Safari

Rolling in the aisles
First saw this on Air France flight in 2009 and had us rolling in the aisles. So much so that the steward came along to see what movie was causing the raucous laughter. Wish it was easily accessible in the USA.





Click to Editorial Reviews

The Booby Trap

Entertaining
Very satisfied with the purchase but was lost that they don't have seasons 3 and 4 since I have missed them. Then this season started where I had no clue. Wish other seasons were available.

I can't get enough
I love this couple and Love following their journey. This episode of the birth of Duke is the sweetest yet.

LOVE!
Love this couple, love em, love em! So inspiring and entertaining to walk beside on their journey! Fun show! Start from beginning if you can!

Click to Editorial Reviews

Falstaff

Novità
The newest addition to a crowded and distinguished DVD field for Verdi's final (greatest?) opera comes from Glyndebourne 2009. Richard Jones's production places the action in the England of the 1940s. Jones recently received brickbats for a severely updated Munich LOHENGRIN (Decca), in which Lohengrin wears a T-shirt and track pants. The temporal facelift given FALSTAFF is inoffensive, although it fails one test: the update leads nowhere that justifies it, so it seems novelty for its own sake. Say what you will about Robert Carsen's Salzburg ROSENKAVALIER (recently reissued by Arthaus; see review), but Carsen followed through on his impulse. There proved to be a rationale for his transplanting the opera to the Vienna of just prior to WW1, and his production could not have worked in the Vienna of another period, whether the 1740s (as prescribed by Strauss and von Hofmannsthal) or the 2000s. Jones's FALSTAFF is a more arbitrary affair. The Blitz does not begin in the Windsor Park scene,...





Click to Editorial Reviews

Finding Forrester

A HIGHLY ABSORBING, WELL ACTED FILM...
This is a heartwarming movie with fine performances by Sean Connery, newcomer Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Nouri, and Anna Pacquin. Well directed by Gus Van Sant, the film revolves around the two main characters, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, and sixteen year old Kamal, played by Rob Brown.

William Forrester is a writer who, battling his own inner demons, has remained reclusive after writing a Pulitzer Prize winning novel some forty odd years earlier. Living alone in a changing neighborhood in the Bronx, he makes the acquaintance of Kamal, an intellectually gifted inner city kid, who plays street basketball, loves to write, and does both well.

A mentoring relationship springs between the two. Under Forrester's secret tutorship, Kamal blossoms. When Kamal's scholastic test scores come to the attention of a local prep school, school officials offer him a scholarship to attend and, if he chooses to do so, play basketball on the school team. The school also...

You've found him
Here is another well done off-the-mainstream movie that Hollywood decides to surprise us with every so often. It is a film which examines a curious friendship which is forged between a young black youth (Jamal, played by Rob Brown) and an aging, reclusive white author (William Forrester, played by Sean Connery).

The movie invokes the directorial talents of Gus Van Sant, and there are a few obvious parallels between it and "Good Will Hunting," also directed by Van Sant. To SOME extent, Jamal is the liberal arts counterpart to the math/science extraordinaire that Matt Damon played in "Hunting." However, while he is precocious, Jamal is not quite the "giant among giants" type of genius depicted in Damon's persona.

However, what Jamal is is a young, gifted youth who has a whole lot of potential. The one thing he lacked all his life was intellectual direction. He is well-read, but never had any one to help him hone his writing skills. After stumbling...

Finding Forrester - Truly inspirational!
In "Finding Forrester" you can find no better story! Finding Forrester is just a wonderful, melodramatic tale that is told from the heart and is quite uplifting. Sean Connery gives a stunning performance as an agoraphobic man devastated by personal loss. Newcomer Rob Brown's performance as an extremely intelligent, but held back by his surroundings youth is nothing less than outstanding and Anna Paquin whose performance is right on with her usual high standards.

The premise: MINOR SPOILER

The main character played by Rob Brown is an extraordinarily intelligent sixteen year old living in the South Bronx. As a dare, he is challenged to sneak into "the man in the window's" home and bring something out. Connery scares him out of his home, causing him to leave behind his book bag with all of his stories in it. After critiquing all of his work, Connery drops his book bag down on the street for him to recover. What follows from this point is the development of an unlikely...

Click to Editorial Reviews

Easy Living

A fallen champion
Of all the films of Jacques Tourneur, directed after the war, this film is one of my most misunderstood. Set in the world of American footbal, the film engages in a reflection on the sport and the notion of stardom. Through the course of a champion,(superb Victor Mature), Tourneur engages in critical reflection on the American way of life, the concept of social success. A must see.

Where was the Hays office when we needed it? (And I'm not into censorship)
Victor Mature once quipped, "I'm not an actor--and I've got the movies to prove it." This is a poor soap opera disguised as a sports picture. From its oh-so-ironic title to the wooden performances of most everyone involved, this is a dud, about a self-loathing, each-other-loathing couple who can't cope with the loss of their careers. It stops being a dud at the end, when Vic's character gives up hitting opponents on the field and starts hitting his wife to compensate--then it goes from dud to disgusting. A waste of film, and also of Lucille Ball, who has a thankless role as the team's secretary and implied slut. This is the worst type of misogyny, as the guys are degraded too.



Click to Editorial Reviews

Another Earth

Tragic convergence of lonely orbits
I'm a cantankerous old goat, rarely moved to hyperbole, but I was simply enthralled by this film: totally absorbed throughout, except when I found myself chuckling giddily at the realisation I was watching a profoundly brilliant piece of cinema. The last time I had that sensation was in 1991 when I saw Silence of the Lambs. Another Earth is an utterly different film, but in its own way it offers, just as completely, everything that this medium of film promises and so rarely delivers.

In Another Earth, a new planet appears, close by, in the sky. In fact, it is another Earth, identical to our own. Thereafter, Earth II precipitates, frames and propels a delicate and desolate gravitational attraction between two irreparably damaged people. Irreparably damaged because the only thing which will heal them is the only thing that cannot: each other. Another Earth explores that relationship and, with the aid of the planet-sized metaphor, the ever-present path-dependency of our short,...

Very Insightful
This movie is very well done. No 3-D aliens and nothing exploded. Very thoughtful dialog and great use of the Science Fiction genre to tell a very human story. William Mapother (probably best known as "Ethan" in the seies "Lost") and Brit Marling (who has an economics degree from Georgetown an looks very comfortable playing the "smart girl" role)are very good. Kids will find this boring as will people that need helicopters in every other scene to keep their attention. But if you want to view deep characters in an interesting story, this is a jackpot. I gave this 4 stars but I'd call it a 4+.

Should have done much better at the box office
Why didn't this film do better at the box office? Was it the marketing or, was it was just too cerebral for most of the movie going public. Perhaps the trailer gave the impression of unremitting and unrewarded suffering. In the last case, be assured that there is true and well deserved redemption that comes with a twist at the end. Whatever the problem was, the fault was not the film. But, it prevented this movie from drawing an audience in numbers it should have. And that is a shame. Its failure at the box office will further dampen the spirits and limit the opportunities of truly original film makers. Don't let this happen. Buy this movie and reward intelligent, creative and thought provoking films that will provide a welcome relief to the normal mindless Hollywood fare.

Click to Editorial Reviews

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

It don't get much better
I was NOT prepared for this dvd. Diffidently (after all, what does Madrid know about Weill?), I ordered it simply to have another copy of MAHOGANNY, a work I adore.

Can you spell "schmuck"? That's what I was calling myself ten minutes into the performance. It is, simply, the most intelligent production of this "opera" I have seen (pray, be not impressed; I've seen only three others, but I've re-seen them many times).

Conducting: one couldn't wish for better. The cast: not one dud amoung them, not a one (check out Jenny's trill in "Moon of Alabama" - it is to swoon). The mise en scene? Oh, man, don't get me started. It's like a Broadway show; it's like the best of contemporary opera; it's like the old 60's days of the Living Theater. Yet it's too something "also" on which right now I can't put my finger. To borrow a phrase from Talulah B, it's a goddamn miracle. The chorus? Spot on.

Underlying all is the translation of Brecht's libretto into...

great
If you like Weill and Brecht it will be hard not to like this. I'm not terribly critical. I think this is a great performance of exciting music.

Magnificent
Like another reviewer, I was hesitant about a production that was not sung in the original German. Silly, silly me. This is a great production, complete with a couple of surprises. The singing is superb and the staging ingenious. I really love this.

Click to Editorial Reviews