Thursday

Apparently we are on the verge of a Western revival. How true is this? I don't know. I read it in the Sunday Times, so perhaps it is just one critic's interpretation of random events. After all, films like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford have been in the pipeline for some time. Westerns are always being made, but are we now seeing a consistent run of them? And will they be successful and influential? There have recently been several TV shows set in the West, and at least five or six films are planned for release later this year and the next. What's happening? Possibly Hollywood is following the dictum of John Ford: 'when in doubt, make a Western'. Are filmmakers, having run out of ideas (comic books, TV series, kids' toys, Disneyland rides etc) turning to their staple diet? Or is it, as the article suggests, indicative of a new way to approach contemporary politics and warfare? Instead of making films directly about events in Iraq, they make a western. The newspaper critic posits several interpretations of what the Western has meant and now represents, and I'll talk about that tomorrow...