Welcome to the April 2024 
newsletter from the Spaghetti Western Database, your regular newsletter of what happened last month in the world of European westerns.
How to receive this newsletter automatically: Read instructions here on how to receive this to your inbox or notifications 
newsletter. Contact us if you have any questions or news/rumors/contributions.
NEW STUFF IN AND AROUND THE SWDB IN 
APRIL 2024:
WANTED:
We’re still trying to get in touch with
- the person who ran the Altervista website SPAGHETTI WESTERN DATABASE
- our friend from Finland who went by the name of Shobary (with the popular SW website with that title).
If anyone has reliable contact information, please send us a message. We want to rescue and preserve the remnants of these two websites, like we’ve done with A Fistful of Pasta.
New around the SWDb:
After we had finished archiving all of A Fistful of Pasta last mnoth, we also ran a spontaneous effort to archive the spaghetti western reviews of Josh Samford’s Varied Celluoid. Enjoy reading, those are now preserved as well.- Let us know if you want to help with
our new master calendar Calendar - The Spaghetti Western Database and 
company directory Company directory - The Spaghetti Western Database. These are just slowly progressing but are meant to be mostly companions to ongoing efforts to improve release date information in the databas, as well as biographical information. Please contact us at any time with any info you have that is missing in the database, it’s all highly appreciated. - A steadily rising number of film pages in the database now have picture-powered dedicated credits pages. These are incredibly valuable in a lot of peoples’ quests to identify actors and characters.
… as always: join the SWDb, help out, it will make it better 
You don’t have to become a full time editor or official staff to contribute. Anything from being active in the forum to correcting mistakes to joining entire improvement projects is more than welcome. From all over the world, in all languages, we welcome help!
Emerging, ongoing and future improvement projects
- Improving locations information with the locations project
- Cataloging home video special features with the featurettes project etc)
- Improving and expanding information about VHS releases in the database (these aren’t nearly as reliable and complete as we have it for DVD and BluRay)
- Improving soundtrack pages (not started, volunteers welcome)
- Adding more company, production and box office data
- technical improvements for the SWDb, including a better search, which will require time, expertise and likely money, all of which aren’t plentiful. Donations welcome, maybe at some point I could hire someone to do it.
- Lastly, more outreach is in order to reach into the far corners of the internet, and beyond the English-speaking spots.
SWDb 
Letterboxd
If you’re a Letterboxd user, we hope you follow the official SWDb Letterboxd HQ account. Click here to learn more about that. For the new year we’ll finally bring more exclusive content to that channel as well. And your reminder: all the revised film pages in the SWDb have a direct link to their respective LB entry and the bottom.
Home video news:
In April there were new releases in France, Spain and Germany as well as some re-issues in Spain and Japan. More HD gaps filled, happy shopping!
May is the big one. Not only does Hannie make her HD debut in the UK and Lanky in France, Django strikes again in Germany, and Nobody in France…the big release in May is Once Upon a Time in the West making its 4K UltraHD BluRay debut. While first reports of the transfer do not sound enthusiastic (it was quite clear Paramount would fuck it up), it may still be a very solid release bringing the movie to a whole new generation of fans. Plus, there’s an audio commentary by Tom and Jay and a new intro by Maltin.
And the calendar grows, almost daily, with more titles added. News is slowly getting into July and beyond, while we’re still performing updates to April. 4K releases of more Leone films are coming, more French releases are coming, it is really worth stopping by a few times a week.
Visit the SWDb home video release calendar
Obituaries
Our head of obits, the spaghettiologist @Tom_B had to update the boot hill cemetery with an unfortunate 8 new obituaries over the course of the last four weeks.
Check out “Cemetery with crosses”
Reviews:
Please contact us if you want your reviews published. We are especially looking for reviews of movies that have no, or very few, reviews in the SWDb. We publish them in all languages, and you don’t need to be a professional writer!
Print the Legend: Notes on Antonio del Amo’s Son of Jesse James - The Spaghetti Western Database
Ohne Dollar keinen Sarg BluRay Kritik - The Spaghetti Western Database
El Cisco Filmkritik - The Spaghetti Western Database
El Cisco film review - The Spaghetti Western Database
Those of you who feel inclined to donate a dollar or euro or yen or real or whatever, head here. PayPal has improved the donation experience, check it out - and you don’t even need a PayPal account to donate. Also, whenever you shop at Amazon, click on one of the SWDb’s Amazon links first, it doesn’t matter which one and what you buy.
Lastly, get ready to enjoy (or be disapointed by) Paramount Home Entertainment’s upcoming 4K Ultra-HD BluRay release of Once Upon a Time in the West. Details are almost all confirmed, keep checking the page for details as we update it. Check it out, it arrives in May.
See you next month!
