Favorite Western movie/show

POSTED BY: MacBaker
UPDATED: Saturday, June 11, 2005 14:34
VIEWED: 8773
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CHRONICTHEHEDGEHOG

Thursday, June 9, 2005 6:17 AM

The Outlaw Josey Wales has to be top of my list, then maybe The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

KOFFEE

Thursday, June 9, 2005 9:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by MANWITHPEZ
For me...Its all about Lonesome Dove. Great book, great miniseries.

I whole heartedly agree! And Tombstone would be right up there at the top of my picks as well. After all, my niece is named after Wyatt’s brother Morgan.

Quote:
Originally posted by EST120
i liked the quick and the dead too. not a real big fan of leonardo dicaprio but he was quite good in that movie. of course, gene hackman and sharon stone always can be fun to watch and you get a pre-superstardom russell crowe to boot!

I am a huge Crowe fan, but I hate this movie.

I had a bias against it from the beginning because they stole the title of the film from another great western starring Sam Elliot. The original Quick and the Dead movie was based on a book by famous westerns author Louis L’Amour (The Sacketts, The Shadow Riders) and is a completely different story entirely. The Sam Elliot movie was fantastic, as most all of his westerns are. Another favorite of mine that Elliot is in is Conagher. (another L’Amour story)

Some more of my quirky favorites in no particular order….
Pale Rider
Dances With Wolves
Hang Em High
Quigley Down Under
Rooster Cogburn
Little Big Man

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78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

SICKDUDE

Thursday, June 9, 2005 5:13 PM

Also, I remember seeing a bit of "The Grey Fox". Anyone see the whole thing?

"Don't say 'ka' until you've tried it." Daniel Jackson

KOFFEE

Friday, June 10, 2005 4:06 AM

Just thought of another few....

A Man Called Horse
Jeremiah Johnson
Barbarosa

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78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

SMUDGE

Friday, June 10, 2005 11:35 AM

it can only be Once upon a Time in the West
for tv short lived The Quest (1977)

shiny

MANWITHPEZ

Friday, June 10, 2005 12:15 PM

I can't believe...I just can't that the fantastic Gregory Peck movie The Gunfighter hasn't been mentioned here. I just can't.

And no one's mentioned Destry Rides Again. These are two banner Westerns. The Gunfighter is about a gunslinger, who, against the odds, has managed to stay alive, though always hunted. He can never have a quiet drink in a bar because there's always someone lookin' to prove themselves better than him. He always has to sit with his back to a wall. And, with Peck's fantastic portrayal, you can tell he's haunted by the faces of the men he's killed. Great movie.

Destry Rides Again stars Jimmy Stewart. At least two other westerns named in this thread were influenced directly by this film. One is Brisco County Jr. Educated lawman who's almost silly on the surface, but has plenty of steel underneath. Also, father issues. The other is Blazing Saddles. Madeline Kahn's portrayal of Lily von Shtupp is almost a direct sendup of Marlena Dietrich's character in Destry. Right down to the accent and the bad singing.

I'll mention another, and that's The Fastest Gun Alive starring Glenn Ford. I remember watching the beginning of this movie, and thinking "When is it going to get good?" I didn't have to wait long. Ford plays a saloon owner with a secret. He's really a faster than legend gunslinger. He gets drunk in his own bar one day and starts shooting off his mouth. Then he goes home, retrieves the gun that he swore to his wife he had thrown in the lake, takes it back to town, and manages to scare the crap out of everybody! Its not long before someone (Broderick Crawford) comes looking for a fight. This one's a little hard to find, but if you can, its worth watching.

And now I think I've shot my mouth off about westerns a little too much....Sorry!

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

MANWITHPEZ

Friday, June 10, 2005 12:21 PM

Oh, and I'm sorry about The Cowboys spoiler...I had it in my head, since I hadn't watched the movie since I was a kid, that that happens in the beginning..But, I know now that it doesn't...Sooooooo sorry. But, its a great movie nonetheless...Also, No one's mentioned True Grit, She Wore A Yello Ribbon, and quite possibly, my favorite wester of all...McClintock!

If you happen to buy a copy of McClintock!, be careful...There are a lot of crappy transfers out there...to be certain, if you got a cheap copy of this movie, you got what you paid for...

I tried to warn my mother (Whose DVD collection is 90% westerns), but it was too late...

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

CHRISTHECYNIC

Friday, June 10, 2005 3:26 PM

This is in the order
movies I like
series I like
movies that I’m commenting on.

Silverado
Silverado is a great western, if for no other reason than it embodies the western. In a time when westerns were unpopular and everyone was trying to make their own version Silverado simply stuck by the classic western design and made it good by doing it well, not by reinventing anything.

One of the things I liked is that there was no attempt made to give people “western” accents, these are people who were moving west, by definition that means they were coming from the east. Nothing kills the scene more quickly than a guy talking in an unbelievable way, and it doesn’t matter whether it is something that was bleeped out and then dubbed over in a completely different voice, someone saying they came from Massachusetts with an accent associated with the Midwest, extreme west, or anything else including the word “west.”

It’s like a confederate from Missouri talking with an Alabama accent.

The Outlaw Josey Wales
I really liked this one, can’t really say why, perhaps only because there were not reasons for me not to like it.

Blazing Saddles
It’s funny; that is all you need to know. The ending could have been better, but other than that I have no complaints.

The Quick and the Dead
Well I’ve been watching this, lately as it’s been getting heavy rotation on a movie channel I have, it’s got an actual reason for the frequency of gunfights, characters with complexity, and an interesting stylization

Firefly
The only western series I have watched.

Sometimes I wonder what Firefly actually requires It seems like you could put it on a boat, in an ocean, during a colonial period where there are no continents, just different sized islands. On the other hand you could change the plot and keep the quality effects and it would sell, provided it came at the right time, which it didn’t.

Because it is non derivative you could expand any one of it’s specific elements into another genre

Open Range, Shane, Pale Rider, Quigley Down Under
I can take or leave all of these, if they are on TV or otherwise free I’ll watch, but I wouldn’t pay money for them.

Stagecoach
Well I know it’s a classic, but it seemed flat to me. There were different character who might have had interesting interactions, but they didn’t. I don’t even care that much about character, I need characters that are complex and four dimensional to love a show (by which I mean Play, TV Show, or movie.) However to like it all I need are ones that are not so incredibly two dimensional as to draw your attention from the strong point of the show, whatever that may be.

The Unforgiven
Burt Lancaster vs. the Indians right? Or is there another movie by that name?
Anyway, I didn’t like it at all, acting was wretched, I know most was at that point in time, people were still used to pantomime and stage acting, but I try not to live in the past. I may have reel to reels and a Commodore 64, but that doesn’t mean I’ll accept something sub par just because it’s old, Charlie Chaplain didn’t suck and he was working in a medium not even used today.

Also I don’t like any movie that says it’s ok to shoot someone under a flag of piece, especially if it says it’s ok because the person loves his sister. Remember that no one cared what the daughter thought she wanted to leave, they wouldn’t let her. They committed murder to stop her, after the murder they were at least defending themselves.

By the way,
The NRA says, “Guns don’t kill people.”
Burt Lancaster says, “The gun does the killing.”

BLACKOUTNIGHTS

Friday, June 10, 2005 3:44 PM

Simply put, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly may not only be the greatest western of all time, but the greatest movie of all time. Leone uses vision more than dialog to portray the project — which I've always thought is the purpose of movies. If I want talk, I'll listen to the radio. That doesn't lessen the importance of dialog, but c'mon. It's all about the eyes, dig?

Frankly, I'm stunned no one has mentioned Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" or, unbelievably what is possibly the best ending of any movie...George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and and Sundance Kid." God! What a great closing!

"You're either in or you're out, and I'm playing to the in."

RHYMEPHILE

Friday, June 10, 2005 6:46 PM

"Hoooo, Mac-Lin! Good party, but nooooo whiskey!"

LOL, god, McLintock! Thanks for reminding me, ManWithPez! My father and I have watched that film so many times.

I'd have to echo others here, with Josey Wales (the scene with the almost-rapists is nerve-wracking); The Searchers ("Alls Moes needs is his rockin' chair"); Liberty Valance; Winchester '73 (so good); Shane (because of black-clad Jack Palance); Jeremiah Johnson ("I use it fer lookin' through"); and Butch and Sundance ("Think you used enough dynamite, there, Butch?"). I also love any film that can give us a good portrayal of Native Americans in the West as well. Geronimo with the wonderful Wes Studi is a good one.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is like a John Ford Quiet Man reunion, and a valentine to John Wayne fans. Victor McLaughlin is great in that film.

Also, for someone into Custeriana as I am (although I do cheer for the "bad guys"), I enjoyed They Died With Their Boots On for Errol (although it's filled with inaccuracies), but my favorite Custer film has to be Son of the Morning Star with Gary Cole. It was a TV movie (and I wish it were on DVD) and the book (of the same name) is beyond excellent.

What about Calamity Jane? Well, it's a musical, but still, it's a great flick.

My favorite western of all time I guess would be Dances With Wolves. I generally watch it until Lt. Dumb Bear goes back for his journal. After that the film is just heartache and misery, and I can never stand to watch it.

And y'know, as soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to remember a film I forgot.

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"I've seen life on this planet, Scully, and that's precisely why I'm looking elsewhere."

-- Fox Mulder, The X-Files

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