Walk The Line late pass
LaserWolf
Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
Finally made it to the dollar theaters, so I saw it last week. I didn't want to go, but so many people who I respect liked it.I'm a Johnny Cash fan, and while I cheered and cried at times, I really didn't like it.Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that Cash was ever a little boy crying for his mommy. (I'm not talking about the childhood Cash, I'm talking about the drunken I-can't-take-care-of-myself Cash.)I've seen plenty of old Cash footage and I've never seen him clown, dance and mug. Sickening.Cash sings better than Phoenix, why couldn't they have him lip sync?My sister says it's not fair to compare anything to Ray, but... I never got the feeling that this is what it was like to be there. This is what it was like when the music was being created. Ray gave me that feel. Ray had detail like Tom Dowd in the background. Cash didn't get that. I'm not sure, but I don't think they got the right players and chronology for the Tennessee 2 & 3. Sam Phillips was good.The out of control drug addict Cash felt more like John Bulushi than Cash to me.Best scene was when AP Carter put the shotgun on Cash's connection. I thought he was going to pull a Cheney on his ass.I think the movie was for people who don't really like Cash or country music.I used to be a fan of music bio flicks, but maybe Jammie Fox ruined them for me.I think Cash, even drunken young and drug addicted, was a man who had strong beliefs and convictions who knew what he was doing. (Accept for Ballad Of A Teenage Queen, his second hit and thankfully missing from the film.)What you say?Dan
Comments
****PERVERTED THREAD HIJACK!!!****
So you guys know about that Savage Love sex columnist who created a new sex term for the homosexual-hating Senator Rick Santorum, right?
Well, I think he should create a new one for Cheney. You know, something that has to do with accidentally "shooting" someone.
Herm
P.S. Sorry, D*n!!!
And I went into the movie hoping for the best after all the hype.
I did enjoy the singing though. Definitely better than a lip-sync.
What I want to know is...why would we want a soundtrack album of Phoenix-sings-Cash when Columbia is reissuing the hell out of Cash's old stuff?. Is the American public THAT dumb?
Agreed. Now see, I liked the flick, but this is where you and I think the same way.
You notice how the scriptwriters almost tried to make people forget that Cash was a country singer at all?
To wit:
(a) At one point, Cash's dad calls his son something like "a pill-popping rock star."
(b) In a fifties scene, they have Cash following a steamy Jerry Lee Lewis set with one of his more uptempo tunes, "Get Rhythm." He's hopping all around the stage like he's Elvis or Billy Lee Riley or any of the other more rock-oriented Sun acts. Like my friend Jason sez, you see they didn't have him standing stock still singing "Ballad Of A Teenage Queen."
(c) When J.C. is all set to record a live album at Folsom Prison, somebody at the record label is trying to talk him out of it. "But, Johnny - the Byrds are doing country-rock, Bob Dylan's gone electric, and here you are recording an album at a prison!" They didn't compare him to any of the country singers on Columbia, notice that? They didn't tell him to add strings like Ray Price, they looked at him in the same light as Dylan and the Byrds (which isn't a bad thing, mind you).
Now, even in the fifties and sixties, Johnny Cash had a minor rep with rock fans, and it's kinda flattering that Johnny sold so many records that he was compared to the label's non-country acts, but even so...these three scenes appear to be historical revisionism...like they're trying to play up to the punk audiences who bought his Rick Rubin-produced albums on American.
Apart from that, I liked the movie, and whoever played Luther Perkins got it right. Ever see J.C.'s TV appearances with the Tennessee Two? Luther always had this paranoid glance, like he wanted to be somewhere else, and the guy playing him in Walk The Line had that one dead to rights.
i liked aspects of the movie and others i didnt...
i thought having alot of the june / jonny dynamic played ou thru there songs was well done and much better than endless scenes of domestic strife.
the singing irked me a bit
reese's voice was very very strong.. better than june's almost (well less ragged "old lady" sounding than june's anyway)
phoenix was pretty week in the vocals
its weird from some angles he looked EERILY like johnny and then from others he had no resemblace whatsoever
we paused the movie and the ACTUAL folsom prison footage was on the music station... comparing the two side by side it was SHOCKING.. he really actually didnt look anything like johny or sound anything like him either.. cash is much more bloated and creepy looking, as well as just plain old looking whereas joaquin was like the airbrushed version.
as for cash clowning on stage?
man watchign this ACTUAL folsom footage i think they got that part accurate. .his stage moves were downrigght BIZARRE... wacky even.. and he certainly wasnt standing still.. he was pretty dang goofey.
as for the movie downplaying the country element.. i dont really buy that.. but listening to the msic it definatly gave you that bygone era kinda feeling.. the music is SOOOOOO simplistic... the way his band holds the groove at the begining folsom section pretty much sums up the music in the entire music.. two note country vamps AD NAUSEUM.
makes me remember why im bored to tears by soooo much of country music...
did anybody else find the cheap shots against elvis slightly unnessary? first they call him a POON hound or something then when johnny takes his first pills they almost stage it as if elvis got him hooked on em.
Simple, but it goes with the territory. This isn't the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and I wouldn't judge by those standards.
To quote myself from the Oscars thread:
I wanted to like the film, but it never cohered in my opinion.
JRoot
Looking at her during the scenes from the sixties, if they ever decide to do a Jeannie C. Riley biopic, she is SO there.
June and Johnny's love story is a good. No doubt, she saved him. The movie tells that story well, and Resse does a good job.
In the Johnny Cash movie The Man and His Music, there is a prision scene. The Carter family comes out and June talks to the crowd. She tells them this is as sexy as they are going to get. One guy in the front row is clearly looking up her mini skirt. Then she tells them to "get your hands out of each others pocket".
I went home and watched some really Cash footage to get the taste out of my mouth. I assure you Phoenix was weak. For one thing, Johnny can hit those bass notes.
Please recommend a good Cash biography. I have the Carter family history that came out recently on my reading list.
Dan
"...still, I'd have to say my all time favorite book is 'Cash' by Johnny Cash."
I've quit reading autobios. They tend to be inaccurate and self agrandizing. I perfer a well researched bio along the lines of the Billy Strayhorn and Sam Cooke books.
I haven't given up on autobios, but I've noticed that if it's written by the subject, it focuses on the life and the gossip. If it's written by an outside biographer, then it deals with the music (even after the subject is past their prime). A good example of this is Ray Charles - Michael Lydon's bio has some choice gossip PLUS detailed reviews of the music well after he stopped selling records. On the other hand, Ray's OWN book (from '78) ends after his 1964 drug bust. Well, the book doesn't really END, but since he'd already become an institution by then and had nothing to prove anymore, his post-'64 accomplishments are kinda glossed over.
I forget which prison album it was, but on one of them, no sooner does Johnny introduce June than the drummer starts playing a striptease beat and the crowd starts hooting...naturally we can't see what June was doing, but just the fact that those inmates probably hadn't SEEN a woman in a minute was enough; she could have been standing stock still in a potato sack and got the same reaction.