Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Peckinpah month: links & resources #1


Evil Dead Zombie over at Things That Don’t Suck helped kick off Peckinpah month in fine style yesterday with an excellent article on ‘Ride the High Country’. He follows that up today with an appraisal of Peckinpah’s massively compromised third film, ‘Major Dundee’. Taken out of Peckinpah’s hands by the studio and shorn of about 45 minutes, it’s a frustrating but often impressive viewing experience. Go here for the article, which perceptively highlights both the flaws and flashes of genius.

Michaël Parent at Le Mot du Cinephiliaque has contributed a piece, in French and English, on ‘The Wild Bunch’ in which he pinpoints how this landmark western broke with the John Ford-style romanticism of the genre and yet remains a deeply nostalgic work.

Thanks for these articles, guys.

Today’s entry on The Agitation of the Mind (it’ll be online in a couple of hours) is a biographical overview. It’s a thumbnail sketch, really, and I’m saving a lot of behind-the-scenes details on the films for the reviews themselves. There’s a more in depth bio written by Gabrielle Murray over at Senses of Cinema which is well worth reading.

Elsewhere on the net, Peckinpah’s page on They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? comes complete with a shedload of links.

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