It’s not a remake of The Wild Bunch; they just share the same title. The plot goes (according to IMDb):
“A group of genetically modified crops battle against a field of wildflowers.”
[quote=“John Welles, post:101, topic:1805”]It’s not a remake of The Wild Bunch; they just share the same title. The plot goes (according to IMDb):
“A group of genetically modified crops battle against a field of wildflowers.”[/quote]
Yeah, I read that… I know its animation… the poster of this one is similar to the original Wild Bunch poster though
Haha!
Yes I’ve read about the Israeli film before, it has gotten good reviews.
Great news for Peckinpah fans:
A Blu Ray of Cross of Iron will be released soon, and Mike Siegel will provide the extras:
http://www.realpoliticalfacetalk.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1299260837
"Kinowelt for Germany (BlueRay & 2-Disc SE DVD)
Optimum for the UK (only BlueRay, all 3 same content)
Release will be soon. May/June I suppose.
I just finished a rough cut of the supplements:
-PASSION & POETRY - SAM PECKINPAH’s WAR 45min.
a documentary featuring James Coburn, Senta Berger, David Warner,
Vadim Glowna, Roger Fritz, Katy Haber.
-
5 featurettes with 1976 on set audio interviews:
ON LOCATION - CROSS OF IRON: SAM PECKINPAH
ON LOCATION - CROSS OF IRON: JAMES COBURN
ON LOCATION - CROSS OF IRON: JAMES MASON
ON LOCATION - CROSS OF IRON: MAXIMILIAN SCHELL
ON LOCATION - CROSS OF IRON: DAVID WARNERapprox 5 min. each (25 min. altogether)
-
featurette KRÜGER KISSES KERN (9 min.)
-
featurette VADIM & SAM - SON & DAD (7min.)
-
featurette CUTTING ROOM FLOOR (5 min.)
-
Mike’s Homemovies - Steiner meets Kiesel again (8min.) "
May need to get a Blu Ray player.
[quote=“John Welles, post:101, topic:1805”]It’s not a remake of The Wild Bunch; they just share the same title. The plot goes (according to IMDb):
“A group of genetically modified crops battle against a field of wildflowers.”[/quote]
Says Willie Nelson is in it as a character named “Sage”. Lol, I could think of a better plant for him to play. 
You can buy instead the German 2 DVD …
Sam Peckinpah learned his profession by directing some TV stuff before he got the chance for making feature films. He created The Westerner starring Brian Keith, from which a pilot in 1959 and 13 episodes in 1960 were aired. All only with a 25 min runtime.
Some of his episodes for The Westerner are excellent. Much better than TV usually was up to the 90s, and even better directed and written than most of the then contemporary films.
Here is the episode Jeff which is probably the best of these, and which already brought Peckinpah in trouble with censorship:
Watch it soon before it gets deleted again.
Today I received the sad news that Vadim Glowna passed away last night at a Berlin hospital. It was quite sudden. Over the last 10 years he had become a good friend. He smuggled me into the VIP areas of the Berlin Film Festival and wrote the foreword for my Peckinpah book. He loved my PASSION & POETRY projects and supported me quite a bit. Over the years he didn’t do that many interviews but he gave me a great one which made it hard for me to chose some exerpts for PASSION & POETRY (the feature length film). But last year I was able to use the biggest part of that footage for the CROSS OF IRON blu-ray I co-produced and I’m glad he finally saw this landmark film restored and released with my 2 hours of supplements. For him the film was most important as it changed his life and he also became a film maker shortly afterwards.
I can’t express my sad feelings, he will be missed forever.
R.I.P.
R.I.P. FOR THE MAESTRO
I’m big Peckinpah fan, but I still haven’t seen it all: Osterman, Killer Elite, Major Dundee and Alfredo Garcia (the later is on the top of my watchlist for some time).
The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs are my favorites.
Pat & Billy is hit & miss for me. Coburn is great, as is Dylan’s soundtrack, and there some great parts for which I’ll rewatch the movie any time I get the chance (for example for the cabin shootout and the beautiful end of that scene with Knockin’ on the heaven’s door), but overall it is flawed movie, so I felt little bit disappointed first time I saw it. On the other hand I like Convoy very much, although I understand that many people will see similar flaws in it like in Pat & Billy.
Great thing about Peckinpah’s movies is that they have great replay value, you can watch whole movies or just part of it many times and not get bored. His movies are like great records, I guess.
Forgot to mention that the large part of Iron Cross was shot at locations in Croatia, including Zagreb, and local cast was used, so it has special place in the heart of the people here.
You must see Alfredo Garcia titoli. I can’t make up my mind whether that or The Getaway is my favourite Peckinpah.
^ For me it’d be WILD BUNCH, ALFREDO GARCIA, then THE GETAWAY. At least that’s my opinion this morning. 
VCI is releasing an widescreen anamorphic DVD of DEADLY COMPANIONS for those of us in R1 land. Though as anyone who has ever bought anything from VCI knows, their prints and transfers can be sub-standard, hopefully this one will be a pleasant surprise.
MAJOR DUNDEE Blu Ray is up for pre-order.
A great, flawed film, it’s one I think will benefit from a good Blu-ray transfer. The cover for the release is very nice too… shame it is limited to only 3000 copies… It will probably become very over-priced off resellers in the years to come, alas. It’s good of them to put both cuts of the film on, although I wouldn’t watch the Theatrical Cut; it’s the Extended Cut all the way for me!
Here’s another remarkable episode of The Westerner called Line Camp:
This one was written and directed by Tom Gries, who later used some of its ideas for his feature debut Will Penny.
The photography by Peckinpah’s favourite DoP Lucien Ballard is remarkable dark. And again the violence is handled with intelligence and with a certain realism. Directing, editing, photography and atmosphere is again closer to cinema than to TV.
Watch it, it lasts only for 25 min.
Peckinpah’s Convoy will be released on Blu by Kino on 28/4/15.