BRB

I don't think I ever saw an actual honest-to-Clint western movie. For some reason, they really put me off, maybe the toxic masculinity?

That is... does Dances With Wolves count?

@Wolff Okay. Shall we start?

@Vincent Western movies are part of Hollywood? Or are they made by some other countries?

There is a significant portion of Western movies that was directed by, mostly, Italians. They are known as 'Spaghetti Western'

A good example would be Sergio Leone's work

(sorry, I put Ennio Morricone here first, but he's a composer and not a director)

(learning while checking Wiki here ^^')

Are England movies are also part of Hollywood?

@Vincent 👍🏼

@Vikas Um, no.

@Vincent So what are they called if you know?

English Movies?

Unless you are talking about movies made in England, Arkansas :P

'English movies', that'd be my guess. Maybe 'British movies' or 'UK movies' would be clearer

but movies made in the UK are decidedly different from Hollywood movies. They are European, and usually European movies are of smaller budget, and are less... prude.

@Vincent Let me find examples

@Vikas that... was a joke.

hence the ':P' at the end

@Vincent Locke

eh?

So should I call it British Movie?

@Vincent Locke (2013) is a movie.

ah. hadn't heard of it.

@Vincent It's a good movie.

Tom Hardy

I... know Tom Hardy ^^

of course

@Vikas Howdy

@Wolff googles how to respond to howdy

@Wolff Hello

@Vikas Haha. It's "hello" in cowboy language.

@Wolff I saw bad/weird dreams again in my afternoon nap today also, like I said before. I think I found the reason. And it is interesting.

@Vikas What is the reason then?

Can an uncomfortable and little high pillow be reason for it? I notice these dreams only when I use a particular pillow, I think.

@Vikas I have no idea. Did you dream about your neck?

when I use a low height pillow, I see okay dreams.

@Wolff No, but someone slapped me, from who I would never expect even scolding.

And a lot of dreams like that in a series.

I'm thinking to ask it on Psychology stackexchange.

@Vikas I have a tip then ... use low pillow.

@Wolff I'll buy a fiber pillow

Right now we use cotton pillow, that is also stuffed more.

@Wolff Good one

OK @Vikas, newer western recommendations: True Grit (2010), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). Both by the Coen brothers.

And by Quentin Tarantino: Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015).

I enjoyed all these four very much. Watched them several times.

I also have some older classic ones: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), They Call Me Trinity (1970)

Do these come under Hollywood? I mean who make these movies? (I asked same Vincent)

@Vikas Anybody can if they want.

@Vikas Ask Wikipedia:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_(genre)

@Wolff So what's special in these movies? Different kind of stories? Or just different culture and clothes and story can be anything like Hollywood?

There have been many different countries making western movies. Mostly American of course (it's their history), but as Vincent mentioned there are also some Italian ones called Spaghetti Westerns. Often with American actors but filmed in italy.

@Vikas They take place in the old west in America. At about 1850-1900. Often about about cowboys, bandits, deputies, native Americans.

Often about the fight between "normal" people and bandits. How to maintain civilization in these small towns in the middle of nowhere.

Thematically, the modern superhero film genre is the inheritor of the western.

@Wolff Oh. So there won't be any phones/laptops and new technologies in movies?

@Wolff Seems interesting.

@Vikas No, I said they mostly takes place in about 1850-1900. Can be a little before or after that.

@Vikas Do you know The Revenant (2015) with Leonardo DiCaprio? That's also a western. I can recommend that too.

@Wolff Okay, why aren't these movies much talked about?

@Wolff Yes seen.

@Vikas They are. Westerns are one of the most influential genres in modern film. They were the most popular and lucrative film/TV category for a couple of decades and their formulas and film language survives in films like Star Wars and the entire superhero film ouvre, as well as many TV shows of various kinds--including the shifts in the genre over time as it starts to comment and reflect on itself.

Movie stars like John Wayne are generation-defining personalities.

If you aren't hearing people talk about westerns, then you're not in spaces where people talk about the landscape of film.

@BESW No friends in my college and office talked about Western movies. Even though they watch Hollywood movies. So I was wondering . . .

@Vikas The interest for westerns goes up and down, but seems to always return. Right now I would say the interest is quite high. Also with Red Dead Redemption 2 being one of the most popular games ever.

@Wolff 👍🏼

It's also useful to note that the western is as much about themes of the needs of the community vs the role of individuals and what it takes to live a good life, as it is about any particular place or time.

And over the course of the decades of the western's greatest prominence, the perspective on those themes changed dramatically. Early westerns tend to be about a single man with moral righteousness and great skill taking a stand against evil people in order to protect helpless innocents. Later on, westerns started to question the helplessness of the innocents, the evil of the opponents, and the righteousness of the man.

@BESW Every decade has its own style of cowboy. Also aesthetically. It's quite fun to see the shift over time.

Even during the heyday of the "traditional" western, the films were in direct conversation with Japanese samurai films. The filmmakers quoted each other constantly.

Star Wars is famously composed of shots, scenes, plot beats, and entire characters and their arcs, taken piecemeal from both westerns and samurai films.

That's what makes it feel familiar despite its gonzo aesthetic.

Every western movie has a cowboy?

Not strictly speaking.

Most western films have a main character who people now would probably refer to as a cowboy, but only in a very loose sense that has little to do with the actual profession. Largely because westerns are extremely ahistorical and always have been.

The movies' cowboy aesthetic --leather and jeans and canvas, big wide-brimmed hat, stubbly beard, pistol, horse, wrinkles, squint, etc-- usually gets applied to characters who are nothing like actual cowboys.

(Basically any question that goes "Does every [thing in a category] have [quality]?", the answer is gonna be "no." Categories, be they westerns or scifi or houses, are groupings of qualities and it's rare that any single quality is necessary or sufficient to count as being part of the group. Instead, the more qualities things share the more likely they are to be counted as parts of a given category.)

@Wolff I knew this will happen, at least in India (I guess we discussed it few months ago). imdb.com/title/tt14257028

@Vikas Yeah, there will be movies. This is a documentary though.

@Wolff Don't worry there will be movies too :D

This is just a trailer

@Vikas Not something I'm especially interested in watching though. Our TV is filled with "What did we learn from corona?"-documentaries. Smells a bit of people trying to be the first.

@Wolff yeah