Slacker - Criterion (1 Viewer)

[Rick Deschaine]

Went to my local B & M store today and found
Slacker - The Criterion Collection. In fact there were about 4 copies there.

Not sure of this, but I thought that it came out next week, not today?

Pretty cool if so.

later, Rick

 

[MichaelPR]

Digital eyes has it comingt out as of today while other places i have seen on line have it coming next week.

 

[Ted Todorov]

My local street date breakers often have Criterions more than a week in advance. I think that Criterion ships to retailers pretty early.

Ted

 

[Jon Martin]

Was it Best Buy? They seemed to have released it early. Guess they didn't know about the delay.

Great disc. Found it yesterday as well. Will be hard to beat for the best DVD of the year, for me at least.

It has SLACKER (with 3 commentaries) and Linklater's earlier Super 8 film IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN TO PLOW BY READING BOOKS (with commentary). PLOW is a great film, probably his second best after SLACKER. Glad it is finally on DVD.

All sorts of extras, 30 minutes of deleted scenes, home movie footage of production, audition videos. A film about one of the locations and another short by Linklater, made in the mid 80's about an Austin music festival.

Also included is a little paperback book. If you have the SLACKER production book, it isn't anything new as most of the photos and graphics are from that. But it is a nice extra.

Anyway, great disc.

 

[Henry Gale]

From this weeks Austin Chronicle
Slacker
Criterion Collection, $39.95
"I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it."

– Charles Gunning, as Hitchhiker Awaiting "True Call" in Slacker

It's been 14 years in the making, but the film that planted Austin on the topography of the national consciousness has finally arrived on DVD in an appropriately, gloriously bells 'n' whistles package from the Criterion Collection, in an equally gorgeous package courtesy of local design guru Marc English of Marc English Design.

Slacker has, in the years since its 1991 release, become a genuine cinematic watershed event: Richard Linklater's rambling story of Austin life at the tail end of the first Bush reign is now a snapshot of a time and place no longer so easy to discern. There was no need for the rallying cri de coeur "Keep Austin Weird!" in '91: One look at Slacker and you knew the city was plenty weird already; the mad parade of misfits and post-collegiate denizens of the Drag that wandered in and out of frame, discoursing at length about whatever struck their pleasingly warped fancies, was as purely Austin as could be. The legacy of the cosmic cowboys and the Armadillo and Janis and JFRNKLN seeped into Austin's streets – and into Linklater's film – like rainwater pooling inside statuary, distorting it from within, remaking itself in its own anti-image with Glass Eye and Woodshock and Liberty Lunch. That was then, however, and now Les Amis is gone, a Starbucks in its stead, Mad Dog & Beans is a parking lot, and Madonna's Madge and penning kiddie lit. Charles Gunning, Louis Mackey, D. Montgomery, and others exist only in our memories.

Now the term "slacker" is a pejorative. Back then, it was a badge of honor.

As with any Criterion DVD, the film itself is only half the story, or, in this case, let's say an eighth or so. Wrapped around Slacker is, among many other items, Linklater's other film – his first, 1988's minimalist road epic It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books; a history of the Austin Film Society told through its fliers; a grief-and-joy-inducing 10-minute trailer for Nancy Higgins' documentary on the greatest Parisian cafe never in Paris, Viva Les Amis; a Linklater/Lee Daniel-lensed minidoc on the acid-drenched 1985 Woodshock festival; essays and reminiscences galore; and enough enlightening, interesting, and occasionally hilarious commentary tracks to steal a weekend or two from your life and replace it with, finally, something approaching a quiet glory.

All of this swaddled in English's immensely complementary design and a 68-page booklet (including essays by John Pierson, Ron Rosenbaum, Chris Walters, Michael Barker, and Monte Hellman) that echoes the narrative tropes of the film like an expansive mirror.

Linklater has gone on to be one of the most visionary directors of our time: part Bresson, part Fassbinder, all of his heroes (and ours) rolled into one Austinite with a dead-bang eye and a true ear. Slacker has, rightfully and justly, become a cult film of enduring significance. There's still no template for living life, just as there was no template for Slacker, and that's just as it should be.

Here's to oblique strategizing.

(And Les Amis.)

Richard Linklater will sign copies of the Criterion Collection's Slacker at Waterloo Records on Friday, Sept. 24, at 5pm.

 

[John@K]

Just ordered this from Digital Eyes today and can't wait to get it. It's been a long time since I saw this movie, and having lived there while it was being filmed, it's always cool to see your old stomping grounds on film.

 

[Henry Gale]

"Viva Les Amis"....all 50 minutes of it, premiered this week in Austin.
But, I really revived this thread for this priceless bit of news which had to go in the Slacker thread.

NEW YORK - Online casino Golden Palace has spilled $5,001 for Britney Spears’ alleged home pregnancy test.

“It’s hard to put a price on Britney Spears’ urine,” Golden Palace spokesman Drew Black told The Associated Press Wednesday.

 

[Rich Malloy]

Posting that news here... inspired.