There’s always Shanghai Nights. Does that count?
Shanghai Noon :smack:
Science Fiction has replaced the Western.
New frontier, & all that.
I think the genre has in fact been played out…there areimply too many good westers, and no point in repeating the past. Another observation: the late John Ford made many classic western films-and fimed a lot of them in Monument Valley, AZ. Every time I see one, it looks like Ford must have BOUGHT the place!
Ang Lee’s western, Brokeback Mountain will come out next year.
'Course, this particular film will feature two gay cowboys (played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal), so it’s not quite the run of the mill western.
BTW, I imagine it shan’t be long until a gay porno spoof named Bareback Mountain is released after the Lee film. 
There will always be a place for Westerns, they just won’t be as ubiquitous as they once were. Every so often another excellent one comes along - Unforgiven, Free Range, Tombstone, Deadwood. Some will be good vs bad just like the old fashioned films because people like escapism, where good rules and evil drools and you can tell the heroes from the villains. Some will be darker, like Unforgiven in which there really are no good guys. Some of the appeal of Westerns was the sense of independence and freedom - go where you please, no mention of having to obey an alarm clock or pay bills, none of that mudane stuff. Part of the appeal is the illusion of it being a simpler time (it wasn’t).
The Westerns we usually see only take place in a very narrow time period, the 1880s. This was the time of cattle drives, Colt single action army pistols, Winchesters etc. But, it had to change - more people were moving west, building cities and towns etc. The technology was leaping ahead. It was no where near as static or as simple as the movies show it to be.
Sometimes SciFi can be a Western. Like Firefly. Too bad Fox stuck it in the friday night death slot.
Exactly. HBO’s Deadwood is doing a brilliant job of showing this. The conflict has shifted from basic survival to economic survival. The bad guys are (literally) cutthroat businessmen, and the saloon with the best piano player has an advantage.
I can hardly wait for the second season. Deadwood alone is worth the $12 a month subscription.
For Deadwood fans, Amazon.com has the first season DVD being released on February 8, 2005. This might be the very first series that I have to buy. I’m guessing the second season on HBO won’t be too far behind.
The second season starts in either January or March – maybe it’s Carnivale in January and Deadwood in March, or vice versa; anyway, it’s not too far away. 
A couple of the actors are in our Yahoo Deadwood group. Filming started in July, if I remember right.
They aren’t allowed to give away any plot points, but they’re definitely excited about what’s happening on the set. Big teases, they are.
That will continue. Outland, with Sean Connery did it. Connery was a Marshal, bringing law and order to a mining town/planet. Star Wars was sort of a Western, complete with gun slinging bounty hunters and a showdown between Darth and Luke.
Carnivale is next up. They are reshowing the first season now. The first season DVD for Carnivale goes on sale in early December.
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that. I thought it was quite succesful - silly, but a perfectly appropriate use for the genre that worked, to me. More charming that it had a right to, and definately in the vein of Maverick and Brisco County. Interesting that these comedy/adventure Westerns take a half-and-half approach to the “revisionist” problem as set out by Exapno Mapcase - they have Native Americans in them, but treated with a sort of nod and a wink to classic Western stereotypes and a “but of course we all know better” attitude. Interesting also that both Brisco County and Shanghai Noon include the element of Chinese railroad builders, a PC-popular group you hardly ever saw in classic Westerns.
I think another thing about Westerns for a TV series is that they have a higher production cost than something like a crime show or a comedy. Setting it in the past, all the outdoor shooting and then there is the insurance you need in case someone falls off a horse and…
Dr. Quinn was dropped because of high cost even though the show was popular it just wasn’t very profitable.
Deadwood doesn’t have to worry about a profit. It just has to be a hit with subscribers and hopefully draw in some new ones.
I’ll agree that westerns probably won’t be as prolific as they were in the 50’s and 60’s, but I’ve seen two fairly recently **Hidalgo[\b] and **The Missing[\b] that I’ve enjoyed. It might be interesting if some of those old movies could be re-done today, this time from the point of view of the Indians.