cowboys Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows - The West Is Yet to Come
Filed under: Critical Thought », Box Office », Brad Pitt », Columns », 400 Screens, 400 Blows », Cinematical Indie », Western »
Did the Western make a comeback in 2007, with 3:10 to Yuma (371 screens), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (294 screens), and last spring's Seraphim Falls? That's a tough question, but the better question would be: did it ever go away? Those three movies earned a lot of attention this year, and it showed that, if nothing else, filmmakers and actors are eager to make Westerns once again, as they did back in the 1950s. How much more of a indication do you need when Pierce Brosnan, Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt don cowboy hats and mount horses? Other actors, such as Matt Damon and Colin Farrell have suggested how much fun they had while making recent Westerns. Unfortunately, audiences don't seem so interested, and conversely, producers don't want to put up the money for actors to play if audiences don't want to share in the fun.
Director James Mangold told me that no studio would touch 3:10 to Yuma, and that he had to secure financing from a bank. It opened, happily, in the #1 box office slot, but after eight weeks, it has started to slide, and is still just shy of recapturing its $55 million budget. And this is a terrific, crowd-pleasing movie with a great performance by Crowe. It's directed with energy and clarity, with an innovative use of an authentic Western soundtrack. It has exciting gunfights and chases and escapes. And if aesthetes and elitists wish, they can see bonus allusions to Iraq in the film, even if they're not actually mentioned or hammered home. It's unpretentious in every way. (Paul Haggis could take a few notes from this movie.) So why has the box office slowed down so drastically?
Graphic Novel 'Cowboys & Aliens' Getting Adapted
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Comic/Superhero/Geek », Western »
Cowboys and extraterrestrials, two great tastes that taste great together, will be coming together on the big screen in an adaptation of Platinum Studios Comics' graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens. According to a report in Variety, the comic will be adapted as a live action feature by Dream Works and Universal Pictures. Imagine partners Brian Grazer and Ron Howard will produce along with Platinum Studios chairman-CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg who was the head of Malibu Comics back when they were publishing Men In Black. Also producing will be Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who also scripted this summer's Transformers). Ervin Rustemagic and Rich Marincic will co-produce. Screenplay will be by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby who also penned Children of Men and the eagerly anticipated Marvel Comics adaptation Iron Man. No mention yet of who might direct.Set in Arizona in the 1800s, the genre melding Cowboys & Aliens begins when a battle between Apaches and cowboys is interrupted by the arrival of an alien craft whose commander wants to enslave mankind, and the two warring factions must join forces to defeat the invaders. The graphic novel, which was published in 2006 based on ideas created by Rosenberg, has an official website which you can see here, and the graphic novel itself can be read online in its entirety here.
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