Over the last three or four years I've become a huge admirer of Westerns, and I've always been dumbfounded as to why the genre took such a sudden decline in the 1970's and it has never recovered since. In the 1930-1960 period, it was the most common genre of film and was the playing ground for the biggest Hollywood stars like
John Wayne,
Jimmy Stewart,
Henry Fonda and
Gary Cooper before declining rapidly after
John Ford faded away. A slight resurgence in the early 90's with
Wyatt Earp,
Dances with Wolves,
Tombstone,
The Quick and The Dead and the cool
Unforgiven soon faded away and now-a-days nobody cares about the genre. I mean sure there are Westerns out there if you look hard enough.
Open Range,
The Proposition and
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada are probably the big three of recent time but they all came by and went without anyone taking any notice. I guess
Brokeback Mountain you can add to the list, but does it really count as a Western? I'm not so sure. However, there is one Western that can drive the genre into a new age of cinema. That movie being
Walk the Line director
James Mangold's remake of the classic
3:10 to Yuma, starring two of the greatest actors of this generation
Christian Bale and
Russell Crowe. Quint, the lucky bastard from
AICN has seen a five minute show-reel from the flick and kindly tells us his thoughts....
The flick looked fantastic. Great looking Western, with Crowe being so carefree and Bale being so troubled... gonna be a great dynamic. The guy has a second by second account of the footage which you can read for yourselves by
clicking here, which will also take you to the second banner featuring Bale. I saw
The Prestige last night for the second time and I have to say Christian Bale's acting is off the charts. He is on a different planet to just about everyone else working today and I don't think it's going to be long until the Academy recognizes his talents somewhere down the line. 3.10 to Yuma, is going to be something special. source -
aicn