Clarence Mulford's original pulp magazine and book Hopalong Cassidy is, like Truman Capote's voluptuous Southern blonde prostitute Holly Golightly, Dashiell Hammett's fat middle-aged Greek Nick Charles, Sax Rohmer's clean-shaven and rather sympathetic Fu Manchu, or Bram Stoker's white-haired demonic old rapist…

I mean, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE looks nothing like STAGECOACH or GUNSMOKE, but doesn't look much like MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER or DEADWOOD, either.

And Spaghetti Westerns didn't make any particular attempt to portray the West as it really looked (for one thing, their locales were usually dryer, with fewer trees, and better lit, with very little mud). They changed the way Westerns looked not because they were realistic, but because they were cool. Eastwood…

I'm not talking bout going full DEADWOOD and I'm not saying it would make the shows "better." I just mean that many of them were leaner, meaner and more morally complex than they're often given credit for being, with harder men, looser women, and less easily resolvable moral dilemmas. Just a few cosmetic changes and…

Marie Gomez was the best thing about HIGH CHAPARRAL. She was also memorable, and not just for for her sideboob bathing scene, in one of the most damn manly movies ever made, THE PROFESSIONALS, in which she manages to be sexier, if not more beautiful, than Claudia Cardinale.

The best TV westerns could be surprisingly modern. I'm serious when I say the most dated thing about might be that everybody wears Stetsons. Put some bowlers and flat-topped flat brimmed hats like Kurt Russell wears in TOMBSTONE (and Wyatt Earp wore in real life) on the cast, make the streets muddier, show a little…

Marty, this may because they did a whole article on GUNSMOKE. And a fascinating one, too.

Glad to see the shout-out to THE WESTERNER. Co-creator Tom Gries was clearly inspired by it when he wrote and directed the realistic and melancholy WILL PENNY, with Charlton Heston in his best and most atypical role other than Cardinal Richlieu.

Anita Morris.

See, I was expecting this to be about Lisa London, Raven Delacroix, Barbara Crampton, Linda Blair, Adrienne Barbeau, Betsy Russell, Kitten Natividad, Louisa Moritz, Monique Gabrielle, Roberta Vasquez, or Ava Cadell. You know, the women I scanned for movies looking for nude scenes of when I worked at Action Video in…

I was kind of jazzed for THE EXPENDABELLES when it looked like Lexi Alexander would direct it. Although I doubt she would have gotten my dream cast of Pam Grier, Michelle Yeoh, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton, Zoe Bell and Gina Carano.

Back in the 80s, I read an interview with RE-ANIMATOR's Stuart Gordon in which he said an MPAA member told him that if they were rating THE THING, ALIEN and THE EXORCIST "now" (i.e., 1988 or thereabouts), they'd get NC-17s.

Well, Gina's retired from fighting. Ronda Rousey is the current MMA It Girl. Not sure if she'll make as a good a transition to screen fighting. Gina began in Muay Thai and specialized in beat downs. Ronda is a former Olympic judoka who almost always wins with an arm bar. Not somebody you'd ever want to fight, and…

Thing is, she could actually kick every one of their asses.

I think that could just as easily be said about Shelley's character. He does kill Henry Clerval, but his other victims are a woman and a child.

That would actually have been great. The Pinkertons were much more satisfying Ethan fodder than the Brits he got in a fight with when he went out on a date with Dorian Gray. I can't imagine even a Victorian tough, particularly a toff, being quite so eager to pick a fight with somebody who is obviously an American…

I actually don't get hate-watching, which feels like a massive waste of time. Of course, I'm saying that in an online comment.

Yes, the character. I would hope they wouldn't resort to actual blackface (as in, having this same actress play a character who actually was African).

Father Christmas (they're actually not quite the same thing), but yes.

As ghastly as it is, the 300 sequel is actually worth seeing for her performance. Her character in that deserved a better movie. She should have been an antagonist for someone like Conan.