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Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) More at IMDbPro »C'era una volta il West (original title)
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2003 | 2002
19 items from 2013
Blu-ray Release: The Great Escape
26 March 2013 12:44 PM, PDT | Disc Dish | See recent Disc Dish news »
Blu-ray Release Date: May 7, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $19.99
Studio: MGM/20th Century Fox
Classic action film The Great Escape was remastered for this Blu-ray release, its high-definition debut in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary.
The 1963 adventure film, based on the book by Paul Brickhill, tells the story of a group of allied POWs in a World War II camp who plan the escape of several hundred of their fellow prisoners.
The acclaimed cast includes Steve McQueen (Le Mans), James Garner (The Notebook), Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park), Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West), Donald Pleasence (Escape From New York) and James Coburn (The Man From Elysian Fields).
Inspired by a true story, The Great Escape was nominated for an Oscar for its editing and is one of the American Film Institute’s 100 Most Thrilling American Films.
The Blu-ray contains these special features:
audio commentary by director John Sturges »
- Sam
What Your Favourite Sergio Leone Movie Says About You
20 March 2013 4:53 AM, PDT | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »
There are two kinds of Western films. Those that came before Sergio Leone and those that came afterward.
With only six films to really speak of the Italian director who made Clint Eastwood a superstar left behind a spellbinding body of work that capitalzes mainly on the mythology surrounding the old American West. Throughout his films the themes of violence, treachery, and ways of life meeting their end are consistently explored like in Once Upon a Time in the West where the outlaw is soon becoming a thing of the past with the coming of the railroad and Once Upon a Time in America where the gangster is slowly being forced to reform or risk being gunned down.
There is something unique about the experience gained from watching each of Leone’s movies. The characters are often amoral and sometimes don’t even have names, however, somehow despite their surreal »
- Michael Thompson
Man Behind Michael Haneke Spoof Twitter Account Talks the Director's Taste in Movies, "Parms Dorz" and Stinky Cats Lol
18 March 2013 8:51 AM, PDT | Thompson on Hollywood | See recent Thompson on Hollywood news »
Shortlist.com deputy editor Benjamin Lee is the man behind the spoof @Michael_Haneke Twitter account that kept more than 30K followers amused during the ramp-up to the Oscars, and the film's Best Foreign-Language win. Lee has a feature in the Guardian discussing his experience while running the Twitter handle, and a few surprising facts he learned about the real-life Austrian director. Highlights below. On Haneke's taste in mainstream films: [The Twitter account] all started after I read an interview in which he was asked if he enjoyed any mainstream films and he replied "What about Once Upon a Time in the West, for example? Isn't that a mainstream film?" I could just imagine the delivery, with the sort of knowing tone that I ran with for the following months (it's the same way I imagined him "accidentally" forgetting that not everyone else has two "parms dorz").What the real Haneke thinks of »
- Beth Hanna
Benjamin Lee: I didn't expect the real Michael Haneke to be a goofball
15 March 2013 4:03 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
The writer of the spoof Twitter account about the notoriously chilly film-maker shares his view of the 'charming' man seen in a new documentary – and on being right about the stinky cat
A funny thing happened the other week while I was discussing my surreal alternate life as @Michael_Haneke. After discovering that I was behind the parody Twitter account, my acquaintance asked: "But how did you know about the cats?" For the uninitiated, one of the key obsessions of fake Haneke, a purposely lowbrow take on the famously austere director, is his "stinky cat". It was a recurring joke made to distance the two Hanekes even more, not being able to imagine the director of The White Ribbon making so many references to his cat's flatulence.
Yet, as I have recently found out, "real Haneke" is the proud owner of more than one cat, a fact that few people know. »
Once Upon A Time In The West Showing at the Wildey Theater in Edwardsville this Saturday
13 March 2013 8:09 AM, PDT | WeAreMovieGeeks.com | See recent WeAreMovieGeeks.com news »
In a class by itself, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) was an emotional, operatic Western that fully deserves to be called a masterpiece and it’s my favorite movie. It’s a grand overview of the themes and ideas that inspired the Italian filmmaker to write and direct films in the distinctly American genre. It stars Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale, and my favorite actor, Charles Bronson as the laconic, vengeance-seeking gunslinger. After the worldwide mega-success of his “Man With No Name” trilogy A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good The Bad And The Ugly, Leone could have cast anyone he wanted in the role of ‘Harmonica’, the hero of Once Upon A Time In The West. Charles Bronson had been Leone’s second choice (after Henry Fonda) four years earlier for the lead in A Fistful Of Dollars »
- Tom Stockman
Damiano Damiani obituary
11 March 2013 5:06 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Italian director whose 1966 film A Bullet for the General, set in revolutionary Mexico, began a wave of 'tortilla westerns'
Damiano Damiani, who has died aged 90, was a director of Italian popular films and television. He was best known for La Piovra (The Octopus, 1984), an internationally successful TV series about the mafia, and made several mafia-themed films and TV movies, but his range was much wider.
Born in Pordenone, north-east Italy, he began his career in the 1940s, working in the art department and directing documentaries. As popular Italian cinema boomed in the 1960s, he began to make personal pictures, westerns, comedies, political thrillers and horror films. If you have only seen Amityville II: The Possession (1982), his one American movie, you have seen Damiani at his least inspired. In that film, the camera followed potential victims around a haunted house in a style made tedious four years earlier by John Carpenter's Halloween. »
- Alex Cox
Damiano Damiani obituary
11 March 2013 5:06 PM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Italian director whose 1966 film A Bullet for the General, set in revolutionary Mexico, began a wave of 'tortilla westerns'
Damiano Damiani, who has died aged 90, was a director of Italian popular films and television. He was best known for La Piovra (The Octopus, 1984), an internationally successful TV series about the mafia, and made several mafia-themed films and TV movies, but his range was much wider.
Born in Pordenone, north-east Italy, he began his career in the 1940s, working in the art department and directing documentaries. As popular Italian cinema boomed in the 1960s, he began to make personal pictures, westerns, comedies, political thrillers and horror films. If you have only seen Amityville II: The Possession (1982), his one American movie, you have seen Damiani at his least inspired. In that film, the camera followed potential victims around a haunted house in a style made tedious four years earlier by John Carpenter's Halloween. »
- Alex Cox
Trailers from Hell: Darren Bousman on Dario Argento's 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage'
8 March 2013 8:14 AM, PST | Thompson on Hollywood | See recent Thompson on Hollywood news »
Dario Argento Week! concludes at Trailers from Hell with director Darren Bousman introducing Argento's directorial debut, "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage." Dario Argento's acclaimed directorial debut emerged from a successful writing career that encompassed everything from movie criticism to contributions to westerns like Five Man Army and Once Upon a Time in the West. He enlisted his father, producer Salvatore Argento, to help fund what would become a landmark in the Italian giallo genre, whose origins many link to Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Evil Eye in its alternate Us version). Although there are also echoes of Bava's Blood and Black Lace, much of the plot is inspired by Fredric Brown's novel The Screaming Mimi (filmed by Gerd Oswald in 1958). Coproduced with Germany's Ccc Films which expected an Edgar Wallace style thriller and was put off by the level of violence. Ennio Morricone's score is disturbingly sexy. »
- Trailers From Hell
Turkish film enters a wilderness of nostalgia and introspection
26 February 2013 3:52 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Whereas westerns reflect a longing for a vanished past, Turkish cinema is examining and lamenting modernisation as it happens
By the time Sergio Leone got to Monument Valley in 1968 to film exteriors for Once Upon a Time in the West, its sandstone buttes – engrained in the popular consciousness by their presence in John Ford's westerns – had already assumed the hulking mythic grandeur the great Italian director needed for his story of American beginnings. Nuri Bilge Ceylan was surely hoping for a little of the same when he had his night convoy of murder investigators sweep their headlights across the vast prairie in last year's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. The auburn-grey hills around Keskin, near the capital Ankara, might not be as singular a location as the Utah valley, but they've got their own mute, unknowable magnificence – a suitable backdrop for Ceylan's gloomy night of the Turkish soul. »
- Phil Hoad
Win: Joe Dante’s Piranha On Blu-ray!
29 January 2013 10:13 AM, PST | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »
Killer fish are the order of the day in Joe Dante’s original cult classic Piranha, which comes to Blu-ray for the first time from Second Sight Films and is available to buy right now!
We have two copies of the Blu-ray to give away to our readers.
From the director of The Howling and Gremlins and starring Bradford Dillman (Sudden Impact), Heather Menzies (Logan’s Run), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Keenan Wynn (Once Upon a Time in the West), Barbara Steele (The Pit and The Pendulum) and Dick Miller (The Terminator), Piranha makes its Blu-ray debut complete with some outstanding bonus features on 28 January 2013.
When two teen hikers disappear around Lost River Lake, private detective Maggie McKeown teams up with the local drunk to search for clues. Their investigation takes them to a secret military base where they inadvertently let loose an experimental strain of mutant piranha. »
- Matt Holmes
Sundance 2013: Miller twins explain how the West was won with 'Sweetwater'
27 January 2013 7:55 AM, PST | EW - Inside Movies | See recent EW.com - Inside Movies news »
Six years ago, Logan and Noah Miller ambushed Ed Harris after a screening at the San Francisco Film Festival and told him that he had to play their late father in their movie. Daniel Miller had passed away on a jailhouse floor four months before after a life marred by alcoholism, but before he’d died, the identical twins had promised him that they would make a movie about his life — and that Ed Harris would play him. Despite no Hollywood experience and no financing in place, the boys were persuasive and Harris rather quickly agreed. “They’re smart and »
- Jeff Labrecque
Sundance 2013: Morris twins explain how the west was won with 'Sweetwater'
27 January 2013 7:55 AM, PST | EW - Inside Movies | See recent EW.com - Inside Movies news »
Six years ago, Logan and Noah Miller ambushed Ed Harris after a screening at the San Francisco Film Festival and told him that he had to play their late father in their movie. Daniel Miller had passed away on a jailhouse floor four months before after a life marred by alcoholism, but before he’d died, the identical twins had promised him that they would make a movie about his life — and that Ed Harris would play him. Despite no Hollywood experience and no financing in place, the boys were persuasive and Harris rather quickly agreed. “They’re smart and »
- Jeff Labrecque
‘Nest of Vipers’ showcases Giulio Petroni’s complex plotting and atmospheric set pieces
23 January 2013 6:43 PM, PST | SoundOnSight | See recent SoundOnSight news »
Nest of Vipers (Night of the Serpent)
Directed by Giulio Petroni
Italy, 1969
Though Giulio Petroni has only rather few titles to his name when compared with his prolific, and better known, counterparts, the Italian director does have the bragging rights of working with both Lee Van Cleef (Death Rides a Horse, 1967) and Orson Welles (Tepepa, 1969).
It’s Petroni’s Nest of Vipers, recently released alongside Pierro Pierotti’s less successful Tails You Lose (1969), by Wild East Productions, that showcases the director’s talent for complex plotting and atmospheric set pieces.
Similar to the earlier Ringo series by Duccio Tessari, and to the now time-honored traditions of Leone and Corbucci, the structure of Nest of Vipers pits the outsider (here, and often, the“gringo”) versus a band of outlaws, where a largely unassuming and tight-knit community is caught in between and unawares.
Luke Askew, probably best known for roles in Easy Rider and Cool Hand Luke, »
- Neal Dhand
You've been Djangoed! Ten Spaghetti Cowboys that shaped the genre
21 January 2013 12:45 AM, PST | Shadowlocked | See recent Shadowlocked news »
Keeping up with his career plan of paying homage to every film genre going, Quentin Tarantino has moved onto the spaghetti western with Django Unchained (2012). It’s not a remake of the pasta classic Django (1966), or indeed a spaghetti western, but it has clearly taken its inspiration from those violent Italian productions that swamped the late sixties.
Hollywood may have dominated the field since the beginning of motion pictures but European westerns are not exactly new; the earliest known one was filmed in 1910. Sixties German cinema made good use of Kay May’s western heroes Shatterhand and Winnetou, and the British produced The Savage Guns (1961), Hannie Caulder (1971), A Town Called Bastard (1971), Catlow (1971), Chato’s Land (1972) and Eagle’s Wing (1979). When the genre showed signs of flagging in the mid-sixties, a clever Italian director named Sergio Leone took it upon himself to reinvent the western – spaghetti style!
What made the spaghettis »
Looking back at Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy
17 January 2013 3:12 AM, PST | Den of Geek | See recent Den of Geek news »
Feature Paul Martinovic Jan 18, 2013
With Django Unchained out now in the UK, Paul looks back at Sergio Leone's classic Dollars trilogy that helped inspire it...
Howard Hawks, one of the most successful Western directors of all time and a key influence on Sergio Leone, once said a great movie can be defined as one with "three great scenes, and no bad ones." There can be few directors who understood the power of great scenes quite as strongly as Leone, the director of the Dollars trilogy and de facto godfather of the spaghetti western.
Some might argue his emphasis on great individual moments was to his detriment, as the MacGuffin-laden plots of his films seem to exist mainly as devices on which he can hang his elaborate setpieces, and were subsequently labeled as exercises in pure style. While the artistic and intellectual merits of the three films are up for debate, »
- ryanlambie
DVD Review - Django, Prepare a Coffin (1968)
14 January 2013 10:38 AM, PST | Flickeringmyth | See recent Flickeringmyth news »
Django, Prepare a Coffin (Italian: Preparati la bara!), 1968.
Directed by Ferinando Baldi.
Starring Terence Hill, Horst Frank, George Eastman, Jose Torres and Pinuccio Ardia.
Synopsis:
After the cold-blooded execution of his wife, a lone gun-slinger, Django (Hill), becomes a vigilant for a town at the mercy of his wife’s murderer.
With increasing publicity for the Spaghetti Western genre (specifically those with the name “Django” in the title) thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, there has never been a better time to seek out the 60s classics. It is worth noting that despite being advertised as a sequel to the Franco Nero-led Django, Django Prepare a Coffin seems more like a prequel with only a few corresponding features.
Django (recommended viewing before this film) has the essentials of many popular cult films – a cheap yet pleasing tone. Likewise, Ferdinando Baldi’s sequel/prequel is rife with dozens of embarrassing nuances though enjoyable nonetheless. »
- flickeringmyth
The 300 Greatest Films Ever Made (Part 9)
9 January 2013 10:59 PM, PST | Cinelinx | See recent Cinelinx news »
Our daily countdown continues, with part nine out of 30 in our list of the 300 Greatest Films Ever Made. These are numbers 220-211.
.
220) Cinema Paradiso (1988) Giuseppe Tornatore France/ Italy
219) Blue Angel (1930) Josef Von Sternberg Germany
218) A Raisin In The Sun (1961) Daniel Petrie USA
217) Dances With Wolves (1990) Kevin Costner USA
216) The 10 Commandments (1956) Cecil B. DeMille USA
215) Rebecca (1940) Alfred Hitchcock USA
214) The Miracle Of Morgan Creek (1944) Preston Sturges USA
213) Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper USA
212) Ran (1985) Akira Kurasawa Japan
211) Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) Sergio Leone USA
Numbers 210-200 coming next.
film cultureClassicslist300 »
- feeds@cinelinx.com (Rob Young)
Notebook's 5th Writers Poll: Fantasy Double Features of 2012
9 January 2013 9:40 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »
Looking back at 2012 on what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How would you program some »
- Daniel Kasman
Exclusive Interview: Niall Johnson, Director of Keeping Mum
5 January 2013 1:42 PM, PST | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »
Niall Johnson is a sterling British filmmaker you may not have heard of, but you will certainly be aware of his work. Starting off with television dramas like The Ghost of Greville Lodge, then moving onto small indie pictures like The Big Swap, Johnson made waves in Hollywood when he wrote the script for the Michael Keaton-starring supernatural chiller White Noise, which shattered Box Office records at the time of its release. But the writer-director is perhaps best known for his wonderful black comedy Keeping Mum, now a staple on Film4, which tells the tale of Maggie Smith’s housekeeper, who hides a dark past, helping change a divided family for the better, even if she does so through rather unorthodox means…
Johnson did anything but keep mum in this exclusive interview where he very candidly discusses his career so far, his very busy upcoming slate, and his thoughts on the film industry today. »
- Oscar Harding
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2003 | 2002
19 items from 2013
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