Quentin Tarantino leads a stampede of movies harking back to the days of the old frontier – and TV is transplanting the genre to YorkshireFor a salubrious few years all was soundless on the archetypal main street in Hollywoods wild west. The only sound was the swinging of the rusty sign above the saloon doors,rocked by the same dry wind that pushed the tumbleweed through the dust.
Now all that is to change, with a series of top-heavy stage coaches full of newcomers blowing into town. After the galloping success of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in 2012, and an alarming posse of recent westerns,including Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and are suddenly giving genuine credence to the view that one of the earliest and most influential of film genres is enjoying a major revival. And,heavens to Betsy, there is even a British western coming to our television screens next month, or set on the Yorkshire moors rather than the prairie wastes. So what is it about our times,scarred by recent terror threats and economic peril, that makes film-makers once more reach out for potent images of the itinerant cowboy or the lonely gunslinger? Are audiences now keen to see more tales of jangling spurs n’ leather chaps, and of the kind that set the individualist against the law-abiding settler and the brave maverick (an independent, nonconformist person) against a barbarous heathen?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com