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Woe to Live On

The book Woe to Live On was made into the movie Ride With the Devil.

Which one did you like better, the book or the movie?  There are 8 votes for the book, and 8 votes for the movie.

Book details for Woe to Live On

Woe to Live On was written by Daniel Woodrell. The book was published in 1987 by No Exit Press. More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

 

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Movie details for Ride With the Devil

The movie was released in 1999 and directed by Ang Lee, who also directed Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Ice Storm (1997) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). Ride With the Devil was produced by Universal Studios. More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com.

Actors on this movie include Tobey Maguire, Jeremy W. Auman, Scott C. Sener, Skeet Ulrich, Glenn Q. Pierce, Kathleen Warfel, David Darlow, Zan McLeod, John Whelan (III), Roger Landes, Jeffrey Dover, Tyler Johnson, Kelly Werts, Michael W. Nash, John Judd (II), Don Shanks, Jay Thorson, Dean Vivian, Cheryl Weaver and James Caviezel.

 

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Great period pictures make you feel as if you've stepped into another era, heard its language, breathed its spirit, and come away with a fresh perspective on that time as well as your own. Ride with the Devil is one of those special films--why wasn't i... Read More
Great period pictures make you feel as if you've stepped into another era, heard its language, breathed its spirit, and come away with a fresh perspective on that time as well as your own. Ride with the Devil is one of those special films--why wasn't it more widely embraced by reviewers and filmgoers? Did it rely too much on our patience for slow accumulation of unforced rhythms and meanings (as opposed to The Patriot, which "moved" audiences with cattle-prod simplicity and manipulation)? Ride with the Devil--smart, handsome, tenderly awed by how individual lives get ambushed by history--is ripe for rediscovery.

The Civil War of battlefields and plantation houses is nowhere to be seen here. Instead we see the war as an improvised and largely blundering but very bloody feud among neighbors in the border state of Missouri. In this bucolic war zone--more than a little reminiscent of the Balkans in the late 1990s--the Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility) traces the destinies of several young Southern bushwhackers (guerrilla fighters) as they experience violence, the seasons, and different kinds of love. Skeet Ulrich draws the aristocratic glamour role (and top billing), but he's overshadowed by Tobey Maguire as a first-generation American, the magnificent Jeffrey Wright (a shameful oversight at Oscar time) as a freed slave fighting beside his former master, and singer Jewel in a very natural acting debut as the young widow who graces all their lives. The title The Birth of a Nation was already taken, but by the end of this movie you feel it would have applied here. -- Richard T. Jameson