“Barbara Stanwyck is splendid in the role of Annie Oakley; this is indeed her most striking performance in a long time” Andre Sennwald, a New York Times reporter, stated the above shortly after seeing the premiere of Annie Oakley in…
Read more →Westerns
Poll: Who’s Your Favorite Character from “Silverado”?
We’ve recently been celebrating the films of 1985 here on MovieFanFare, and among the year’s best is Silverado. Director/co-scripter Lawrence Kasdan‘s rollicking salute to the Hollywood westerns of yesteryear follows four cowboys─a former outlaw (Kevin Kline), a falsely accused ex-con…
Read more →“Lonesome Dove” Celebrates Its 35th Anniversary
This year marks 35 years since Lonesome Dove was first published. Filled with incredible action sequences, beautiful photography, and a top-notch cast, a sweeping, two-part miniseries, based on Larry McMurtry‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Western novel aired in 1989 — earning fans…
Read more →Guest Review: The Underrated Western “Gun Glory”
Philip Yordan‘s western novel Man of the West was brought to the screen in beautiful Cinemascope as Gun Glory (1957) with the great Stewart Granger taking on the lead role of Tom Early. It is 1880s Wyoming, and Early has just…
Read more →James Stewart’s “Bend of the River” Remains the Definitive Western
Now available on Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics, the 1952 Western Bend of the River stars James Stewart as Glyn McLyntock — a former outlaw who is now working clean as a wagon scout on a perilious mission to assist…
Read more →Guest Review: Across the Wide Missouri (1951)
Bernard de Voto’s book Across the Wide Missouri became a surprise best-seller in 1947, earning the Pulitzer Prize for History. The brass at MGM quickly purchased the rights to the book in order to use the title and then pondered,…
Read more →Poll: Which Character from “Tombstone” Is Your Favorite?
It was 25 years ago this week that Tombstone first hit theaters. The acclaimed Western follows retired Western Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) as his attempts to settle down in the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona, are complicated when he, his…
Read more →The Clint Eastwood Favorite “Hang ‘Em High” Gets A Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition
On August 3, 1968, Hang ‘Em High originally hit theaters. The film starred Clint Eastwood — back in America and fresh off of his success with the “Dollars” trilogy that established him as a global superstar — as Jed Cooper,…
Read more →“The Desperadoes” Is a Glenn Ford Technicolor Classic
Columbia Pictures, being a poverty-row film studio for many years, was a little bit behind its rival studios throughout the 1930s and 1940s. They did not really make it into the big league until the mid-1930s when they began outputting…
Read more →Movie Trailer of the Day: “Shane”
Directed by George Stevens (Giant), the sagebrush classic Shane stars Alan Ladd as the titular character, a retired, laconic gunfighter who comes to the assistance of a homestead family when they are terrorized by a wealthy cattleman (Emile Meyer). As…
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