Film Editors: Dede Allen, Richard Marks
Original Music: John Hammond
Written by Calder Willingham from the novel by Thomas Berger
Produced...
Little Big Man
Region B Blu-ray
Koch Media
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 139 147 min. / Available from Amazon.de / Street Date September 14, 2017 / Eur 17.99
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan, Jeff Corey, Aimée Eccles, Kelly Jean Peters, Carole Androsky, Ruben Moreno, William Hickey, Jesse Vint, Alan Oppenheimer, Thayer David.
Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.
Production Designer: Dean Tavoularis
Art Direction: Angelo P. Graham
Special Makeup: Dick Smith
Special Effects: Logan Frazee
Film Editors: Dede Allen, Richard Marks
Original Music: John Hammond
Written by Calder Willingham from the novel by Thomas Berger
Produced...
- 11/28/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Robb Sheppard Oct 13, 2017
The Hot Shots! movies were the peak of spoof cinema in the 1990s. We take a look back...
Spoof. Say it aloud. Feels like a dirty word doesn’t it?
Aside from even sounding slightly smutty, the spoof movie genre has, of late, been sullied by (five!) Scary Movies, Meet The Spartans and - oh, the irony - Disaster Movie. Transitory, devoid of wit and with the lowest common denominator in their crosshairs, these movies aimed for the tittering teenager, the cheap thrill-seeker and the perpetually stoned.
Perhaps the above seems like a sweeping generalisation, but it’s with good cause. Where these movies and even the term spoof itself have since been eschewed, there remains a series of films which occupy a place of fondness in the heart of - including yours truly, obvs - many a film fan: the Zaz movies.
The writing, directing and producing partnership of David Zucker,...
The Hot Shots! movies were the peak of spoof cinema in the 1990s. We take a look back...
Spoof. Say it aloud. Feels like a dirty word doesn’t it?
Aside from even sounding slightly smutty, the spoof movie genre has, of late, been sullied by (five!) Scary Movies, Meet The Spartans and - oh, the irony - Disaster Movie. Transitory, devoid of wit and with the lowest common denominator in their crosshairs, these movies aimed for the tittering teenager, the cheap thrill-seeker and the perpetually stoned.
Perhaps the above seems like a sweeping generalisation, but it’s with good cause. Where these movies and even the term spoof itself have since been eschewed, there remains a series of films which occupy a place of fondness in the heart of - including yours truly, obvs - many a film fan: the Zaz movies.
The writing, directing and producing partnership of David Zucker,...
- 10/10/2017
- Den of Geek
The classical western exists as an ideal sandbox for stories of heroism, in which white hats can immediately separate our protagonists from the black-hatted antagonists. Occasionally, though, we have a revisionist western that questions and defies the well-trodden patriarchal confines of the genre, as if looking at an old image from a tilted perspective and finding something new.
Sometimes, the characters don’t fit into the dusty old boxes occupied by so many western heroes and heroines. The hero robs and kills to stay alive, frightened and overwhelmed by this strange, new frontier. Other times, the stereotypical Western landscape disappears, blanketed in snow. Horses drive their hooves through ice-covered puddles. Wind screams past bone-thin trees — manifest destiny frozen over, encasing the American dream in ice.
In the case of Sofia Coppola’s newest, The Beguiled, gender and power roles reverse: an injured Union soldier (Colin Farrell) turns up at a girl’s school, an arrival which breeds intense sexual tension and rivalry among the women (Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning). According to our review, the movie is “primarily based on the 1966 book by Thomas Cullinan,” and “appears, at first glance, to be a remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 film adaptation rather than any sort of new reading of the original text. Coppola, of course, is far too clever for that.”
In celebration of The Beguiled, we’ve decided to take a look at the finest examples of the revisionist western. Enjoy, and please include your own favorites in the comments.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) idolized the legendary outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt), growing up hearing campfire stories about the man. Ford loved James so much that he eventually willed himself into the man’s life story. You cannot tell James’s story without also telling Ford’s. These two tragic lives are irrevocably linked by Ford’s betrayal. The film’s dryly antiseptic voiceover narration confides that Ford grew to regret his violent ways. The same goes for James, who at one point beats a child and then weeps into his horse’s neck, unable to live with his own deeds. While James’ propensity for violence is a deeply cut character flaw, Pitt plays the outlaw like an emotionally wounded teenager. His jovial sense of humor cloaks a vindictive and self-loathing interior. Whether Jesse James hurts himself or someone else, there is always a witness looking on with wide eyes. After James’ murder, Ford became a celebrity, touring the country reenacting the shooting. But Ford gained his prominence by killing a beloved folk hero. And so, one day, a man named Edward Kelly walked into Ford’s saloon with a shotgun and took revenge for James’s murder. Unlike the aftermath of Ford’s deed, people leapt to Kelly’s defense, collecting over 7000 signatures for a petition, leading to his pardon. America hated Robert Ford because he killed Jesse James. They loved Edward Kelly because he killed Robert Ford.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Robert Altman)
Robert Altman’s largely forgotten and often funny western about egotistical showman Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman) treats its lead without respect, eagerly mocking him at every opportunity. Known across America as they best tracker of man and animals alive, Cody runs Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, a rodeo-like performance of cowboy-feats, ranging from simple rope tricks to the trick-shots of the legendary Annie Oakley. However, Cody is a fraud, a walking accumulation of lies and tall-tales. When Cody gets the chance to hire Chief Sitting Bull, the man who defeated General Custer at Little Big Horn, he’s thrilled, until Sitting Bull refuses to participate in his offensive show. Contrasted with phony Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull drips with dignified authenticity, totally uninterested in living up to the ignorant public’s racist image of his people. While the manufactured “reality” of Cody’s shows gets applause from white audiences, the stoic realness of Sitting Bull initially receives jeers, until something occurs to the crowd: this isn’t showmanship; this is the real thing. Later, when Cody and his gang form a posse, he hastily removes his show attire and searches through his wardrobe, cursing: “Where’s my real jacket?” So utterly consumed by his own public image, Cody can no longer locate his true self. Altman’s film is a rare western with a lead character who never succeeds, changes, or learns from his mistakes, always remaining a hopelessly pompous horse’s ass.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
As we meet the legendary Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) he’s scoping out a bank, recently renovated to include heavy iron bars over every window and bolted-locks on every door. He asks the guard what happened to the old bank, which displayed such architectural beauty. “People kept robbing it,” the guard says. “Small price to pay for beauty,” Butch replies. It’s a running theme in revisionist westerns to reveal the truth behind the legend. The changing times had rendered bandits on horseback obsolete. But Butch Cassidy and his partner, the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) didn’t see the end coming until the future was already upon them. After barely evading a super-posse (to use a term coined by screenwriter William Goldman) led by a ruthless bounty hunter, they escape to Bolivia with Etta (Katherine Ross) Sundance’s girl, where their criminal ways are similarly received. What began as a vacation away from their troubles slowly becomes a permanent getaway run, sowing seeds of inevitable tragedy. Etta sees what Butch and Sundance cannot: the end. “We’re not going home anymore, are we?” Etta tearfully asks Sundance, informing him that she has no plans to stick around to watch them die. George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a tearful celebration of a pair of old dogs too foolish to learn new tricks.
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
The gorgeous and haunting Dead Man opens with a soot-faced Crispin Glover trilling as he points out the window of a train: “They’re shooting buffalo,” he cries. “Government said, it killed a million of them last year alone.” The American machine greedily consumes the landscape, leaving smoldering devastation in its path, while a stone-faced accountant named William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels to the hellish town of Machine, where he’s promised a job. Unfortunately, there’s no job at the end of the line for this seemingly educated man, blissfully unaware of his namesake, the poet William Blake. After taking a bullet to the chest, Blake wanders this dying western landscape as if in a dream, guided by Nobody (Gary Farmer) a Native American raised in England after getting kidnapped and paraded around as a sideshow attraction for whites. At one point, Blake stumbles upon three hunters by a camp fire, one of which, played by Iggy Pop, wears a muddy dress and bonnet like a twisted schoolmarm. Writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s twist on the western (accompanied by Robby Müller’s flawless cinematography) hums with textured period detail and vivid costume design, the accumulation of which achieves an eerily stylized tone.
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
The spirit of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is in the sequence scored by Jim Croce’s “I’ve Got a Name.” Django (Jamie Foxx), now a free man, removes the old saddle from his horse’s back, a saddle originally procured by a white slaver, the animal’s previous owner. He then mounts in its place, his own saddle personalized with an embroidered D. His freedom is still new and unfamiliar but, Django is more than willing to grasp those reigns. What works best about the film is how Tarantino’s screenplay embraces the politics of the Antebellum South in a fashion carefully ignored by every other western of its time. The dialogue, Tarantino’s most applauded talent, wheels a careful turn between a sly comedy-of-manners and a bluntly provocative historical indictment, always landing on a shameless exploitation cinema influenced need for violent catharsis. Tarantino’s channeling of Spaghetti Western violence, with the gore cranked up to a level far beyond that of even Sergio Corbucci’s bloodiest work, delivers tenfold on that catharsis, splattering the pristine white walls of Candyland plantation bright red.
El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Dripping with transgressive and bizarre imagery, El Topo embraces every taboo imaginable with a breathless zeal. Existing somewhere between Midnight Movie oddity and art-house epic, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s second feature envisions the west as an unknowable landscape, dotted with peculiar and grotesque characters, such as a legless gunfighter who rides around on the back of an armless man. Describing the film in narrative terms, beat by beat, would be pointless, although we follow a rider in black, the titular El Topo (which means The Mole) who crosses the desert with a naked boy on the saddle. Though we spend more time with El Topo, his son is the heart of the film, this warped and subversive pseudo-fable exploring the cyclical nature of life. Jodorowsky’s painterly eye for composition lends individual shots with arresting and breathtaking resonance. With less than subtle biblical imagery scattered throughout, including a marvelous sequence involving a religion based around the game of Russian Roulette, Jodorowsky’s film feels at times like a twisted celebration of mysticism, sampling notes from Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. It’s ending, a chaotic, dream-like burst of violence, adds a scathing gut-punch to an already overwhelming experience. There is no other western quite like El Topo, to say the least.
Continue >>...
Sometimes, the characters don’t fit into the dusty old boxes occupied by so many western heroes and heroines. The hero robs and kills to stay alive, frightened and overwhelmed by this strange, new frontier. Other times, the stereotypical Western landscape disappears, blanketed in snow. Horses drive their hooves through ice-covered puddles. Wind screams past bone-thin trees — manifest destiny frozen over, encasing the American dream in ice.
In the case of Sofia Coppola’s newest, The Beguiled, gender and power roles reverse: an injured Union soldier (Colin Farrell) turns up at a girl’s school, an arrival which breeds intense sexual tension and rivalry among the women (Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning). According to our review, the movie is “primarily based on the 1966 book by Thomas Cullinan,” and “appears, at first glance, to be a remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 film adaptation rather than any sort of new reading of the original text. Coppola, of course, is far too clever for that.”
In celebration of The Beguiled, we’ve decided to take a look at the finest examples of the revisionist western. Enjoy, and please include your own favorites in the comments.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) idolized the legendary outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt), growing up hearing campfire stories about the man. Ford loved James so much that he eventually willed himself into the man’s life story. You cannot tell James’s story without also telling Ford’s. These two tragic lives are irrevocably linked by Ford’s betrayal. The film’s dryly antiseptic voiceover narration confides that Ford grew to regret his violent ways. The same goes for James, who at one point beats a child and then weeps into his horse’s neck, unable to live with his own deeds. While James’ propensity for violence is a deeply cut character flaw, Pitt plays the outlaw like an emotionally wounded teenager. His jovial sense of humor cloaks a vindictive and self-loathing interior. Whether Jesse James hurts himself or someone else, there is always a witness looking on with wide eyes. After James’ murder, Ford became a celebrity, touring the country reenacting the shooting. But Ford gained his prominence by killing a beloved folk hero. And so, one day, a man named Edward Kelly walked into Ford’s saloon with a shotgun and took revenge for James’s murder. Unlike the aftermath of Ford’s deed, people leapt to Kelly’s defense, collecting over 7000 signatures for a petition, leading to his pardon. America hated Robert Ford because he killed Jesse James. They loved Edward Kelly because he killed Robert Ford.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Robert Altman)
Robert Altman’s largely forgotten and often funny western about egotistical showman Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman) treats its lead without respect, eagerly mocking him at every opportunity. Known across America as they best tracker of man and animals alive, Cody runs Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, a rodeo-like performance of cowboy-feats, ranging from simple rope tricks to the trick-shots of the legendary Annie Oakley. However, Cody is a fraud, a walking accumulation of lies and tall-tales. When Cody gets the chance to hire Chief Sitting Bull, the man who defeated General Custer at Little Big Horn, he’s thrilled, until Sitting Bull refuses to participate in his offensive show. Contrasted with phony Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull drips with dignified authenticity, totally uninterested in living up to the ignorant public’s racist image of his people. While the manufactured “reality” of Cody’s shows gets applause from white audiences, the stoic realness of Sitting Bull initially receives jeers, until something occurs to the crowd: this isn’t showmanship; this is the real thing. Later, when Cody and his gang form a posse, he hastily removes his show attire and searches through his wardrobe, cursing: “Where’s my real jacket?” So utterly consumed by his own public image, Cody can no longer locate his true self. Altman’s film is a rare western with a lead character who never succeeds, changes, or learns from his mistakes, always remaining a hopelessly pompous horse’s ass.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
As we meet the legendary Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) he’s scoping out a bank, recently renovated to include heavy iron bars over every window and bolted-locks on every door. He asks the guard what happened to the old bank, which displayed such architectural beauty. “People kept robbing it,” the guard says. “Small price to pay for beauty,” Butch replies. It’s a running theme in revisionist westerns to reveal the truth behind the legend. The changing times had rendered bandits on horseback obsolete. But Butch Cassidy and his partner, the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) didn’t see the end coming until the future was already upon them. After barely evading a super-posse (to use a term coined by screenwriter William Goldman) led by a ruthless bounty hunter, they escape to Bolivia with Etta (Katherine Ross) Sundance’s girl, where their criminal ways are similarly received. What began as a vacation away from their troubles slowly becomes a permanent getaway run, sowing seeds of inevitable tragedy. Etta sees what Butch and Sundance cannot: the end. “We’re not going home anymore, are we?” Etta tearfully asks Sundance, informing him that she has no plans to stick around to watch them die. George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a tearful celebration of a pair of old dogs too foolish to learn new tricks.
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
The gorgeous and haunting Dead Man opens with a soot-faced Crispin Glover trilling as he points out the window of a train: “They’re shooting buffalo,” he cries. “Government said, it killed a million of them last year alone.” The American machine greedily consumes the landscape, leaving smoldering devastation in its path, while a stone-faced accountant named William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels to the hellish town of Machine, where he’s promised a job. Unfortunately, there’s no job at the end of the line for this seemingly educated man, blissfully unaware of his namesake, the poet William Blake. After taking a bullet to the chest, Blake wanders this dying western landscape as if in a dream, guided by Nobody (Gary Farmer) a Native American raised in England after getting kidnapped and paraded around as a sideshow attraction for whites. At one point, Blake stumbles upon three hunters by a camp fire, one of which, played by Iggy Pop, wears a muddy dress and bonnet like a twisted schoolmarm. Writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s twist on the western (accompanied by Robby Müller’s flawless cinematography) hums with textured period detail and vivid costume design, the accumulation of which achieves an eerily stylized tone.
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
The spirit of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is in the sequence scored by Jim Croce’s “I’ve Got a Name.” Django (Jamie Foxx), now a free man, removes the old saddle from his horse’s back, a saddle originally procured by a white slaver, the animal’s previous owner. He then mounts in its place, his own saddle personalized with an embroidered D. His freedom is still new and unfamiliar but, Django is more than willing to grasp those reigns. What works best about the film is how Tarantino’s screenplay embraces the politics of the Antebellum South in a fashion carefully ignored by every other western of its time. The dialogue, Tarantino’s most applauded talent, wheels a careful turn between a sly comedy-of-manners and a bluntly provocative historical indictment, always landing on a shameless exploitation cinema influenced need for violent catharsis. Tarantino’s channeling of Spaghetti Western violence, with the gore cranked up to a level far beyond that of even Sergio Corbucci’s bloodiest work, delivers tenfold on that catharsis, splattering the pristine white walls of Candyland plantation bright red.
El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Dripping with transgressive and bizarre imagery, El Topo embraces every taboo imaginable with a breathless zeal. Existing somewhere between Midnight Movie oddity and art-house epic, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s second feature envisions the west as an unknowable landscape, dotted with peculiar and grotesque characters, such as a legless gunfighter who rides around on the back of an armless man. Describing the film in narrative terms, beat by beat, would be pointless, although we follow a rider in black, the titular El Topo (which means The Mole) who crosses the desert with a naked boy on the saddle. Though we spend more time with El Topo, his son is the heart of the film, this warped and subversive pseudo-fable exploring the cyclical nature of life. Jodorowsky’s painterly eye for composition lends individual shots with arresting and breathtaking resonance. With less than subtle biblical imagery scattered throughout, including a marvelous sequence involving a religion based around the game of Russian Roulette, Jodorowsky’s film feels at times like a twisted celebration of mysticism, sampling notes from Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. It’s ending, a chaotic, dream-like burst of violence, adds a scathing gut-punch to an already overwhelming experience. There is no other western quite like El Topo, to say the least.
Continue >>...
- 6/22/2017
- by Tony Hinds
- The Film Stage
By John M. Whalen
Back in the 1950s, before he became a legend, filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch,” “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” and “The Killer Elite”) wrote scripts for TV westerns, including “Gunsmoke,” “The Rifleman,” and “Tombstone Territory.” His reputation grew and in 1957 he wrote his first screenplay entitled “The Glory Guys” which was based on Hoffman Birney’s novel, “The Dice of God.” The book was a fictional account of Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, with all names changed. The script went unproduced for almost eight years, and in the meantime Sam had moved on, directing features including “The Deadly Companions” (1960), “Ride the High Country” (1962) and “Major Dundee” (1965).
You would think that with that growing resume, Peckinpah would have been able to direct anything he wanted to, but such was far from the case. “Bloody Sam,” as he was called, affectionately by his fans,...
Back in the 1950s, before he became a legend, filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch,” “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” and “The Killer Elite”) wrote scripts for TV westerns, including “Gunsmoke,” “The Rifleman,” and “Tombstone Territory.” His reputation grew and in 1957 he wrote his first screenplay entitled “The Glory Guys” which was based on Hoffman Birney’s novel, “The Dice of God.” The book was a fictional account of Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, with all names changed. The script went unproduced for almost eight years, and in the meantime Sam had moved on, directing features including “The Deadly Companions” (1960), “Ride the High Country” (1962) and “Major Dundee” (1965).
You would think that with that growing resume, Peckinpah would have been able to direct anything he wanted to, but such was far from the case. “Bloody Sam,” as he was called, affectionately by his fans,...
- 12/30/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Do you like my choice of leading image? 'We're the Glory Guys! Eee-Yow!' What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time is actually from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah. Twilight Time's extras have a lot to say about that, and so does Savant. The Glory Guys Blu-ray Twilight Time 1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger, James Caan, Andrew Duggan, Slim Pickens, Peter Breck, Jeanne Cooper, Michael Anderson Jr., Adam Williams, Wayne Rogers, Michael Forest, Paul Birch, Stephen Chase, Claudio Brook. Cinematography James Wong Howe Cinematography Ernst R. (Tom) Rolf, Melvin Shapiro Original Music Riz Ortolani Written by Sam Peckinpah from the novel by Hoffman Birney Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy Directed by Arnold Laven
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Glory Guys is as generic and standard-issue...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Glory Guys is as generic and standard-issue...
- 9/5/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
John Ford puts a Technicolor sheen on Monument Valley in this second cavalry picture with John Wayne, who does some of his most professional acting work. Joanne Dru plays coy, while the real star is rodeo wizard Ben Johnson and the dazzling cinematography of Winton C. Hoch. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1949 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 103 min. / Street Date June 7, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen, Mildred Natwick, George O'Brien, Chief John Big Tree. Cinematography Winton Hoch Art Direction James Basevi Film Editor Jack Murray Original Music Richard Hageman Written by Frank Nugent, Laurence Stallings from the stories War Party and The Big Hunt by James Warner Bellah Produced by Merian C. Cooper, John Ford Directed by John Ford
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Have you never seen real 3-Strip Technicolor used for terrific outdoor photography?...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Have you never seen real 3-Strip Technicolor used for terrific outdoor photography?...
- 6/4/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Prince, iconic singer-songwriter and seven-time Grammy winner, has died at the age of 57. In 1986, to celebrate the release of his movie Under the Cherry Moon, Prince agreed to go on a blind date with a radio contest winner. People caught up with the lucky fan to discuss her night out with the music icon. Read the cover story below:First you win a contest, and then you win friends. That's how it happened for Lisa Barber, 20, a Sheridan, Wyo. motel chambermaid who last month dialed an MTV contest number and, by being the 10,000th caller, won a date with Prince and...
- 4/21/2016
- PEOPLE.com
The last living Plains Indian War Chief, Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, died on Sunday, family members confirmed to Billings, Montana's Q2 News. He was 102 years old. Medicine Crow was born on October 27, 1913, near Lodge Grass, Montana. He was the last living person with a direct oral lineage to 1876's Battle of Little Big Horn - his grandfather, White Man Runs Him, was a scout with General Custer. Medicine Crow was the first of his tribe to graduate from college. He was working towards an advanced degree in anthropology when he volunteered for the Army during World War II. While serving in Europe,...
- 4/4/2016
- by Alex Heigl, @alex_heigl
- PEOPLE.com
The last living Plains Indian War Chief, Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, died on Sunday, family members confirmed to Billings, Montana's Q2 News. He was 102 years old. Medicine Crow was born on October 27, 1913, near Lodge Grass, Montana. He was the last living person with a direct oral lineage to 1876's Battle of Little Big Horn - his grandfather, White Man Runs Him, was a scout with General Custer. Medicine Crow was the first of his tribe to graduate from college. He was working towards an advanced degree in anthropology when he volunteered for the Army during World War II. While serving in Europe,...
- 4/4/2016
- by Alex Heigl, @alex_heigl
- PEOPLE.com
Friends of Film is developing an adaptation of famed author Frederick Forsyth's 2001 novella "Whispering Wind".
The story is a romance drama about a frontiersman and a Cheyenne Indian woman after the Battle of Little Big Horn. Their nineteenth century survival skills are put to the test when they are pursued by men armed with modern technology.
Robert Stern is adaptating the screenplay and will produce. 'Wind' is the longest story in an anthology collection titled "The Veteran" by Forsyth who penned such legendary books as "The Day of the Jackal" and "The Fourth Protocol" .
Source: Variety...
The story is a romance drama about a frontiersman and a Cheyenne Indian woman after the Battle of Little Big Horn. Their nineteenth century survival skills are put to the test when they are pursued by men armed with modern technology.
Robert Stern is adaptating the screenplay and will produce. 'Wind' is the longest story in an anthology collection titled "The Veteran" by Forsyth who penned such legendary books as "The Day of the Jackal" and "The Fourth Protocol" .
Source: Variety...
- 1/21/2016
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
It’s no secret that John Ford’s 1939 Western classic Stagecoach was based on a magazine story by Ernest Haycox called “Stage to Lordsburg.” Until this month I’d never read any fiction by that author, but a friend recommended Bugles in the Afternoon, which inspired a mediocre 1952 movie starring Ray Milland and directed by Roy Rowland. The story takes place ten years after the Civil War and deals with a man who enlists in the U.S. Cavalry at a remote outpost in North Dakota, little dreaming that he will be a participant in the battle of Little Big Horn. He is deliberately quiet about his past, including a blood feud that drove him out of the Army a decade ago and soured him on...
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[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...
- 7/11/2013
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
When they say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore," this is what they're talking about. "How the West Was Won," released in America 50 years ago this week (on February 20, 1963) was probably the most ambitious western ever made, an epic saga spanning four generations, 50 years, two-and-a-half hours, five vignettes, three directors (well, actually four), the widest possible screen, and an enormous cast of A-listers, including James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, and Spencer Tracy. It's hard to imagine any movie, let alone a western, being made on such a grand scale today, when it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Naturally, in a production that massive, there was a lot of chaos behind the scenes. Even fans of the movie may not be aware of the off-camera feud between Peck and his director, the technical challenges imposed by the untried widescreen format,...
- 2/20/2013
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Champion of Native American rights across five decades
On 27 February 1973, members and supporters of the American Indian Movement (Aim), mostly Lakota Sioux, occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota – the site of what is sometimes described as the last battle of the Indian wars, where in December 1890 the Us 7th Cavalry, the regiment led by General Custer at the Little Big Horn, massacred some 350 Lakota, mostly women and children.
The 300 protesters were soon surrounded by some 800 federal marshals, FBI agents and national guardsmen in a siege that lasted 71 days and led to the deaths of two Native Americans, one a Cherokee, and left one agent paralysed.
As the spokesman for Aim brought to Washington to negotiate, Russell Means, who has died aged 72 after suffering from throat cancer, became the leading face of Native Americans. Viewed as the most notorious Indian since Sitting Bull, he assumed a position of de...
On 27 February 1973, members and supporters of the American Indian Movement (Aim), mostly Lakota Sioux, occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota – the site of what is sometimes described as the last battle of the Indian wars, where in December 1890 the Us 7th Cavalry, the regiment led by General Custer at the Little Big Horn, massacred some 350 Lakota, mostly women and children.
The 300 protesters were soon surrounded by some 800 federal marshals, FBI agents and national guardsmen in a siege that lasted 71 days and led to the deaths of two Native Americans, one a Cherokee, and left one agent paralysed.
As the spokesman for Aim brought to Washington to negotiate, Russell Means, who has died aged 72 after suffering from throat cancer, became the leading face of Native Americans. Viewed as the most notorious Indian since Sitting Bull, he assumed a position of de...
- 11/1/2012
- by Michael Carlson
- The Guardian - Film News
The Internet has been bristling with the news that Wes Anderson will tap Johnny Depp for his next movie. (Anderson’s publicist could not confirm reports from Twitch that Depp will star in the director’s following project.) However, if it does happen, what kind of Wes Anderson character should Depp play? Here are five possibilities.
1. The embittered son with father issues. Family ties or lack of them are a particularly strong theme in Anderson’s work — see Jason Schwartzman as Ash in Fantastic Mr Fox.
2. The estranged or reluctant father figure. Another Anderson staple is most clearly expressed in...
1. The embittered son with father issues. Family ties or lack of them are a particularly strong theme in Anderson’s work — see Jason Schwartzman as Ash in Fantastic Mr Fox.
2. The estranged or reluctant father figure. Another Anderson staple is most clearly expressed in...
- 7/10/2012
- by EW staff
- EW.com - PopWatch
Release Date: Nov. 8, 2011
Price: Blu-ray $24.99
Studio: CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment
Dustin Hoffman (r.) goes native in Little Big Man.
The well-respected 1970 revisionist Western film Little Big Man, directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and starring Dustin Hoffman (Straw Dogs) and Faye Dunaway (Network), makes its Blu-ray debut under the auspices of Native American Heritage Month.
Stunningly restored so that Harry Stradling Jr.’s amazing cinematography is shown to best effect, the movie follows the life story of Jack Crabb (Hoffman), a white man raised by the Native American Cheyenne tribes. Crabb recounts his life, often comically, through flashbacks of the many historic events he witnessed — including the battle at Little Big Horn led by the egomaniacal General George Custer (Richard Mulligan, S.O.B.) — as the West was won as the bloody result of American imperialism and genocide of Native Americans.
No are on the Blu-ray version of...
Price: Blu-ray $24.99
Studio: CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment
Dustin Hoffman (r.) goes native in Little Big Man.
The well-respected 1970 revisionist Western film Little Big Man, directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and starring Dustin Hoffman (Straw Dogs) and Faye Dunaway (Network), makes its Blu-ray debut under the auspices of Native American Heritage Month.
Stunningly restored so that Harry Stradling Jr.’s amazing cinematography is shown to best effect, the movie follows the life story of Jack Crabb (Hoffman), a white man raised by the Native American Cheyenne tribes. Crabb recounts his life, often comically, through flashbacks of the many historic events he witnessed — including the battle at Little Big Horn led by the egomaniacal General George Custer (Richard Mulligan, S.O.B.) — as the West was won as the bloody result of American imperialism and genocide of Native Americans.
No are on the Blu-ray version of...
- 10/11/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
The Ohio Senate passed a bill Wednesday stripping state workers of their collective-bargaining rights. It just barely passed after a 17-16 vote, and union leaders expect it will soon pass the House too, where the Gop has a 59-40 majority. "We're expecting it to pass," said Ohio's AFL-CIO spokesman.
In this week's Newsweek, R.M. Schneiderman and Andrew Romano report on how Ohio's budget battle could decide who wins the White House in 2012.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Election Night Fallout
• Pushing a crusade against collective bargaining initially seemed like striking gold, but several Gop governors began to come out against the hardline proposals. • In Ohio, where the political stakes are higher than almost anywhere else, Gop pols risk losing their seats if they overreach. • Any passions unleashed by the collective-bargaining battle could alter the local political landscape heading into 2012-and potentially swing a crucial battleground state. • A tough...
In this week's Newsweek, R.M. Schneiderman and Andrew Romano report on how Ohio's budget battle could decide who wins the White House in 2012.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Election Night Fallout
• Pushing a crusade against collective bargaining initially seemed like striking gold, but several Gop governors began to come out against the hardline proposals. • In Ohio, where the political stakes are higher than almost anywhere else, Gop pols risk losing their seats if they overreach. • Any passions unleashed by the collective-bargaining battle could alter the local political landscape heading into 2012-and potentially swing a crucial battleground state. • A tough...
- 2/28/2011
- by R.M. Schneiderman & Andrew Romano
- The Daily Beast
Paul Dunlap was a prolific film composer in the 1950s and 1960s, scoring over 200 features. He was best known for providing themes and scores for numerous science fiction and horror thrillers of the decades. His music highlighted attacks by prehistoric beasts in 1951’s Lost Continent starring Cesar Romero, and an alien robot invasion in 1954’s Target Earth with Richard Denning and Kathleen Crowley. He scored Michael Landon’s transformation from man to monster in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), and provided music for such other Aip and United/Allied Artist cult classics as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), Blood of Dracula (1957), How to Make a Monster (1958), Frankenstein – 1970 (1958), Invisible Invaders (1959), The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959), Angry Red Planet (1959), Shock Corridor (1963), and Black Zoo (1963).
Dunlap was born in Springfield, Ohio, on July 19, 1919. He began working in films in the early 1950s, scoring westerns, war and action films including The Baron of Arizona...
Dunlap was born in Springfield, Ohio, on July 19, 1919. He began working in films in the early 1950s, scoring westerns, war and action films including The Baron of Arizona...
- 3/24/2010
- by Jesse
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
They drank, fought, chased women and died. But La's Native Americans live on in a lost gem of a film: The Exiles
In Los Angeles Plays Itself, the cult documentary by Thom Andersen about "the most photographed city in the world – and the least remembered", the director heaped praise on an all-but forgotten La movie: Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles, which documented a riotous and boozy Friday night in the lives of several Native Americans, originally from Arizona, living in the Bunker Hill area of downtown La in the late 1950s.
Unlauded and largely unseen in its day, it has received ecstatic plaudits from Us critics ever since. Today it's seen as both a unique moment in the history of Native American film-making and a record of the vanished community (and the beautiful Victorian architecture) that once existed where La's skyscrapers now stand.
The Exiles, which is out on DVD this week,...
In Los Angeles Plays Itself, the cult documentary by Thom Andersen about "the most photographed city in the world – and the least remembered", the director heaped praise on an all-but forgotten La movie: Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles, which documented a riotous and boozy Friday night in the lives of several Native Americans, originally from Arizona, living in the Bunker Hill area of downtown La in the late 1950s.
Unlauded and largely unseen in its day, it has received ecstatic plaudits from Us critics ever since. Today it's seen as both a unique moment in the history of Native American film-making and a record of the vanished community (and the beautiful Victorian architecture) that once existed where La's skyscrapers now stand.
The Exiles, which is out on DVD this week,...
- 2/17/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Video game movies still aren't a hot commodity yet (maybe after Prince of Persia?), but it doesn't mean we can't be excited for more adaptations coming up (like BioShock, too). SlashFilm has learned that writers Douglas Cook and David Weisberg, of The Rock and Double Jeopardy previously, will be adapting the video game Darkest of Days released by Phantom Efx last year (for Xbox 360 and PC). The project is being produced by Joe Roth (Hellboy II, Alice in Wonderland, Knight & Day) and is currently be shopped around to Hollywood studios by CAA. You've got to hear what the plot of this game is, though, it's pretty awesome! Here's a brief synopsis of the introduction to our protagonist and story in the Darkest of Days video game. In Darkest of Days, the player controls Alexander Morris, a soldier fighting in General Custer’s army during the Battle of Little Big Horn...
- 2/12/2010
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The Rock/Double Jeopardy screenwriters Douglas Cook and David Weisberg are attached to write a a big screen adaptation of the first-person shooter time-travel war video game Darkest of Days. Joe Roth (Alice in Wonderland, Knight & Day) is producing and CAA is currently shopping the project to the hollywood studios. In Darkest of Days the player controls Alexander Morris, a soldier fighting in General Custer's army during the Battle of Little Big Horn at the beginning of the game. After Custer is killed and Morris is wounded he is suddenly rescued by a man in futuristic armor and taken through a strange portal. Morris then awakens in the headquarters of Kronotek, an organization that has managed to develop time travel technology and is apparently dedicated to researching and protecting history. A Kronotek higher-up known as "Mother" tells Morris that the organization's founder has gone missing and disturbances have started appearing...
- 2/11/2010
- by Peter Sciretta
- Slash Film
In honor of the release of the Charlie Sheen 911 call, we've put together our favorite quotes from the shortened fifth season of Two and a Half Men. Too soon?
Although season five only had 19 episodes due to the writer strike, the season still had plenty of memorable moments including the CSI crossover episode, the introduction of Mr. Waffles, and the gorgeous Jenny McCarthy guest starring.
You can browse our complete collection of Two and a Half Men season 5 quotes or browse our favorites below:
Charlie: Hey, Berta, how have you been washing my underwear?
Berta: Like I do everything else around here: with a song on my lips and love in my heart.
Charlie: I'm serious. I got a rash in my, you know, private area.
Berta: Private? You get any more traffic down there, you're gonna have to open a Starbucks. | permalink Alan: Hey, Berta, you're a woman.
Berta:...
Although season five only had 19 episodes due to the writer strike, the season still had plenty of memorable moments including the CSI crossover episode, the introduction of Mr. Waffles, and the gorgeous Jenny McCarthy guest starring.
You can browse our complete collection of Two and a Half Men season 5 quotes or browse our favorites below:
Charlie: Hey, Berta, how have you been washing my underwear?
Berta: Like I do everything else around here: with a song on my lips and love in my heart.
Charlie: I'm serious. I got a rash in my, you know, private area.
Berta: Private? You get any more traffic down there, you're gonna have to open a Starbucks. | permalink Alan: Hey, Berta, you're a woman.
Berta:...
- 12/28/2009
- by eric@iscribelimited.com (The Barnacle)
- TVfanatic
TG4 this week introduces a new seven part series, 'Cowboys', that profiles seven legendary Wild West characters and examines and explores the myths of the old West to reveal what really happened. 'Cowboys' is produced and directed by Brian Reddin of Dearg Films. From the Battles at the Alamo and Little Big Horn to the outlaw antics of Butch Cassidy and Jesse James, this series will explore their Irish connections and attempt to distinguish the facts from the spin of contemporary writers and mythmakers. The director of photography for the documentary series is Gerry MacArthur and Darren Chan is the project's editor.
- 10/7/2009
- IFTN
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