PressCuttings

Press Cuttings

Metro, Wednesday 21, 2005 Film Event The Wild Bunch (18) Running time 145 Mins

Re-scoring silent classics is all well and good. Re-scoring talkies that already have a perfectly good soundtrack is a different proposition altogether, however, especially when the music is as integral to the movie as Jerry Fielding's for Sam Peckinpah's magnificent 1969 western, The Wild Bunch. But the members of the Orchestra Cube are something of a wild bunch themselves, and don't give a plugged nickel for fans' sensitivities if there's the chance that something exciting might come out of it.

They'll have to work pretty hard to live up to the occasion. Peckinpah's ultra-violent tale of ageing, anachronistic outlaws staging their last stand in Mexico is a blistering onslaught on the senses (it's shown in its original form tonight; the re-scoring takes place tomorrow). Book-ended by two apocalyptic massacres, it's not a film for everyone. As usual with Peckinpah, it's often reprehensively macho and it's hard to justify the violence on the grounds that it just shows it how it is - it's too lovingly ritualised for that.

But this is passionate, personal film-making on a grand scale. With a grizzled but dignified cast that includes William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan, The Wild Bunch lingers in the memory long after the final burst of slo-mo carnage. Will Orchestra Cube manage to do the same?

Jim Burke

Tonight and tomorrow, The Cube Microplex, Dove Street South, off King Square, Bristol 8pm, £2 tonight, £3 tomorrow. Tel: 0117 907 4190 www.cubecinema.com

( See http://microplex.cubecinema.com/cgi-bin/diary/programme.pl#1982 )

Venue, 28th July 2006

Tumbling from the searing sunlight into the crepuscular underworld of the Blackout Marquee can feel like falling down a rabbit hole - or, given the five enormous video screens clustered above the stage, like slipping through the looking glass. But settle down a while and your sensibilities and eyes adjust to the surroundings: The Cube Orchestra providing a live score to a silent burlesque film therefore becomes the logical prelude to an improvisation session conducted through the medium of video by a man in a penguin suit; laptop-nihilist My Ambulance Is On Fire's sonic barrage of despair and fury inspires Ravey Davey arm pumping and fond thoughts of Nathan Barley.....