Where the Buffalo Roam
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.63 You Save: $7.35 (49%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.47 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Where the Buffalo Roam
Movie Review: Not too shabby
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie isn't as good as Fear and Loathing...but a good precursor. Bill Murray does a great job and you don't even recognize Peter Boyle...really good acting on their parts for the characters. Director wasn't that great, but you need to keep in mind when the movie was made.Movie Review: A Must for Bill Murray Fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Bill Murray in one of his most interesting roles portraying Hunter S. Thompson. Its amazing how this unpredictable, almost apathetic character can captivate the audience from beginnning to end.Movie Review: get it!
Summary: 4 Stars
if you own F&L in LV you have to get this one. bill murry come on and peter boyle!Movie Review: Three stars, only because of the watered down soundtrack.
Summary: 3 Stars
I've only recently discovered the greatness that is the writing of Hunter S. Thompson. Like many before and the many that'll come after, there was no correlation when I saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas between Raoul Duke and some guy named Thompson. I knew it was a book. I knew it was written by Hunter Thompson and that's really it. For some reason, I figured this was a completely fictional story, and in some ways it was, but more importantly is that it was mostly not fiction. Having read scraps here and there from Hey Rube, (HST's column on "Page 2" of ESPN.com) I was still only partially familiar with his work before he died.
Even though he couldn't fight back all the political commentary (and who would want him to?) in Hey Rube, it was much more light hearted than most of the stuff in The Great Shark Hunt and Songs of the Doomed which come closer to mixing journalism, horror, comedy, and political editorials than anything I've ever read. That sounds like a bass flavored milkshake on the first notion of mixing those things, but it plays out well and really makes what Fear and Loathing fails to communicate a real tragedy. More of my generation could use a dose of HST, drug use or no.
That said, this movie was preceded by my viewing of "Breakfast with Hunter," a documentary leading up to and during the filming of Fear and Loathing, and Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, a BBC documentary that follows Hunter and illustrator Ralph Steadman halfway across the country to Hollywood for no particular reason. While the documentaries didn't really have any sort of narrative, (nor does this review by now) it does give more insight into "the man, the myth, the legend."
That said, I'll finally make my point. Bill Murray comes closer to nailing the real mannerisms and speaking patterns of Thompson than Johnny Depp, which most people unfairly attribute to Depp with now real basis other than comparing the two performances without any groundwork laid to understand the origin of the character. Fear and Loathing is really a bastardization of HST in a definitive sense because Raoul Duke was meant to pry HST away from reality a bit and allow him more creative freedom. That was the essence of his definition of gonzo journalism. Most journalists cover a story, while a true gonzo journalist would have the wonderful problem of separating himself from the story, which makes for a more fictional pacing.
Fear and Loathing is Duke as portrayed by Depp as he portrayed Thompson. There was no real way that Depp could have portrayed Thompson because he was setting out to intertwine Thompson with Duke's dialog, which Hunter said all along was a character he made up to attribute quotes to, that no one else would say.
Movie Review: It's Not Weird Enough For Me
Summary: 3 Stars
The last time I saw this film was when I was seventeen during it's theatrical run in anticipation of a Bill Murray vehicle along the lines of "Meatballs" and I got something totally unexpected. I had never read an issue of "Rolling Stone" or the works of Hunter Thompson so I left the theatre scratching my head. Having since read some of Thompson's work and enjoyed the film version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" I can approach this film from a different perspective. The good news is that Murray perfectly captures the skewed anarchic spirit of Gonzo. The bad news is that director Art Linson does not. The direction is pretty flabby and conventional. It seems like Linson was trying to make the offbeat life of Thompson palatable to a mass audience and in the process drained whatever life there was in the story. That's not to say there was much of a story to ruin because the script by John Kaye is pretty mundane. I avoided making comparisons between Murray and Johnny Depp as Thompson because both made interesting choices in their performances. The same cannot be said for Peter Boyle(who get's top-billing over Murray?!) as Laszlo, Thompson's attorney. It's probably more in the way the character has been written here but Laszlo in this film is a fairly nondescript civil-rights attorney. Benicio Del Toro did wonders with the character in "Fear and Loathing". What else is interesting is that "Rolling Stone" magazine, whom Thompson wrote for, is given the fictitious monicker of "Blast" and that Jann Wenner, editor for the "Rolling Stone", is given a fictional name. Did neither the magazine or Wenner want their name attached to this project? Anyone curious about the exclusion of Jimi Hendrix songs that were available on the original film soundtrack and the VHS tape of this film is answered by director Terry Gilliam on his commentary track for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". According to Gilliam he attempted to obtain a Hendrix song for his film but could not get the rights from the administrators of his estate because they will not allow his songs to be used in films that depict drug use.