MGM sends James Stewart and Anthony Mann to Colorado high country locations for their third big-ticket western, a tight & tense psychological drama with a select cast: Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker and Millard Mitchell. Stewart’s anguished bounty hunter is a sick man on a mission he knows is self-destructive and just plain wrong; it’s the actor’s most fraught western performance. The landscape itself is psychological, with treacherous rocky outcroppings and a dangerous river. Even more impressive is the new restoration from Technicolor elements: this is one of the most beautiful westerns yet out on disc.
The Naked Spur
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 91 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date September 21, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell.
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm Brown
Film Editor: George White
Production Illustrator: Mentor Heubner
Stunt Performers: Virginia Bougas, Ted Mapes,...
The Naked Spur
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 91 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date September 21, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell.
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm Brown
Film Editor: George White
Production Illustrator: Mentor Heubner
Stunt Performers: Virginia Bougas, Ted Mapes,...
- 11/6/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
By John M. Whalen
In “Wings of the Hawk” (1953), Van Heflin stars as Irish Gallagher, an American mining for gold down in Mexico. He and his partner Marco (Mario Siletti) are ripped off by local military ruler Coronel Paco Ruiz (George Dolenz), who takes over the mine and kills Marco. Irish barely manages to escape on horseback and is rescued by insurrectionists led by Raquel Noriega (Julia Adams), who gets a bullet in the shoulder for her trouble. Irish patches her up in exchange for his freedom and romance rears its ugly head. Jealousy also flares when revolutionary leader Arturo Torres (Rudolpho Acosta), who had been her lover, sees what’s going on. Enter Pascual Orozco who asks for Arturo’s help in taking Ciudad Juarez. They’ll need $5,000 to buy 200 rifles but the revolutionaries have no money. However, they come up with a brainstorm.
By John M. Whalen
In “Wings of the Hawk” (1953), Van Heflin stars as Irish Gallagher, an American mining for gold down in Mexico. He and his partner Marco (Mario Siletti) are ripped off by local military ruler Coronel Paco Ruiz (George Dolenz), who takes over the mine and kills Marco. Irish barely manages to escape on horseback and is rescued by insurrectionists led by Raquel Noriega (Julia Adams), who gets a bullet in the shoulder for her trouble. Irish patches her up in exchange for his freedom and romance rears its ugly head. Jealousy also flares when revolutionary leader Arturo Torres (Rudolpho Acosta), who had been her lover, sees what’s going on. Enter Pascual Orozco who asks for Arturo’s help in taking Ciudad Juarez. They’ll need $5,000 to buy 200 rifles but the revolutionaries have no money. However, they come up with a brainstorm.
- 3/5/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Writer/director Paul Schrader’s first movie since “First Reformed” is shaping up with an enviable cast, which now includes Tiffany Haddish, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker confirmed in a recent interview with The Metrograph. As previously announced, Oscar Isaac is set to lead the film currently titled “The Card Counter” as a gambler and ex-serviceman who tries to reform a young man looking to exact revenge on a mutual enemy. According to the interview with Schrader, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe are also on board and the film is financed. (It’s repped by HanWay Films.)
Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star who’s become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, “I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She’s a firecracker. It’s like talking to a live-wire connection. She’s very funny and,...
Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star who’s become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, “I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She’s a firecracker. It’s like talking to a live-wire connection. She’s very funny and,...
- 1/31/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
It looks like there might be some film icon beef percolating on social media. Paul Schrader, the legendary screenwriter and director who got a major late-career boost last year with the release of “First Reformed,” took to Facebook this week to share some critical comments on fellow New Hollywood icon Brian De Palma.
In a since-deleted Facebook post (via The Playlist), Schrader wrote, “Don’t get me started on Brian De Palma. I re-watched ‘Redacted’ last night because thought that given total artistic freedom he could reach for the stars. And he did. But the stars were beyond his reach. The script is trite, it is weak. That’s because Brian is trite, Brian is artistically weak. Skate fast on thin ice. That’s his story. That’s his con.”
As the comment gained traction online, Schrader took down the post and put up another that explained he was basically...
In a since-deleted Facebook post (via The Playlist), Schrader wrote, “Don’t get me started on Brian De Palma. I re-watched ‘Redacted’ last night because thought that given total artistic freedom he could reach for the stars. And he did. But the stars were beyond his reach. The script is trite, it is weak. That’s because Brian is trite, Brian is artistically weak. Skate fast on thin ice. That’s his story. That’s his con.”
As the comment gained traction online, Schrader took down the post and put up another that explained he was basically...
- 6/29/2019
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Paul Schrader made his grand return to Facebook for the first time since November, revealing that his social media hiatus was requested by A24, the distributor of his Oscar-nominated film “First Reformed.” Last November, Schrader stirred up trouble after posting to Facebook that he was offered to direct a new film and requested Kevin Spacey to star. The producer of the film told Schrader hiring Spacey “is not possible” given the dozens of sexual misconduct accusations against the actor.
“I believe there are crimes in life but no crimes in art,” Schrader wrote in the since-deleted post from November. “Spacey should be punished for any crimes his actual person created. But not for art. All art is a crime. Punishing him as an artist only diminishes art. Put Celine in jail, put Pound in jail, punish Wilde and Bruce if you must, but do not censor their art.”
In his...
“I believe there are crimes in life but no crimes in art,” Schrader wrote in the since-deleted post from November. “Spacey should be punished for any crimes his actual person created. But not for art. All art is a crime. Punishing him as an artist only diminishes art. Put Celine in jail, put Pound in jail, punish Wilde and Bruce if you must, but do not censor their art.”
In his...
- 2/27/2019
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Randolph Scott's final 'Ranown' western is a minimalist masterpiece, an unusually gentle story about a great westerner on a forlorn romantic quest. It's also a showcase for the underrated Nancy Gates and Claude Akins, and a pleasure to watch in wide, wide CinemaScope. Comanche Station All-region Blu-ray Explosive Media / Alive 1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 74 min. / Street Date July 22, 2016 / Einer Gibt Nicht Auf / available at Amazon.de/ EUR14,99 Starring Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Atkins, Skip Homeier, Richard Rust. Cinematography Charles Lawton Jr. Film Editor Edwin H. Bryant Music supervisor Mischa Balaleinikoff Written by Burt Kennedy Produced and Directed by Budd Boetticher
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
One must be careful when ordering Blu-ray discs of Hollywood films from overseas. Foreign distributors license American movies that the studios won't release here, but sometimes they don't have access to good video masters. In a few cases the films being offered are simply being pirated.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
One must be careful when ordering Blu-ray discs of Hollywood films from overseas. Foreign distributors license American movies that the studios won't release here, but sometimes they don't have access to good video masters. In a few cases the films being offered are simply being pirated.
- 9/12/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
This almost completely forgotten '50s western couldn't compete with the big productions, but it has a good cast -- James Arness, Robert J. Wilke, Emile Meyer, Harry Carey Jr. Plus early work by writer Burt Kennedy, and the debuts of actress Angie Dickinson and director Andrew V. McLaglen. Gun the Man Down Blu-ray Olive Films 1956 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 76 min. / Street Date July 19, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring James Arness, Angie Dickinson, Emile Meyer, Robert J. Wilke, Harry Carey Jr., Don Megowan, Michael Emmet, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez. Cinematography William H. Clothier Film Editor A. Edward Sutherland Original Music Henry Vars Written by Burt Kennedy, Sam Freedle Produced by Robert E. Morrison Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
When the 1950s rolled in John Wayne stopped being merely an actor and graduated to institution status, starting his own production company, Batjac, and promoting his own group of talent.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
When the 1950s rolled in John Wayne stopped being merely an actor and graduated to institution status, starting his own production company, Batjac, and promoting his own group of talent.
- 7/23/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It's fitting that Clint Eastwood and John Wayne both have the same birthday week. (Wayne, who died in 1979, was born May 26, 1907, while Eastwood turns 85 on May 31). After all, these two all-American actors' careers span the history of that most American of movie genres, the western.
Both iconic actors were top box office draws for decades, both seldom stretched from their familiar personas, and both played macho, conservative cowboy heroes who let their firearms do most of the talking. Each represented one of two very different strains of western, the traditional and the revisionist.
As a birthday present to Hollywood's biggest heroes of the Wild West, here are the top 57 westerns you need to see.
57. 'Meek's Cutoff' (2010)
Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her frequent leading lady, Michelle Williams, are the talents behind this sparse, docudrama about an 1845 wagon train whose Oregon Trail journey goes horribly awry. It's an intense...
Both iconic actors were top box office draws for decades, both seldom stretched from their familiar personas, and both played macho, conservative cowboy heroes who let their firearms do most of the talking. Each represented one of two very different strains of western, the traditional and the revisionist.
As a birthday present to Hollywood's biggest heroes of the Wild West, here are the top 57 westerns you need to see.
57. 'Meek's Cutoff' (2010)
Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her frequent leading lady, Michelle Williams, are the talents behind this sparse, docudrama about an 1845 wagon train whose Oregon Trail journey goes horribly awry. It's an intense...
- 5/26/2015
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Cinema is a kind of uber-art form that’s made up of a multitude of other forms of art including writing, directing, acting, drawing, design, photography and fashion. As such, film is, as all cinema aficionados know, a highly collaborative venture.
One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and actor.
This article will examine some of the great director & actor teams. It’s important to note that this piece is not intended as a film history survey detailing all the generally revered collaborations.
There is a wealth of information and study available on such duos as John Ford & John Wayne, Howard Hawks & John Wayne, Elia Kazan & Marlon Brando, Akira Kurosawa & Toshiro Mifune, Alfred Hitchcock & James Stewart, Ingmar Bergman & Max Von Sydow, Federico Fellini & Giulietta Masina/Marcello Mastroianni, Billy Wilder & Jack Lemmon, Francis Ford Coppola & Al Pacino, Woody Allen & Diane Keaton, Martin Scorsese & Robert DeNiro...
One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and actor.
This article will examine some of the great director & actor teams. It’s important to note that this piece is not intended as a film history survey detailing all the generally revered collaborations.
There is a wealth of information and study available on such duos as John Ford & John Wayne, Howard Hawks & John Wayne, Elia Kazan & Marlon Brando, Akira Kurosawa & Toshiro Mifune, Alfred Hitchcock & James Stewart, Ingmar Bergman & Max Von Sydow, Federico Fellini & Giulietta Masina/Marcello Mastroianni, Billy Wilder & Jack Lemmon, Francis Ford Coppola & Al Pacino, Woody Allen & Diane Keaton, Martin Scorsese & Robert DeNiro...
- 7/11/2013
- by Terek Puckett
- SoundOnSight
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 30, 2013
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Robert Stack plays to the crowd in Bullfighter and The Lady.
The 1951 film drama-romance Bullfighter and The Lady was the breakthrough movie for filmmaker Budd Boetticher (Seven Men From Now).
Robert Stack (TV’s The Untouchables) stars as Chuck Regan, a brash American skeet shooting champion whose visit to Mexico introduces him to two irresistible forces: the exotic Anita de la Vega (Joy Page) and the lure of the way of the matador. Unflinching in his confidence, Regan sets out to conquer both, learning bullfighting from an icon of the Mexican corrida, Manolo Estrada (Gilbert Roland). But Regan’s headstrong assertiveness and desire to impress Anita gets the best of him when he debuts in the ring and knows there’s only one way and one place he can redeem himself.
Written by James Edward Grant from a story by Boetticher,...
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Robert Stack plays to the crowd in Bullfighter and The Lady.
The 1951 film drama-romance Bullfighter and The Lady was the breakthrough movie for filmmaker Budd Boetticher (Seven Men From Now).
Robert Stack (TV’s The Untouchables) stars as Chuck Regan, a brash American skeet shooting champion whose visit to Mexico introduces him to two irresistible forces: the exotic Anita de la Vega (Joy Page) and the lure of the way of the matador. Unflinching in his confidence, Regan sets out to conquer both, learning bullfighting from an icon of the Mexican corrida, Manolo Estrada (Gilbert Roland). But Regan’s headstrong assertiveness and desire to impress Anita gets the best of him when he debuts in the ring and knows there’s only one way and one place he can redeem himself.
Written by James Edward Grant from a story by Boetticher,...
- 6/14/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
The “adult” Western – as it would come to be called – was a long time coming. A Hollywood staple since the days of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the Western offered spectacle and action set against the uniquely American milieu of the Old West – a historical period which, at the dawn of the motion picture industry, was still fresh in the nation’s memory. What the genre rarely offered was dramatic substance.
Early Westerns often adopted the same traditions of the popular Wild West literature and dime novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries producing, as a consequence, highly romantic, almost purely mythic portraits the Old West. Through the early decades of the motion picture industry, the genre went through several creative cycles, alternately tilting from fanciful to realistic and back again. By the early sound era, and despite such serious efforts as The Big Trail (1930) and The Virginian (1929), Hollywood Westerns were,...
Early Westerns often adopted the same traditions of the popular Wild West literature and dime novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries producing, as a consequence, highly romantic, almost purely mythic portraits the Old West. Through the early decades of the motion picture industry, the genre went through several creative cycles, alternately tilting from fanciful to realistic and back again. By the early sound era, and despite such serious efforts as The Big Trail (1930) and The Virginian (1929), Hollywood Westerns were,...
- 1/4/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
By Michael Atkinson
The last of the red hot Golden Age Hollywood genre buckaroos, Budd Boetticher represented a long-vanished prototype: the man's man studio director who, before turning gruffly to making pictures, had spent years being a boxer or a stevedore or a soldier or what have you. Today, filmmakers pay their dues by earning six figures shooting shampoo commercials; then, a man who made westerns or war movies or gangster films was a man who had lived in the world and returned with a heartful of brutal and hopeful business you can't learn by watching other movies. In a sense, Boetticher outdid the competition by becoming a professional Mexican matador right out of college -- a scenario difficult to beat for hard-won iron-man chops in Tinseltown. Of course his biography influences how his best films -- the westerns he made between 1956 and 1960 -- have been perceived and why they've been canonized,...
The last of the red hot Golden Age Hollywood genre buckaroos, Budd Boetticher represented a long-vanished prototype: the man's man studio director who, before turning gruffly to making pictures, had spent years being a boxer or a stevedore or a soldier or what have you. Today, filmmakers pay their dues by earning six figures shooting shampoo commercials; then, a man who made westerns or war movies or gangster films was a man who had lived in the world and returned with a heartful of brutal and hopeful business you can't learn by watching other movies. In a sense, Boetticher outdid the competition by becoming a professional Mexican matador right out of college -- a scenario difficult to beat for hard-won iron-man chops in Tinseltown. Of course his biography influences how his best films -- the westerns he made between 1956 and 1960 -- have been perceived and why they've been canonized,...
- 11/11/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
By Sean Axmaker
December 16, 2005
"In the mid-1950s, director Budd Boetticher and actor Randolph Scott teamed up for a series of finely etched, elegiac westerns which count among the greatest glories of American cinema of the time." That's how the New York Film Festival announced the screening of the newly restored Seven Men From Now in 2000, finally out on DVD [Update, 11/4/08: And now the addition of five more of his films on disc! -- ed.]. Between 1988 and 1992, Sean Axmaker conducted a series of interviews with the late director. In these highlights, Boetticher talks about his work with two unique men, Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, 18-day shoots and gunslingers in love.
December 16, 2005
"In the mid-1950s, director Budd Boetticher and actor Randolph Scott teamed up for a series of finely etched, elegiac westerns which count among the greatest glories of American cinema of the time." That's how the New York Film Festival announced the screening of the newly restored Seven Men From Now in 2000, finally out on DVD [Update, 11/4/08: And now the addition of five more of his films on disc! -- ed.]. Between 1988 and 1992, Sean Axmaker conducted a series of interviews with the late director. In these highlights, Boetticher talks about his work with two unique men, Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, 18-day shoots and gunslingers in love.
- 11/3/2008
- by GreenCineStaff
- GreenCine
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