growning up as a kid in the 50’s and 60’s, I became a western junkie....mostly TV westerns but movies too...as I got to be an adult, I became more selective about all things...including westerns...
accuracy was horrible in old westerns pre 1870s westerns showed heros and villians brandishing SAA colts and pre 1890s westerns showed the hero brandishing 1892 and 1894 Winchesters....the stories of the older westerns were extremely simplistic....good vs bad....no meat to the stories.
NO, I am sorry...the best westerns (with the exception of such classics as Shane, Winchester 73, the Searchers, and a number of others), can’t hold a candle to such ‘modern’ Classics as ‘The Shootist’, ‘True Grit’, ‘Tombstone’, Eastwoods ‘Unforgiven’ and the miniseries ‘Lonesome Dove’....and to a lesser extent Quigley Down Under, Crossfire Trail, and the first season of ‘Deadwood’(it went down hill rapidly after that season)
there are 2 or 3 Costner movies I will watch more than once, but until this guy gets a film editor and pairs down his movies to 2 hours, I wont include them in my greatest lists.(ok, here they are...Wyatt Earp, Dances with Wolves, Open Range)
Just my $0.02.
And turn out the lights
‘Cause Roy Rogers rides tonight,
HBO's 'Deadwood' was fantastic.
I'm a big Sergio Leone fan and 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is maybe my favorite western of all time - how can you top Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef???. I also recommend Leone's 'Duck you sucker' (surprisingly good) and the Fistful of Dollars movies with Clint Eastwood (the Man with No Name).
The recent remake of '3:10 to Yuma' was very good.
I have 'How the West was won', 'The Outlaw Josie Wales', The Magnificent Seven', 'Once upon a time in the west' (ultimate bad guy Henry Fonda), and the remake of Appaloosa all lined up for weekend viewing on the new Blu Ray :)