Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I’ve loved Western movies ever since I was a kid. Maybe it was because it was the first kind of films that I saw when I was about six or seven years old and started going to the movies by myself. Every Saturday, my Mom would give me some pocket change—tickets were just ten cents for kids—and I would trundle down the one block to the Palace theater on Gay Street in Baltimore.
Each week The Palace would show a Western plus two, count’em, serials and I loved those cowboy flicks with Lash Larue, Sunset Carson but especially Gene Autry. One of the movie highlights of my kid-hood was when my Mom took me downtown to the Hippodrome theater to see Gene Autry’s only color film, The Strawberry Roan, but not just the movie, Gene was there in person on stage after the movie along with Champion, the Wonder Horse who did a few tricks. It was cowboy nirvana for us kiddies.
So here’s a short list of Westerns that I think need to be released in 4K Blu-ray:
Silverado is available in Blu-ray but I would like to have a 4K version because it’s such an epic western with an epic cast including Kevin Costner, Kevin Kline—all the Kevins—and was produced and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and written by Kasdan and his brother Mark. When is the last time you saw Jeff Goldblum, John Cleese and Linda Hunt in a Western? If only Kasdan’s other Western film, Wyatt Earp, was as good as Silverado.
Skip Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp and go directly, do not pass Go, to Tombstone. This film is available in Blu-ray and has amazing performances here as well. Kurt Russell is Wyatt Earp in the performance of his career and why Val Kilmer did not win an Oscar for his portrayal of Doc Holliday, I haven’t a clue. It’s amazing and the scene of his verbal duel with Michael Biehn in Latin is a sight to behold and listen to. And Charlton Heston is in the movie too.
And speaking of The Gunfight at the OK Corral, My Darling Clementine has a beautiful Blu-ray from Criterion but a 4K release would be nice now that Criterion is releasing 4K discs. And speaking of Henry Fonda, why not give us a 4K Blu-ray of Warlock. There is an expensive Blu-ray available of this underrated film that stars Fonda in a 1959 movie that, in many ways, presages his role in 1969’s Once Upon a Time in the West. Warlock also stars Richard Widmark and Anthony Quinn. But wouldn’t a 4K disc do justice to it’s classic nature?
And while all kinds of boutique video companies out there have overwhelmingly embraced the horror genre, no one, as far as I can tell, has similarly embraced the Western genre. Sure, some have released Spaghetti Westerns—even a lot of bad ones— and I think that’s a really good thing. Most videos about American-made Westerns have so far have been limited to Blu-rays—and that’s a good thing too—but 4K’s are relatively scarce. So far there’s 3:10 to Yuma, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Hostiles*, which if you haven’t already seen, buy a copy. The 4K version is only twenty bucks from Amazon.
Let’s hope that changes…
*There are several others and I don’t mean to slight them.
You can send me movies—DVD, Blu-ray or 4K Blu-ray— to review that can be used in these videos to: Joe Farace PO BOX 2081 PARKER, CO 80134