by Sam Juliano
Note: The ‘Anthology Heaven’ series, which was temporarily abandoned before the U.K. trip will resume next Saturday, September 7th.
The western countdown is tentatively slated to launch on Monday, September 16th. However, it is not expected that the first entry will be the film that finished Number 50. The reason for this is that some writers in our circle may opt to write essays on the twenty “runners-up” that follow from Numbers 51 to 70. The titles of those films will follow at the end of this post. Though I am anticipating that only a handful will be covered (maybe four or five) I could be wrong. There may be more than that, or there may be not a single one reserved. I won’t know this answer in all likelihood until people begin to answer the group e mail that I will send out soon. I cannot of course unveil the titles of the films that finished 1 to 50, as one of the delights of the countdown is the surprise and suspense. The circle of writers do know the full results but I will not post them at the site, and allow the actual countdown to succeed. If my projections are right the Top 50 will probably start around Monday September 23. But as I say it could be earlier or later depending on who claims some of the following twenty runner’s up. As to the claims made on the Top 50, I will ask all the writers to respond to the group e mail with reiterations of what they had claimed weeks ago (I no longer have those e mails) and of new requests. Any films in the Top 50 that are not ultimately claimed will be represented at the site with the title, number and a screen cap. This will still maintain the possibility of an active comment section, even without an essay. But I would expect such occurrences to be relatively rare.
So, here are the 20 runners-up that finished 51 to 70 in the tabulation conducted early this month by Voting Tabulator Extraordinaire Angelo A. D’Arminio Jr:
51 The Westerner (Wyler; 1940)
52 Forty Guns (Fuller; 1957)
53 Django (Corbucci; 1966)
54 The Big Trail (Walsh; 1930)
55 Blazing Saddles (Brooks; 1974)
56 The Last Picture Show (Bogdonovich; 1971)
57 Bad Day at Black Rock (J. Sturges; 1955)
58 Canyon Passage (Tourneur; 1946) 59 Hud (Ritt; 1963)
60 Duck, You Sucka (Leone; 1971)
61 Tombstone (Cosmatos; 1993)
62 The Shootist (Siegel; 1976)
63 The Magnificent Seven (Sturges; 1960)
64 Rancho Notorious (Lang; 1952)
65 3 Bad Men (Ford; 1926)
66 Brokeback Mountain (Lee; 2005)
67 Little Big Man (Penn; 1970)
68 Colorado Territory (Walsh; 1949)
69 The Long Riders (Hill; 1980)
70 The Furies (Mann; 1950)
