Favorite Movies and TV Shows?

Movies
The good, the bad and the ugly (my second most favourite film of all time.)
The Bandeleros
Jeremiah Johnson
The unforgiven
Once upon a time in the West
Fistful of dynamite
Young guns 2
Rio bravo

Loads of other westerns I like; can't think of them at the moment though.


Elodie

Well here's a tv show or three that you all probably don't remember:

Wagon Train

Rawhide

Have gun, will travel (Paladin)

Festus

Have Gun, Will Travel - one of my favorites. Paladin, Paladin ... I also liked Bonanza, not as much Gunsmoke (liked it better in the earlier years), and probably pretty stagey if I watched it now, but I loved Zorro.

Movies - And again Zorro, all of the Hopalong Cassidy movies (remember, I was a kid), How the West Was Won, San Francisco (not typical Western), and I'll have to think of what else. I'll second Cav Guy on Tombstone and She Wore a Yellow Ribon. Puma

Movies:
Rio Bravo
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Tombstone
Wyatt Earp (for the historical accuracy -- Tombstone is a better MOVIE)
Serenity
Maverick
The Long Riders
Silverado
Winchester 77 (the last 2/3rds only -- the problem with doing a lot of research into a time period is that you can't watch certain movies or scenes without screaming at the TV; such is the case for the first 1/3 of Winchester 77)

TV Shows:
Wild, Wild West
Maverick
The Magnificent Seven
Alias Smith & Jones

TV Shows:

We had Rawhide, Lone Ranger, Maverick, Bonanza in the U.K. but I never really got into them. They were very good and very popular, but I preferred movies.

I figure it'll draw screams of outrage, but I really do like the visual aspects of Paint Your Wagon for conveying the rough edges of the American Outback, in the same way the very first movie named Star Wars showed a high-tech vision that wasn't all straight lines & polished chrome & no grit in the corners. I wish more Westerns didn't look so much like an Esquire fashion shoot.

I enjoyed Paint Your Wagon, too. I liked the songs and we were very into Clint Eastwood when I was growing up, so we never missed any of his movies.

I have a few favorites too. Most of the movies have already been mentioned (Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter, Outlaw Josey Wales, Silverado) and TV shows (Wild Wild West and Have Gun Will Travel).

There were three though that I found memorable that I wanted to mention.

The first was =Man in the Wilderness= where Richard Harris is left for dead after being attacked by a bear. I was a kid when I saw it but it left a real impression on me about survivial. Also, the sort of nemesis is trying to move ship through the mountians on wagons if I remember right. I should really track it down and see it again.

Another one was =Ravenous=. It was pretty bloody but I found myself intrigued by the application of Wendigo Psychosis to a western frontier format. It had a snippit of dialogue that I really liked too when one of the characters remarked: "Its lonely being a cannibal. It's tough making friends."

The last was one I stumbled on during a lazy Saturday afternoon (back when I still had those). It was =White Comanche= staring William Shatner. I remember it was pretty over the top but that actually made it rather fun to watch.


--Dev

William Shatner = Over The Top

(He was one of my gramma's 2 faves. Charles Bronson was the other. My mother adored Clint Eastwood. Hence, I've seen EVERY Eastwood, Bronson and, sadly, Shatner flick available. Many more than once.)

Speaking of Bronson (were we?), From Noon to Three is great, for the way it shows how easily rampant mythology can spread.

I actually liked Pale Rider a lot, although it's certainly not a classic western. There's a lot of old western movies I like.

TV:
The Virginian (especially when Lee J. Cobb was on it)
Lawman (for special reasons, I actually have videos of a number of episodes)
The Rifleman (my first BB gun was a copy of the Winchester 1894 used on the show . . . now I have a 30-30 Model 1894. If I'm not mistaken, that model wouldn't have fit in with the timeline of the show)

I'm a huge fan of Quigley Down Under and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

TV would have to be Wild Wild West and Lone Ranger for all those nostalgic reasons.

The Magnificent Seven TV show is the reason I started writing. And the reason I started researching the Old West. But I have to assume that all the earlier influences were there, it just took the one "thing" to push me over the edge, if you will.

The show Wild West Tech is the one I find inspirational. Every episode is not perfect and much of the humor is weak but after watching even a re-run it gets me in the mood to write.

For me though it was reading King's book The Gunslinger that pushed me over into reading westerns. I always like the genre but after reading that book I realized I liked the western part more than the supernatural part, which was weird for me at the time.

Paint Your Wagon

Anthony Ravenscroft said:

I figure it'll draw screams of outrage, but I really do like the visual aspects of Paint Your Wagon for conveying the rough edges of the American Outback, in the same way the very first movie named Star Wars showed a high-tech vision that wasn't all straight lines & polished chrome & no grit in the corners. I wish more Westerns didn't look so much like an Esquire fashion shoot.

Click to expand...

I loved Paint Your Wagon. I thought it was a great movie with great acting, and a highly original story.
Of course, I also loved They Call Me Trinity, and They Still Call Me Trinity. You can now download the first at a few internet sites here and there.

Mr. Jinx said:

The first was =Man in the Wilderness= where Richard Harris is left for dead after being attacked by a bear. I was a kid when I saw it but it left a real impression on me about survivial. Also, the sort of nemesis is trying to move ship through the mountians on wagons if I remember right. I should really track it down and see it again.




--Dev

Click to expand...

Very good movie, and actually based on a true story. Hugh Glass was mauled by a bear, and Jim Bridger and John Fitzgerald abandoned him before he died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass

Resurrecting this ol' thread ...

The kids have discovered "Lone Ranger" and "The Rifleman." I always liked "True Grit" because as a kid I so identified with the little girl in the story. Not enough to remember her name, though I always liked "Wild, Wild West" but at least part of it was because of the theme song.

Now that you mention "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" I can't get the song out of my head. My dad used to sing an updated version where "she wore it for her airman who was far, far away ..."

Best regards,
Ann

Matty was the girl in True Grit.

When I was a kid, in the UK, my gran's favourite Western show was the one starring Barbara Stanwick (The Big Country?). I preferred The Virginian, and later Alias Smith and Jones and The High Chapperal.

Good grief! Lee Majors was in The Big Valley?
I knew it was a Big something - and I love the Big Country film too.

Nobody's mentioned Anthony Mann's westerns yet?

If you haven't seen these, get 'em--they're must-see movies, among the finest westerns ever made. Outstanding writing and direction, featuring the great (USAF Brig. General) James Stewart. Not as iconic as Duke Wayne, but a more versatile actor:

Winchester '73
The Naked Spur
The Man from Laramie
Bend of the River
The Far Country

...and this one with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins:
The Tin Star

Why haven't I posted in this thread yet? Will wonders never cease?

More to the point, why has no-one mentioned Firefly yet?
It's often described a 'space western' and there are a couple of points to that:
Firstly, the terra-formed planets in Mankinds new home galaxy can be pretty rustic. The government builds planets not roads, so on the border worlds... well, they're like the towns in any western you care to mention.
More importantly is the very Western themes that run through the show.
Just in case you haven't seen it.

Sad to say, but for my generation (feel old?) that's about the only western TV show. A sad comment on the genre mayhaps.

In terms of films, well:
Unforgiven (How it should be done)
The Spaghetti Westerns (the birth of the gritty western?)
The Quick and the dead (Throw western cliches into a pot and simmer gently for 90 minutes.)
Maverick (nice and light, but with some good performances)
Tombstone (Of Course)
Open Range (Fantastic, without making an epic deal of it)
Pale Rider (Mildly different. Also gave us a western stereotype that has served the videogame industry well)
Blazing Saddles (No, Really)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Like Firefly, but with Clint Eastwood)

THat'll about do it for now. I'm sure more'll occur to me as time goes on.