The Importance Of A Good Car

Wouldn't you know it.

I finally get digital cable installed in the house, which means I finally get access to all these killer movie channels that I've never seen except at my parents' place. And I finally get to Tivo Wise Blood, which has been on my Holy Grail list for Yod knows how many years, having only seen it a few times back around 1996 or so when Randy kept gushing about it, insisting that we rent it from the Naro video store or... gosh, I don't remember how Joe and I managed to see it back then. Either way, our old second-generation VHS recording got lost in various moving shuffles and I've been hunting high and low ever since, so color me stoked to possess the ability to recording it straight off the telly, to have it in my sweaty little mitts once again.

Of course, as fate would have it, Criterion would release the film on DVD two weeks ago.

Although I wish the Criterion edition had some audio commentaries by, well, just about anyone (John Huston gets a pass, understandably) it's still amazing to have this fabulous flick in my possession on such a luscious format. I used to have the above poster hanging on the back of my bedroom door in my old apartment in Norfolk for about two years before I had to move, and it tore coming off in the process. But Criterion always comes with those handy booklets that I love, and I had no idea the movie was filmed in Macon, Georgia because Joe and Randy and I used to swear the town in the film looked just like downtown Suffolk, Virginia (say nothing of its denizens). But holy smokes, the movie trailer included has to be one of the worst, most shoddily pasted together botch-job I've seen outside of a grindhouse theater. Then again by completely contradicting the tone of the actual movie, it does come off as surreal as the spirit of the picture itself: