2 Years of the Weird West Emporium!

2 Years ago today I started this website! You know how people say that they can't believe so much time has passed in regards to something? Well that is absolutely true here, I cant believe its been two years. Seriously.

Originally this site had been a personal blog, except I only had one post (About my friend breaking her collar bone in Roller Derby) that I had done about a year previously...and then it just sat and, as blogs sometimes tend to do, it didn't go anywhere.

Then one day I was scouring the internet for a good website about The Weird West. I came across at least one, Steampunk Central which I had been to before. It was from Steampunk Central that I had first heard of the Legend TV series. At the time I re-found it however, the site was closed down, shuttered up, just a bunch of broken links.

Everything else I found online were either pictures, or reviews of Weird West/Western Steampunk media. A few of the movies on these lists got me on the road to the Weird West. Movies like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and The Valley of Gwangi were some of my first exposure to the genre:



...and of course Wild Wild West:



....but those lists weren't what I was looking for. I was looking for something more comprehensive. Something like Paul Green's Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns except online. So I decided to start the website on my own.

I just reached 50 followers! I wanted to thank each and every one of you for finding my little website interesting enough to bookmark and revisit on occasion. I know the Emporium has been a little quiet lately, unfortunately real life tends to get in the way sometimes, but I'm not going anywhere and the Emporium isn't closing anytime soon (You'll be the first to know if it ever does). Expect some new posts soon. There will be one tomorrow and then maybe one or two next week, but Ill try to keep the posting on my normal non-semi-regular schedule.

Until then however here's to many more years of Weird West Emporium goodness, and Yippee ki-yay, Mamma Jamma!

The Wild Wild West Returns to Television!

This news is a little old, but I wanted to post about it anyway because I have a feeling it's going to be big. Deadline.com is reporting that former CSI executive producer/co-showrunner Naren Shankar and Battlestar Galactica developer/executive producer Ron Moore are planning on rebooting the Wild Wild West for CBS. This is very good news, if you have seen Moore's new version of Battlestar Galactica you know that he can reinvision a property in a very new and interesting way! I hope he brings this much love to The Wild Wild West.

Long time readers of the Emporium know that I have a love/hate relationship with the film version of Wild Wild West. It should have been an amazing film. It had the chance to not only redefine Western Steampunk, but to be the pioneering film for new generation of Weird Western films. In many ways its gorgeous look at and the amazing machines might have saved it from being totally forgotten. The humor, for the most part, fell flat on its face and making the main villain, Arliss Loveless, a racist just made him incredibly uninteresting. He had plenty of motivation for destroying the United States without being a cartoon stereotype also...but one thing the film did do right is lay the groundwork for what a great Wild Wild West TV show could look like!

I hope Moore and Shankar take their cue from the film in terms of design and fantastic Steampunk machines, and put the humor and story into the capable hands of good writers.

Until then however, HERE is the original story at Deadline.com. I will be following it very closely, so expect to hear more when I do!

You mean the Mild Mild West...

I was so excited for this movie before it came out. As I started seeing more and more of the concept art and Photos from it, I can't tell you how excited I was getting for it. An Old West James Bond with giant Steampunk machines was the perfect way to update Wild Wild West as a movie.......Until I saw it....

Now to be fair, I do own this film, its one of my guilty pleasures (plus I just collect fun Weird Westerns because there are so few worth collecting)....but I'm under no illusions that its actually a good movie. Its really more like a beautiful brass knob, shiny and pretty on the outside, but totally hollow on the inside. Most of the complaints I had for it since I first saw it I've decided were silly.....Like I was upset that they didn't use the theme, not even a part, in the main credits but Ive since grown to love the music they DID use. Here is the theme and credits music for the film:



Pretty cool, huh? It does a great job of channeling the 1800s AND the 1960s. Of course I was watching this thinking, "here comes the theme!" and it never came.....so maybe I started off on the wrong foot from the beginning. But what really floored me, and this I STILL feel strongly about, is the humor. Most of it falls REALLY flat. "That's a.......Man's.........Head..." was sort of funny until they pushed it to a 4th time....which was intentional (according to Barry Sonnenfeld's feature commentary) but really doesn't work.

That isn't to say that there is a LOT that is good about it however....The design! The machines! The Steampunk Gadgets! The Set Designs! The Costumes! and even the characters. Jim West and Artemus Gordon are great characters. Arliss Loveless is a really good villain....He'd be a GREAT villain if racism wasn't such a big part of his character.

This is the movie that you use to explain Steampunk to people who don't know what it is, but not much else.

I can only give it 2 out of 5 Bloody Spurs