423 Walker

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Message
Author
User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#26 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:05 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:There's always KOKO (wasn't that interlaced to boot?)
I think the movie was fairly well received upon theatrical release, even if the DVD release wasn't. Good call on Armageddon, I tend to block the Bays and Smiths out of my memory, so obviously the answer is those.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#27 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:43 pm

miless wrote:
domino harvey wrote:Trailer for Walker
woah, that's really 80's.
Remember though that the music is from Giorgio Moroder's score for the Cat People remake (the 'Leopard Tree Dream' track) so says more about what the people who made the trailer thought would sound interesting and exciting than being representative of what the film itself sounds like (perhaps they didn't think Joe Strummer's score would work in the trailer?)

It is really 80s but I have a love/hate relationship with Giorgio Moroder - he is the epitome of the strangely cheesy synthesised sound of the decade but I find his music for American Gigolo, Scarface and Cat People work extremely well with the decadent films they are supporting and even guiltily like his rescoring of Metropolis - though I'm glad for MoC's restored and definitive version of that film!

User avatar
Kudzu
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 2:55 pm
Contact:

#28 Post by Kudzu » Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:48 pm

colinr0380 wrote:It is really 80s but I have a love/hate relationship with Giorgio Moroder - he is the epitome of the strangely cheesy synthesised sound of the decade but I find his music for American Gigolo, Scarface and Cat People work extremely well with the decadent films they are supporting and even guiltily like his rescoring of Metropolis
You haven't lived until you've had a late night drive to his version of "Nights in White Satin" with his monotone English vocals. I love him free of irony or guilt.

User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

#29 Post by Cronenfly » Sat Nov 17, 2007 12:03 am

domino harvey wrote:
GringoTex wrote:I'm not sure there's been a Criterion release as widely panned as this one.
Jubilee or the Night Porter maybe?
Border Radio and Monsters and Madmen weren't exactly lauded, either.

I've heard some harsh things said of Hopscotch and The Ruling Class, too.

This could probably be its own thread, come to think of it...

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

#30 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:46 am

colinr0380 wrote:
miless wrote:
domino harvey wrote:Trailer for Walker
woah, that's really 80's.
Remember though that the music is from Giorgio Moroder's score for the Cat People remake
I knew it was Moroder, but I couldn't place it.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#31 Post by domino harvey » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:54 am

figures that I thought the music was the best part. I'm excited by the prospect of it being a political satire but a little to weary to not Netflix this one first.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#32 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Nov 17, 2007 11:10 am

It could be that use of the Moroder track that explains why the trailer is not listed among the extra features on the disc - it might be too difficult and expensive to sort out the rights for unrelated music that only appears on the trailer. Thankfully we have the Internet and its fuzzy legalities to get around such issues!

beamish13
Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:31 am

#33 Post by beamish13 » Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:09 am

Cronenfly wrote:Can any Cox-boosters support the direction his career has gone in since Repo Man and Sid and Nancy? I don't necessarily support the viewpoint that it was all downhill from there (as I have limited exposure with his other films), but given the degree to which he's fallen off the general radar, I'm curious as to what those more well-versed in his work think.
Cox is a product of the same school of English rebellion that spawned filmmakers like Lindsay Anderson, Derek Jarman, and to a lesser extent Peter Greenaway and Michael Winterbottom. His post-1980's films are vasty different visually (although he storyboards his films himself), but they're thematically linked by their reliance on increasingly alienated narrators that are at odds with their surroundings. "Death and the Compass" in particular is a stunningly made film that stunningly manages to fuse Jorge Luis Borges' sensibilities with Cox's contrarian standpoint. His films take place in locations that range from Central America to England to the States and even Japan, but he manages to make the world always seem like his own on celluloid.

BTW, please check out the book "Alex Cox: Film Anarchist". It's very comprehensive and the photographs are gorgeous. It also goes in-depth on the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" scandal (you just might have your opinion changed).

patrick
Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:15 pm
Location: Philadelphia

#34 Post by patrick » Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:57 am

Can any Cox-boosters support the direction his career has gone in since Repo Man and Sid and Nancy? I don't necessarily support the viewpoint that it was all downhill from there (as I have limited exposure with his other films), but given the degree to which he's fallen off the general radar, I'm curious as to what those more well-versed in his work think.
I'm a devoted follower (if not always a fan) of Cox's work, if that makes sense, and the only post-Sid & Nancy film I would tell people to outright avoid is Three Businessmen, which doesn't work for me at all. Straight to Hell is a really fun punk spaghetti western, although I'm guessing your enjoyment might depend on how much you like the various musicians involved. Death and the Compass and Revengers Tragedy are both excellent adaptations anchored by extremely solid performances by Christopher Eccleston - I think Cox directs him better than anyone else. My only problem with his more recent work is that it's pretty much all shot on really shitty-looking DV, and while I understand why he uses it I think it cheapens the films as a whole. I really need to see Highway Patrolman again, it's been awhile.

Even with its flaws, Walker is probably his strongest film post-Repo Man. It's muddled (like I said before, Cox never seems to be sure what he wants to do) but on the flip side it's bursting with ideas. And I know I mentioned it before, but Joe Strummer's score is absolutely wonderful.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#35 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:05 pm

Here is the page from the alexcox.com site about Walker.

User avatar
Mr Buttle
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:27 am

#36 Post by Mr Buttle » Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:22 pm

Any Brits out there who remember a series on BBC2 called Moviedrome back in the early 90s? It was a venue for screening cult films and Alex Cox used to provide little introductory schpiels for each film. He was fun; he used to dress up in costume or do the schpiel from a location appropriate to the film.

Anyway, I distinctly remember that Walker was actually shown on Moviedrome once. Cox had to introduce his own film and was rather coy about it. I recall that instead of describing the film, he read out a passage from some mainstream film reviewer trashing it, and then made a fist and said "Yes!".

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#37 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:48 pm


User avatar
Satanas
Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:03 am
Location: Phoenix, AZ

#38 Post by Satanas » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:25 am

THX1378 wrote:Sundance ran Walker last night and I watched it. I don't really know what to think of it right now and I'm going to have to watch it again. Ed Harris is great as always, but Peter Boyle is really out of place in his part. But what I really hated is that it seems like Cox wants this to be both a bio pic about William Walker's time in Nicaragua and a political satire about what was going on in the 80's. Whats bad is that he can't make up his mind which way the film wants to go.
I also caught the screening of it on Sundance; based on that one viewing, y'all can pencil me in the slim column of "People That Are Actually Really Psyched That Criterion Is Releasing Walker". I have seen that complaint about Cox's muddled approach to the film (serious bio pic vs. 80's politic satire) come up, and I must confess that I just don't agree with it. Maybe I'm completely misreading Cox's intentions (the only other film of his I've seen is "Repo Man", so I'm not very familiar with his overall oeuvre), but I think the film isn't confused about its own identity at all.

Here is how I see Walker: it isn't merely a satire of 80's politics, it's a satire of historical biopics. Watch Walker and then try to imagine Walker being done as a totally straight, conventional bio-pic and you'll see what I mean. Cox presents every possible cliched scene that would come up in a story like this (ex. the general rallying his troops with an impassioned speech, the tragic last quarrel between lovers, the epic battle scene, the descent into decadence and political corruption) and blows massive raspberries at every one of them. Just look at the scene towards the beginning of the film with Walker arguing with his deaf fiancee. The music swelling on the soundtrack is supposed to be sad and romantic (typical emotional fight music), and Ed Harris plays Walker as completely sincere and serious, and yet the scene is an absurd farce because they are having this fight out in sign language. What should be a poignant scene in most other films becomes extremely comical in this one. Then you have the scene where Walker first meets Peter Boyle. Boyle is playing Vanderbilt, the Secret Chief of Capitalism, the Grand Poobah of Imperialism, the Great Patriarch, Master Of The Motherfucking Universe. In any other historical film, he would probably be depicted with some gravity, possibly with some menace, something that conveys that this is a powerful man, a man not to be trifled with. In Walker the Big Man farts loudly, looks silly, bellows, and acts more like Jabba The Hutt than Charles Foster Kane.

Once Walker and his motley crew arrive in Nicaragua, things get even more over the top. When Walker does his impassioned "we need to be responsible and pull together and be good soldiers in a foreign land" speech to his troops, they snicker at him and converse among themselves and openly ignore him, probably already planning the raping and pillaging they'll do later. In any other film, that scene would have been played for a jingoist effect; they would have nodded along rapturously with their fearless leader, not snort with disbelief at him. Once Walker starts making awful, disastrous decisions, every time the more sane/reasonable/competent characters (like Rene Auberjonois) try to talk some sense into him, not only does he completely ignore them as though they didn't exist, the FILM ITSELF tries to drown their objections out by making the music louder and muffling their speech.

Walker is obviously crazed and a poor leader, but he is the only character in the film who seems fully confident and sure of himself. He appears as a mythic character; indeed, Harris' portrayal of him wouldn't be out of place in a more normal biopic. What makes the film interesting and complicated is that every other character is aware of just how idiotic and dangerous Walker is. It is as though he and the rest of the cast are acting in two different films; all the other characters are desperate, freaked out refugees from the real world, whereas Walker is some iron-willed heroic movie icon from a white-washed, divorced-from-reality bio-film. It would be somewhat like John Wayne showing up on the boat in Apocalypse Now and acting as though he was still in a John Ford movie.

Again, I might be way off and perhaps Cox wasn't even in the ballpark of what I'm suggesting, but that interpretation of Walker as a 3-Stooges-style poke in the eye of conventional bio-pics is why I like it so much. My one beef with it is while I like the anachronisms, I had wished they had shown up earlier in the film. I can see why they start cropping up when they do, but it would have been nice if the more out-of-place modern things had slowly started creeping into view earlier in the film.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#39 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:21 pm

That sounds fantastic Satanas and has me really excited to see the film while at the same time you described reasons why it could be a difficult film to like and why people seemed to be confused by it at the time.

Harris's "La-la-la. I'm not listening" performance of somebody who will only concede to be judged by history sounds amazing and uncomfortably reminiscent of a certain ex-British PM!

I am liking this idea of viewing a historical event with modern eyes and a knowledge of relevant events that occurred outside of the period being discussed more and more. I think any historical film (scratch that, any film), not just those that actively force the issue such as this one, need to be understood on both the 'recreation of a historical period' and 'era the film itself was made in' level.

Thinking about historical anachronisms that Walker might be alluding to, I was reminded of this passage from the documentary The Corporation:

"For big business, despotism was often a useful tool for securing foreign markets and pursuing profits. One of the US Marine corps' most highly decorated generals, Smedley Darlington Butler by his own account helped pacify Mexico for American oil companies, Haiti and Cuba for National City Bank, Nicaragua for the Brown Brothers brokerage, the Dominican Republic for sugar interests, Honduras for US fruit companies and China for Standard Oil."

But apparently he drew the line of being "a gangster for capitalism" when asked to lead a coup against FDR in 1934!

User avatar
Fletch F. Fletch
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:54 pm
Location: Provo, Utah

#40 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:30 pm

Satanas wrote:Here is how I see Walker: it isn't merely a satire of 80's politics, it's a satire of historical biopics. Watch Walker and then try to imagine Walker being done as a totally straight, conventional bio-pic and you'll see what I mean.
I agree. This is a dead-on reading of Walker. I am really looking forward to this release too, esp. Cox's commentary track. I sure hope he talks about all the crazy things that went on while making the film -- the accidental deaths, messing with the infrastructure of Granada (some of which is mentioned in the film's Wikipedia entry, alienating the studio, and, of course, working with Joe Strummer. This is such an cinematic oddity -- one of those, how the hell did he convince a studio to bankroll this film? kinda deals.

User avatar
Belmondo
Joined: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:19 am
Location: Cape Cod

#41 Post by Belmondo » Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:13 pm

Sundance Channel is showing it again tonight: Sunday, Dec. 30, 7pm ET

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#42 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:57 pm


User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

#43 Post by Cronenfly » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:40 pm

I'm enjoying Cox's handlebar...makes him look like a Lebanese pimp.

If the caps are to be believed, the image looks about on par with Under the Volcano (another '80s Universal pic), if not a slight step above. Glad to hear the doc is lengthy (50 minutes), and the piece by the extra (continuing Criterion's commitment to "the little people" from the Matthew Gubler piece on Zissou) looks interesting. I'm still not 100% sold on the film, but I think it warrants a shot, regardless of the contempt thrown its way. It would've made more sense (and surely evoked less anger from some) for it to have come out as part of Anchor Bay's Cox wave of a number of years ago, but I'll gladly take the Criterion disc.

And, even though the cover still sucks, the menus are (for the most part) better put together than the cover would make one believe, even if the whole design borrows too much from Criterion's Fear and Loathing release.

User avatar
CSM126
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:22 am
Location: The Room
Contact:

#44 Post by CSM126 » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:26 am

Cronenfly wrote:And, even though the cover still sucks, the menus are (for the most part) better put together than the cover would make one believe, even if the whole design borrows too much from Criterion's Fear and Loathing release.
At least I can read the menus on F&L. The thin cursive font that apears throughout the Walker menus is practically indecipherable to mine eyes. And all the other fonts are just ugly. Maybe it suits the film (I haven't seen it yet), but the completely random menus look like they were designed by someone with ADHD.

Maybe they look better on an actual TV screen. I dunno.

User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

#45 Post by Cronenfly » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:22 am

CSM126 wrote:
Cronenfly wrote:And, even though the cover still sucks, the menus are (for the most part) better put together than the cover would make one believe, even if the whole design borrows too much from Criterion's Fear and Loathing release.
At least I can read the menus on F&L. The thin cursive font that apears throughout the Walker menus is practically indecipherable to mine eyes. And all the other fonts are just ugly. Maybe it suits the film (I haven't seen it yet), but the completely random menus look like they were designed by someone with ADHD.

Maybe they look better on an actual TV screen. I dunno.
I thought it was just me, but yeah, the lettering is pretty indecipherable (it's like trying to read my mother's godawful cursive through tea-stained gauze).

I still defend the menus to an extent; I feel that they capture the (if what I've heard is true) patchwork (and perhaps even a little ADHD) style of the film better than the cover. That's not saying much, and there's a lot not to like about the menus (the M-16s and helicopters look particularly terrible), so mine isn't a strong defense at all.

In fact, on looking back, the only menu I liked was the one chapter screen, which is the most straightforward of them all, so I really don't know why I thought the design worked at all. Just in comparison to the cover, I guess.

User avatar
Jean-Luc Garbo
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:55 am
Contact:

#46 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:35 pm

I have to confess as a Cox fan I've been waiting for this one. I know shoot me. At least Beev confirmed how good I thought it'd look. Also, I have to say that I like the cover.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

#47 Post by domino harvey » Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:37 pm

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:I have to confess as a Cox fan I've been waiting for this one. I know shoot me. At least Beev confirmed how good I thought it'd look. Also, I have to say that I like the cover.
I don't mind it, it looks like a rejected Sex Pistols single cover, but I suspect that was the idea all along

User avatar
TheGodfather
Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:39 pm
Location: The Netherlands

#48 Post by TheGodfather » Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:49 pm


User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#49 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:56 pm


User avatar
kaujot
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:28 pm
Location: Austin
Contact:

#50 Post by kaujot » Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:11 pm

I was really iffy about this release, but after reading the reviews posted here and elsewhere, I think I'm going to have to pick it up.

I've not actually seen a Cox film before, but if Walker is anything like that mustache he's sporting in the Beaver screenshots, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

Post Reply