Likable. He should cut his beard though …
[quote=“chameleon, post:119, topic:358”]^@2.A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology.
[/quote]
BUAHAHA ;D
Yes, will trim the beard tonight 
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Any fan projects with a stereo or mono option?
The end of the Wild Bunch is breathtaking
I don’t remember anyone complaining about the 5:1 sound. It is of course not an original sound, but it seems not to be a total fake 5.1. sound, as for so many other films.
Maybe because a true stereo sound was then produced for some 70 mm copies, and they could do something good with the stereo elements.
Possibly the best movie about failure ever made.
Might be interesting: new, reasonably priced book on The Wild Bunch, just in time for the film’s fiftieth anniversary on June 18, 2019. Written by W. K. Stratton, published by Bloomsbury.
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I got Stratton’s The Wild Bunch three days ago and started reading it yesterday. It’s not an academic book (no trace of pseudo-poststructuralist gibberish terminology, no trace of page references for the sources cited either) but rather conceived in the style and manner of Glenn Frankel’s book on The Searchers. Smooth reading so far – and great new words/phrases for me, e.g. “to pony up” and “idiot-box pabulum.” 
Well well, no post-structural gibberish, but idiot-box pabulum. I guess Mr. Derrida would’ve been over the moon with such a term
Pseudo-poststructuralist!
I had to look up “pabulum” in my dictionary. And then I had to smile.
I didn’t know that one either
Pseudo-poststructuralist … I wonder what the difference with genuine post-structuralism is 
If it’s anything like Glenn Frankel’s book then I’m going to love it. By the way, I liked Frankel’s book on “High Noon” even more - quite simply a brilliant read (and Frankel does thankfully include page numbers in his references).
You’re the expert on philosophy, scherpschutter, but aren’t you a bit too hard on the poststructuralist bunch? You(’ll) probably like this website: Communications from Elsewhere. 
I haven’t read his High Noon book yet but intend to do so soon. Frankel’s The Searchers was a fine read, entertaining and informative. – Preponderantly, no, solely favorable reviews of Stratton’s T. W. Bunch on various sites, e.g. on Kirkusreviews.com and Variety.com (remarkable comment by a gentleman [maybe aptly] named Ugly Hombre).
Fastest reader in the West, I finished Stratton’s book last week. Its introduction and first part provide interesting autobiographical background (the author was only thirteen when he first saw The Wild Bunch at his local cinema in Oklahoma), historical information on the time of the film’s production and on its story’s temporal setting (the Mexican Revolution), and an account of its laborious genesis. After his strong beginning, Stratton unfortunately lets T. W. B. deteriorate into an assemblage of curricula vitae and anecdotally biographical tidbits about practically everyone in one way or another involved in the making of The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah aficionados will surely be familiar with many of those data from previous publications on the director – and some information we would perhaps have preferred to remain ignorant of, e.g. that Bloody Sam suffered badly from hemorrhoids but exclusively wore white pants during the shooting of his masterpiece.
That said, I enjoyed reading The Wild Bunch’s 305 pages, excluding an appendix that leaves a lot to be desired: incomplete bibliography and index, and, as mentioned above, no page numbers for the sources. Stratton’s repeated mentioning of Sergio Leone’s films as possible influences on The Wild Bunch will without a doubt be of great comfort to devotees of Spaghetti Westerns.
It ain’t like Glenn Frankel, but it’ll do. However, Stratton’s now a baptized member of the Holily Unholy Church of Sam, spreading the gospel according to Matthew Simmons, Mark Seydor, Luke Weddle, and John Siegel. Before and while reading The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film (a rather highfalutin subtitle), I rewatched a couple of Peckinpah’s films, and I have to admit that my feelings toward the man and his work are more ambivalent than ever. Paul Schrader possibly tries to express a similar ambiguous attitude in Tom Thurman’s documentary Sam Peckinpah’s West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade (2004); by projecting himself vicariously into Peckinpah’s mindset, he declares, “The power of The Wild Bunch is that Peckinpah says, ‘Look, I know this is anachronism, I know this is fascist, I know this is sexist, I know this is evil and out of date, but, God help me, I love it so.’”
Wild Bunch is a great Western movie, despite its celebration of violence at the end.
It’s not just a movie, but an allegory that starts with kids burning hundreds of ants that are about to overwhelm scorpions, an image which later evolves into Mexican soldiers vs. Holden and companions.
I think it’s legitimate to expand the allegory to the American involvement in Vietnam at that time.
Apart from that it’s quite entertaining with great cinematography. And I don’t miss women in this movie.
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Rewatched this film today. It has some truly great action set pieces that were revolutionary for their time, so i get why so many people hold this film in such high regard, but outside of said action scenes it is nothing special, its often a typical American old school western where it’s very slow and not much is happening most of the time, full of boring pointless conversations and scenes.
Something no one mentions about this film is the image quality, its very very bad, everything lacks definition and the film can be almost nauseating to watch at times. I had to take breaks while watching it because of this as it almost gave me a headache.
I also didn’t enjoy this as much as I wanted to. Great shootouts but I didn’t enjoy much else. Much prefer Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron for my ‘ragtag group of dudes go about shooting people’ fix.
Isn’t this more of an issue with how you watched it? It looked fine when I watched it from a BluRay rip.
You reminded me that I still need to see Cross of Iron, i’ve heard really good things about it.
I thought it was the rip at first too but every version I found had the same image quality, all bluray rips. It’s definitely a problem with the film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) also has this issue. Whatever he used to record these movies just sucks.
