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It is difficult to think of a movie star who did more to dictate the course of motion pictures in the United States during the 20th century than John Wayne. The Iowa native, who owes his acting career to John Ford and Tom Mix doing legendary USC football coach Howard Jones a minor favor, slugged it out as a contract player throughout the 1930s until, at tail end of the decade, he twirl-cocked a Winchester rifle as the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach." That moment, that movie, changed the Western forever. Before Ford's masterpiece, the genre was basically pulp cinema; after it became a massive hit, Westerns acquired the power of myth.

Wayne firmly believed Westerns existed to tell tales about the pursuit of America's manifest destiny. Wayne was so serious about this that, late in his career, when Clint Eastwood approached him about co-starring in a Western together, he...

Content warning: this article contains a mention of suicide.

1910s and 1920s Hollywood was the Wild West -- and not just because it was churning out so many Westerns. Damien Chazelle's "Babylon" isn't visually accurate, but it captures the spirit of the era. The first kinetograph camera had only been invented about 25 years earlier, and it proliferated quickly, giving birth to a new artistic medium and a new financial industry in swift order. Filmmakers in Los Angeles brought cameras out to the deserts of California, wrangled a few horses, hired actors from then-popular live Wild West shows, and almost deliberately created a genre. Westerns soon became one of the most cost-efficient and popular genres, and studios demanded that directors throw together as many as they could on as narrow a timetable as possible.

Hence, the filmographies of silent film stars and their directors were overwhelmingly plentiful when compared to filmmakers today.

Actor Tom Mix made his feature film debut, as far as film scholars have been able to determine, in the 1909 Western "The Cowboy Millionaire" (directed by Francis Boggs and Otis Turner). The name of Mix's character is not known. "The Cowboy Millionaire" is a rarity in Mix's filmography in that it survives to this day. Most of Mix's films, sadly, are lost media; no prints survive. He was one of the most prolific American actors of his generation, appearing in multiple one-reel Westerns every year from 1909 to 1929. In 1916 alone, he appeared in 37 movies, which is three films per month and one extra besides. 1914 was also a banner year for Mix, as he appeared in a mere 15 movies yet directed 14 of them. Overall, Mix appeared in about 150 films in his career, usually playing the same type of paternal, friendly, heroic cowboy character in each one. Of those films, however, only about 35 survive.

Though the summer movie season of 1988 would not officially begin until the May 20 opening of Ron Howard and George Lucas' "Willow," movie buffs hungry for spectacle after enduring an unusually weak spring (led by Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice" and Oscar-winning holdovers like "The Last Emperor" and "Moonstruck") were eagerly looking forward weeks in advance of this kickoff and wondering which of the studios' big-ticket offerings would satisfy as wholly as "The Untouchables," "RoboCop," and "Predator" had done the previous year. Amid the glut of mostly unpromising sequels, there were two seemingly sure things (Robert Zemeckis' "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and the Eddie Murphy vehicle "Coming to America") and a smattering of originals toplined by some of the biggest stars in the industry.

And then there was "Die Hard."

As you likely know, John McTiernan's classic was initially viewed by some as a looming folly based on 20th Century Fox...

Actor John Wayne and director John Ford are made for one of the most iconic duos of American Western cinema, but their best collaboration was their first movie, Stagecoach. Released in 1939 and considered one of the best Western movies, Stagecoach remains a memorable film over 80 years later.

John Wayne and John Ford symbolize an important period of Hollywood's golden era, and their collaborations have remained highly influential in Western movies. Their longtime friendship is highlighted by the many films they worked on together over the years. However, despite their incredible portfolio of shared work, nothing comes close to Stagecoach.

John Wayne & John Ford Never Topped 1939's Stagecoach Stagecoach Was Wayne's First Leading Role In A Ford Movie

Wayne and Ford worked on a total of 14 movies together, with Wayne largely in the leading role, over their longtime professional friendship. Their portfolio includes classics like The Searchers and Rio Grande. The...

1939 was a massive year for Hollywood, in that it offered a long list of now-iconic movies and career stepping stones for some of the biggest stars of this era. This was especially true for the Western genre and two of its biggest icons in cinematic history. In that year alone, both James Stewart and John Wayne had their breakthrough Westerns, Destry Rides Again and Stagecoach, that shaped their images in the medium going forward.

There's no disputing Wayne and Stewart's significance to the genre. Of the two, Wayne obviously has the better resume, with leading roles in an impressive number of movies now considered to be among the greatest Westerns of all time. But Stewart, for his part, has also contributed his fair share of worthwhile entries into the world of Westerns. After all, James Stewart's Westerns also account for a few of the genre's best, with Winchester '73 being a notable example.

Writing duo Alfred Gough and Miles Millar may now be known for the likes of the hit Netflix series Wednesday and the long-awaited horror comedy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but the pair once crafted a masterful blend of Western and action in 2000s Shanghai Noon. Starring martial arts icon Jackie Chan and Wedding Crashers star Owen Wilson, the movie expertly combines thrilling action, comedy, martial arts, and cowboys, with a sequel, Shanghai Knights, released in 2003. Sadly, despite the popularity of the Shanghai movies, a third movie never materialized, and Gough has now revealed why. It was Jackie Chans fault.

We came very close. Oh my gosh, Covid always makes my timeline wonky. I think it was like 2017, 2018, we had a script and Jackie [Chan] and Owen [Wilson] had verbally kind of committed. Then, at a certain point, Jackie just decided he didn't want to do it. That's all I really know. There was...

The martial arts western action comedy Shanghai Noon was a massive hit when it was released in 2000. While the film, starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, received a sequel, a third film in the franchise never got off the ground.

Speaking to Collider, Alfred Gough, who wrote the film with Miles Millar, revealed the current status of Shanghai Dawn. "We came very close. I think it was like 2017, 2018, we had a script and Jackie and Owen had verbally kind of committed," he explained. "Then, at a certain point, Jackie just decided he didn't want to do it. That's all I really know. There was a moment probably six or seven years ago where it looked like it was starting to come together. We weren't writing it, we were working with some younger writers, but we helped break the story, and they were writing it. So, that's where we are."

9:...

Shanghai Noon screenwriter Alfred Gough sheds light on the unmade third movie, what its story would have entailed, and why it ultimately fell apart. The 2000 action-Western starred Jackie Chan as a Chinese Imperial Guard who joins forces with Owen Wilson's outlaw in order to rescue a kidnapped princess. A sequel titled Shanghai Knights was released in 2003, taking the duo on a quest to recover a priceless artifact. A Shanghai Noon 3 was also announced in 2015, but few updates emerged after.

While Gough is currently known for his collaborations with Tim Burton on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Wednesday, the writer reflected on his early collaboration with Miles Millar, his co-writer on Shanghai Noon, while talking to Collider. Gough recalled how far development on a third movie had progressed before things fell apart, admitting it had reached the script stage and had partial involvement from Chan and Wilson. He said:

We came very close.

Back in 2016, Moma curator Dave Kehr programmed a series of restorations and rediscoveries from the early days of sound at Universal Studios. Across the country in Los Angeles, film historian Leonard Maltin looked at the schedule with envy and longing. “My mouth was watering,” Maltin told IndieWire. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t just fly to New York and set up a futon in the lobby so I could go to all the films he was screening.”

Luckily, Maltin was able to see some of the films back in Hollywood when Universal archivist Bob O’Neil allowed him to sit in on screenings that had been set up to check answer prints. “I saw dozens of them,” Maltin said. “Some were good, many were unmemorable or downright bad, but every now and then I got lucky and found a real winner.”

Maltin wanted to share his discoveries with the Los Angeles film community,...

The best movies about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday dramatize the lives of the famous real-life gunslingers in different ways. Most of these Westerns are focused on the events surrounding the notorious O.K. Corral gunfight. Some point the camera towards other, lesser-known aspects of either or both of Earp and Holliday's tumultuous lives.

Throughout film history, movies like Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, and My Darling Clementine have practically created their own Western subgenre based on Earp and Holliday's adventures. From the most traditional dramatizations of the events at the O.K. Corral and the town of Tombstone to revisionist and anti-Westerns that put strange new spins on the familiar tales, the best movies about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday have definitely made their mark on cinema. While they may not be the most lauded or popular Western films, these movies have captured the imagination of audiences for close to a hundred years.

Wyatt Earp’s fame as a legendary lawman of the Old West is known around the world, but his real life contained many complex details that extended far beyond his most notorious gunfight. New information sheds light on Earp’s later years and brings more balance to our understanding of the famous figures from his time.

Earp is best remembered for participating in the infamous 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona alongside his brothers and friend Doc Holliday against the outlaws Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury. After leaving Tombstone, Earp tried his hand at many ventures like gold mining in Alaska and refereeing a boxing match. He also dabbled in the early film industry in California, where he eventually settled in Los Angeles and passed away at age 80 in 1929 from complications of a bladder condition.

At his funeral, Earp’s pallbearers included representatives...

The Action Scene explores the form, history, and visceral power of action cinema through its set pieces.Clockwise from top left: The Fall Guy, In the Shadows, Kambakkth Ishq, and Hooper.Invoking both the stuntman and the scapegoat, the title of The Fall Guy (2024) pithily encapsulates the film’s plot: after a literally backbreaking high-fall-gone-wrong derails his career, stunt performer Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) resumes the job for a blockbuster project helmed by his ex-girlfriend Jody (Emily Blunt), only to be framed for a murder committed by the actor he doubles (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Indeed, stunt performers have physically “taken the fall” for onscreen stars for most of film history, weathering the scrapes, burns, bruises, and fractures that go into constructing visceral spectacle, but their labors have gone mostly unrecognized by the general public. The Fall Guy presents an ironic inversion: whereas Colt gets in trouble because he is visibly linked...

Authenticity was top of mind when Martin Scorsese and his team set about creating the world of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The Oscar-nominated film, which is in contention for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematography, Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Original Score and Original Song at the Academy Awards, aims to capture the tragic true story of the murders of several Osage in 1921 Oklahoma, and the film’s design team went to great lengths to do service to the tale at hand.

Set during a time when indigenous peoples in the area were tremendously wealthy owing to oil discovered on their land, “Killers of the Flower Moon” chronicles the horrendous series of murders that were designed to transfer ownership of the land back to white people, all told through the eyes of Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) and her husband Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio).

“History is fascinating, and you can’t...

For Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, costume designer Jacqueline West immersed herself in researching early-1920s denizens of Osage County, Oklahoma. She visited museums commemorating plundering oil tycoons and watched rare black-and-white home movies commissioned by Osage families, wealthy from retaining mineral rights to their oil-rich reservation. Osage costume consultant Julie O’Keefe ensured the authenticity and nuanced storytelling of traditional clothing and materials, which endure long after the tribe’s forced relocation from Missouri to Oklahoma in 1872.

“I had these 10-foot boards of townspeople, on every level, all the way around my warehouse,” says West about designing the introductory sequence in which World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in bustling Fairfax and encounters the two worlds he soon infiltrates. Suited white merchants and disheveled fieldworkers seek their fortune, as Osage Nation members don attire representing their cultural pride and wealth. Patterned blankets pristinely wrapped around tailored suits,...

Bruce Willis burst onto the American entertainment scene as the glib, smart-alecky detective David Addison Jr. opposite Cybill Shepherd’s Maddie Haynes in ABC’s Moonlighting, a show that helped launch the dramedy genre. Willis was not long for the small screen, though, with his his sharp tongue and sarcastic wit destined for bigger things.

More than 90 films and $5.3 billion later, Willis has played a smart-aleck New York detective in the Die Hard series, a smart-aleck oil driller-turned-astronaut in Armageddon, a smart-aleck cop in The Last Boy Scout, a smart-aleck gangster in Last Man Standing, a smart-aleck soldier in Tears of the Sun … well, you get the picture.

When he wasn’t cracking wise, Willis played many other memorable roles in films that included The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Color of Night (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), The Sixth Sense (1999) The Story of Us (1999), Looper (2012) and Motherless Brooklyn...

Though it'd be easy to assume John Wayne is the actor with the most Westerns under his belt, that distinction actually belongs to a different Hollywood legend. The Western genre is among the most iconic in the history of Hollywood. Actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood used Westerns to become two of the most famous movie stars in history. Westerns were an integral part of the film industry, and they were initially produced at an astounding rate, seemingly defining cinema for decades.

The Western genre may not be as a popular as it was in the 20th century, but it remains the most iconic category in cinema. There is no shortage of modern Westerns, and the overarching impact the genre had on filmmaking as a whole cannot be understated. In years past, a multitude of actors, including Gabby Hayes, Randolph Scott, Ward Bond, and so many more made their...

Considering his future fame playing a certain Baron, it is an amusing coincidence that Peter Cushing’s very first job in the movies was under the direction of James Whale, director of the classic 1931 Frankenstein, as a double for star Louis Hayward in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939). Hayward played twins in the film and Cushing played the opposite role for each take. Though he was cut out of the film and Hayward’s two halves spliced together in order to appear opposite himself, Cushing learned much about film acting from the experience as he was allowed to watch dailies and critique his own performance. As a reward for his work, he was given a small role in the film as the King’s Messenger. He would work with Whale once again near the end of his brief sojourn in Hollywood before returning home to his beloved England where...

John Wayne gets a bit of a bad rap as an actor. Yes, he mostly made star vehicles after his breakthrough performance in John Wayne's "Stagecoach," but he was willing to challenge himself (and his audience) by playing unlikable protagonists in Howard Hawks' "Red River" and Ford's "The Searchers." He had an acute understanding of film acting, and, according to Ron Howard, could make minor adjustments on the fly that would turn an otherwise ordinary scene into a classic Wayne moment.

But did anyone want to see John Wayne play King Lear on Broadway? Not particularly. At least, not because they thought it would be good.

Wayne was not a classically trained actor. He found his way to motion pictures because Tom Mix owed a favor to legendary USC football coach Howard Jones. When Wayne was forced to quit the team, Mix and Ford brought the young man into their extended company.

The Western is back, again. After it died. Prior to which it came back again.

As film historian and co-host of the How the West was Cast podcast, Andrew Patrick Nelson argues, journalists and historians love to write about the Western being dead just as much as they enjoy writing about its resurgence. However, this ebb and flow is part of a predictable life cycle that has kept the genre alive for over a century.

The origins of the frontier narrative on our public consciousness dates to 1845, when John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in an essay about America’s perceived right to expansion. As the Wild West came to an end and the frontier became settled, Frederick Jackson Turner introduced his “frontier thesis” in 1893. Turner hit on the binary conflicts that make the Western as a mythological place so engaging. The frontier, as he defined it,...

The John Wayne his fans know and love didn't really show up until John Ford's "Stagecoach" in 1939. Though the director and silent Western star Tom Mix saw tremendous potential in the USC football washout when they took him on as a prop boy in the mid-1920s, his screen presence was purely physical. At 6'4", the Iowa-born lad cut a formidable figure on the big screen, but he had miles to go as an actor. If you asked Ford (and many did), he was happy to tell you that Wayne needed a decade's worth of seasoning in Poverty Row Westerns before he could topline a major Hollywood production.

It was unwise to argue with the cantankerous Ford, but Wayne had a shot at undermining his mentor when Raoul Walsh cast the young man as the star of 1930's "The Big Trail," an early, wildly pricey epic that sought to...

Harry Houdini in Haldane Of The Secret Service Image: Harry Houdini Pictures While a lot of people are looking ahead to the movies that are coming in 2023 (we’ve done it too), The A.V. Club thought this would also be a good moment to take a look back. Way, way back.

There isn't a single historical figure of the 19th century whose life has been more mythologized via motion pictures than Wyatt Earp. Several great Westerns have been dedicated to his exploits. John Ford's "My Darling Clementine," John Sturges' "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," and George P. Cosmatos' "Tombstone" are widely considered the best of the bunch. As for Lawrence Kasdan's "Wyatt Earp," a three-hour, swing-for-the-bleachers epic that hit theaters six months after the release of "Tombstone," the consensus holds that it is a film in search of a greater purpose. It's the whole Earp story, but to what end? 

One of the most fascinating facets of Earp's life is that he moved to Los Angeles, and served as a technical advisor on silent Westerns made by Tom Mix and John Ford. You'd think a cinephile like Kasdan would want to delve into this subject with antiheroic vigor,...

John Ford did enjoy his petty tortures, especially when his subject was John Wayne.

Ford had certainly earned the right to rib the star a little. He employed Wayne as a prop man as a favor to USC coach Howard Jones and silent Western star Tom Mix, and vouched for the actor when Raoul Walsh considered casting him for his 1930 epic "The Big Trail." He might not have coined the name "John Wayne" (that was Walsh), but he did more to shape his swaggering persona than any other director in Hollywood.

But Ford's needling could verge on cruelty. When an insecure Wayne, playing a Swedish seaman in 1940's "The Long Voyage Home," asked Ford for a dialect coach to help him nail the accent, the director retorted "Well, Jesus, all right, if you want to be a goddamn actor." In 1948, after viewing Howard Hawks' "Red River," Ford quipped, "I never...

As the motion picture industry lurched into the sound era, John Wayne's career was languishing. He wasn't getting many decent roles. He wasn't impressing people when he did. He wasn't even John Wayne.

He was Marion Robert Morrison, a strapping, 6'3", Iowa-born washout from the USC football team. Wayne found his way into Hollywood via his coach, Howard Jones, who frequently procured tickets for the silent movie star Tom Mix. The actor, along with director John Ford, took on the young Wayne as a favor to Jones, giving him steady, if unspectacular work as a prop man and extra.

Given his athletic stature and boyish good looks, Wayne had the physical makings of a future star. After plugging away throughout the second half of the 1920s in bit parts (occasionally as a member of the USC football team), he finally received his first official credit Duke Morrison in James Tinling...

Before John Wayne began making low-budget Westerns in the 1930s, stunt performers were rarely, if ever, acknowledged or given credit for their work. Studios didn't want to break the illusion to reveal that it wasn't the main star on-screen performing their own stunts, so the practice became one of Hollywood's biggest secrets. Looking back on the history of stunts from the era, the British Action Academy noted that, during that time, studios and directors began demanding more dangerous stunts that resulted in a large increase in on-set fatalities.

The marquee star wasn't in mortal jeopardy and some actors like Harold Lloyd had it written into their contracts that it could never be revealed when a stuntman was utilized. Tom Mix, the first bonafide movie star, always claimed that he was the one who made the famous horse jump across the Beale's Cut ravine in John Ford's 1923 short film, "3 Jumps Ahead.

Motion pictures, for better or worse, shape the way that we view history. They bring the past to life using realistic costumes, production design, and visual effects. They tell vivid stories about real-life figures and important events that shaped the world around us to this day, and which provide meaningful parallels to the lives we currently lead.

And yet, if the movies have taught us anything, it's that every single historical figure, at some point in their storied life, has also solved at least one murder mystery. Or at least they fought a mummy or something. The desire to tell tales of historical fiction is perfectly understandable, but our collective and very specific urge to transform biographies into pulpy fan fiction is a little weird, if you think about it.

Consider, if you will, Scott Cooper's "The Pale Blue Eye," which co-stars Harry Melling as a young Edgar Allan Poe,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWill-o'-the-Wisp.The New York Film Festival has revealed the lineup for their Currents section, dedicated to films "testing and stretching the possibilities of the medium." The program includes new films from João Pedro Rodrígues, Ashley McKenzie, Bertrand Bonello, Helena Wittmann, and more. This year's crop of Revivals was also unveiled, featuring the highly anticipated restoration of Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore.61 films will be preserved through funding from The National Film Preservation Foundation. Grant recipients include the 1921 mystery-western Trailin’—starring Tom Mix, considered the first on-screen cowboy—and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980), one of two feature films Kathleen Collins completed before her premature death.Cinema company Cineworld, owner of the Picturehouse chain in the UK and Regal Cinemas in the US, could be facing imminent bankruptcy, per recent reports.

There’s a lot of ways to describe Jordan Peele’s Nope: an update on “Watch the Skies!” sci-fi from the 1950s; a tribute to Steven Spielberg’s 1970s blockbuster building blocks (what if those Close Encounter of the Third Kind UFOs were just hungry, extraterrestrial great white sharks?); a 21st century meta-text about what we watch and why we keep watching it. All 100-percent accurate.

But read the reviews and explainers and numerous think pieces on Peele’s latest blend of horror and commentary, and there’s one word that keeps popping up,...

Alex Winter’s musical documentary Zappa is a fun movie which frames Frank Zappa the way he should be, as a hero. While this may ring particularly true for fans of the original Mother of Invention, the film is also a must-see for anyone who plugged in a guitar, banged drums, pounded a piano, ruined their teeth on clarinet reeds, or waited for their triangle part to come up in a Julliard School of Music chamber ensemble. It is also for social justice warriors stretching to see beyond the warning labels. The feature documentary is an intimate look at an artist who defied labels, both the record industry ones which curtailed output, and the easy, cheesy, tags of pundits, critics and frightened senate committees.

“This is the beginning of your new future,” Zappa assures an appreciative audience in the archival concert footage which sets the tone. Winter begins the film in the Czech Republic,...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.When you look through the IMDb entries for the early releases of the Fox Film Corporation (recommended: it's dispiriting and boggling at once: how many Buck Jones and Tom Mix westerns did the world need—and how many survive?) it's striking how many potentially interesting ones are unheard-of and impossible for the ordinary cinephile to see. My mouth waters in particular at the many, many Roy William Neill silents: Neill was a terrific, expressive filmmaker, a journeyman maybe, but a very talented one, best known today...

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Faced with falling audience attendance and rising debt in the late 1950s, Fox president Spyros Skouras had no choice but to sell off big chunks of the studio lot. In 1960, he put 176 acres of Fox's northern property — real estate on L.A.'s Westside that William Fox had purchased in 1924 from silent-film star Tom Mix to house his Fox Film Corp. — on the auction block. The buyers: land investor William Zeckendorf and the Aluminum Company of America, who cut a check to Fox for $43 million ($366 million today) and then began demolishing ...

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Faced with falling audience attendance and rising debt in the late 1950s, Fox president Spyros Skouras had no choice but to sell off big chunks of the studio lot. In 1960, he put 176 acres of Fox's northern property — real estate on L.A.'s Westside that William Fox had purchased in 1924 from silent-film star Tom Mix to house his Fox Film Corp. — on the auction block. The buyers: land investor William Zeckendorf and the Aluminum Company of America, who cut a check to Fox for $43 million ($366 million today) and then began demolishing ...

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Women… Do you look like this? Men… Do you look like this?

I’ll admit, I am deathly afraid I haven’t pissed enough people off this past year and I’m rapidly running out of time. But, damn, people keep on pissing me off and, like every jamoke who has a keyboard and an Internet connection, vengeance is mine.

As Geek Culture enthusiasts, there are lots and lots of incredibly important issues for us to discuss. Fan-women get dumped on viciously for committing the crime of voicing their opinions. Women gamers often are treated like they are Typhoid Mary. Women cosplayers often are regarded as fair game for convention-attending degenerates. And there’s that bit about only having to pay women 77 cents on the dollar, and that’s something that affects absolutely every aspect of a woman’s daily life. As human beings, intelligent women continue to be marginalized as ditzy babes.

Tumbleweeds will screen Friday, November 14th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium as part of The King Baggot Tribute at the St. Louis International Film Festival. It will be preceded by a 35mm showing of the 1913 version of Ivanhoe featuring live music by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and an illustrated lecture on the life and career of King Baggot by We Are Movie Geeks own Tom Stockman. Tumbleweeds will feature live piano accompaniment by Matt Pace

William S. Hart (1864-1946) was the first great star of the movie western. Fascinated by tales of the Old West, Hart actually acquired Billy the Kid’s six-shooter and was a friend with legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in shorts, achieved stardom as the lead in the western The Bargain. Hart was particularly interested in making his westerns realistic and...

A fifty year storm, post apocalyptic gangs and surfing ... that's the template for Juancho Otalvaro's Territorial Pissings, a deliberate throwback to the cult movies of the 80s.Sometime during the 1980s a storm began, and for 50 years it did not stop. Now, survivors struggle to thrive in a wild world with most of the past below sea. Surf has become the ultimate rush throughout the known territories. The surf leader of The Squids, Tom Mix, finds his community threatened by the Piranha surf gang after one of his partners gets kidnapped. Surf battling and dirt road motorbike slaughter will not only gush out blood, but uncover the secrets this new world holds.Twitch fave Miguel Gomez - director of Italia 90, El Fin and El...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

‘Shane’: Alan Ladd stars in classic Western to be screened at the Academy The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a 60th anniversary screening of George Stevens’ classic Western Shane, starring Alan Ladd as a lone and mysterious gunslinger, at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 7, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Besides Ladd, Shane, a 1953 Paramount release, also stars Jean Arthur in her last movie role, in addition to Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, and Jack Palance. (Photo: Alan Ladd in Shane.) "A gun is a tool, Marian, no better or no worse than any other tool, an axe, a shovel or anything," Alan Ladd’s Shane tells Jean Arthur’s homesteader wife and mother. "A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that." That may sound like your usual National Rifle Association bullshit, but in the...

‘Hollywood Hero’ John Dewar remembered (photo: Anthony Slide wearing Tom Mix’s hat in 1976) Perhaps I have been around too long, but as I grow older I grow despondent that those who contributed so much to film history in the past are forgotten, with others often coming along and taking claim for their achievements. One such Hollywood hero is John Dewar, whom I met when I first came to Los Angeles in 1971. He was a curator in the history department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and introduced me to the museum’s treasures relating to film history, acquired before the creation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — at a time when both institutions were housed together simply as the Los Angeles County Museum. Back in the mid-1930s, it was Ransom Matthews, head of industrial technology at the Museum, who had started collecting such materials.

For the fans of this wonderful man, which I proudly count myself as one; 26 May 2013 marks the centenary of horror legend Peter Cushing. One of the most versatile actors to grace the big screen, Cushing never gave a single bad performance throughout his 50-year career. A dedicated perfectionist, who believed in giving nothing less than his best effort, Cushing’s 100% commitment always lifted a bad film. The movie may fail him but he would never fail his public.

Cushing began his acting career in repertory theatre and with his legendary one-way ticket to Hollywood, made his film debut in 1939. After a couple of productive years in the States, he worked his way back to England following the outbreak of World War 2. Marrying actress Helen Beck, he worked on stage but struggled to find good roles until he became a member of the RSC under Laurence Oliver. As British TV’s first big star,...

May 26th marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Peter Cushing, a thespian whose efforts on stage as well as screens both big and small left such a mark on viewers that it often seems as though he’s always been a part of popular culture. This is not entirely inappropriate, as popular culture was virtually always a part of Cushing himself, from the comic strips he was creating at five years of age to the Tom Mix movies which thrilled him as a youngster to the plays in which he appeared at Purley County Secondary School in Sussex, England. These moments in Cushing’s life are but a scant few of the fascinating facts to be found within a new biography of the actor—Peter Cushing: A Life in Film, by David Miller—but aside from his various credits over the course of his lengthy career, what...

By Sasha Esquivel

Along with a few lucky others, I recently had the opportunity to be a part of the hustle and bustle of a real film set in town. Thanks to the City of Austin, the Austin Film Society and local chapters of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, I got to intern with the props department on the set of Parkland.

The movie is described on IMDb as being about "the chaotic events that occurred at Dallas' Parkland Hospital on the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated." The cast includes current/former Texans Jackie Earle Haley, Mark Duplass, and Marcia Gay Harden; plus Billy Bob Thornton (who won the Tom Mix Honorary Texan Award at the Texas Film Hall of Fame in 2009), Zac Efron and Ron Livingston, among many others.

This was my first time on a film set and the entire experience taught...

How did the lone cowboy hero become such a potent figure in American culture? In an extract from his final book Fractured Times, the late Eric Hobsbawm follows a trail from cheap novels and B-westerns to Ronald Reagan

Today, populations of wild horse-riders and herdsmen exist in a large number of regions all round the world. Some of them are strictly analogous to cowboys, such as gauchos on the plains of the southern cone of Latin America; the llaneros on the plains of Colombia and Venezuela; possibly the vaqueiros of the Brazilian north-east; certainly the Mexican vaqueros from whom indeed, as everyone knows, both the costume of the modern cowboy myth and most of the vocabulary of the cowboy's trade are directly derived: mustang, lasso, lariat, sombrero, chaps (chaparro), a cinch, bronco. There are similar populations in Europe, such as the csikos on the Hungarian plain, or puszta, the Andalusian...

There are films from late in the great directors' careers which inspire passionate devotion among the more avid fans, films for which excuses have to be made, and films which inspire pained embarrassment. For me, the late films of Blake Edwards sometimes fall into all three camps, but then some of his earlier films do too: Mickey Rooney's enthusiastic personation of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's must surely cause pangs of discomfort to even the most devoted admirers of Audrey Hepburn.

Sunset (1988) perhaps has the edge on some the films immediately before and after, because it's clearly inspired by real love, not so much of movies or movie people, but what Alan Rudolph has called "movie-ness." Let's unpick that.

The loose and unsatisfying plot involves the 1929 murder of a Hollywood madam at a brothel where the prostitutes are styled to resemble movie stars (cue truly cringe-worthy don't-look-alikes and...

Saturday Night Fever's 'shining light' in 1970s polyester tracked down for museum's Hollywood costume show

The most famous white suit in the world, a classic example of the finest 1970s polyester tailoring, has been tracked down by the Victoria and Albert Museum after an international search.

The three-piece suit was as much a star of the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever as John Travolta who played Tony Manero, or the Bee Gees, who provided the soundtrack for the story of a young man who disco-dances his way out of the ghetto.

Bought off the peg in a cheap men's clothes store in Brooklyn, the suit was last seen in public 17 years ago, when it was sold at a Christie's auction to an anonymous bidder for $145,000 (£93,000), three times the top estimate. The curators of this autumn/winter's exhibition on Hollywood costume were determined to find it and put out an international appeal.

You want action? Movie-movie action? Then forget The Avengers, which opens in the Us on May 4. The following day, head instead to the Niles Essanay Film Museum in the northern Californian town of Fremont, where they’ll be screening two action-packed flicks: Laughing at Danger and "The Tragic Plunge," episode 7 of the serial The Perils of Pauline. Haven’t heard of either one? Well, Laughing at Danger was an independent production released in 1924. It stars Richard Talmadge (no relation to sisters Constance Talmadge and Norma Talmadge), who, according to some sources, was quite popular in the Soviet Union, of all places. As for the serial The Perils of Pauline, it was a humongous success in 1914, turning Pearl White (photo) into a major screen star. Actually, more than that. White became a near-legendary movie icon, one whose adventures have been copied, remade, and rebooted ever since. In fact, I wouldn’t...

The great movie pioneer D.W. Griffiths once said “we do not want now and we shall never want the human voice with our films.” Shame he failed to realise that film-making is a technical medium that will always develop. In the last 100 years we have had the introduction of colour, trick photography, 3D and CGI, among other numerous innovations such as CinemaScope - and even Smellovision. But none of these compare to the most revolutionary of cinematic changes: sound.

The silent era of the twenties holds little more than curiosity-value for many modern film fans. Other than a few notable exceptions such as Nosferatu (1922) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), it’s become a long-forgotten part of cinema history. But back then we had the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies of their day! Big stars and talented actors who sadly failed to survive the test of time.

The coming of sound was controversial,...

London Evening News correspondent Wg Faulkner, who began a regular 'kinema' column on 17 January 1912, gets the credit as the UK's first film critic. What's surprising is how little has changed since then

The early film critics, wrote Alistair Cooke in 1937, were presented with a new art form, unencumbered by tradition, and free "to define the movies with no more misgivings than Aristotle defined tragedy". Or at least they would have been, but the press lost interest once the novelty wore off, and so "through a trick of snobbery the simple Aristotelian lost his chance". This lapse did not pass without comment. While "every theatre play is accorded the honour of a press notice", complained the trade paper Kinematograph Weekly as late as 1918, the "perfunctory sort of acknowledgement" given the likes of The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance was "obviously written by people who bring to the kinema the prejudiced...

Yeah, that’s him, little Denny, aged six or seven (or maybe even five), dragging the kitchen chair across the linoleum and putting it next to the icebox. He climbs up on it and then he’s close to Mom’s radio. He knows which knobs to turn, he knows how to find what comes from the speaker, what is very important: his programs.

Every weekday afternoon, after school, from 3:30 to six – dinner time, Dad’s nightly return from Work (and work is also very important, though Denny doesn’t know why) – Denny listens to Tom Mix and Superman and Hop Harrigan and Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy (what other kind of boy could there be?) and what may be his very, very favorite, Captain Midnight. Mom has her programs, too – Ma Perkins and Young Doctor Malone and some others – but Denny thinks they’re no better than okay.

The National Film Preservation Foundation announced today that the next volume in their invaluable series of DVD releases will be Treasures 5: The West, 1898-1938. The 10-hour, 3-disc box set celebrates "the dynamic, gender-bending, ethnically diverse West that flourished in early movies but has never before been seen on video."

The full lineup is here and today's announcement plucks out a few of the highlights: "Among the 40 selections are Mantrap (1926), the wilderness comedy starring Clara Bow in her favorite role; Ws Van Dyke's legendary The Lady of the Dugout (1918), featuring outlaw-turned-actor Al Jennings; Salomy Jane (1914), with America's first Latina screen celebrity Beatriz Michelena [image above]; Gregory La Cava's sparkling Old West–reversal Womanhandled (1925); Sessue Hayakawa in the cross-cultural drama Last of the Line (1914); one-reelers with Tom Mix and Broncho Billy, Mabel Normand in The Tourists (1912), and dozens of other rarities." The set is slated for a September release.

Speaking of the wild,...

This is not your granddaddy's Western. Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes would not recognize the actions that take place in "Meek's Cutoff." They would not feel at home here, but Gus Van Sant would. Consider Van Sant's 2002 film "Gerry," in which two twenty-something men go off into the desert and forget to bring any food with them. "Gerry" has an opening that would likely drive half the audience to the exits-that's how slow-moving the scenes slide by, setting the tone for the remainder of the inaction. Kelly Reichardt would love that picture. She opens her "Meek's Cutoff" without dialogue for ten or fifteen minutes, her camera person grooving on some long shots of folks in a covered wagon traipsing across the Oregon Trail in 1845 before railroad made the trip outdated. Still its tempting to say that the brave and foolish people making the trip...