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We’re hard at work on getting two FAR WEST products out the door — the short story anthology, TALES OF THE FAR WEST, which will be available before Christmas, and the Limited Edition version of the FAR WEST ADVENTURE GAME, which will be sent to Kickstarter backers in January. What to do while you wait, and you also have some free time due to the December holidays? Well, if you’ve got Netflix streaming, fire it up and have your very
Easily my favorite wuxia film of recent years, Reign of Assassins marks the triumphant come-back of 90s HK movie star Michelle Yeoh, in a film that is co-directed by none other than John Woo. In nearly every respect, Reign of Assassins is a brilliant film. The film tells the story of a woman who runs away from her secret society of assassins, the Dark Stone gang, and (after changing her appearance with a bizarre period-chinese-medicine version of a facelift) tries
For this Inspirography article, we decided to have a little fun. Music has been a big part of the Far West experience. I’ve assembled a playlist of hundreds of tracks — more than 15 hours of music — that I’ve used not only for background when playtesting the RPG, but also for accompaniment while writing. The playlist features soundtrack material from Spaghetti Westerns and Wuxia Films; Classic Rock tracks, Folk, Outlaw Country, Electronic, Chinese Pop songs, Hip-hop and more. Anything
Let’s just get this out of the way: The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is not what many would call a “good” movie. It wears its Spaghetti-Western-by-way-of-Grindhouse pedigree right out in the open. It’s a grimy, violent road-movie, with over-the-top characters and the most gossamer-thin of budgets. It is also brilliant inspirography for Far West and wicked-awesome. The basic premise of the film is that Ransom Pride, a gun-running outlaw, gets himself killed in Mexico, and his girlfriend Juliette sets
This time around, our Inspirography series takes a look at Jonah Hex. No, not the god-awful movie that came out last year: the far, far more interesting comic series that has been running on and off since the 1970s, published by DC comics, featuring the scar-faced ex-Confederate bounty hunter, Jonah Hex. Jonah is a righteous man, an avenger of the innocent, and cares deeply about staying true to his own personal honor. He’s also bitter, cynical, possessed of an acidic
This Inspirography entry takes a look at the first truly mixed-genre example that came along after development of Far West had begun. Initially, our inspiration had been pure examples of the spaghetti western and wuxia genres, along with western-inspired fantasies like Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. A mere 4 months after development had begun, however, this film was released by Takashi Miike — a brilliant director known for controversial classics like Ichi the Killer and Audition. Whereas the trappings are
This inspirography installment features another nearly-perfect Far West film, The Warrior’s Way, which was released in theatres late last year. The hardest part about inspiration for Far West is the combination of elements — we’ve drawn inspiration from spaghetti westerns (and it’s easy to find examples of that genre which are inspiring), and martial arts films (also easy to find individual stand-outs of this genre). It’s a rare film that combines the two — and even rarer still when it
One of the regular features here at the Far West will be a look at some of the ingredients that have gone into our western/wuxia/steampunk melange. We’ll recommend books, films, comics and more — all part of what we call the “Inspirography” of Far West. For our first recommendation, we’re taking a look at a film that came out after development of Far West had already begun, but which dovetailed perfectly with the project. The Good, The Bad, The Weird