Ugly West, The
teaser, trailer, My Name Is Blueyoda special
4 trailers for Tmbtm’s edits
1 special feature for Harmonica (King Of The Dogs)
4 trailers for CBB’s edits
4 previews for CBB’s edits
1 special feature for 2 Glorious Bastards (Including Johnny Cash)
1 subtitle extra (sing along with Johnny)
animated menus
“Harmonica” is a 1h11 version of Once Upon a Time in the West.
Now when TMBTM started to work on this edit, he planned to make it fun, but in the end it turned as a serious version.
The first version of the fanedit he made still included the character of Cheyenne, played by Jason Robards and he added an Iggy Pop song as his main music theme, but in the end it was the only “fun” thing about the edit and it was a bit jarring. So he decided to completely removed his character (adding one more common thing between CBB’s edit and his).
Removing Cheyenne was not easy at all, and it turned a “quick made” edit into something way more difficult. It turned what was just a shorter version into something way more different.
Forcing the relations of the characters into a new direction through the removal of a key character was a super difficult task. Cheyenne had no real purpose in TMBTM’s shorter workprint and that’s why in the end, he had to be removed entirely.
The fanedit also has various new music tracks, replacing some of the famous Morricone score and giving these scenes an entirely new atmosphere.
TWO GLORIOUS BASTARDS:
It all started with the German title of the original THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, which is 2 GLORREICHE HALUNKEN (translation: Two Glorious Bastards). Now why the German distributors decided for such an odd title change is unknown, but it inspired CBB to drop THE BAD from his edit and to make things more fun, he also decided to try to remove every bit of the famous and awesome Morricone soundtrack and replace it with Johnny Cash.
While the removal of THE BAD was not that hard, even though it required to drop some of the most famous scenes in Western history (e.G.the cemetery duel), replacing the score was a close to impossible task, because the music is deeply woven into the original sound and cannot be just separated.
Using various complicated techniques and spending months on the audio recreation, CBB managed to give the fanedit an entirely new atmosphere, not better than the original, but highly entertaining and very different from the original.
Each Johnny Cash song was carefully chosen to fit to both the atmosphere and the contents of the scene, in which it was used. Every song was filtered to better represent the 1960s audio quality of the original sound.
In the end almost 50% of the new audio is a replacement of the original audio, using bits and pieces from the original, some other movies and sound effect collections.
- Cheyenne was removed from the movie.
- Some scenes are reorganized, and/or merged.
Example: the scene where Claudia Cardinale is searching for something in the house is two scenes from the original movie merged into one
- New musics. But All from Morricone (or musicians playing covers of Morricones music).
Two Glorious Bastards
- Angel Eyes (The Bad) was completely removed from the movie.
- Tuco’s brother was removed, because the score could not be removed from his scenes.
- The bridge scene is heavily shortened.
- Tuco and Blondie are not caught by the Blues and imprisoned.
- Some of the scenes from the extended edition were removed, because they were boring
User reviews
Thank you Boon and TMBTM! :]X
User Review
The Ugly West has been high on my must see list and having purchased / watched the two films recently I wanted to see how much these edits would differ from the originals. A Sergio Leone film can be a hard slog to sit all the way through and while these two edits aren't meant to improve the originals but to give a more digestible version to two Sergio Leone classics.
First up was Harmonica a very shortened version of Once Upon A Time in the West though its core story line is very much intact. I have to be honest and say the musical changes made weren't to my taste neither the more dance/remix version of Ennio Morricone score I didn't like nor the inclusion of the music used in Kill Bill. I can understand the idea as Tarantino himself used the music of Ennio Morricone within his two Kill Bill films, but I just feel this music is so inferior to the original it took away from the final epic confrontation between Harmonica and Frank.
Another problem I had with the edit was just how did Harmonica get off the train? Last we saw of him was tied up on the train, next we see of him bidding on the McBain property. Apologizes to the editor if I missed something but I didn't fully understand what had just happened. At first I thought Harmonica was in cahoots with Morton, when the large amount of money was taken out of the drawer but then this would totally go against the character of Harmonica who has his own agenda. During the bidding we flashback to the train in which the Morton hands out $500 to his men to bid on the property though the men at the bidding are completely different. Again apologizes if I missed something but looking at the deleted scenes I couldn't help but think that the character of Cheyenne should have been included. It would have given the edit a longer run time that I felt it deserved but I also feel the character of Harmonica needed someone to play off as his agenda is with Frank and not with Jill McBain.
Overall I felt this was a solid but unspectacular edit compared to TMBTM previous efforts; 7/10.
The second edit by CBB titled Two Glorious Bastards feels like watching a totally new film, compared to the original. If the music of Johnny Cash was going to be used to a particular genre then a Western would be it. The songs chosen are all very good and often tell the story were seeing on screen, only once with the inclusion of hurt did I feel was unnecessary.
Not once did I feel the character played by Lee Van Cleef was missing from the story his character is just as good as Good/Ugly. It would have been a nice touch to have him cameo in both films (even though Lee Van Cleef doesn't appear in OUATITW there is a train scene from A few Dollars more that could maybe have been used) if just to acknowledge the actor but also connect the two edits, but of course this may go against the editors intent for the edit.
The film The Good the Bad and the Ugly is a classic that is hard to improve on, this edit however doesn't try to do that but offers a classic alternative. 9/10 This is a great concept for a fanedit and isn't hard to see why it's considered a must have within the fanedit community.
The overall presentation is also very well done with the DVD menus and extras giving the edit a very professional look / feel. Overall score 8.5
January 3, 2012 @ 6:02 am
I rewatched this recently and realized I hadn’t rated it or written a review. I’ll make it short and sweet.
Harmonica: Perfect. Loved it. The story flowed greatly considering all the major cuts TMBTM made. 10/10
Two Glorious Bastards: Amazing editing by Boon. Not only did he delete one of the three title characters with ease he did some incredible sound work. Sure, not all the Cash songs work well, but it was really well done. The only complaint about this one is the audio levels on a couple of the songs seemed a little high for my ears (sorry I don’t know the names of which songs). 9/10
EDITED TO ADD: I watched the "Making of" clip that details the sound editing work done. I wish I could give it a 9.5, a lot of work went into editing Two Glorious Bastards.
DVD: Awesome work. Menus are beautiful. Special Features are great, especially Boon’s explanation of the audio editing he did. And I always get a kick out of seeing a BlueYoda mashup. 10/10
Overall score: 9/10, Almost Perfect.
User Review
December 10, 2011 @ 8:45 pm
*This rating was given before reviews were required*
October 14, 2011 @ 4:36 pm
*This rating was given before reviews were required*