Welcome back to Western Wednesdays!  I apologize for losing sight of the trail last week — but let us be stern frontiersmen and women, and not dwell on past failings.

This past week, everyone (including myself) has been eating up the wild wild West in the form of Red Dead Redemption.  I’ve spent hours herding cattle, taming mustangs, and shooting horse thieves, thoroughly enjoying the experience of playing in this genre rather than simply watching it.   So when it came time to pick a film for this week, it was tempting to go for one that reflected the gritty nature of the game.

But then I thought hey, why not go for the exact opposite of Red Dead Redemption? Why not delve into a corner of the genre I’ve dodged thus far, and visit the singing cowboys?   Surely, there was no one more unlike the scarred John Marston than Gene Autry.  So, I selected Tumbling Tumbleweeds and prepared for some wholesome, musical fun.

Now, I had a very specific image of the singing cowboy. They were squeaky clean guys in pretty, fringe decorated shirts and ornamental gunbelts. They had horses with cute names.   They never got dirty, and their movie plots centered around rescuing lost little dogies or kids who wandered onto the prairie. If they shot a gun, it was never to kill, but to startle or warn.

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If you’re hearing the ominous sound of clinking spurs, hissing rattlesnakes, and squeaking saloon doors, well, you’re probably crazy. But it also means it’s  Western Wednesday, and you’re just really excited!

I’m afraid I have to be a bit of a no-good yellow cheat this week due to a previous embargo engagement with one Mr. J. W. Hex.  (He just rides into town so rarely ….) but it never hurts to visit an old favorite, especially one that’s as much fun as The Quick and the Dead.

But first, I have to take you back into a sepia-tinted time of 1995.  I was 13, and I hated Westerns. I was all about sci-fi and fantasy, and no history was interesting to me unless it was medieval and European.   Westerns were a dusty, dull genre where everyone just drank whiskey,  had silly shoot-outs, went on cattle drives,  and visited brothels.

My family rented The Quick and the Dead, and my world was rocked. This Western starred a woman — a mysterious woman with no name.  She rarely spoke, and when she did it was always snarly.  She smoked a cigar.   It was the most original character I had ever seen. If more Westerns were like this, I thought, I would like them all.

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When your work spreads as far across the  digital range as mine does, it can occasionally provide a nice bit of synergy. Or repetition.  It depends on which word you want to use, I suppose. After watching Hombre last week, I resolved I would seek out as many of Elmore Leonard’s Western adaptations as I could. The first on my list was the original 3:10 t0 Yuma, which I’ve never managed to watch in its entirety.

And what happens? I joined Matt Raub on The Flickcast this week, and was called upon to recommend a movie. With Russell “Robin Hood” Crowe on the brain and Leonard queued up for Western Wednesday, only one came to my screen-burnt brain: James Mangold’s remake of 3:10 to Yuma.  I promptly kicked myself after. Talk about beating a dead horse, and using up your good material.

But it couldn’t have worked out better. Delmer Daves’ 3:10 To Yuma is an entirely different animal than Mangold’s, and neither of them have much in common with Leonard’s original short story. If you’re a film nerd (and especially if you’re an aspiring director or screenwriter), you couldn’t find an easier compare and contrast exercise than this.

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One of my biggest misconceptions going into this feature was that Westerns never tackled the topic of racism. (You may call me a brainwashed and judgmental liberal if you like. I don’t mind.)  I lumped them all in with The Searchers – which, incidentally, wasn’t as racist as I remembered but isn’t exactly condemning its characters’ biases either.

But a lot of Westerns tackle it.  They just tend to examine it through the dewy and sad eyes of the white man such as Jimmy Stewart’s Broken Arrow.    Hombre ups the ante by showing discrimination through the painfully blue eyes of Paul Newman.   How can anyone look down on those pool colored irises? You’d have to be really evil.  And boy, are the white people of Hombre evil.

Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, Hombre introduces us to John Russell (Newman), a white man who was raised by Apaches and considers himself one of them.  When his adopted father dies, and leaves him a boarding house, he bristles at the suggestion that he relearn to walk and talk as a white man.  He sells the boarding house, and is on his way back out via stagecoach, but he can’t escape prejudice that easily.

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As a general rule, Westerns tend to be what Sergio Leone labeled “fairy tales for grown-ups.” They may not always be sophisticated, but they reside in a quasi-historical land of cool where even the dust, sweat, and blood seems to be part of the fun. Very few Westerns ever delve into the brutal realities of the frontier.

There’s a good reason for that – misery is not entertaining.  McCabe and Mrs. Miller is proof of the rule.  This is not a enjoyable movie. This is the bonechilling reality that underpins all your Western myths, Manifest Destiny, John Ford and Conestoga wagons.  Robert Altman’s unfortunates come before all that. They’re the desperate people scraping a town together for their own profit so that civilization can come in and build over the opium-addicted ashes.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a footnote-in-history movie, the kind of story that exists only in dusty judicial records. McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in a mining outpost and decides to build a brothel.  Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie, the most beautiful woman alive) gets wind of it, and arrives to muscle in with her superior knowledge. They’re a success, and of course big business gets wind of it, and wants to buy them out.  McCabe dissembles, and they send in the bounty hunters.  No, it doesn’t end well.

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Some kids find a magical creature — perhaps Frankenstein’s Monster or an extra-terrestrial — who sends them on a wild and magical adventure where they learn life lessons. Other kids find Lee Marvin, and embark on a wild and wacky adventure where they become bank robbers. Only one of these youthful scenarios has a happy ending. But what do you expect when you find Marvin copiously bleeding outside of your barn?

The Spikes Gang initially sells itself as a lighthearted, Cat Ballou type of Western. Will (Gary Grimes), Les (Ron Howard), and Tod (Charles Martin Smith) decide to be kindly and patch Harry Spikes (Marvin) up. They do the typical teen thing, and hide him away from their parents, bringing him clothes, food, and money.

He generously turns down the money, revealing that he’s a well-padded bank robber, and sells the boys tales of silk shirts, women, Cuban cigars, and expensive bourbon. They’re drooling. Who wouldn’t? Marvin could use that raspy voice to tell me the sky was green, and I’d ride off with him in a heartbeat.  (Or live in polygamy — but that’s another Marvin movie.)

But these are better boys than I, and they morosely watch Spikes ride off.  The damage has been done, though, and those tales of bourbon and babes prey on their young, impressionable minds.  Their grubby, poor, and sternly Christian lives seem more unbearable than before, and it takes only one belt-whipping before they ride out into the sunrise.   For farm boys, they’re woefully unprepared, and it isn’t long before they’re starving and desperate enough to do like Spikes would do, and rob a bank.

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“What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny’?  ‘Make yourself at home’? ‘Marry my daughter’? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.” — Blazing Saddles

But dang, did they cut a dashing figure in a gray uniform. I’m talking about you, Rock Hudson. Look at the rakish bend of your hat brim! Aren’t you just the handsomest Confederate I’ve seen since Bill Compton traded his uniform for a pair of fangs!

One of my new cinematic fascinations (if you’ll forgive such a pompous label) is the way Hollywood and pop culture imagines the Civil War. It’s not something I ever thought about beyond Gone With the Wind,  Firefly, and True Blood, but it’s an intriguing subset of American culture.

Since no cannonball has been left unturned when it comes to the War Between the States, I’m sure there are already twelve books about this very topic. If there’s not, well, maybe I will write one when Western Wednesdays is through.

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Before there was Avatar, before there was even Dances With Wolves, there was Broken Arrow.

I wasn’t expecting much out of this film. I picked it solely because it had Jimmy Stewart, and he’s been missing from this feature for too long. I knew from the description that it was about the wars with the Apache, who have always been the genre’s favorite villainous redskins. Again, I wasn’t expecting much.

If there was one thing that was pounded into my head in college, it was that no movie ever portrayed Native Americans fairly. They were all John Wayne propaganda pieces that justified our rape and pillage of the land over and over again. It was one of those little facts that justified my disdain for Western movies for years.

But it turns out my American history classes weren’t entirely right, at least in the case of one film. Broken Arrow was the first film to actually portray the Native Americans in a sympathetic and fair light, and while it stumbles in authenticity, it deserves an A for effort. The fact that it comes from one of Hollywood’s stauncher Republicans (Stewart was a proud conservative) is a nice surprise.

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The fun part of Western Wednesdays is discovering little gems like Rio Conchos that were lost in the shuffle of giants like John Wayne.  Lacking any big stars or cult iconography like Django’s coffin, they just sit on Netflix waiting for someone to dig them up.

Rio Conchos is a slow burn of a movie, more of a Western noir than a real shoot ‘em up. Everyone has an agenda, no one can be trusted, and you’re just not sure who is going to screw it all up and make off like a bandit. It also starts off rather typical with the usual trope of “There’s been a raid, a bunch of rifles are missing, and they’re going to wind up in the hands of Apaches!”

Naturally, a disparate bunch of men are assigned the task of tracking down the rifles — a bitter ex-Confederate (Richard Boone), a Buffalo Soldier (Jim Brown), an ambitious Army Captain (Stuart Whitman), and a smooth-talking Mexican mercenary (Tony Franciosa). Of course, they don’t get along. The ex-Confederate makes no secret of his dislike of blue coats or black men, and while they come to a grudging understanding and respect, they never really become friends.

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A few days ago I raved about SyFy’s reality show Destination Truth, and hopefully inspired a few more of you to put it on your DVR or TIVO. In case my enthusiasm wasn’t enough to convince you, SyFy has sent us a clip of next week’s Destination Truth, where Gates and his crew investigate the Great Wall of China.  I was hoping the clip would be of a hilarious cultural misunderstanding or bout of food poisoning, but it’s of Gates brushing up against a possible entity.

If you’ve never seen the show before, you might find yourself sneering at Gates’ goosebumps, but don’t judge too hastily. He’s actually a hard man to shake. Judge its night vision eeriness for yourself.

Along spookier lines, SyFy has also included a clip of next week’s Ghost Hunters, which finds  TAPS doing its usual thing, and investigating some paranormal activity in New Jersey.   (New Jersey may not be as exotic as China, but it’s just as colorful in its own way, right?)  Watch them try to solve the mystery of the climbing EMF reading. Red-blooded males will probably appreciate it’s the two lovely ghost hunting ladies that are doing the investigating.

Is any of it for real? Who knows.  It’s good fun, anyway.  I’m not a fan of reality television, but SyFy has me hooked with all these investigations into pseudo-science.  Plus, I saw Gates kiss a cobra on an Egyptian episode.   Seeing someone risk death for a laugh and vaguely educational purposes  is worth a Wednesday night.

The clips are embedded below. Thanks to SyFy for sending them to us!

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The offbeat, swirly, Gothic-lite, snow-filled reign of Tim Burton will never let up. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Universal’s Illumination Entertainment has snagged the rights to Charles Addams’ original The Addams Family cartoons with an eye to letting Burton direct a stop-motion feature out of them. Why yes, the term “3D” is also being tossed around. Yay.

I love The Addams Family. I was unhealthy obsessed with the Barry Sonnenfeld film as a pre-teen, and I used to hang out at the bookstore reading the original cartoon collections. It was the closest I got to becoming a Goth.  While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Burton films over the years, I’m not sure I want to see the Addams sent through The Burton Factory, and made out to be a family with a penchant for swirls and black and white stripes.

DHD notes that Burton will ignore the previous films and television show, and return straight to the source.  Apparently, he’s quite drawn to the sharp wit of the original comics. And they are funny. Much funnier than Burton’s Addams imitation, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy which is just kind of gross and painful to read.

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I imagine most writers dream of being the star of their novel or screenplay — unless the lead is  some kind of unrepentant serial killer, and even then I suspect it’s still a sleazy kind of catharsis. But unless your name is Jason Segel, your dreams of headlining the poster and getting the girl will never be fulfilled.

But don’t be too bitter. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Segel didn’t nab that sexy of a lead.  He’ll be starring in the untitled Muppet movie he penned for Disney, so the only girls he might get will be made of felt. Not much is known about the film, which will be directed by James Bobin, except that it centers on a man (Segel) who seeks to reunite the Muppets so that they can save their studio.

We can laugh that he penned himself into the leading role, but he does love the Muppets,  so it’s only natural.   I know I dreamed of being of in a Muppet movie. In my heart of hearts, I probably still do.

Then again, he did write and star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall too. Look what that got him.  A posh Hawaiian shoot. Beautiful actresses.  Cool costars. Fame. Fortune. A Muppet movie.  He’s going to have an enviable habit of this, isn’t he?

Oh well.   Again, let’s not begrudge him.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to finish that script about a entertainment reporter who has to choose between  Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, and Viggo Mortensen before nabbing the female lead in a remake of The Outlaw Josey Wales ….