The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Cold Bishop]

The first season of Lonesome Dove is 6hrs long. There is then Return to Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years, Streets of Laredo, Dead Man's Walk... All part of a series.

They're only related as much as say, the various Chandler adaptions (and in the case of Return..., even less than that): they may all be based off the same source texts, but you wouldn't seriously argue that Hawks film is meant as a prequel to the Dmytryk?

I think a part of the dispute here is the very different conceptions of serialized TV in the U.S. and Britain. Here the division between a series and a miniseries are much more clearly defined than in Britain, where really, all that seems to separate the two is whether a second serial is commissioned. It seems largely touch and go. Look at State of Play (to give a more obvious example): according to our rules and IMDB, it is eligible. This despite the fact a second series was ordered, which would have made it ineligible. The simple fact that the second series never materialized is all that's separating it. Here on the other hand, something like Terriers, despite being cancelled after one season, is not eligible (nor should it be): the intention to make a long-running series as opposed to a self-contained miniseries was there from the outset.

Likewise, I guess something like The Day Today could be accepted for the 90s list, despite the fact that no one here is really going to make the argument for it as "cinema". Likewise, one could make an argument for pilot episodes of American series, many of which are self-contained, and in many cases in the past, when a series isn't picked up, are released as standalone films.

Milch may have chosen to keep the first season self-contained, but there was no doubting that if given the chance, he would have kept the series going. It is not a miniseries. It wasn't conceived nor produced as one. Jean-Pierre Gorin may very well be right about The Wire, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere, and if that means shortshrifting it, I'm okay with that. At the end of the day, its just a silly list.

[Yojimbo]

Lonesome Dove (Simon Wincer 1989)... This is not just making my list, it's making my Top 10.

Would that be the first season or the second or the third? Or the first episode or the second or-... Look, either TV is eligible or it isn't, but it's ludicrous to put this in your Top 10 and then refuse to tally votes for Deadwood.

It absolutely isn't, and such an argument shows how childish you are being about the Deadwood thing. Lonesome Dove is a six hour movie, period, obvious to anyone who has actually seen it. Deadwood is a TV series. There is a clear and inarguable difference between the two. Actually watching the film coupled with five minutes of actual investigation would lead you to discover that there were a couple TV miniseries sequels several years afterward, with a different cast and filmmakers. How this has any bearings on the first, wholly self-contained six hour film is a question that you cannot answer as long as you keep trying to stir up a controversy that does not exist via sour grapes. Rather than rallying supporters behind your Deadwood cause, I suspect all you're trying to do is scare people away from voting for Lonesome Dove by planting phony doubts as some sort of retribution for your perceived slight, which, while admirably fitting with the villainous tone of many of the films we've been watching, is still pretty lame.

Lonesome Dove (Simon Wincer 1989) was a mini-series, made for tv.
It was of a length which wouldn't, or couldn't have been screened in cinemas, although I recall a (hugely overrated) Italian tv production, 'Best of Youth' being screened in a Dublin Film Festival some years ago.

[Nothing]

Fair 'nuff, dom.

So... Vote for Deadwood if you like it! Currently in my Top 25...

[PillowRock]

The first season of Lonesome Dove is 6hrs long. There is then Return to Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years, Streets of Laredo, Dead Man's Walk... All part of a series.

No they weren't, and were never thought of as such by anybody. (Certainly nobody at the time that any of them were being made and broadcast.)
Calling Lonesome Dove (the mini-series) "the first season" of Lonesome Dove: The Series is like calling Robert Altman's M*A*S*H "the first season of the Alan Alda series".

[Yojimbo]

Fair 'nuff, dom.

So... Vote for Deadwood if you like it! Currently in my Top 25...

I love 'Deadwood' - which I consider the greatest dramatic series made for tv, - far more than I like 'Lonesome Dove', but I won't be voting for either

[Finch]

I'll be voting for Deadwood and the entire series at that even though I think that the third season is marginally weaker than the previous two.

[Yojimbo]

I'll be voting for Deadwood and the entire series at that even though I think that the third season is marginally weaker than the previous two.

less than perfection ain't half bad, though, Finchy!

[Finch]

Oh aye, even when the show was "merely" very good to great, Deadwood was still head and shoulders above everything else on TV. Think I'll also include Jarmusch's Dead Man in my list (if not the Top Ten, then among the Top 20).

[Yojimbo]

Oh aye, even when the show was "merely" very good to great, Deadwood was still head and shoulders above everything else on TV. Think I'll also include Jarmusch's Dead Man in my list (if not the Top Ten, then among the Top 20).

Dead Man may well make my 10, also; certainly Top 20
btw, is that 'Hanzo The Razor' I see above me?

[knives]

So we're seriously going to be the bad parents to Nothing's whinning attention starved child?

That said I wouldn't be surprised if Dead Man also gets very high on my list, possibly even top ten.

[domino harvey]

So we're seriously going to be the bad parents to Nothing's whinning attention starved child?

I thought my compromise fair (and one that would have no real effect on the list, since it is not part of the official tally-- it's basically throwing one of your 50 votes away as far as I'm concerned, but to each their own) and I had hoped it would stop people indulging Nothing in useless bickering so we could move on in this thread, but that backfired, as now people are talking about full-blown allowing TV into all future lists. Remember when things were simple and we watched movies and discussed movies and didn't try to loophole every personal thing in?

[knives]

Those were the days, but now we have got Nothing to show for it.

[Yojimbo]

Those were the days, but now we have got Nothing to show for it.

Much Ado About Nothing!
boom Boom!

[Nothing]

I think Cold Bishop hit on something with regards to the different perception of series television in the US and UK. In the UK, the whole concept of a 'mini' series is pretty obtuse given that the average UK 'series' runs for 6 episodes per season anyway, usually with one director for all six episodes, so that basing eligibility around what's 'mini' and what isn't seems pretty arbitrary from here. Whereas Yojimbo's position that he won't be voting for either Deadwood OR Lonesome Dove (ie. theatrical feature films only) is one I understand, although I won't be following his example (give me a great western as an i-Phone download and I'll include it...)

[PillowRock]

but that backfired, as now people are talking about full-blown allowing TV into all future lists.

That could get really dangerous around a science fiction list, especially if you start treating each season of a series as a separate entity.

[Finch]

btw, is that 'Hanzo The Razor' I see above me?

It's Tomisaburo Wakayama as Ogami Itto in LONE WOLF & CUB. Wakayama is the brother of Shintaro Katsu (HANZO, ZATOICHI). The similarities between the two are startling, especially when you see Wakayama with his head shaved in the MUTE SAMURAI TV series.

[PillowRock]

in Britain, where really, all that seems to separate the two is whether a second serial is commissioned.

It's not quite always that simple in Britain, either.

The production of Smiley's People didn't change Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy from a mini-series into a series.

And The Prisoner is universally (so far as I can tell) considered a series rather than a mini-series even though only one season / series was ever done (granted and uncommonly long one by British standards).

While it may be difficult to come up with a concise definition that consistently works correctly to separate mini-series from series, the vast majority of TV productions come across pretty clearly as one or the other. Even if no second series had ever been commissioned, The Sandbaggers would always have felt like series TV; that's the immediate impression from watching any given episode. Tinker, Tailor falls on the other side of that divide; again, even if you are just watching one "episode" of it.

[zedz]

This is just going to run and run isn't it? In practical terms, I think all of the mini-series that have been voted for during the last lists project (the obvious contenders: Berlin A, Decalogue, Scenes from a Marriage etc.) were quite different in their production from most television series: single director, single writer (or one writing collaboration), one big concentrated, finite production rather than an ongoing or hope-to-be-continued one, so it's highly disingenuous to act like the dividing line is all big and mysterious. Deadwood is and always was a television series. You can't turn it into a mini-series through wafts of half-baked rhetoric.

[domino harvey]

A brief note about submitting your lists: I don't need both, but please give me either a year or a director with each film. This will stop votes for Appaloosa getting mixed up with votes for the Appaloosa or remakes, etc. Also, if your film is foreign, please give me the original name and the most widely translated name. If you assume I know your favorite spaghetti western by either name, you are almost surely mistaken.

[domino harvey]

the Great Jesse James Raid (Reginald Le Borg 1953) There is nothing great about this one other than the feeling when it ended.

Renegade Girl (William Berke 1946) Approximately seventy percent of this b-western is just close-ups of Ann Savage's visage. That pretty much is the plot of this one, I think.

the Return of Jesse James (Arthur Hilton 1950) Now here's a decent b-western, one with a crackerjack plot: a gang of outlaws decides the best way to ensure their safety when riding is plant the doubts that Jesse James died and then hire a ringer (John Ireland) to play the part. This is probably the last of the Lippert Westerns I'll get to in time for the list, but it was a strong one to go out on. It's amazing what a second-string Hollywood outcast like John Ireland can bring to these scuzzy little Bs.

Stars In My Crown (Jacques Tourneur 1950) I got spoiled that two of the first religious Hollywood films I ever did see, the Song of Bernadette and the Shoes of the Fisherman, are pretty clearly anomalous, as unlike seemingly every other religious studio pic, they're not godawful dreck. This one is especially bad and falls under the same trap as One Foot in Heaven, in that it confuses piousness with being a complete dick. Lord did I hate Joel McCrea's gun-toting frontier preacher, especially the one scene where a doctor tells him not to expose a bunch of children to typhoid and he informs the doctor that as preacher, his role is far more important than even that of the doctor. Ugh.

the Claim (Michael Winterbottom 2000) A nice change of pace. True confession time: I caught a bit of this back in the day on Sundance Channel and always intended to seek it out, but every time someone's mentioned the Proposition, I confused it with this until, well, very recently (and don't worry Nothing, that one's coming up soon in my watch pile too). This is a very strong, elegant-looking look at the make/break function railroads had on small towns. A pretty frontier film set in the snowy mountains, the elegant cinematography is really the star here more than Wes Bentley or Sarah Polley.

the Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway 1936) If I had known this was a "feudin' and a fussin' couzins" flick, I would have never wasted my time and money.

Tombstone (George P Cosmatos 1993) / Wyatt Earp (Lawrence Kasdan 1994) Though I didn't particularly care for either film, I'm glad I managed to finally pull off this massive double feature. Tombstone certainly fares the better of the two, mainly on the strength of Val Kilmer's outrageous portrayal of Doc Holliday. But Val Kilmer cannot be onscreen for each of this film's 130 minutes.

While it's true that I have not particularly cared for any Earp film yet, certainly none has been as spectacularly dreadful as Wyatt Earp, Costner's hilariously self-important awards bait born from sour grapes on Tombstone's opposing vision. Over three-plus hours of flavorless attempts to paint the story of Earp in the blandest manner possible, this is a stunning film for all the wrong reasons. Why did Costner (the real auteur at work here, as anyone can see) think an audience would give a damn about Earp as a kid, or worse, his protracted love life? The film at least has the decency to cast Joanna Going (who will always be the "pretty girl" from Ed to me) in one of the many thankless roles for women, ensuring there's at the very least something on screen worth looking at starting around two hours in. At least Tombstone knows it's a dumb action film and has the decency to operate efficiently as one. The only saving grace here is, well, Doc Holliday again, played nicely by Dennis Quaid, who still suffers the (just) indignity of being unfavorably compared to Kilmer. Although, huge lols @ each film's audacity to hire Bill Pullman / Bill Paxton.

[Nothing]

In practical terms, I think all of the mini-series that have been voted for during the last lists project were quite different in their production from most television series: single director, single writer (or one writing collaboration), one big concentrated, finite production rather than an ongoing or hope-to-be-continued one

And yet The Day Today qualified for the 90s list?! That's far more of a conventional 'series' than Deadwood in that every episode is self-contained. And if you're going to use the 'multiple directors' charge then what about How the West Was Won? Would you strike that from contention too? The fact is that, in modern television, the creator-executive producer is the driving force behind the show, the 'auteur' as it were, not the inividual directors or writers, who just conform to a certain expectation and perform a service essentially (this is why the Lynch-directed episodes of Twin Peaks so utterly unbalance the series as a whole, because they establish a directorial signature that the other journeyman directors are incapable of following). And then, conversely, what about The Kingdom? That's the work of a single writer-director, but there have been two seasons, so... In short: if it's a moving image then why not?

Lord did I hate Joel McCrea's gun-toting frontier preacher, especially the one scene where a doctor tells him not to expose a bunch of children to typhoid and he informs the doctor that as preacher, his role is far more important than even that of the doctor.

Sounds fucking great, can't wait for this one to arrive

The Claim is middlebrow shit, btw, like everything else from WInterbottom (although I do have something of a softspot for 9 Songs, as a kind of unitentional encapsulation of everything that's repugnant about modern boho youth).

Re: Wyatt Earp films, I'm hoping to catch Wichita before this is over, and of course don't forget My Darling Clementine, one of the few Fords that doesn't suck.

[swo17]

I've just discovered that Nothing is actually a TV show and is therefore disqualified from the lists projects. Unless he is able to prove that he is only a mini-series.

[Mr Sausage]

Does this mean at some point he'll be canceled due to poor ratings?

[knives]

The executives that do that will definitely be doing this show and it's audience a favor.

[Nothing]

Oh dear, is it that time of the month again?