Best Western of all time & where're they now??

For a guy who lets Prince of Persia ending up as the 3rd Romantic film of 2010 on his website.

I think you shouldn't asking him anything..
Watching films & judging them isn't based on any algorithms, this guy clearly has no knowledge about films whatsoever.

I think they don't do Westerns any more because that genre doesn't resonate with the 15-35-year-old males they now make movies for. They didn't grow up on Saturday afternoon matinees with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry; they didn't make Audie Murphy a star by trooping faithfully to all of his Westerns; they didn't make the transition to "grown-up Westerns" when High Noon hit the screens; and they weren't around when 9out of 10 TV series each season were Westerns introducing future stars like Steve McQueen, Robert Culp, James Garner, and Clint Eastwood, to name but a few. Little kids no longer find Roy Rogers two-gun holsters and cap pistols under the Christmas tree; instead they get X-Men action figures and the Avatar DVD.

Hip Hop and gangs'trs have replaced Westerns and singing cowboys. Westerns are just old-fashion to today's population, most of whom were born long after the Western craze in movies and TV. And after seeing Russell Crowe stink up the screen in modern "westerns" like the silly The Quick and the Dead and the gawd-awful remake of the classic 3:10 to Yuma, I hope Hollywood will just let the genre fade away with dignity instead of desecrating its tired old bones

Westerns became less popular as the world became more technolgically advanced. When they first started making them, there were still people alive who had been part of it. Nowadays Hollywood's idea of a period film is one set in the 1980s.

Too late: the new True Grit.

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In all honesty, a lot of the old westerns did not depict the old West accurately. Many showed the Native Americans as nothing but evil with no redeeming qualities. I believe that many of what they called "Injuns" had very legitimate gripes -- enough to commit violence -- I surely would have. I think modern audiences now know this because they haven't been brainwashed by the text books that I had to read when I was a kid. You know, the Manifest Destiny crap-beliefs we were taught. The plundering of the Native Americans is just one aspect of the old west and depicted in many Westerns.

yeah Hollywood's idea of a historical film is like the tear-down-and-rebuild attitude here in Houston where any building that's been around long enough to acquire 3 coats of paint is eligible for a historical marker.

I'm sure the technological advance into the frontiers of space probably had something to do with the demise of the Westerns of yesteryear, but I suspect the transformation of US society in the 1960s was an even bigger factor. From its very start, the Western was always a contest between good and evil, the guys in the white hats vs. the guys in the black hats. The noble cavalryman rode to the rescue of civilians threatened by indigenous savages. But in the 1960s, there was the emergence the anti-heroes. The Earps were no longer totally good and noble peace officers but hired killers who spent much of their time gambling and whoring around. The brave, loyal, and somewhat noble Billy the Kid of the past became Dirty Little Billy. Suddenly we realize the cavalrymen led by John Wayne in raids upon the villages of savage Indians were just like American soldiers burning hutches in Vietnam. Instead of good vs. evil, there was just various degrees of evil as Clint Eastwood's man with no name would gun down 4 men for laughing at his mule and then put another bullet into whoever was not yet dead from the first shot. Once you strip the basic morality play of good vs. evil out of the Western and start judging the pioneers of the 1870s by the mores of the 1960s, it's just not a good old fashion Western anymore where the hero takes a stand against evil because it's the right thing to do.

I see and understand where you're coming from, although I cringe at your dismissal of Manifest Destiny as "crap-beliefs we were taught." Manifest Destiny was a historical reality--for many years Americans thought it was their destiny to domesticate and produce and live in and rule this continent from the East Coast to the West Coast, with no infringement from other nations. I'm not saying that justified some of the things that happened but there was a strong conviction among Americans that they were destined to establish, preserve and push forward a nation like no other. But its depiction is not limited to American Westerns. You can see it in films like The Wind and the Lion when the US, Germany, and other nations compete to influence the berbers of North Africa. You can see the British version of Manifest Destiny in Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Would be King, Khartom, Zulu, 55 Days in Peking (I think that title's off) where representatives from the US, Japan, England, France, you name it, have to stand off the Boxer Rebellion in China. It's also there in all its jingoistic glory with Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles. Point being there was a historic belief in Manifest Destiny that wasn't limited to the US or to Western movies.

There may have been Westerns where all Indians were portrayed as evil--I can't remember them all. But I do remember many in which "good" Indians were in as much danger from the "bad" Indians as were the whites and even some in which I could even understand the motivations of the "bad" ones. But I think Indians have a lot more problems--health and education issues as well as a high percentage of alcoholism--than how their ancestors were portrayed in movies.

But when you get right down to it, in the American West, South America, Africa, Australia, South Sea Islands and Asia, the aboriginal peoples were living virtually in the stone age when they came into contact with the more technological advanced Europeans. And there was no way they could compete with the new settlers. And those who were traditionally nomad hunters and gathers, following the animal herds from one seasonal grazing ground to another, were bound to clash with the Europeans who build houses and fences on the land they claimed. And once the new arrivals began to farm and graze cattle on the plains of the Midwest, the giant buffalo herds and the Indians who depended on them had to go. Because you can't build a town, raise a crop or graze cattle on a piece of land where a million buffalo pass through a couple of times each year. And it sure raises hell with later efforts to lay railroad tracks across those migratory trails. Everything was stacked against the aborigines right from the start--even if no one ever lifted a hand against them, their old way of life was doomed when they became dependent upon the European immigrants for metal tools and weapons, guns, ammo, cloth rather than skins. Unable to make any of those things themselves, they soon were totally dependent on the very people who were settling the land they used to roam. It's got nothing to do with who's good or who's bad--it's all about who is best able to adapt and survive in that changing world. And the local natives just couldn't cut it.

Well sure it was. Pretty shameful too.

I like the way you summed it up. Very nice. Sounds just like the free market except, instead of small Mom-and-Pop stores/companies, were talking about people here.

That's the reality. And the Indians in real life weren't always so nice. The Aztecs had a civilization of sorts, but it was pretty horrible with human sacrifices and all. I'm not say what the Spaniards did to them, which was also brutal was justified, but when competing cultures clash, the superior one by Darwinian standards will triumph.

I didn't make that statement. I didn't even hint at that. They're human. They made mistakes. They over-reacted at times.

And, we're moving off topic here . . . .

Today's world is a clash of competing cultures, but I sure don't want to see one survive and the rest perish.

Maybe so, but Darwin's dead.

Old style Communusm disappeared with the collapse of the Iron Curtain. The horrible Taliban is still with us, but no longer in charge of a country with their insanity.

Some traditions in Muslim countries and elsewhere are vile toward women and the world will be a better place if they are no longer practiced.

Darwin is dead, but he is still in print.

Fill in the blanks. Pick your country and subset of the population.

I don't believe his works had anything to do with culture clash. People after him have tried to use his theories in those ways.

This discussion should probably stop in this thread. I'm through here. Maybe you can start another thread if you like.

Abstract

¶In Arab and Islamic countries, domestic violence is not yet considered a major concern despite its increasing frequency and serious consequences. Surveys in Egypt, Palestine, Israel and Tunisia show that at least one out of three women is beaten by her husband. The indifference to this type of violence stems from attitudes that domestic violence is a private matter and, usually, a justifiable response to misbehaviour on the part of the wife. Selective excerpts from the Koran are used to prove that men who beat their wives are following Gods commandments. These religious justifications, plus the importance of preserving the honour of the family, lead abusers, victims, police and health care professionals to join in a conspiracy of silence rather than disclosing these offences. However, a fair reading of the Koran shows that wife abuse, like genital mutilation and honour killings are a result of culture rather than religion



So what do you want to substitute?


Just to make it clear, I'm not a believer of Social Darwinism, which was used by white supremacists and industrialists to use to justify their behavior toward other races and workers. But it was their attitudes, their "culture" that became outmoded, not the other way around. Applying Darwinism to things other than evolution isn't wrong, but using it to justify monstrous behavior is.

Once Upon a Time in the West

The ever-lovin mother of all westerns



"You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month - he must have been a happy man."

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It cuts both ways, like in The Last of the Mohicans when only one last member of a tribe is left after his son is killed by other Indians. Indians were fighting, torturing, enslaving, and killing each other centuries before the Europeans ever set foot on this continent. The Black Hills were the holy land to the Sioux not because they had always lived there--no, they took it from other Indians who were there before them. And Cortez with 100 men and a couple of dozen horses couldn't have conquered the Aztec nation if not for the thousands of other Indians, tired of being kicked and killed by the Aztec, who joined him on his way to meet Montezuma. The Europeans and their descendents had Indian allies fighting on their side against other Indians in every one of the Indian wars ever fought. It was Apache scouts working for the Army who finally ran Geronimo to the ground.

When the Boers and the British first settled South Africa, there were no native tribes there to be pushed out because the Zulu in their march across the continent had already killed or chased all the tribes away. Those tribes couldn't compete with the Zulu stabbing spear and the Zulu spear couldn't compete with the British rifle.

On the other hand, if all the people involved in the European vs. native wars had instead died of old age at 150, they would all have been dead long ago anyway, so we're talking hypothetically about historical events that were already decided and beyond further control before we were ever born.

"Want" has nothing to do with it. It's a simple fact. But it's never as simple as one survives and the rest perish.

Most survive, some prosper, some become also-rans, and some fall by the wayside. Those who are up one day may through no fault of their own be down tomorrow. That's the way it is in the animal kingdom and that's the way it is in human society. That's the way the world works and there ain't nothing gonna change it.

The Roman Empire used to be a real big thing.

Well, I want a better world. If enough people want a better world it will be a better world. If enough people just throw up their hands and say "well, that's the way it is and there's nothing we can do about it", then you're right, the status quo will remain.