Year Of The Western! #9 Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

So coming down of the fun italian high of the The Hills Run Red, we come back to America for a film that I am sure was important to those that made it at the time it was made, but I don't know how well the statement holds up over the years. Film #9 Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.  Normally, I like...

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Year Of The Western! #8 The Hills Run Red (1966)

I wondered when I would be getting into Italian Spaghetti Westerns. I think this is where my heart truly belongs. After finding out how 'El Deguello' in Rio Bravo lead to the music in A Fistful of Dollars and how that film would go on to be one of the most iconic westerns of all time, I knew I needed horns and strings to emphasize the dramatic moments between a wronged man and the one who caused...

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Year OF The Western! #7 Shane (1953)

So it turns out that I made a mistake and thought Shane came out in 1963, not 1953. So in my grand attempt to watch these 30 films in order is undone by about 10 years. Honestly, this is a mistake that I am glad I made because that put Johnny Guitar first on my list and that film really got me excited for all the different possibilities a western could be. Had I seen Shane first, I think I would...

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Year Of The Western! #6 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

I was worried about how I would feel about another John Wayne/John Ford film after just coming off of The Magnificent Seven. Learning about the limitations placed on John Ford in order to get this film shot and the troubled relationship he had with John Wayne during the production made me appreciate what this film really was about, the end of era, in more ways than one.  Film #6 The Man...

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Year Of The Western! #5 The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Five films in and five different experiences. I understand a genre can can stretch and explore different elements. Heck, this is unrelated to westerns, but take a look at this trailer for Fox's upcoming New Mutants Film. That is a straight up horror film hiding out in the X-Men universe. And I think that kind of stretching is long overdue with super hero comic book films (There are some examples...

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Year Of The Western! #4 Rio Bravo (1959)

So as soon as I came off the unexpected high of 3:10 to Yuma, I saw that the next film on the list was another two hour plus John Wayne film (if I recall the next three are John Wayne films). I had a feeling that it was going to be another series of vignettes that didn't necessarily belong together, much like how I felt much of The Searchers ending up being. Rio Bravo does have a lot of wandering...

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Year Of The Western! #3 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

It's interesting to me what was once a technical limitation can become an artistic and story telling strength. Black and white is how we understood film for over fifty years. Yes, there were advances on making films in color as early as 1903 with The Great Train Robbery and 1915's The Birth of a Nation. The former painted individual portions of the image frame by frame and the later would...

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Year Of The Western! #2 The Searchers (1956)

I forgot to mention in the previous post that I am going to be watching all 30 of these films in their production order. I originally planned on just picking at random but I feel like that may be doing an injustice to some of the later titles as they had 10, 20 years to build upon what came before them.  Also, I feel like that film making technology and styles change a great deal so I...

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