I've almost fully rebuilt the archives from mis-formatted and lost entries that were worse for wear after the server changeover. They're being re-posted on a somewhat regular basis. Expect them to keep popping into the archives on a rolling basis throughout the month as I have time to attend to them.
The main purpose for this post is to announce new recurring features and plans for Arthouse Cowboy that'll keep this column its own distinct animal. As life has gotten somewhat more predictable and manageable for me, I'm launching some long-planned regular items, the first of which have already started appearing. Below you'll find the new recurring features I'm posting and what kind of content to expect out of them.
Culture of Demand (revived and revamped)
I threw a couple of these out there back in 2005 under the banner of Culture on Demand. The prepositional change is in keeping with how the atmosphere and market have changed in the last three years. These pieces are less review-y and more along the lines of critical essays and (occasionally) raging screeds. I'm applying my Cultural Anthropology studies to looking at the nature of how people are evolving their tastes in terms of media consumption. The moviegoing landscape has been changing big-time to the point that we're immersed in the tidal wave resulting from what Jeff called "The Big Fade":
"Certain industry-watchers are in denial about this (and you know who I mean), but there's no hiding from this any longer: we're experiencing a seismic shift in attitudes about how, when and where to get our entertainment fix.
"It's not a welcome thing to consider, but the hard fact is that the good old "let's go to the movies so we can have fun and have something to talk about later over drinks" option is starting to slip down the pole a bit.
"Seeing movies in theatres is being slowly de-popularized and retired by different demos for different reasons. I'm calling it the Big Fade.
"The fade is on because the movie-going experience costs too much, which is happening because greedy actors and their agents have pushed their fees into the upper stratosphere. The higher the fees, the bigger the budgets...which in turn has forced studio-based producers to back away from making adult-friendly middlebrow movies and concentrate more and more on theme-park movies, which has pushed away the adults."
The Home Front (brand new)
An extension of Culture of Demand pieces, Home Front is going to be more review-focused. Since so many people are now seeing movies almost exclusively at home or on other small screens, I wanted to focus on everything from regular DVD to Blu-ray to the 31 flavors of digital downloads and streaming. Straight to Video (STV), an oft-ignored category that horrifies and entertains me in equal measure will also be covered here, especially low-rent STV sequels. I promise to focus equally on high-quality, low-awareness releases that deserve more attention.
Region0 (read: Region Zero, brand new)
This is my space to advocate movies and TV shows that, for whatever reason, you can't find in the States or isn't getting a fair shake with its move to American shores. Asian movies (live action and animated), older US movies that are inexplicably not on DVD in Region 1, and British TV shows that make US cable channels look absurd are all the tip of the iceberg here. As with Access Denied! (below), I'll include the country of origin, original year of release, and where/how to find it (legally) if you can.
Access Denied! (brand new)
The spiritual sibling of Region0 jumps to the perspective of people in other countries who have trouble seeing movies for one reason or another, whether foreign (US) or domestic. Whether they're amazing and great and have something to say...or really preachy for the sake of controversy, movies banned in their native countries deserve special attention. I'm Chinese and Cuban, so out of the gate I have a lot to work with on those fronts alone. As a long-term goal, I also want to do some investigative research on how people are seeing all this stuff that's allegedly banned. There are apparently a few ten millions of Daily Show fans in China.
Western Evangelism (brand new)
This has nothing to do with proselytizing evangelical Christians. Since I started writing for Hollywood Elsewhere off and on, I've wanted to write a monthly (if not more frequent) piece to promote good westerns people haven't seen in a while, aren't on DVD or are simply not available.
To give you a feeling for where my Western tastes lie: I'll try anything competent once. That's why I watched a lot of John Wayne's lesser work that involves "let's ride up another ridge and kill another 7 minutes with a riding montage and find those Injuns." There's been a rash of STV westerns recently that will probably not be covered here unless they surprise my face off.
I'm going to also use this feature as an excuse to cover good "Horse Movies" like Into the West and others that in my mind are Westerns thematically but aren't all-out oaters. Expect some weird non-American gunslinger product in here too.