‘YELLOWSTONE’ RENEWED, ‘DEADWOOD’ RETURNING, ‘HIGHWAYMEN’ RESCHEDULED, ‘BUSTER SCRUGGS’ RECUT – PLUS TWO NEW WESTERNS RELEASED THIS WEEK!

HERE’S AN EXCLUSIVE – FIRST LOOK AT THE NEW POSTER FOR THE NEW WESTERN ‘ANY BULLET WILL DO’, WHICH OPENS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4th!

‘YELLOWSTONE’ RENEWED!

The folks at Paramount TV are so delighted with the popular and critical success of YELLOWSTONE that they’ve given the Kevin Costner vehicle an early renewal – the 10^th and final episode of the tyro season will air on August 22^nd, and the cast and crew will be heading back to Utah and Montana shortly. Reactions of Western aficionados to the Taylor Sheridan series have been mixed – Facebook complaints run the gamut from improper calf-delivery to no likable characters to “LONGMIRE did it better” – but all gripes seem to end with, “…but I can’t wait for the next episode!”

The series follows the Dutton family, led by Costner’s John Dutton, and their struggle to hold on to the largest cattle ranch in America, and the attempts of a developer (Danny Huston) and an Indian activist (Gil Birmingham) to take it apart.  It’s the 2^nd most watched series on basic cable, following AMC’s WALKING DEAD.

What with production of YELLOWSTONE’s 2^nd season imminent, it’s fortunate that Costner’s next project, THE HIGHWAYMEN, is already in the can. Made for NETFLIX, Costner and Woody Harrelson star as Fred Hamer and Maney Gault, respectively, the legendary Texas Rangers who got Bonnie and Clyde. Originally announced for October, the date has been changed to March of 2019. The movie is directed by John Lee Hancock (THE ALAMO) from a script by John Fusco (YOUNG GUNS).

‘DEADWOOD’ ROLLS CAMERA IN OCTOBER!

Things are busy at Gene Autry’s old Melody Ranch these days, where WESTWORLD is moving out, and DEADWOOD is coming home. Absent since 2006, David Milch’s series that did so much to reinvigorate excitement about the genre, is returning to HBO. Everyone involved is being tight-lipped about story-lines, returning characters, and whether it will be a series or a movie. What is known is that it will be directed by Daniel Minahan, who directed the series in the past, and has been busy of late helming HOUSE OF CARDS and GAME OF THRONES.

COENS’ ‘BUSTER SCRUGGS’ GETS A TRIM, HEADS TO VENICE!

Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs

The Coen brothers’ Western series THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS will have its premiere at The Venice Film Festival, which begins at the end of August.  It was originally announced as an anthology series with a difference – six episodes with six intersecting story lines.  You can read the details about the stories and casts from my earlier coverage, HERE.

Of course, an international film festival seems an odd place to premiere a TV series, but the Coens, who brought you the remake of TRUE GRIT and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, have decided to recut the series into a 132-minute movie.  NETFLIX says they will be premiering BUSTER SCRUGGS by the end of 2018, but no word yet on whether it will be in feature form or episodic. Or both (that’s my guess).

INSP’S ‘THE COWBOY WAY’ RETURNS FOR SEASON 4 ON AUGUST 26^TH!

Booger Brown closing in on a steer

Bubba, Booger, Cody, and their wives and youngins make the move to Sunday nights with the 4^th season of INSP’s remarkably popular and enjoyable reality series, THE COWBOY WAY.  The real-life day-to-day challenges and adventures of the Faith Cattle Company partners are a perfect antidote to citified stresses. You can read my Round-up interview with Bubba Thompson HERE. You can read my True West article on the series HERE.

TWO NEW WESTERNS THIS WEEK: ‘A RECKONING’ AND ‘THE IRON BROTHERS’ – AND A THIRD, ‘ANY BULLET WILL DO’, ON THE WAY!

It seems like THE REVENANT made a deep impression on a lot of filmmakers. After years of the sandy, gritty, deserty oaters that took their inspiration from Spaghetti Westerns, independent filmmakers have decided to look to the mountains.

The two new Westerns that open this week were both shot in heavy snow; A RECKONING in Montana, and THE IRON BROTHERS in Idaho and Wyoming.  And at the end of the month, a third Western, ANY BULLET WILL DO, from the writer-director of A RECKONING, Justin Lee, is also snowbound.  Below is an exclusive-to-the-Round-up clip from A RECKONING.

A RECKONING is the story of Mary O’Malley (June Dietrich), a young wife whose husband is brutally murdered. It’s not the first unsolved dismemberment murder in the small community, and the nominal mayor, played by Lance Henriksen, hires a flock of bounty-men to catch the killer. When Mary, with no faith in that rabble, tries to sell her property for a rifle, a pistol, and a horse, to find her husband’s killer herself, only one townswoman, played by Meg Foster, will help.

June Dietrich in A RECKONING

As Mary searches, through stunningly photographed forests, in snow, by lakes, we see she’s correct in her assessment: the bounty hunters are more interested in hunting each other than the killer. The problem is, you never get a sense that she has a plan. She isn’t following tracks, isn’t looking for sign, rarely speaks to anyone, has no suspect. She just rides or walks through stunning visuals. She once makes a comment that she’s sticking to well-travelled roads, assuming the killer would do the same, to look for more victims. But what she travels doesn’t appear to be a road or even a path; she’s just stumbling between trees, until she stumbles upon her husband’s killer, and that’s when the action starts.  A RECKONING is being released today by SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT.

IRON BROTHERS features a pair of real brothers, Tate Smith and Porter Smith, as Abel and Henry Iron, two mountain-men struggling to make a living as fur trappers since their father died.  Lazy and short-tempered Henry blows up at traders who offer him an insulting price for his pelts. In moments, a man is dead and Henry is on the run. At the same time, the more even-tempered Abel has an unexpected run-in with Shoshone hunters. Suddenly a chief is dead, and the Iron brothers are running a gauntlet of dangers on their way out of the mountains, trying to reach the safety of civilization.

IRON BROTHERS

As with A RECKONING, there is a wealth of beauty, but a poverty of incident. As Mary slogged through forest and snow, the Irons slog through snow and more snow. When the action comes, it’s entertaining, but the brothers, despite being engaging at times, mutter a great deal of their presumably improvised dialogue. Many of the conversation scenes are framed ala Ingmar Bergman, and shot in one take. If you have great actors, well-rehearsed, this can be very effective. But if you have actors doing their first film, what you have is a scene that cannot be edited, either to speed it up, or to use the best parts from several takes. THE IRON BROTHERS is co-written and co-directed by brothers Josh Smith and Tate Smith, and is available on many platforms, including AMAZON, from RANDOM MEDIA.

TIM McCOY TEACHES SIGNING, HEMINGWAY CUTS OUT ORSON WELLES, AND MORE GREAT VIEWING FROM ALPHA VIDEO!

THE SPANISH EARTH

Back in the late 1930s, World War II was raging in Europe, but Japan had not yet pulled the sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor that would propel the U.S. into the fray. A group of American intellectuals, among them writers Dorothy Parker, Archibald MacLeish, Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway, took the side of Spain’s democratically elected government, against the fascist Generalissimo Franco, and decided to finance a documentary to try and sway American public opinion. Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens shot the movie, and Orson Welles performed the narration written by Hemingway. But when Hemingway saw the finished version, he found Welles’ delivery too gentle and cultured – he rewrote the commentary, and recorded it himself. It’s a fascinating documentary, and a fascinating document, whether you are a history buff, or a Hemingway fanatic or, like me, both.

‘DEADLINE’ AND ‘INJUN TALK’

In 1948’s DEADLINE, Sunset Carson is a Pony Express rider on his last run. The Western Union Telegraph is putting the Pony Express out of business, and when sabotage and murder occur, Sunset seems a likely suspect. A decent entry in the Sunset Carson cannon, it’s written and directed by Oliver Drake, whose greatest service to Western movie fans was co-writing Yakima Canutt’s autobiography.

But of much greater interest than DEADLINE is a half-hour educational film sponsored by Standard Oil, INJUN TALK.  Apparently the last film directed by B-movie whiz Nick Grinde in 1946, at a powwow, Col. Tim McCoy and chiefs from several tribes tell the fascinating history of Indian sign-language. As a form of communication used then mostly by elders, there was real concern at the time that sign-language would be lost. And Tim McCoy was no casual signer. Before his movie career he’d been Adjutant General of Wyoming, lived for a time on the Wind River Reservation, and was considered one of the most articulate of its practitioners – he taught Iron Eyes Cody among others.

RIDERS OF THE WEST and THE BUSTER CRABBE SHOW

RIDERS was one of eight ROUGH RIDER films that Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton made for Monogram in the 1940s, movies that traded on the charm of Western stars who were getting a little too old for the rough stuff. They would have made more but, incredibly, Col. Tim McCoy was drafted – recalled to active Army duty at age 51. Shortly thereafter, tragically, Buck Jones, on a cross-country bond-selling tour, died in a fire in a Boston nightclub, The Cocoanut Grove, along with nearly 500 others.

As with the previous set, the best part here is the short, an episode of THE BUSTER CRABBE SHOW from 1951. Much like THE GABBY HAYES SHOW and a number of others, Crabbe hosted a half-hour program where he chatted with the viewers, and showed a truncated B-Western. The fun of this one, of course, is watching Buster. The film he shows is GUNS OF THE LAW from the P.R.C. TEXAS RANGERS series. Normally these chopped movies are hard to follow. Fortunately, P.R.C. Westerns tended to be so short on plot that this is probably the best way to watch it!

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

I hope you’re having a grand summer!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright August 2018 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

COEN BROS. WESTERN SERIES TO ROLL IN NEW MEXICO, PLUS GUNSMOKE MOVES TO INSP, REVIEWS AND MORE!

COEN BROS.’ WESTERN SERIES ‘BUSTER SCRUGGS’ READY-TO-ROLL IN NEW MEXICO!

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Western series, THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS is rolling camera in Albuquerque this month, reportedly from mid-July through mid-September! The brothers’ first entry into the small-screen Western format follows their excellent and hugely successful 2010 remake of TRUE GRIT, which received five BAFTA awards and ten Oscar nominations. 

SCRUGGS will be an anthology series. It will consist of six episodes with six separate but interwoven story-lines. The first, SCRUGGS, will concern a singing cowboy, and in the title role is Tim Blake Nelson, who starred in one of the brothers’ earlier successes, 2000’s OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? No stranger to the genre, Nelson played a freighter in the excellent but grim THE HOMESMAN (2014), his performance was one of the few bright spots in the dreary KLONDIKE miniseries (2014), and he appeared in the LONESOME DOVE miniseries prequel DEAD MAN’S WALK (1996).  

NEAR ALGODONES, about a feckless would-be bank robber, will star James Franco, previously in WILD HORSES (2015) for Robert Duvall. Also starring are Stephen Root, who played a judge in the series JUSTIFIED (2012), and appeared in 2013’s SWEETWATER and THE LONE RANGER, and other Coen films; and Ralph Ineson, who plays Amycus Carrow in the HARRY POTTER films. 

No casts have been announced yet for MEAL TICKET or ALL GOLD CANYON.  Zoe Kazan, currently starring in THE BIG SICK and previously in the indie Western MEEK’S CUTOFF (2010), will play the title role in THE GAL WHO GOT RATTLED. And finally, THE MORTAL REMAINS, following five stagecoach passengers to a mysterious destination, will star Tyne Daly, whose career I take credit for, since I wrote her her first role as a policewoman in 1977’s SPEEDTRAP, which she followed with CAGNEY AND LACEY (1981-1988).  She previously appeared on episodes of THE VIRGINIAN (1968) and MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1999).  Updates are coming soon!

INSP ADDS ‘GUNSMOKE’ TO SADDLE-UP SATURDAYS AND WEEKDAYS!

INSP, whose Saddle-Up Saturdays already featured THE VIRGINIAN, THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, THE BIG VALLEY, DANIEL BOONE and BONANZA has now added GUNSMOKE to the mix!  Starting Saturday, July 8^th, they began running two episodes beginning at 10 a.m., Eastern time.  

Starting on Monday morning, they’ll be running one episode at 9 a.m., Eastern on weekdays. Best of all, these are the 176 hour-long black & white episodes made from 1961 until 1966, which are among the very best, and not being shown by anyone else. They’ll also be showing at least four of the five GUNSMOKE movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s – on Sunday, July 16^th it will be 1987’s RETURN TO DODGE, at 2 p.m. Eastern.  On Saturday, July 22^nd, INSP will run a six-episode marathon of justice-themed GUNSMOKE episodes, and the GUNSMOKE movie TO THE LAST MAN. On Sunday, July 23^rd, it’s a double feature of GUNSMOKE: THE LONG RIDE and GUNSMOKE: ONE MAN’S JUSTICE.

GUIDE TO THE OLD WEST – A Book Review

The full and modest title of this tome is An Educational and Slightly Amusing Guide to the Old West, and I hope it’s author, Don Dunham, won’t take it the wrong way if I say that it’s the best bathroom reader I’ve had in years! I don’t mean that the book is scatological in any way, but rather, that its alphabetical short-entry format makes it ideal for skimming and random reading for a couple of minutes at a time.  While not encyclopedic in scope, the 100-page volume can quickly give you a smattering of information on a host of Western topics. Its first entry typically describes in a concise paragraph the 101 Ranch:

“Large (110,000 acres), cattle ranch on Oklahoma founded by Confederate Veteran Col. George W. Miller. It also had thousands of sheep and thousands of buffalo. Established in 1879, it lasted into the twentieth century and began to put on Wild West Shows starring such future noted cowboys as Tom Mix and Will Rogers.”

While appealing to anyone with an interest in American history, as historian Peter Sherayko points out in his foreword, it’s just the thing for writers, historians, reenactors and actors, “…to get their creative juices flowing.” And not all entries are as brief as the example given. When a topic is of major importance, it is given as much space as it needs.  The “cattle drive” entry is nearly three pages, and full of details about the different routes, who did the work, what they were paid, and how they dealt with Indians along the way.  The entry about Indians is nearly six pages long, and other in-depth articles look at the Presidents, firearms, and the proper wardrobe of the working cowboy. 

There are some confusing elements; a reference at the end of an article, such as “see film Wagonmaster 1949,” doesn’t refer to another entry in the book, but is rather a suggestion that you should see that movie (and you should, if you haven’t).  But overall, this large format – 8 1/2” X 11” – book is full of useful and amusing and enlightening information for adults and kids, with hundreds of ‘idea triggers’ when you don’t know which way to take your story.  It’s available from Amazon books for $19.95, HERE.  

NEW RELEASES FROM ALPHA VIDEOS!

REX BELL IN ‘DIAMOND TRAIL’

Handsome Rex Bell is one of those elusive B-western stars, rarely seen, and better known for his marriage to Clara Bow than for his movies. Alpha has unearthed a sparkling little 1930 Monogram programmer, DIAMOND TRAIL, in which Bell starts out not as a cowboy, but as big-city reporter Speed Morgan. When he saves gangster Flash Barrett (Lloyd Whitlock) from an ambush, pretending to be mobster Frisco Eddie, he becomes Flash’s best friend, and his plans to get the goods on Flash leads him to a western diamond-smuggling racket. 

Also included are a pair of shorts. The 1930 Pathe two-reeler RANCH HOUSE BLUES is a Western comedy concerning an attempt to trick a crabby old rancher into selling, without telling him there’s oil on his land. The crab is former Keystone Kop Nick Cogley, and the romantic interest is Charlie Chaplin’s first wife, Mildred Harris.   1933’s THE LAST DOGIE is an Educational Pictures one-reel bunk-house musical starring Metropolitan Opera tenor James Melton singing traditional Western songs very well.   You can order it HERE.

ULTRA-RARE PRE-CODE COMEDIES – BERT LAHR IN ‘NO MORE WEST’

Here’s a fascinating collection of six talkie comedy shorts made before the 1934 Hays Code, or Motion Picture Production Code, put stringent limitations on what could be said or shown, in order to quiet would-be censors who found movies immoral.  The very best is Bert Lahr in NO MORE WEST, a particular delight to folks who only know Lahr as The Cowardly Lion in 1939’s THE WIZARD OF OZ.  Bert plays a Coney Island shooting-gallery operator who nabs a pair of bank robbers, which inspires him to move out west to a town where he’s immediately made the sheriff. It’s ridiculous fun throughout, with a few casting surprises: the lead bank robber is Harry Shannon, who would play Charles Foster Kane’s dad in CITIZEN KANE. The judge who appoints Lahr sheriff, Harry Davenport would soon be seen as Dr. Meade in GONE WITH THE WIND.

The rest of the shorts include another with Lahr, HIZZONER; a very early talkie directed by Mack Sennett, 1928’s THE LION’S ROAR; DOWN WITH HUSBANDS, featuring Bert Roach and Johnny Arthur (Spanky’s dad in the OUR GANG comedies) as husbands whose wives go on strike; HONEYMOON BEACH, where a greedy mom tries to force her daughter to marry wealthy Keystone Kop Billy Bevan; and the most bizarre of the bunch, TECHNO-CRAZY, involving a Bolshevik technology-run utopia, and plans to bomb the mansion of Mayor Billy Bevan.  The quality of prints varies greatly, but it’s an outrageous and often very funny collection.  You can order it HERE.

WATCH ME YAK ABOUT TV WESTERNS!

I recently spent an enjoyable afternoon being interviewed for a webcast, along with fellow blogger Patti Shene, about the TV Western. The interview was for Dan Schneider’s COSMOETICA series, which I understand is the longest-running webcast series on the arts.  If you enjoy it, take a look at the links to Dan’s other webcasts – he finds a lot of very interesting guests and topics.

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Tonight, I got an email from a friend who noted that it had been over a month since I’d posted a new Round-up.  He wanted to know if I’m alright.  I am. But other priorities have kept me from the blog for some time.  I’m back, and my backlog of articles and interviews and film and book reviews which need to be written and posted is truly staggering!  I’ll catch up as quickly as I can!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright July 2017 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved