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Miramax
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (What makes films great!) 『Character development at it's best. Written and on the screen. It draws audiences to see it and big name talent to be in it.』
(Good will hunting by Brandon) 『I don't have to say how good this movie was. I could watch it all the time and never get tired of it.』
(Inspirational and Entertaining Drama) 『After all these years, it's still hard to believe that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote this screenplay. The Collector's Series edition has a commentary with Ben and Matt, where they talk about the genesis of the movie and how the screenplay changed from its inception to the final film cut. Every actor involved turns in brilliant performances--the casting of Robin Williams and Minnie Driver can't be overstated. "Good Will Hunting" is one inspirational drama that isn't sappy or ridiculously overwrought.』
(Einstein, Shakespeare--and Who???) 『Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is an MIT janitor and mathematical genius with a major attachment and abuse reactive disorders (though the film doesn't identify the latter). After solving an "impossible" math problem Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) chalked on the board outside his classroom, the goodly pedant attends Hunting's latest arraignment for fighting, and convinces a skeptical judge that he can salvage the boy's otherwise futile life.
After false starts with several "master" psychologists whom Hunting easily outwits, Lambeau approaches Sean McGuire (Robin Williams). Lambeau figures, who better to help the boy than his eclectic former college roommate, like Hunting a tough-skinned "Southie" (South Boston native)?
Thus begins Hunting's frequent forays into Cambridge to "study" with Lambeau and his mathematical colleagues, whom he usually humiliates by solving their toughest problems in the blink of an eye.
In one clever scene, Hunting takes his best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) and two other Southie sidekicks to a Cambridge bar. Chuckie tries to impress Harvard student Skylar (Minnie Driver). A self-satisfied graduate student prig interrupts, and tries embarrassing Chuck to captivate Skylar. That backfires when Hunting steps in. He has also apparently read and memorized every book ever written. The prig slinks away in shame. As Hunting and friends depart, Skylar approaches and hands him her number.
As another reviewer notes, Good Will Hunting is good and original--but where good, is not original and where original, is not good. I'd agree that the film nicely portrays lower class Boston Irish life, and the strange match between a high class orphan (and upper-class) Harvard woman and a brilliant street tough, whose early life was marred by constant physical abuse. The acting in general is very strong, with Robin Williams (as always) at the head of the class.
But the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck screenplay, while often fine and riveting, is also at times completely naïve. As young actors before this film gave them their first break, Damon and Affleck bought into ahistorical propaganda and never let go. Thus in one session with McGuire, Hunting again spews forth his mastery of great literature and science, but like an otherwise unread cultist ranks Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky with Shakespeare. Utterly ballsy---and too stupid.
If the math is inaccurate, so what. That's not a key point of this film.
But it is extremely unfortunate that the movie portrays a sudden breakthrough when Hunting finally gets down to talking to McGuire about the serial beatings he suffered as a child. Everyone even slightly familiar with psychological therapy knows this is genuinely incredible (as in not believable). Genius or not, no patient who experienced such major early life traumas could achieve such complete healing after only a few months of counseling. This might make pleasant fiction. But given the seriousness of the film's central theme, it dangerously suggests the impossible is possible and could give some viewers false hope.
--Alyssa A. Lappen』
(Original and touching) 『Where do you start with such a wonderfully crafted story with an amazing cast.
A janitor (Matt Damon) at a college is discovered to be mathematically gifted by a highly acclaimed mathmetician at the college and is pressed to use his talent.
But Matt fights the approach because he's afraid of the unknown and doesn't want to leave his comfort zone of his friends, and unchallenging job. After fighting and kicking he finally gives in and slowly begins to break down his walls to experience the gift he has never used.
No one could have been better than Matt Damon. He takes the role on as if he truly was the character who was brought up in abusive foster homes and has built walls around his insecurities.
I loved to watch him. I believed him. And Minnie Driver as his girlfriend is captivating.
It's refreshing to see the very talented Robin Williams in a more serious role.』 『A true motion picture phenomenon, this triumphant story was nominated for 9 Academy Awards(R) -- winning Oscars for Robin Williams (Best Supporting Actor) and hot newcomers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (Best Original Screenplay). The most brilliant mind at America's top university isn't a student ... he's the kid who cleans the floors! Will Hunting (Damon) is a headstrong, working-class genius who's failing the lessons of life. After one too many run-ins with the law, Will's last chance is a psychology professor (Williams), who might be the only man who can reach him! With acclaimed performances from Academy Award(R)-nominee Minnie Driver (GROSSE POINTE BLANK) and Ben Affleck (ARMAGEDDON) -- you'll find GOOD WILL HUNTING a powerful and unforgettable movie experience!』 『Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hitGood Will Huntingtriumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho,Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women's melodrama in the '30s and '40s: He's crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.
Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet math genius who ignores his gift in favor of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgård). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor's former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past, and as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film's beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck's clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection andfeeling for one another.--Dave McCoy』
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Viz Video
Usually ships in 24 hours 『831: ISLAND TIME
832: LIKE A MEOWTH TO A FLAME
833: SAVED BY THE BELDUM
834: FROM BRAGS TO RICHES
835: SHOCKS AND BONDS
The action is non-stop as Ash and his friends battle their way to the Hoenn League! On the way they face powerful whirlpools and not-so-powerful Team Rocket tricks, but with their trusty Pokémon at their side, they can't lose--can they?』
Kakaku：2998 saved$29.98
Goldhill Home Media
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (One of Britain's best) 『This is not, as one reviewer describes it, a black comedy. Instead, it is a splendid three-part television program about a complete bounder, the sort of "cad" film that George Sanders might have starred in earlier. The acting is marvelous--right down to the smallest roles, such as the maid and the hotel clerk. Nigel Havers is perfect, as are Rosemary Leach and Bernard Hepton. This is television the way it used to be on BBC before the Huns took over. I noticed one small cut, however, in the sex scene between Havers and Leach, a moment of complete disgust on the face of the younger man. Perhaps the contemporary editors thought that the facial expression was politically incorrect. In any case, this is an excellent production, equal to Havers' performance in Sleepers.』
("The Charmer" is one you won't want to miss) 『It's rare that a program makes you root for the villain and despise the "good guys", if there are any good guys in this wonderful production, but "The Charmer" does just that.
Nigel Havers plays Ralph Gorse, a handsome immoral man who has one goal in life, to rise above his station. This series takes place in the 1930's, when England as indeed most places, was still very class conscious. Unless you came from a good family, which meant old money, not money coming from "trade" like Ralph's father-in-law, it was very difficult if not impossible to become one of the beautiful people.
Ralph desperately wants to live in the same world as one of his conquests, a young Fiona Fullerton as the wild socialite, Clarice Mannor, who he comes the closest to having any kind of feelings for. To get into this world however, takes money, so he takes advantage (in more ways than one) of a dowdy middle-aged Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, played wonderfully by Rosemary Leach. Plumleigh-Bruce is a basically petty and selfish woman who richly deserves everything she gets in this story. The worst of the lot as far as petty and selfish goes to Bernard Hepton's Donald Stimpson, a perfectly horrible man in every way. Old, ugly and wearing coke bottle glasses, he is truly a viscous little man. Even after the money that was conned out of Joan is returned to her, he just will not let it go. He will not rest until he sees Ralph destroyed. This, he does, but at no small cost to himself. In the end he finds he's won the battle, but lost the war. Hepton is so good in this role, I hated his guts by the time it was over, a sure sign of great acting.
There are really no winners in this six-part drama, each character ends up miserable in their own way in the end, but for me at least, even with all the horrible things he did, I couldn't help but hope that Ralph had gotten away with it. He was a charmer indeed.』
(A charming black comedy with a charming cad. Fine performances by Nigel Havers, Bernard Hepton and Rosemary Leach) 『"Not too tight, old boy," says Ralph Gorse at the end of The Charmer. We've spent nearly 312 minutes leading up to this point. They are 312 well spent minutes.
Gorse (Nigel Havers) is a charming English con man in the early Thirties. He lives by his amoral wits, seducing, enticing and working the side deals. He wants everything he isn't and everything he hasn't. Eventually he works his way up to murder. The Charmer, a wonderful Masterpiece Theater presentation now twenty years old, maintains every bit of its queasy allure, thanks in large part to Havers, to Rosemary Leach and to Bernard Hepton. Leach plays Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, a somewhat frumpy upper-middle class, snobbish Englishwoman, a widow who attracts Gorse's attention because of her property and her income. Hepton plays Donald Stimpson, a man who wears round, thick eyeglasses, has a rather silly mustache and is a property broker. He is a long-time friend and wooer of Joan, and he also fancies a marriage to her, to her income and to her property. The idea of a regular bit of the old bed springs is attractive to Stimpson, too. When Gorse meets Donald and, through him, Joan, the main pieces in this sly, malicious and self-serving game come into play.
In the course of this six-part series we will watch Gorse woo and manipulate, empty bank accounts, impregnate, cause a fire with fatal results, seduce, and murder. Following his trail like a middle-aged, self-serving angel of retribution is Donald. And Donald pulls along in his wake Joan, a woman who knows she was had and scorned, who still loves her Rafe but has Donald whispering to her that Rafe must be held accountable. Donald, of course, would like nothing better than to see Gorse brought down, partly because he detests Gorse and partly because he is sure that will be the path back to Joan's heart, bed and finances.
Is there anyone likable in this drama? Not really, and that's so satisfying. It is the ability of Gorse, Joan and Donald to ignore their real motives and fail to hide their real moral characters from us that gives us so much pleasure. By the end of the drama, Gorse, Joan and Donald each in their own way find a comeuppance that allows us to think our own upright moral characters might even be real.
Nigel Havers has a particularly tough job giving us the picture of Ralph Gorse. Havers must show us what a heel the man is, yet he also must make us see Gorse's charm. We know when Gorse is thinking up some disreputable betrayal for his own benefit. We can see how he is justifying a death. Havers also is able to show us how seductive, how pleasant, how companionable Gorse can be when he wants to. Rosemary Leach gives us a wonderful portrayal of a singularly unlikable, self-deluding woman who wants to be loved, who flutters at Gorse's attentions, who rather likes Donald's insistent courting and who thinks nothing of giving her young Irish maid condescending disdain. And last, we have Bernard Hepton, in my view one of the best of Britain's skilled character actors. With those thick glasses and that mustache, Hepton turns Donald Stimpson into a figure of slightly pompous amusement for us; that is, until we begin to realize just how resentful Stimpson is becoming, and how relentless he is in the pursuit of bringing down Gorse. Hepton turns Stimpson into a little man dangerous to underestimate, who simply won't let go.
The Charmer is murderous black comedy that is a great deal of fun, and features three outstanding performances. The DVD transfer is not as crisp as we've come to expect, but is still very easy to watch.』
(THE CHARMER) 『I saw this years ago on Public Television and thought it was excellent. So good, in fact, that several years later, I'm looking to purchase a copy for my library. Very British, very well acted and well laid out, from beginning to end. I thoroughly recommend if you're a fan of British television programming.』
(Did the "charmer" really deserve what he got in the end?) 『Saw it on tv - it was a mini series at the time - and I just loved it. The acting is very good, the story itself excellent...when you get to the very end of the story you begin to feel some sort of sympathy for the bad boy because he was at times misunderstood, and used as well. I was fortunately enough to get the videos from the N.Y. Public Library, though sometimes one or two at the time, but every time I watched it, I loved every minute of it....even the sad end.』 『Starring: Nigel Havers, Bernard Hepton, Rosemary Leach, Fiona Fullerton, David McKail. Based on the novel‘Mr. Stimpson&Mr. Gorse’ by Patrick Hamilton. On the surface Ralph Gorse is a charmer in every sense of the word: handsome, suave and stylish, sparkling company and the possessor of a sexual magnetism that attracts most women h e encounters. But the charm is a veneer. Gorse is a con man and sexual adventurer, whose conquests are merely a way of obtaining his heart’s desires: money and power. VOLUME ONE Episode One – The Tempter Ralph Gorse, down to his last pennies, meets Joan Plumleigh-Bruce in a roadhouse. She is attracted to Gorse, despite the difference in their ages. But Plumleigh-Bruce has another suitor, the stolid Donald Stimpson, who is attracted by her regular income, her pleasant house and the promise – yet unfulfilled – of sex. Gorse lures the jealous Stimpson into a sordid night at a pleasure house in a scheme of subtle blackmail. Episode Two – The Investor Gorse allies himself withClarice Mannor’s fast socialite crowd and continues to fortify his relationship with the romantically-swayed Plumleigh-Bruce with whom he opens a joint bank account for depositing the promised fruits of their future investments. Stimpson casts a jealous and suspicious eye over their financial andromantic liaisons. VOLUME TWO Episode Three – The Deceiver Gorse flees to Brighton where he finds employment as a car salesman and begins romancing the innocent and lovely daughter, Pamela, of his boss, Harold Bennett. Stimpson’s dogged inquiries have uncovered Gorse’s whereabouts; and withthe swindled Plumleigh-Bruce in tow, he proceeds to Brighton to confront Gorse with the evidence. Episode Four – Gorse in the Middle Gorse marries the pregnant Pamela and settles uncomfortably into married life. Bennett, father of the bride, still suspicious of Gorse’s motives, buys the newlyweds a house. The deed is solely in the bride’s name, but Gorse has a scheme to turn the tables – and collect the insurance. VOLUME THREE Episode Five – The Imposter Gorse is drafted for military service, but army life is not his cup of tea. He decides not to return from a brief furlough and checks into a fashionable Brighton seaside hotel where he exchanges identities with a drunken R.A.F. officer. Shortly afterward, a corpse is found on the beach bearing Gorse’s identity papers. Episode Six – Gorse at the End Plumleigh-Bruce and Stimpson are summoned to Brighton to verify theidentity of the body bearing Gorse’s papers. Plumleigh-Bruce can’t face the gruesome prospect and flees to their hotel where she bumps into Alison Warren, Gorse’s latest conquest. Plumleigh-Bruce’s story confirms Warren’s mounting suspicions. She confronts Gorse with the truth and threatens to expose him. Cornered, he takes desperate measures to escape his pursuers.』
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Reel Indies
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (Another World) 『"Trona" is a microcosm of it's namesake ... a world of contradictions.
It is hilarious ... and depressing. Beautiful ... and squalid. Boring ... and fascinating. All at the same time.
It's a movie about a lonely man frustrated with his life ... a man who wants to escape. And escape he does, inexplicably finding himself transported to the middle of the blind desert in his business suit.
Hilarious circumstances strip him of almost all of his clothes, leaving him in his tidy whities, dark socks and dress shoes, a visual reminder that he is leaving it all behind.
Along the way, the viewer is given insight to a world few get to see. A world where the drink of choice is Robitussin on the rocks. And one where peeing in the corner of a hotel room makes more sense than using the toilet.
The dialog is spare. The music ethereal. The symbolism rampant.
If you're curious and patient, it's worth a look.』
(Interesting) 『I can't claim to understand Fenster's message in this movie; however, as a native of Trona, I enjoyed catching glimpses of familiar places. Here are the scenes you can expect to recognize in this film:
Nice daytime shot of the Pinnacles, and a night shot of the Trona plant from the Pinnacles. If you've never been to the Pinnacles at night, you're missing something special, and the twinkling lights of the pump houses on the lake are almost mystical.
Moving from the Pinnacles, Fenster has a decent perspective of the Trona plant as he walks along the fence/wall from the Train House towards the Main Entrance Security Gate. He also enters one of the only remaining (albeit trashed) homes next to the Train House behind the old Mobil Gas Station.
Fenster catches several views of the Catholic Church on Trona Rd near the school, but I'm not sure how this fits into the film. It just kind of shows up, I suppose to let the viewer know that some people in Trona attend church. This large, white, triangular shaped church sets on the edge of the dry lake and does offer a sharp contrast between nature at its roughest and man's search for meaning and faith--perhaps that was what Fenster was after.
He then moves out to Pioneer Point where you will see an outside and inside shot of Trails Drive In. Although he is kicked out for not wearing a shirt, Karen (owner) is a wonderful person and will do whatever she can to help her customers. If you're ever in Trona, stop and try one of her hamburgers.
Two other brief scenes include a shot outside the Post Office, and a shot of the bench on the bike trail between Trona and Pioneer Point.
Much of the movie takes place inside a junkyard. I'm not convinced this was shot in Trona, as the mountains in the background look like those just west of Inyokern. I believe the junkyard scenes were filmed in Ridgecrest, at the intersection of County Line Rd and Hwy 178. Most of the town scenes were also most likely filmed in Ridgecrest, as Trona does not have a "downtown."
If you're looking for an action film, romance, or comedy, you may want to look elsewhere. But, if you want to catch glimpses of Trona and the high desert, and perhaps ponder Fenster's "minimalist" style, then I highly recommend this film. It runs 64 minutes and has several bonus features. 』 『David Fenster s feature debut tells the loopy story of a depressed businessman who inexplicably finds himself in the middle of the desert, gets nearly all his clothes stolen by a passer-by and eventually installs himself as the overseer of an abandoned junkyard paradise. Defiantly minimalist, David Fenster s TRONA marks a striking feature debut by a filmmaker with a taste for moribund humor and the ironies of the American Dream. Tracking the so-called Man with the Mustache from an innocuous business trip to a bizarre detour into a totally new life in the California desert, Fenster s film intrigues us with its use of big physical space and bigger narrative gaps. Trona itself, once a company town and always one of the strangest California communities, has never been better documented.』
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Silver Nitrate
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (RODENTS ON THE RUN) 『This is a dubbed German made for TV movie that isn't all that bad, nor all that good. The scenes with the thousands of rats is pretty effective. The dubbing is pretty bad and hinders the actors (?) performances. The story revolves around a rat infestation in Frankfort, where the bitchy mayor lowered funding for waste removal thereby causing a strike, in which the garbage isn't picked up; it's also the hottest summer in Frankfort history so this situation inflames the rodent's appetite and ferocity. Not a complete time waster for fans of this kind of movie.』 『A city faces its most terrifying nightmare when a breed of flesh eating rats crawl out from under the street and begins hunting humans…』
Kakaku：998 saved$9.98
Xenon
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (Decent Si-Fi Flick) 『For fans of movies like Johnny Mnemonic, i think you'll enjoy this one. I would have liked to see Michael Ironside in it a little more then he was, but it was still a good movie. It wasn't as predictable as many movies are now'a days.』
Kakaku：250 saved$2.50
Juxtapositions
Usually ships in 24 hours IPhone 3G used's review (Reveals much about Carter's aesthetic, influences, and experiences) 『The Juxtapositions series of modern-classical documentary DVDs has featured such great composers as Mahler, Boulez, and Kurtag, and with Frank Scheffer's A LABYRINTH OF TIME we get a full-length overview of the life and work of Elliott Carter. At 98 years old as I write this, Carter has got a long career behind him, but his output has only increased in old age, and this film celebrates him as a major American composer.
Far from being a meaningless jumble of notes, Carter's music is, according to the composer, meant to represent the interaction of various personalities, play on the listener's perception of time, and symbolize the hubbub of the automobile and jet age. Indeed, Carter says that his turn to the avant-garde was motivated not by a search for abstraction, but rather by a desire to write music closer to life in our hectic contemporary society. There are plenty of music snippets here. We see the Arditti Quartet performing the String Quartet No. 1, cellist Fred Sherry helping the composer in the writing of the Cello Concerto and "For Mr. Ives", and pianist Ursula Oppens rehearsing the Piano Concerto. Charles Rosen, Pierre Boulez, and Daniel Barenboim are interviewed about their admiration for Carter's music.
As the title suggests, the documentary celebrates not only Carter's music but also the composer's long life. Indeed, the very first words spoken in the film are Carter reminiscing about Europe in l'entre deux guerres and his return to London after World War II. We see him looking over old examination papers from his time with Nadia Boulanger, reflecting on his admiration for Charles Ives and Edgar Varese. A major theme is how how New York has changed since his boyhood there in the 1910s, with the arrival of the automobile, the shifting artistic landscape, and (communicated only by a camera shot, not with words), the destruction of the World Trade Center. The earliest footage includes some domestic scenes with his late wife Helen Carter, who gave up a promising career as a sculpture to support her husband's music.
I was disappointed that there is no extra material on the disc besides the film itself. Other Juxtapositions discs have a second film or footage of the performance of a work. Nonetheless, if you are a Carter fan, this is a documentary worth seeing.』
(nice tribute to Mr. Carter) 『This is a nice tribute to Mr. Carter, a gentle man in the way he speaks, quite different than his ruggedly thorny, powerful penumbral anguish- ridden music. Carter's music sits conceptually in the center of the 20th Century, so Charles Rosen tells us, in an appearance here between Stravinsky and Schoenberg or situated with strong reference to the European post-war musical paradigm. Rosen plays a little snippet from Carter's "First Piano Sonata", a Forties transitional work as the "Cello Sonata" both being good examples of this centerness; one a time keeper (the piano) the other a freer atonal agent, the cello. Both are interesting works, impassioned, quite free for the cello trying to relieve itself from the tyranny of obvious time, the (steady quarter notes) from the "stravinsky-aspect". We find this music sounding interestingly as a background for Carter gazing out his apartment speaking quite freely throughout this DVD, overdubbed and directly. He always reminds me of Burgess Meredith the actor. As Meredith, Carter's persona shares a stern dignity a cultured authority quite close to accepted musical discourse, never straying too far from what is known and can be done through serious music. We find also images of the young Carter, now perhaps a younger Robert Redford. There are vintage photographs revealed herein that gives this a way to some degree.
The piece here runs through Carter's life chronologically, quite useful to some degree and quite impossible to explore all aspects of his exceptional oeuvre.
We begin with reminiscences, visiting war torn Europe the First and then Second World Wars with recollections of extended residence situations throughout his career. These form a useful conceptual "hinterland" for much of the known complexity the dodecaphonic content of what his music has said and what it implies when you hear it.
His Greenwich Village apartment is the situs for much of the dialogue here; beautiful shots looking west I believe, and traversing different seasons as well. The gritty-ness, the untouched and abandoned edifices, the modernity of New York City, the metropolis is like a singular metaphor for Carter's music. He had provided modernity a new paradigm to create music to engage a concept to compose music, to explore rhythmic readings over longer distances of time; hence the title "labyrinth" here is useful. I think Carter certainly ushered in the thinking of found concepts, and found working means to organize all the functions of music, its complexity subverted slightly to render a different context, or to engage a text for a purely instrumental work as he has so frequently.
He writes music in a modest room, books on the back wall; original editions of Proust and Crane, with numerous size bound and loose-leaf pages of music manuscript(s)surrounding the work area. Some I believe are "notebooks" of tone configurations and/or skeletal premonitions or finalized ones of the work in front of him. An indefatigueable worker writing every day at his own concocted large 3-foot board tipped upwards, to the left an adjustable neck light clamped to the desk illuminating the proceedings, the music written with fine point pencil (automatic) in hand tying notes over a barline as he loves to do. He has an electrical eraser, with a motor adhering to Stravinsky's canon that music is really written "avec le gum" with an eraser.
The scenes looking outside this elegant spartan-like apartment have his wife's Helen sculptures. There are also multiple shots throughout of New York City, the nocturnal occasional lights and the crisp sunny mornings, all with the Twin Towers still standing. This reminds one of the situated-ness of Carter's music, that his music has dealt with the turbulence, the durability and chaos, the various "Times", the of the 20th Century. Carter's surface view is that man always finds a way out of this chaos. The music as well written over a lifetime of development has interestingly searched for concepts for these paradigms to put into play where the music unfolds over differing expanse(s) of time.
We learn for example in the 'First String Quartet' (written in Arizona under a Guggenheim Grant) was about the explosion of a chimney from a film. How does one represent different "movements" of durations, different speeds of time, gradations of pulses. This requires pre-planning Carter tells us sitting at his long mahogany dinner table. If you know the Carter 'Quartets' they are all excursions, a treatise in differing speeds, characterizations of persona, gesturings and modulations of pulse and rhythmic occurrences, large polyrhythms distributed over the entire work. There are ample situated performances here with snippets of rehearsals as the Arditti Quartet, intense facial shots while playing the "Piano String Quintet". But Arditti only plays here no speaking live. However Ursula Oppens has a short moment on the opening of the massive "Piano Concerto", This Carter wrote in light of the new Berlin Wall. He was there with composition students in West Berlin at the time. "No",(to Ms Oppens) Carter says", "that's not quite right it has to be more dream-like ","No", "try again. . . "."Also I don't like the staccato. . . " "Yes, that's it. . . " The metaphor here is the piano represents "freedom" against the tyrannical orchestral (chordal constructed) accompaniment. Also a moment with cellist Fred Sherry, another discussion in rehearsal over a sixteenth rest, Sherry exclaims, "if they are all downbows, you don't need the rest" it is assumed "to re-take the bow".
Carter also visits Nadia Boulanger's old studio in Paris where he once studied, a time the Nazis assumed power, yet there was this "Light" of culture that was and will be, the "illumination" of her studio. After (or prior) we see Carter then flipping through a bin of books in a street-side bookstore; Then a rehearsal with Pierre Boulez and Carter's "Clarinet Concerto". "No" Carter exclaims," he never does this part right", Boulez makes a note in the score and then speaks well of Carter, an "anomaly", in the uncompromising nature of the music, and as a composer working within a culture (American I assume) that always compromises culture for the "cashbox"(my word not Boulez's).
Sorry there wasn't footage of his larger works performed, although he did speak briefly about his "Symphony for Three Orchestras". There is also none of the conflicts of Carter's acceptance (within "Organized Music", i.e. who controls what, who gets played and how often). This was not discussed and a fairly conflict-free portrait of Carter the composer. But there are good useful parallels into the way Carter's music works, quite abstractly, (and safe) as his walking down a New York City street with its "chaos" of traffic, ambulance sirens, honking horns the onward rush, and stops, and the noise of foot-traffic. His music is much more complex than this but the metaphor is well understood. The low points are excerpts from Carter's opera "What Next", explicated by the work's instigator Daniel Barenboim. The work is predictably about an atrocity, here a street accident is utilized as a metaphor for the time(s) we live?. The Berlin production is admirable but I don't find this relevant nor creative, nor interesting, nor inventive drama, nor congruent with Carter's massive oeuvre. You may find it otherwise. 』
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Legend Films Inc.
Usually ships in 24 hours 『These six classic western movies starring John Wayne, presented in color for the first time and beautifully restored, are the ultimate cowboy collection. Legendary shootouts, fierce fist fights and fast horses provide non-stop entertainment from America's all-time favorite cowboy. This gift set includes:Cold Vengeance,Guns Along the Trail,Stagecoach Run,Gold Strike River,Stolen Goods, andInnocent Man.』
大満足！北国のホタテ・いくら・ボタンエビがぎっしり！
