Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe

Random observations on movies

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Entries Tagged as 'westerns'

Westerns – Part 5 – Rebirth

February 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Cinematography, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Film Narrative, Genre

The western as a genre was dead until 1989 but was revived by, of all things, a made for TV mini series directed by an Englishman. That series was Lonesome Dove, a four part drama, that rekindled an American love for the western. It was made for the small screen but it had epic ambitions [...]

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Westerns – Part 4 – Demise

February 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Film General

The western died out in the early 1980s following the monumental disaster of Heaven’s Gate (1980). Not only did it bring a film studio to its knees financially but it made other studios extremely wary of investing in the genre. The underlying reasons though are not so much about the financial profligacy of the film [...]

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Westerns – Part 3 – Easterns

February 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Cinematography, Film Authorship, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Film Narrative, Film Sound, Genre

John Ford’s westerns have influenced so many directors throughout the world so it was not so much of a surprise when “westerns” started being made outside the Hollywood system.
The most famous mutation of the traditional western was the spaghetti western. These were films made largely in Europe (Spain being the most believable location to double [...]

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Westerns – Part 2 – John Ford

February 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Cinematography, Film Authorship, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Genre

Westerns have been around since theĀ  era of silent film. They have been the staple of early cinema and early TV. I can remember watching many western series on the box during the sixties such as Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rawhide and many more.
But the western started to become more of an art form in cinema [...]

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Westerns – Part 1

February 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Narrative, Genre, Screenwriting

I haven’t really posted anything about genres so far so I thought I would start with one of my favourite genres – the western. Genres are a way of categorizing films that have a loose set of similar characteristics. They are inevitably vague with flexible boundaries but include sets of conventions that recur in many [...]

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