Tag: Robert Altman

Robert Altman’s KANSAS CITY Available on Blu-ray March 3rd From Arrow Academy

” He’s a loser. And losers’ve got to be respected. They’re the backbone of my business. They’re my customers, and I take good care of my customers.”

Returning to the city of his birth for inspiration, legendary maverick director Robert Altman helms an evocative, bullet-riddled tribute to the music and movies of his youth in Kansas City, a Depression-era gangster flick as only he could make one.

Blondie O Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh) resorts to desperate measures when her low-level hood husband Johnny (Dermot Mulroney) gets caught trying to steal from Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte), a local crime boss operating out of jazz haunt The Hey-Hey Club. Out on a limb, Blondie kidnaps laudanum-addled socialite Carolyn (Miranda Richardson), hoping her influential politician husband can pull the right strings and get Johnny out of Seldom Seen s clutches.

Nominated for the Palme d Or at Cannes, and featuring a remarkable soundtrack performed live by some of the best players in contemporary jazz, one of Altman s most underrated and idiosyncratic films finally makes its long-awaited Blu-ray debut.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD MA audio
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Audio commentary by director Robert Altman
  • Newly filmed appreciation by critic Geoff Andrew
  • Gare, Trains et Déraillement, a 2007 visual essay by French critic Luc Lagier, plus short introduction to the film narrated by Lagier
  • Robert Altman Goes to the Heart of America and Kansas City: The Music, two 1996 promotional featurettes including interviews with cast and crew
  • Electronic press kit interviews with Altman, Leigh, Richardson, Belafonte and musician Joshua Redman, plus behind-the-scenes footage
  • Four theatrical trailers
  • TV spots
  • Image gallery
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jennifer Dionisio

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors booklet featuring new writing by Dr Nicolas Pillai, original press kit notes and an excerpt from Altman on Altman

Robert Altman’s BREWSTER McCLOUD Now Available on Blu-ray From Warner Archives


Exciting news for fans of director Robert Altman. His BREWSTER McCLOUD (1970) is now available on Blu-ray From Warner Archives. Ordering information can be found HERE


Master filmsmith Robert Altman followed up the smash hit M*A*S*H* with one of the most unusual – and decidedly non-commercial – films of his career.  A fairy tale for the post-flower power era, Brewster McCloud enchants while dripping venom across its own escapist heart. Bud Cort’s Brewster sits at the heart of the fable, a young man who yearns to fly like a bird and lives in a fallout shelter inside the recently built Houston Astrodome. Sally Kellerman plays the fairy godmother figure who aids Brewster in his quest to construct his human-powered wings, while the Wicked Witch of the West herself, Margaret Hamilton, plays Brewster’s anthem-belting nemesis, Daphne Heap. Shelly Duvall embodies temptation for Brewster in the part of Suzanne, while Michael Murphy’s Frank Shaft kicks the film into Bullitt-worthy car chase territory. Oh – wait – we forgot the serial killer part… This bona-fide cult AND classic piece of Seventies cinema soars while showcasing Altman’s striking and eccentric vision on high flying high definition in this new master. 16×9 Widescreen


Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) lives deep within the cavernous underground of the Houston Astrodome, but his dreams rise much higher. He aims to fly. Not in a plane. But with strapped-on wings he’s designing – encouraged by a mysterious woman (Sally Kellerman) who may be his guardian angel.But Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman’s wild, anarchic cult fave, isn’t about dreams as much as it is about the highs and lows of humanity. It’s a serial-killer mystery. A frenetic car-chase flick. A crazy circus-finale comedy. Shelley Duvall debuts as the tour guide whose seduction of Brewster may lead to his undoing. Ah, love. The thing that at once shapes and unravels us. The thing that may or may not give us wings.

Robert Altman’s GOSFORD PARK Available on Blu-ray November 27th From Arrow Academy


Robert Altman’s GOSFORD PARK will be available on Blu-ray November 27th from Arrow Academy

TEA AT FOUR. DINNER AT EIGHT. MURDER AT MIDNIGHT.

In 2001, Robert Altman (MASH, The Long Goodbye) took the unexpected step into Agatha Christie territory with Gosford Park, a murder-mystery whodunit set in an English country house starring a host of British acting greats and with an Oscar-winning screenplay by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. It would become a huge success with audiences and critics alike.


Set in 1932, the action unfolds during a weekend shooting party hosted by Sir William McArdle (Alan Bates), and his wife Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) at his estate, Gosford Park. Among the guests are friends, relatives, the actor and composer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), and an American film producer (Bob Balaban). When Sir William is found murdered in the library, everyone and their servants becomes a suspect.


Also starring Charles Dance, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Maggie Smith, Emily Watson and many more, Altman produced another masterpiece deserving to be ranked alongside Nashville and Short Cuts as one his finest forays into ensemble drama.


SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

  • Brand new 2K restoration from a 4K scan, carried out by Arrow films exclusively for this release, supervised and approved by director of photography Andrew Dunn
  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Audio commentary by director Robert Altman, production designer Stephen Altman and producer David Levy
  • Audio commentary by writer-producer Julian Fellowes
  • Brand-new audio commentary by critics Geoff Andrew and David Thompson (author of Altman on Altman)
  • Introduction by critic Geoff Andrew
  • Brand new cast and crew interviews recorded exclusively for this release
  • The Making of Gosford Park archive featurette
  • Keeping Gosford Park Authentic archive featurette
  • Q&A Session with Altman and the cast
  • Fifteen deleted scenes with optional Altman commentary
  • Trailer
  • Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin
  • FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Sheila O Malley and an archive interview with Robert Altman

Robert Altman’s IMAGES (1972) Available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy March 20th


Robert Altman’s IMAGES (1972) starring Susannah York will be available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy March 20th


The early seventies were a period of remarkable activity for Robert Altman, producing masterpiece after masterpiece. At the time he came to make Images, MASH and McCabe & Mrs. Miller were behind him, with The Long Goodbye, California Split and Nashville still to come.


Originally conceived in the mid-sixties, IMAGES concerns a pregnant children s author (Susannah York, who won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival) whose husband (Rene Auberjonois) may or may not be having an affair. While on vacation in Ireland, her mental state becomes increasingly unstable resulting in paranoia, hallucinations and visions of a doppelgänger.


Scored by an Oscar-nominated John Williams, with sounds by Stomu Yamash’ta (The Man Who Fell to Earth), IMAGES also boasts the remarkable cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind).


SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

  • Brand-new 4K restoration from the original negative, produced by Arrow Films exclusively for this release
  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original English mono audio (uncompressed LPCM) soundtracks
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
  • Audio commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger
  • Scene-select commentary by writer-director Robert Altman
  • Interview with Robert Altman
  • Brand new interview with actor Cathryn Harrison
  • An appreciation by musician and author Stephen Thrower
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil
  • FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Carmen Gray and an extract from Altman on Altman

 

Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE Screens Thursday Night at The Tivoli

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“Y’all take it easy now. This isn’t Dallas, it’s Nashville! They can’t do this to us here in Nashville! Let’s show them what we’re made of. Come on everybody, sing! Somebody, sing!”

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NASHVILLE screens one time only Thursday, September 24th at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis) at 7pm

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In a decade of great films, NASHVILLE is one of the greatest. I saw NASHVILLE during its initial theatrical release and have seen it several times since but it has not played on the big screen (at least in St. Louis) in a long time. In 1974 director Robert Altman was directing films for United Artists and wanted them to produce his film THIEVES LIKE US. They agreed if he would agree to direct a story about country music that they had a script for. He rejected the script and said he would offer them another so he sent writer Joan Tewkesbury, who had been his script supervisor on McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, to Nashville, Tennessee to research. What Tewkesbury came up with juggled almost thirty characters and several intersecting plot lines.

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A red hot country superstar (Ronee Blakley) who is plagued by her feeble health condition and the straining relationship with her agent-husband (Allen Garfield), who has to cater to another country diva (Karen Black) who comes to replace his ailing wife for a public concert; a pompous and loudmouth BBC journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) who comes to shoot a documentary about Nashville; an uprising folk trio called Tom, Mary, and Bill (Keith Carradine, Christina Raines, Allan Nicholls) with their chauffeur (David Arkin) while Tom is the sleaze-bag philanderer and the married Mary and Bill undergo some connubial crisis; A housewife and gospel singer (Lily Tomlin) whose husband (Ned Beatty) is an agent who introduces a politician lobbyist (Michael Murphy) to the music moguls in order to get some big names to sing publicly for the presidential candidate and his main target is a honorific but over-the-hill country star (Henry Gibson) with an harsh wife (Barbara Baxley) and an unworldly son (David Peel), and fellow musicians as well

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There is also a glut of ordinary people including two young singers-wanna-be. One is a runaway wife (Barbara Harris) seeking for an opportunity to sing in front of a large audience, while another is a southern beauty (Gwen Welles) who optionally chooses to ignore her unmusical voice and insists on carrying her pipe dream at all hazards (a striptease in a local bar is just the beginning for the poor dim gal) albeit the persuasion from her friend (Robert DoQui); two young lads, one is a shy soldier (Scott Glenn) who is obsessed with Blakley, the other one is a self-claimed musician (David Hayward) totes his guitar box where conceals a dangerous weapon will later trigger the heartbreaking finale; the last pair is a local old man (Keenan Wynn) and his vampy niece (Shelly Duvall), who flirts with every young man she meets including a tricycle rider (Jeff Goldblum), never caring too much about her dying auntie in the hospital.

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Did I leave anybody out ?!?

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NASHVILLE was also nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, screenplay, both Blakly and Tomlin for Supporting Actress, and Best Director. It received 11 Golden Globe nominations including an astounding five actor nominations. it was also nominated and was awarded by the Writers Guild, Directors Guild, National Board of Review, BAFTA, National society of Film Critics and both the L.A. and New York Film Critics Associations. The Blakley role is patterned after country singer Loretta Lynn, Gibson’s on Roy Acuff, Barbara Baxley on Minnie Pearl, Karen Black on Tammy Wynette, Timothy Brown on Charlie Pride and Keith Carradine on Kris Kristofferson. NASHVILLE is show business, country music, politics and a microcosm of America. The actual Nashville country crowd hated the music as not representative of Nashville because of actors doing their own singing to unknown songs, many composed by the actors and Altman, done live in front of camera which they saw as far inferior and amateurish to Nashville standards.

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But NASHVILLE is one of the most consistently relevant films to have emerged from the 1970s, and I hope filmgoers will make the effort to rediscover it when it plays at The Tivoli Thursday night.

The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

This Week’s WAMG Podcast – BLACK MASS, EVEREST, Robert Altman and More!

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This week’s episode of our podcast WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is up! Hear WAMG’s  Michelle McCue, Jim Batts and Tom Stockman discuss the weekend box office, and next weekend’s releases. We’ll review BLACK MASS, EVEREST, and MISSISSIPPI GRIND. We’ll also preview HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, THE INTERN, COMING HOME, and STONEWALL. We’ll discuss  the career of director Robert Altman in advance of the screening this Thursday of his masterpiece NASHVILLE at Landmark Theaters . WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is a weekly podcast and can be heard streaming at ONStl.com Online Radio.

Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:

Netflix Nuggets: September 2011

Netflix has revolutionized the home viewing market for movies with their instant streaming service. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about films of all genres worth holding a spot on your instant viewing queue. (Release dates are subject to change.) Continue reading Netflix Nuggets: September 2011

Throwback Thursday: ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’

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Robert Altman is a director that almost entirely polarizes me. Â  I either really love his films or I am utterly bored by them. Â  My love or hate for an Altman film is pretty far from the norm, as well. Â  I’m not a fan whatsoever of ‘Nashville,’ yet I absolutely adore ‘Popeye’ and ‘Quintet’ (just don’t try to understand the rules of the game in that one).

With Altman’s passing in November of 2006, we can sit back and look over the man’s entire career, choosing the best and worst from that bunch. Â  In my eyes, the absolute best film Altman’s filmography has to offer is ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller.’

Warm and cold at the same time, heartbreaking and jovial, ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’ was one of Altman’s first films. Â  Set in a small, Northwestern town during the old west, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in town to set up a saloon and brothel. Â  Julie Christie plays the brothel’s madam, Mrs. Miller, whom McCabe quickly falls in love with. Â  Soon after, a company arrives in town to attempt to buy out McCabe, but he refuses. Â  The refusal escalates into violence.

The story is very simple.   It’s based on the 1959 novel, McCabe, by Edmund Naughton, but what makes this film damn near perfect is Altman’s direction and the performances of the two leads.   Altman’s revisionist style fits in perfectly with the film’s dark themes, and scenes of violence become beautiful through their composition.   Through Altman’s direction, every character within the film is given an importance, even a weight to a scene they appear in.   This was done through Altman’s decision to allow many of the people playing smaller parts, even extras, to create backstories for their character.

From Altman’s direction comes the performances given by Beatty and Christie, the latter of which earned an Oscar nomination for her role. Â  William Devane, Rene Auberjonois, and Shelley Duvall all give memorable performances, as well. Â  Keith Carradine, as simply, the Cowboy, made his debut with ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller.’

Altman’s steadiness when framing and shooting scenes, with help from cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond (‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’) gives the film the power to stand up after all of these years.   The film’s soundtrack, made up entirely of songs by Leonard Cohen, is equally brilliant.

Three Cohen songs (“The Stranger Song”, “Winter Lady”, and “The Sisters of Mercy”) appear in the film. Â  “The Sisters of Mercy” appears on a number of occasions throughout the film, and it is riveting every time we hear the single, lonely guitar string start the song off. Â  The songs are incredibly appropriate for the themes and story found within the film, and it is amazing to think that the songs were not written for the film. Â  Altman did not hear the songs until the film was in post-production. Â  After attending a party where Cohen’s album “Songs of Leonard Cohen”, Altman decided the three songs fit his film perfectly. Â  Altman was later upset to hear that Cohen did not like ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller.’ Â  Years later, Cohen phoned Altman saying he had changed his mind about the film after having seen it with an audience.

Haunting, powerful, and poetic, this film couldn’t be any better.   I’m quoting Roger Ebert here, but he said it perfectly when he said, “Rober Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”   Seek this one out.

‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’ can be purchased at Amazon.   It is also a part of the TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Western Adventures along with ‘The Wild Bunch,’ ‘Jeremiah Johnson,’ and ‘The Train Robbers.’   A Blu-Ray is not yet available for the film.   A hardcover book, Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller: Reframing the American West by Robert Self  about the film’s production and its place in American cinema is also available.