Among other things, the prospect of black lead in a Western seemed strange.
Starring Oscar winner Natalie Portman, the brilliant Michael Fassbender and directed by We Need to Talk About Kevin's Lynne Ramsay, the Western seemed destined to be a major awards contender.
Mr. Chalabi, wearing a suit and tie in a country where ties are still suspect for being too Western, seemed to revel in his surroundings.
Lasso, a riff of sorts on the western, seemed like a fragment from a longer drama, and works that followed, Thriller and Cave, referenced horror and thrillers.
Much of the Kyrgyz elite, even those seen as strongly pro-Western, seems to believe that the country has little choice but to cast its lot with Russia.
Even a label like "anti-Western" seems problematic when applied to a man who was educated by British teachers and professors, married and divorced an Englishwoman, with whom he remains on good terms, and still regularly visits London, where he moves in sporting circles and among boldface names.
He makes Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti westerns seem positively loquacious.
A decade after Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" won four Oscars, westerns seem to be back in vogue.
The quality of the novels he read, mostly westerns, seemed notably awful.
Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.
But if our entertainments tell us anything about ourselves, westerns seem willing to address more contemporary themes: celebrity, homosexuality, the lure of easy money.
