Tag Archive: The Searchers
Review–Return to a bloody Old West in new comic book series The 7 Deadly Sins
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The second of the new TKO Studios titles we dived into this weekend is The 7 Deadly Sins. Yesterday we reviewed Sara, which conjured scenes from Sands of Iwo Jima, and now The 7 Deadly Sins feels like a modern twist on the John Ford/John Wayne classics Stagecoach (celebrating its 80th anniversary this year) and The Searchers. Despite the basic story building blocks from a John Ford movie, this isn't a John Wayne film or Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western, or something like more recent Western comic book series like Dynamite's The Lone Ranger. This is a far less traditional Western–far from Classics Illustrated, this is a story that could wrap up the trilogy of Quentin Tarentino's bloody violent modern Westerns The Hateful 8 and Django Unchained.
1867. A post-Civil War frontier "cowboys and Indians" era tale, the story introduces readers to a white man raised as Comanche whose signature is a unique style of scalping homesteaders and U.S. Cavalry soldiers. A priest wants to broker an unholy peace with the Comanche, and a black ex-Union corporal named Jericho Marsh is trying to find his daughters. Marsh finds himself in jail and breaks out with a pregnant ex-slave, a cannibalistic ex-Confederate soldier, a Chinese prisoner, a well-known crack shot, and a woman mistaken for a man, and they bring on an orphaned mountain boy and a Comanche child along the way. The story pulls from Three Godfathers and The Magnificent Seven–not so much derivative, it pulls on the strings of plenty of Western tropes. A handful of strangers, all outlaws, must join to fight off the Cavalry, a wealthy landowner, and Comanches, and it's anyone's guess who might make it out alive.
The 7 Deadly Sins comes from writer Tze Chun (Gotham, Once Upon a Time), artist Artyom Trakhanov (Undertow, Turncoat) and if the color work looks familiar to Western readers that may be because it's created by Giulia Brusco (Scalped, Django Unchained). Letters are by Southern Bastards' Jared K. Fletcher. Parts of Trakhanov's panels are drawn similar to the very traditional, archaic layouts of Stan Sakai's Japanese motif Westerns, landscape shots reminded me of the stark feel of Moritat's work on the Jonah Hex book, All-Star Western, and choreographed action sequences carry the more stylized influence of Frank Miller's interiors later in his career.
Take a look at these great preview pages:
Tags: Artyom Trakhanov, Django Unchained, Giulia Brusco, Jared K. Fletcher, Jonah Hex, modern Western, Moritat, Quentin Tarentino, Stan Sakai, The 7 Deadly Sins, The 7 Deadly Sins review, The Hateful 8, The Searchers, TKO Studios, Tze Chun, Western comics
Now streaming–Bone Tomahawk, an almost perfect classic-style Western
Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies — Leave a comment
Writer/director S. Craig Zahler's 2015 film release Bone Tomahawk starts as a classic Western about life on the frontier–living at home, visiting the local saloon, working in the local Sheriff's office. It quickly becomes a genre-bending damsel in distress/ "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" picture and much more. Several other genre elements are woven together to create a solid, serious drama that is equal parts suspense thriller and gritty, meaty Western that rises above most efforts to make a classic Western in the past 45 years, if you forgive it for one scene that dips into gruesome, in-your-face horror. Put Bone Tomahawk up there with Silverado. It's a far better Western than even the much celebrated Unforgiven.
Bone Tomahawk follows four men as they pursue the mysterious captors of a local frontier doctor–a woman (played by Lili Simmons)–and the criminal she was operating on (played by David Arquette) and the on-hand sheriff's deputy (played by Evan Jonigkeit). It's a simple story, yet it couldn't be more unique in its execution. In possibly Kurt Russell's finest bit of reserved, serious acting ever on film, he plays Sheriff Hunt. Made of the same mettle as Gary Cooper in High Noon and John Wayne in The Searchers, he is relentless in his pursuit. Patrick Wilson is equally relentless as the husband of the missing doctor. His leg has been wounded from a fall and so he must forge ahead limping along throughout the film as he sleuths out what is really going on. Think of him as a mix of Gary Cooper in Sergeant York and Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. Lost's Matthew Fox is the slick but honorable, impeccably dressed gentleman barfly, who once had a thing for the doctor, and volunteers to help find her. The posse is rounded out by the now crotchety character actor from film and TV, Richard Jenkins. He's droll and provides a different flavor of humor along the way.
Zahler isn't afraid to let the movie flow at its own pace, and allow the viewer to soak up the scenery, the Western tropes, the camaraderie of the team as they eat and sleep and take their horses forward through the long desert way. It's an 1890s Assault on Precinct 13, only like High Plains Drifter the nature of the mystery is hidden from us for so long that the anticipation warrants calling this out as a top-notch suspense thriller. Who stole the townsfolk and are they still alive? And what is that strange music we hear in the wind before bodies start falling? Like The Ghost and the Darkness, you want to run away from what is out there waiting for you–this feels like a ghost story, maybe even every frontier family's personal nightmare come to life.
Tags: Assault on Precinct 13, best western movies, Bone Tomahawk, Bone Tomahawk review, classic Western, David Arquette, Evan Jonigkeit, High Noon, High Plains Drifter, Kurt Russell, Last of the Mohicans, Lili Simmons, Matthew Fox, Mogwa, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, S. Craig Zahler, Sean Young, Silverado, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Hateful 8, The Searchers, Unforgiven, Western horror, westerns
Trailer Park–The "What the ?" Edition: Arnold and zombies? Fassbender and cowboys?
Arnold Schwarzenegger is starring in a new zombie movie, and it's not a comedy?
Michael Fassbender is starring in a Western?
It can only be Trailer Park: The "What the ?" Edition. Check out two new trailers below, after the break.
It's always fun to be blind-sided by unexpected previews. Today's two movies weren't in late 2014's trade papers, or they might have made our All the Movies You'll Want to See in 2015 list.
What's it with all the cool, new zombie material being previewed this month? Since 28 Days Later I hadn't gotten the bite yet for the genre, and suddenly zombie TV series iZombie, The Returned, and Les Revenants are knocking everything out of the DVR priority list? Did we time-skip into a parallel dimension?
Arnold's new movie, Maggie, is completely surprising. The first trailer out of the gates looks great. Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin plays his zombie-infected daughter in her last weeks before completely going zombie. Arnold's tired and troubled father looks like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. If the dark and measured pace of the trailer reflects the final cut of the film, this may be a horror thriller to check out.
Then there's this quirky new Western, Slow West. The film has generated some decent buzz already. A Western filmed in New Zealand absolutely looks a bit off. But the steely-eyed Fassbender as a John Wayne in The Searchers / Han Solo type? That may deserve a casting award.
Slow West follows a boy on a quest across the sea to America to track down his lost love. John Maclean directs a relatively unknown cast, Fassbender aside. The trailer carries a bit of British-influenced flare, and the vibe of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's epic immigrant picture Far and Away.
Tags: Abigail Breslin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Schwarzenegger Maggie, Maggie, Maggie trailer, Michael Fassbender, The Searchers, Trailer Park, Unforgiven, westerns, zombie genre, zombie movies
100 movies in a box–Warner Bros. releases gigantic set of hit movies
Not long ago the idea of having all your favorite movies available for viewing instantly was as far out there as hover cars. With streaming options like Netflix you can have access to thousands of movies and TV series in a flash, only limited by the speed and quality of your own home access and viewing technology. But just like online news will never replace the physical daily newspaper, streaming will never replace the home video library.
Back in early December we previewed here at borg.com four movie collections as gift ideas of varying price ranges, from the three-film The Dark Knight Trilogy from Warner Bros. to the eight-film Tarantino XX 8-Film Collection from Lionsgate Miramax to the 15-film Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection from Universal Studios to the massive 22-film Bond 50: The Complete 22 Film Collection from MGM.
Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Night at the Opera, Al Jolson, Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection, All the President's Men, Amadeus, Batman, Ben Hur, Best of Warner Bros 100 Film Collection, Best of Warner Bros 50 Film Collection, Best Years of Our Lives, Bond 50: The Complete 22 Film Collection, Bullitt, Caddyshack, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years at Warner Bros, Dirty Harry, East of Eden, Enter the Dragon, Giant, Gone with the Wind, James Cagney, James Dean, Marx Brothers, National Lampoon's Vacation, North by Northwest, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rebel Without a Cause, Return of the King, Shawshank Redemption, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Tarantino XX 8-Film Collection, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Dirty Dozen, The Jazz Singer, The Outsiders, The Right Stuff, The Searchers, The Shining, The Wizard of Oz, Unforgiven, Warner Bros, Warner Brothers, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Yankee Doodle Dandy