Bound for Glory

Rating:
Summary: Bound For Glory-First Rate!
Review: After spending 7 months engaged as music coordinator and playing the role of George Guthrie is this excellent Hal Ashby film, I was pleased to see how well it actually turned out. When one is behind the scenes in the making of a film, it is often difficult to try and follow a script, inasmuch, that so many scenes are shot out of sequence. This is a very fine film made by one of my closest friends, Hal Ashby. A great director with great actors. Carridine does a wonderful job, as does Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillion, and Randy Quaid...A first rate film for any class "A" film collector...Believe me, most of the dust in this motion picture was real..I coughed for month after the film wrapped...Hope you enjoy it... Guthrie Thomas

Rating:
Summary: I felt like I was Woodie Guthrie.
Review: Captures the times very well. David Carradine gives an absolutley great performance. Ronny Cox is very good, also. The music is simply outstanding. A movie to see over & over. One of the best I've ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful. Haunting music.
Review: Captures the times very well. David Carradine gives an absolutley great performance. Ronny Cox is very good, also. The music is simply outstanding. A movie to see over & over. One of the best I've ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: A treasured moment from my past!
Review: I had the pleasure of being an extra in the scenes filmed in Isleton, CA (the migrant camp scenes). It's impossible for me to watch this film and not see all the action taking place behind camera and between takes. David and Ron were wonderful, as was Randy Quaid. They had fun with this movie and with many of the principle group of extras. We spent a lot of time playing songs on guitars, harmonicas and anything else that could be used as an instrument. The movie is a must for any archive if you like documentaries or movies that teach a part of American history. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: The worse quality ever for a timeless masterpiece
Review: I have bought this dvd because I read other reviews and I understood that the quality of this edition was very good. This is one of my favourite movies and I was very unhappy with the original VHS I had. To my surprise I found out that the quality of the dvd was not better. The movie is presented in a letterbox format but the information that we are given (even on the dvd's case) is Widescreen!!! Try it on a good DLP projector and see yourself the difference... This is the worse quality I have ever seen. I don't know if I am more ungry with MGM or with the customers that wrote the reviews I read. If you are not able to appraise the real quality of a product do us a favour: keep your opinion for yourselves!

Rating:
Summary: I felt like I was Woodie Guthrie.
Review: I saw this movie in bits and each day I was more enthusiastic to watch the movie. This movie got me interested in the dust bowl and now I am studying it.

Rating:
Summary: Bad Soundtrack Mars Biopic of Folk Music Legend
Review: One of the best American filmmakers of the 1970's was Hal Ashby who looked at the world through the eyes of oddball characters like Harold and Maude and Chauncey Gardner from Being There. But this is also the filmmaker who gave us the allegorical Coming Home, and Bound for Glory is a film in that vein. Ashby's work with the picture is masterful, Haskel Wexler's cinematography is wonderfully stylistic moving from soft steamy focus to crystal clear images, and David Carradine was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Woody Guthrie. So what's wrong? The transfer on the DVD audio track is horrible with rumblings, hisses, and portions of the film where dialogue is inaudible moving from heavy bass to high treble. Does anybody bother to look at a print of a film before it's mass produced? This movie is not that old and I'm sure a better job could have been done on the audio tracks. Shame on you, M-G-M! You've caused both Ashby and Guthrie to roll over in their graves.

Rating:
Summary: Bad Soundtrack Mars Biopic of Folk Music Legend
Review: One of the best American filmmakers of the 1970's was Hal Ashby who looked at the world through the eyes of oddball characters like Harold and Maude and Chauncey Gardner from Being There. But this is also the filmmaker who gave us the allegorical Coming Home, and Bound for Glory is a film in that vein. Ashby's work with the picture is masterful, Haskel Wexler's cinematography is wonderfully stylistic moving from soft steamy focus to crystal clear images, and David Carradine was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Woody Guthrie. So what's wrong? The transfer on the DVD audio track is horrible with rumblings, hisses, and portions of the film where dialogue is inaudible moving from heavy bass to high treble. Does anybody bother to look at a print of a film before it's mass produced? This movie is not that old and I'm sure a better job could have been done on the audio tracks. Shame on you, M-G-M! You've caused both Ashby and Guthrie to roll over in their graves.

Rating:
Summary: INSIDE BOUND FOR GLORY
Review: This film is an intimate veiw of dust bowl Americana, and the life of a folk music Icon.The best performance to date from David Carradine. A visual jewel,filmed in California's San Joaquin Valley,by cinematographer Haskel Wexler. First film to use the Steadycam,(floating camera mount). Incredible dust bowl scene created with effects. The music reflects the mind of a man who see's the struggles of the people and the freedom of the soul through his music. Look for Mary Kay Place in her first movie role. Also, first film for Randy Quiad. A real handcrafted film. I shoud know,I was Carradines' stand-in.

Rating:
Summary: SOUNDTRACK WAS FINE.
Review: Unfortunately, for months I was frightened away from purchasing this movie, because one Amazon reviewer a year ago said the DVD soundtrack was such a bad transfer it was difficult to hear the dialog at certain points. Finally I decided I wanted to see this classic film so bad, I'd risk the bad sound. To my surprise and delight, I discovered no problem at all with the sound -- and I'm usually ultra-critical of fuzzy sound, which normally drives me up the wall. If, in fact, there was any sound problem on early prints of the DVD version, it appears to have now been corrected in the later prints. The viewer discovers belatedly, at the end of one music track, that it was tinny-sounding on purpose, because one of the characters was listening on an old-fashioned wind-up phonograph -- a nuance easy to miss if you blinked. In other places, the soundtrack seems to have utilized less-than-perfect, early-day recordings of Guthrie himself, which helps rather than hinders the impact. True, the soundtrack technology in this 1976 movie is not up to modern-day Dolby Surround Sound standards -- but it's rather good for a 25-year-old soundtrack. So relax, and enjoy the Academy Award-winning Depression Era photography of Haskel Wexler that will make you feel you've stepped into a Walker Evans photograph of 1936 Dust Bowl refugees fleeing to the supposed golden land of California. Almost every scene is suitable for framing. Not to be missed. A "must buy" for collectors.