3:10 TO YUMA (2007)

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The 2007 remake of 3:10 To Yuma had a very strong opening weekend, topping the box office with grosses around 14 million dollars. There were obviously a lot of people eager to see a remake of the classic Western.

Then it died, with receipts dropping off precipitously. In the end it barely made back half its production costs in rentals.

The reason for this is fairly simple. It was an o. k. film but a very bad Western. The core audience for Westerns which rushed out to see it wasn’t amused and killed the buzz and the film just wasn’t good enough to cross over to a wider audience without that core support.

[Warning — there are spoilers ahead . . .]

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In the original film, and in the Elmore Leonard short story on which it was based, a beleaguered and somewhat timid rancher becomes a hero by getting a vicious killer to a train that will take him to prison.  He does this against impossible odds and in the end single-handedly.  It’s a classic Western tale of shame and redemption.

The director of the remake James Mangold says the original film had a powerful impact on him as a teenager, which is why he wanted to redo it, but he felt the need to make some improvements in it “for a modern audience”.  So the rancher is beleaguered but only reluctant to fight back for perfectly honorable and sensible reasons, one of which is that he lost a foot in The Civil War.  No shame, and thus no need for real redemption.  The rancher does want to look good in the eyes of his son, who doesn’t understand his father’s apparent timidity.

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Getting the outlaw to the train goes horribly awry in the remake, and the rancher succeeds in his mission only because the outlaw turns out to have a soft side and takes pity on him.  After delivering the prisoner to the train, or allowing the prisoner to deliver himself, the rancher is shot in the back and killed.  His son thinks he’s a hero, but he’s really a failed hero.

Christian Bale, who plays the rancher in the new version, says he likes the message of the remake, because “It doesn’t give you false hope — do the right thing, vanquish the bad guy and everything will be good.”

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This is what James Mangold thinks a modern audience wants from a Western?  In storytelling terms the approach is lunatic — like making a fairytale in which the young hero accomplishes a series of heroic tasks to win the hand of the princess, only to find out at the end that she’s run off with someone else.  Wanting to confound and disappoint an audience in this way is puerile posturing.

In terms of Westerns, the approach is suicidal — as one cynical, “realistic” Western after another proves as it fails to find an audience.  Mangold betrayed his own youthful appreciation of 3:10 To Yuma and the Western genre he claims to love — not out of maturity or realism, but simply because the values of a traditional Western might not look hip enough.  The audience told him in no uncertain terms what it thought of his “hipness”.

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KEEPING THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT ALIVE

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A new Amazon customer review:

Another good collection from Fonvielle

The most recent release from Lloyd Fonvielle, Christmas in the West is a collection of six short stories set in various time periods in the West. While the majority of them are authentic Westerns, “Christmas in December” is set in contemporary times and “Twilight” takes place during World War II.If you’ve read Fonvielle’s previous work, Christmas in the West is largely more of the same. His characterization and plotting is as tight as ever, interweaving characters from all walks of life in a believable, honest and non-sentimental way. My personal favorite story is the aforementioned “Christmas in December,” about a neglected young man who takes up with a Vegas escort, deftly avoiding even the slightest hint of bathos.

If you’re looking for a brief but enjoyable fiction collection, Christmas in the West is worth a read.

For the review and book details, go here:

BATMAN BEGINS

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This is a really bad movie. It’s got an o. k. storyline for a comic book film but it’s treated with a kind of ponderous seriousness that spoils the fun of a comic book film. It has some good design and effects work, and Michael Caine gives an appealing performance as Alfred the butler.

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Unfortunately it’s staged and shot so clumsily that you rarely have a clear idea of the spaces the characters are inhabiting or what exactly is going on in them. The frenetic editing seems to have been deliberately designed to disguise or distract attention from the amateurish staging and shot making, but it doesn’t. Nothing could.

A NEW AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW!

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Western stories?! Yes — and recommended

Don’t be fooled by the title; this is not your Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. These are skillfully-crafted stories couched in a succinct and no-self-indulgence prose, presumably influenced by Elmore Leonard, with clever, unpredictable, and often witty turns of plot. Despite the strictures of the genre, each story and each character is different. Recommended.

To see the review and for book details, click here:

Fourteen Western Stories

THE HAUNTING (1963)

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I saw Robert Wise’s The Haunting at the age of 13, when it came out, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I just watched it again on Blu-ray over 50 years later and it still creeped me out considerably.

It may be the best of the “old dark house” thrillers, because it doesn’t make the mistake of explaining the house’s malevolence rationally and it rarely shows anything shocking. It depends on creating an atmosphere of dread rooted in the psychological make-up of the characters but also literally invested in the house itself.

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The old dark house genre works on its deepest level by combining the idea of the intrinsic coziness of a house — establishing it as a kind of refuge, from a storm, from problems the characters have elsewhere, which is what a house is supposed to be — with the idea of a house as a trap, a prison, which a house can become, psychologically speaking.

Wise sets up and sustains this dynamic expertly, keeping the supernatural terrors of the house always off screen, suggested by lighting, by sound effects, and by a few simple tricks, like having a massive wooden door bulge inward, as though from the effort of a monstrous unseen presence trying to enter the room.

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Wise learned this approach to horror from the producer Val Lewton, who in the 1940s at RKO specialized in a kind of horror film in which atmosphere rather than shock carried the weight of the thrills and chills. Lewton gave Wise his first shot as a director on such films as this.

What Wise learned from Lewton, and his tasteful, intelligent execution of those lessons here, has kept The Haunting from dating — it remains a fine spooky entertainment for a dark and stormy night.

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