Welcome to December 2024 
newsletter from the Spaghetti Western Database, your regular newsletter of what happened last month in the world of European westerns.
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newsletter. Contact us if you have any questions or news/rumors/contributions.
NEW STUFF IN AND AROUND THE SWDB IN 
DECEMBER 2024:
Year in review and year ahead
Alright that’s a wrap for 2024! It has been a wild year once more for spaghetti western lovers all around the globe. Plenty of films released and re-released in many countries (however all in all such a smaller number compared to the DVD years), more soundtracks receiving their due and some welcome new books as well. In the forums and social channels we observed a number of theatrical or festival screenings of spaghetti westerns, @Admin introduced one himself. The SWDb saw an enormous, and I mean enormous, jump in additions and improvements all around. A handful of gunslingers work around the clock to improve information in the database, adding information, links, pictures and much more. The SWDb has never been a better resource. Enjoy it, browse it, and please do spread the word.
The year 2025 is also the year we’ve turned 20! We’re starting a new round of Hall of Fame inductions to mark the occasion. We may also pull out a few other tricks out of our hats this year. Of course we’re still hoping for a flurry of donations to put us in a position to hire some technical help (see below). We are hoping for some truly excellent home video releases as well, with some rumors already brewing. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped in and around the SWDb this year, no matter how small or big your contribution, everyone who was an active visitor of the forums or someone who spread the word. Thanks also to people around the world helping the cause of the spaghetti western, releasing films, restoring films, interviewing survivors, setting up festivals, exhibitions or screenings, and watching these films and enjoying them.
Emerging, ongoing and future improvement projects
Nothing new here, but not all of you read this diligently all the time and it is worth pointing out the great work being done as well as the areas we could use help with. We work on the SWDb every day, not all of that is visible. To give you an idea, but also if you’re wondering where you could get involved, here is an overview of our main projects right now:
- Project
master calendar Calendar - The Spaghetti Western Database - Project
company directory Company directory - The Spaghetti Western Database.
These are slowly progressing but are meant to be mostly companions to ongoing efforts to improve release date and biographical information in the database. Along with adding production and distribution companies to film pages, we also want to add more box office data and filming dates. Please contact with any info you have that is missing in the database, or volunteer to work on these projects, it’s all highly appreciated.
A steadily rising number of film pages in the database now have picture-powered dedicated credits pages. These are valuable to identify actors and characters. More are added every week. We are also working on making actor pages and categories tidier, including overview pages such as “actors by picture” and so forth, a new project led by @ItalianStranger
The locations project. Many location entries in the database are being fleshed out, pictures added, gps locations and google/bing maps directions added, and so forth. We will do a bigger announcement once we have reached some more substantial milestones, including linking to these new location pages from movie entries. We will start introducing a few of these location pages come spring time.
Both of these address major areas of information that bring people to the SWDb: people and places. This requires a lot of detective work, and we highly appreciate all those travelling to Spain or living there with helping out.
The featurettes project. We are cataloging home video special features to make it easier to research for example which people were covered in what documentary or interview on which DVD release.
Information about VHS releases in the database is still bad. Our VHS pages aren’t nearly as reliable and complete as we have it for DVD and BluRay. So we need information about releases, and covers, for all countries and languages. We are starting to include more Super8 information as well, starting with cover images.
Improving soundtrack pages is a future project we would like to intensify. We want the SWDb to be more thorough with original soundtrack releases, track listings and more.
These three are for the geeks and home video historians mostly, but it is worth providing clarity over what is out there and help old and new fans navigate their way through the spaghetti western landscape, on all formats. Especially in the area of soundtrack releases, we will get much more thorough and add Amazon links for more countries. Tip of the hat to you if you have a CD player or even Vinyl record player still.
And now to two tougher subjects:
technical improvements for the SWDb, including a better search, which will require time, expertise and money, all of which aren’t plentiful. Donations welcome, maybe at some point then I could hire someone to do it. Last month we expanded our server’s storage size and performance, which has made the database so much faster, but also doubled our cost.- More outreach: Help us spread the word about the SWDb into the far corners of the internet, and beyond the English-speaking spots. Outreach is also what is needed to make our calls for donations reach a bigger audience.
… 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!
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. We can really use the cash to beef up the server infrastructure, and if we can get enough donations we should finally hire someone to fix some major issues with the underlying tech to make the SWDb better and safer again.
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. 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 December not much revolutionary stuff here. A fascinating release of Django in Germany (albeit marred by a disc replacement issue), and also the third of the Winnetou films arriving on 4K. Germany also sees a newer release of Corbucci’s lesser seen Milian vehicle (albeit only on DVD). The rest are mostly re-issues, and there are also soundtrack releases.
January does not look too impressive so far but it all depends. If you didn’t grab it the first time around, there is a re-issue of Leone’s masterpiece out in the US. And The Great Silence also arrives on 4K in Germany. The rest are minor titles and re-releases. Let’s see how the year shapes up, our calendar already goes way into March…
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 9 new obituaries over the course of the last four weeks, the latest soul lost is legendary composer Nora Orlandi who died on new year’s day.
Check out “Cemetery with crosses”
New book!
See you next month!
