movies

616 – Django Unchained (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 1858 – 1859 Texas – Tennessee – Mississippi (Candyland plantation)

Django Unchained is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie FoxxChristoph WaltzLeonardo DiCaprioKerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walton GogginsDennis ChristopherJames Remar, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance.

comic book adaptation

controversies   imdb

movies

565 – Hostiles (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 1892 Fort Berringer, New Mexico > Fort Winslow in Colorado > tribal lands in Montana

Hostiles is a 2017 American Western film written and directed by Scott Cooper, based on a story by Donald E. Stewart. It stars Christian BaleRosamund PikeWes StudiBen FosterStephen LangJesse PlemonsRory CochraneAdam BeachQ’orianka Kilcher, and Timothée Chalamet. It follows a U.S. Cavalry officer who must escort a Cheyenne war chief and his family back to their home in Montana in 1892.

imdb

movies

551 – John Carter (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 1868 > 1881  Arizona Territory / dying planet of Barsoom – Red Martian city of Helium, predator Walking City of Zodanga

johncarter1 posterJohn Carter is a 2012 American science fiction action film directed by Andrew Stanton from a screenplay written by Stanton, Mark Andrews, and Michael Chabon.

The film is largely based on A Princess of Mars (1917), the first in a series of 11 novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the interplanetary hero John Carter (and in later volumes the adventures of his children with Dejah Thoris). The story was originally serialized in six monthly installments (from February through to July 1912) in the pulp magazine The All-Story; those chapters, originally titled “Under the Moons of Mars,” were then collected in hardcover five years later from publisher A. C. McClurg.

John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch in the title role, Lynn CollinsSamantha MortonMark StrongCiarán HindsDominic WestJames Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe. The film chronicles the first interplanetary adventure of John Carter and his attempts to mediate civil unrest amongst the warring kingdoms of Barsoom.

Several developments on a theatrical film adaptation of the Barsoom series emerged throughout the 20th century from various major studios and producers, with the earliest attempt dating back to the 1930s. Most of these efforts, however, ultimately stalled in development hell. In the late-2000s, Walt Disney Pictures began a concerted effort to develop a film adaptation of Burroughs’ works, after a previously-abandoned venture by the studio in the 1980s. The project was driven by Stanton, who had pressed Disney to renew the screen rights from the Burroughs estate. Stanton became director in 2009; this was his live-action debut, as his previous directorial work for Disney included the Pixar animated films, Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008).

Due to the film’s poor box office performance, Disney cancelled any plans for a sequel (titled John Carter: The Gods of Mars) and trilogy Stanton had planned.

Cancelled sequel   

concept art   imdb

movies

431 – Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

spacetime coordinates:  1873 New Mexico Territory

Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 American western science fiction film directed by Jon Favreau and starring Daniel CraigHarrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde. The film is based on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. The plot revolves around an amnesiac outlaw (Craig), a wealthy cattleman (Ford), and a mysterious traveler (Wilde) who must ally to save a group of townspeople abducted by aliens.

Favreau chose to film traditionally and in anamorphic format (widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film) to further a “classic movie feel” Measures were taken to maintain a serious Western element despite the film’s “inherently comic” title and premise.

Roger Guyett about the aliens: “They’re frontiersmen in a way: traveling to another place and having to deal with all the adversities of the climate. And in our case, we played up the fact that they weren’t comfortable in our world. There are flies all around them; they don’t like the light; and when they were wounded and exposed, a strange fungus grows around them.”

wiki   imdb

movies

0308 – Slow West (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1870  Colorado

Slow-West-affiche-neutreSlow West is a 2015 British/New Zealand  western film written and directed by John Maclean in his directorial debut. It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as a young man searching for his lost love in the American West, accompanied by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3205376/

movies

0301 – Hell or High Water (2016)

spacetime coordinates: 2010s West Texas

hell-or-high-water-poster-gallery

Hell or High Water is a 2016 American neo-Western crime thriller film directed by David Mackenzie and written by Taylor Sheridan, whose script was on the 2012 Black List. The film follows two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who carry out a series of bank robberies to save their family ranch, while being pursued by two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582782/

movies

0300 – Wind River (2017)

Wind-River-film-poster-designed-by-Konrad-CloughWind River is a 2017 American neo-western murder mystery thriller film written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker and an FBI agent, respectively, who try to solve a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. According to Sheridan, the opening “inspired by true events” card was a reference to the “thousands of actual stories just like it” involving sexual assault of women on reservations, his primary motivation for writing the film.

wind river 2wind-river1wind-river-poster

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/