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Showing posts with the label western

RENEGADE - REVIEW

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Review available on the new website .

LIVE-ACTION COWBOY BEBOP? - PODCAST

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We discuss the possibility of a live-action Cowboy Bebop TV series on The Big Rewind .

BLAZING SADDLES - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Blazing Saddles review.

BLAZING SADDLES - REVIEW

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As far as Western spoofs go, it doesn't get any more classic than Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles . The film, which follows Cleavon Little's black sheriff as he is sent into a small racist town to defend it from bandits, was a big hit back in the day and it's still seen as one of the greatest comedies of all time. As with many other Mel Brooks comedies, Blazing Saddles could have easily backfired and been dismissed as being in poor taste but the writing (Richard Pryor helped with the script) is so clever and so funny that it somehow completely works as a biting parody of Western clichés and the genre's reluctance to acknowledge the unapologetic racism of the times. The plot is set into motion when Harvey Korman's corrupt State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr decides to drive the people of Rock Ridge out of town in order to lower land prices. He appoints an African American sheriff to shock the inhabitants away but when that doesn't work he tries various oth

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST - REVIEW

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A couple of years ago, man of a thousand voices Seth MacFarlane brought his brand of humour to Western comedy A Million Ways To Die In West , a feature he directs, co-writes and stars in (not as a bear, this time). The film didn't exactly wow critics and it basically flew by, somehow making a profit on the way despite less-than-flattering reviews. The film itself goes for an old-fashioned look but a defiantly anachronistic and modern take on the subgenre with characters speaking like people would today and the odd pop culture reference. It's not a completely new idea and it's something that works much better in a cartoon than it does in a live-action film but it can definitely work. Mel Brooks always could make that kind of thing funny. Unfortunately, here, it's like the film is trying much too hard to make that a hilarious aspect of the movie when it's, in fact, one of its weakest ideas. The concept that people in the Old West could die of pretty much anythi

THE RIDICULOUS 6 - REVIEW

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Adam Sandler stars in, produces and writes this Western comedy which was released straight to Netflix last year and, though it did really well on the online platform, it was somehow given worse reviews than Sandler's other 2015 effort Pixels . The Ridiculous 6 goes for a kind of Happy Madison version of Blazing Saddles crossed with The Magnificent Seven as Sandler's orphan-turned-Native American-turned-cowboy goes on a journey to raise enough money to save his kidnapped estranged father (Nick Nolte) and, on the way, meets 5 of his half-brothers who all agree to help out. Each of them has their own ludicrous story and their own reasons to find their father, which gives the film a weird Wizard Of Oz vibe. Speaking of weird, you can expect quite a few surprises from this movie including Rob Schneider playing a Mexican dude, Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain, a character called Never Wears Bra, Taylor Lautner going all-out as a mentally challenged yokel and Steve Buscemi doing ungo

THE REVENANT - REVIEW

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After the runaway (and deserved) success of Birdman , director Alejandro Iñarritu is back with yet another Oscar-nominated effort, this time taking on a bigger project following a mad journey of survival and revenge from legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio). Set in the early 1800's, The Revenant is a grim, bloody, cruel piece of work set in beautiful snowy, frozen backdrops which makes for an interesting contrast. Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight also went for a wintery feel but it's hard to call Iñarritu's film a Western since it really feels like something else entirely. The first big sequence involves a large group of frontiersmen being overrun by Native American opponents: it's an epic scene in the old sense of the word complete with arrows piercing through people's faces, horses getting sliced-up and bones breaking left and right. It's an extremely detailed battle filmed in such a sweeping, steady way that it all feels lik

THE HATEFUL EIGHT - REVIEW

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After much deliberation, Quentin Tarantino's 8th movie The Hateful Eight  finally exists and is finally out on the big screen where it belongs. After Django Unchained , here we have another Western, this time presented in a 70mm format with Ennio Morricone himself scoring it. I have a good feeling about this. Indeed, from the get-go the film sucks you in with its beautiful snowy setting, its haunting theme and its reliably great cast not to mention some sharp writing from the maestro himself. The plot sees two bounty hunters meet right before a blizzard is about to hit the region. One of them is John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) who is planning to bring a dangerous criminal (played by an unrecognizable Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the town of Red Rock to be hanged. The other is Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a mysterious man who proudly carries around with him a letter from Abraham Lincoln. On the way to Minnie's Haberdashery, they meet Chris Mannix

BLOODRAYNE 2: DELIVERANCE - REVIEW

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Because BloodRayne was SOOOO good. Here's a sequel for ya. With a new Rayne, about half the budget and an even lesser known cast comes BloodRayne 2: Deliverance , a sequel that I can't imagine anyone was begging for but which nevertheless exists. This time, director Uwe Boll sets things in the Old West where our heroine is made to face off against, wait for it, a vampiric, Eastern European Billy The Kid. See, the problem with the first film, I felt, was that it just wasn't silly enough. Serious lack of vampire cowboys in that movie, frankly. Well, you sure won't be disappointed this time. Initially, I thought this movie was a fan-made thing: the opening titles and the film itself looked so cheap that it took me like 5 minutes to realise that this was an actual movie. That said, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't end up enjoying this movie just a little. It's not good, don't get me wrong, but in terms of cheapo vampire cowboy movies, it de

THE LONE RANGER - VLOG 12/08/13

THE LONE RANGER - REVIEW

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You'd think a superhero western about two dudes, one horse, a bunch of bad guys and Rossini's William Tell Overture would be pretty easy to get right. Then again, Hollywood couldn't get its head around Wild Wild West ... That over $250M was spent on a western based on a old show from the 50's is frankly nuts, especially since there was no way a franchise could have ever been spawned from it! The Lone Ranger , on that basis, was a flop from the get-go. With that in mind, let's look at the film on its own merits. It sadly doesn't really work. Now, don't get me wrong: I do like many parts of this movie and I do think that there was a kickass Lone Ranger flick in there somewhere. Unfortunately, the film is too long and too convoluted to really make sense. Honestly, director Gore Verbinski seems to have missed the point of making a Lone Ranger movie in the first place. What this should have been is a superhero movie as a western with a serial feel. Wha

STEEL DAWN - REVIEW

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Patrick Swayze. In a Mad Max -style post-apocalyptic future. With a sword. In the 80's. Why would you NOT watch that movie?! It almost sounds too good to be true, and it is. The film starts off just like you'd hoped, with a very silly, very cheap-looking sequence involving Swayze being attacked by sand mummies. To give you an idea, the scene ends with Swayze making the SAND bleed. Yup, it is that awesome. Then he meets up with an old friend, some martial arts master and/or sheriff-type dude and just when you expect things to go all Kung-Fu , a bunch of bad leather-wearin' rejects from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome show up to drag the plot down to something resembling a cliched western minus the hats. Which I do like, genre-bending is welcome in most films as far as I'm concerned, but I really wanted Steel Dawn to go all out. Instead of ripping off every Mad Max film and every Sergio Leone flick ever made, why not differentiate from that Mel Gibson-starring

DJANGO UNCHAINED - TRAILER

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Looks badass you guys, can't wait :)

DJANGO UNCHAINED - NEW PICS

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Here's the first proper look at Quentin Tarantino's upcoming western Django Unchained starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz.

BRAVESTARR & FRIENDS

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RANGO - REVIEW

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Sure, the very idea of a trippy animation in which Johnny Depp plays a chameleon wearing a Hawaiian shirt ALONE is amazing. But can that image hold up an entire film on its own? Hmmmm, barely. To be fair, this being Gore Verbinski's first venture into animation, this was never going to be pitch-perfect. Then again Wes Anderson's first attempt with Fantastic Mr Fox was pretty polished. I will say this, though: the film looks great. Visually, it is definitely impressive. Although I will nitpick and say that there are way too many close-ups throughout. Like, ok, do we NEED to see every scale on that snake's face? Can't we just assume it has them? Rango really is an ode to Depp. You've got a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas reference, you've got a whole bit where Rango displays his acting chops (one of his characters being, ahem, a pirate)...and yes Depp is great in this. Most of the cast is actually pretty good too. The problem, well, one of them, unfortunat

BLOODRAYNE 2: DELIVERANCE - REVIEW

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Uwe Boll has been branded as the new Ed Wood by many critics and I've never really seen the similarities apart from the fact they both made bad, silly films...until I saw Bloodrayne 2. Ed Wood mixed genres like monster movies, sci-fi B movies and film noir together in the hope of creating something fresh and original and, as time as shown, he was succesful. Here Boll mixes spaghetti western with comedy, vampire horror and...video games. The result: vintage Uwe. Whereas the first Bloodrayne boasted a good cast, lots of silliness and a lot of boredom, here we have pretty much no relation to the games, no big names and lots of silliness once again but...it does have vampire cowboys. And after robot cowboys (see Westworld ) this is pretty much the best thing I've ever heard. Don't get me wrong: it's rubbish. But as a bad movie this one can be enjoyed on the same level as a good old-fashioned Ed Wood. It's stupid but proudly so and Boll clearly has fun cloning En