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DVD My Dinner with Andre
The sheer audacity of My Dinner with Andre drew throngs of curious filmgoers who made the film the most talked-about art-house hit of 1981. After all, who'd ever heard of a movie consisting of nearly two hours of nonstop dinner conversation? Ah... but this isn't just any conversation--it's the kind of mesmerizing, soul-searching, life-affirming exploration that we feel privileged to listen to, and with unobtrusive style, director Louis Malle invites us to eavesdrop to our hearts' and minds' content. The film was written by two New Yorkers at the dinner table, noted playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and well-known stage director Andre Gregory, who essentially play themselves. They taped their conversations for several weeks and Shawn gradually shaped them into a scripted conversation, but you'd never know it from watching the movie. The talk flows and flows until you're captivated by Gregory's stories of world travel and spiritual quests in Poland, India, Tibet, the Sahara desert... the tales of a soul-searcher who'd dropped out of the theater world to rediscover his zest for living. Shawn plays the skeptic, the voice of reason, his feet on the ground but his own mind willing to soar. The cumulative effect of this conversation is almost hypnotic, and certainly plays into our eternal appetite for storytelling. Both primal and sophisticated, witty and profound, My Dinner with Andre is a film that can be savored over time, offering new revelations with each viewing as the listener-viewer develops his or her own appreciation of life's great mysteries. --Jeff Shannon
I saw this movie on television many years ago late at night. I sat on the living room floor about 5 feet from the screen and was absolutely enthralled with the dinner conversation between two friends. In a television world, we have become passive viewers and forgotten how to engage in the art of verbal conversation between people of experience whose curiosity leads them to consider everybody and everything interesting. If you are into action movies with violence and pyrotechnics, you won't want this one. If you are interested in people and their experiences ... buy this! ... Kyle R. Simplot
A feast for the mind
A great film forces our gaze into the mirror. We reflect on life and, on occasion, change. This is not the sole domain of a philosophical art movie. How about Star Wars, Kinsey or The Shawshank Redemption? Didn't they force us to ask the big questions?
My Dinner With Andre is a treat for the mind. Two friends discuss life in a posh eatery. As one reviewer pointed out, it's not presumptuous at all. Their values . . . their questioning of life's meaning is funny, entertaining and provocative. I liked how the tic-ridden waiter separates one discourse from the next. Wally's voice over sets just the right tone at story's start and end.
Wally might not agree with Andre's intellectual machinations, but he is surely provoked to wax nostalgically on his life . . . as we reflect on our own life choices. I especially liked Andre's moving last few lines about a boy and his father . . . and Wally's final rumination about his father.
Who thought a movie could fly by so fast without a whisper of action? The action is between the words.
a unique gem
Do you ever get tired of endless conversations about how you hate your work, how you dislike and despise your co-workers and how much better you could do the job that your boss is doing? Are you fed up with conversations about the same ole things: shopping, computer news, weather, sports, the business world, gossip, society gossip? Do you feel, after seeing another mindless car chase/explosion/blow em up shoot out/gross out movie, or another regurgitated romantic comedy with its nauseatingly predictable storyline, dialogue and ending that you've had enough and you seriously need a change of pace, a window on a different view. If you are ready for a quiet but at turns funny, profound, silly, and very lively two hours, then get My Dinner with Andre; the best two hour conversation in the history of man. It's about a collision between two ideas about the nature of life; what keeps us going, what gives life meaning.
Think of it this way, you're having dinner with someone and having the most boring conversation ever, and next to you are two people talking about all kinds of interesting things about what seems like everything under the sun. And you desperately want to be at that table. Well, this movie is that table.
Some have accused this film of being pretentious. Give me a break. This is about the most unpretentious film you can get. But what this film is is flat out stimulating and brilliant.
This stirring 1994 work by Louis Malle brought the legendary French filmmaker into another collaboration with actors-writers-directors Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, scribes and stars of the great My Dinner with Andre. The situation here is that Shawn and Gregory were participants in a years-long, informal project remounting a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya every few months for select friends and the general worthiness of the idea. Wearing street clothes and strolling to a crumbling New Amsterdam theater on Broadway, actors Shawn, Julianne Moore, George Gaynes, Brooke Smith, Larry Pine, Phoebe Brand, Lynn Cohen, and others would do a full run of the text (as sharply translated by David Mamet) while a beaming Gregory (the play's director) looked on. Malle--who died... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Phoebe Brand - George Gaynes - Jerry Mayer - Wallace Shawn Director(s): Louis Malle DVD Release Date: Released the 24 September 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It's time someone gave this pretentious film the panning it so richly deserves. First of all, let me say that I have nothing against Wallace Shawn or talkative films - I rather enjoyed "My Dinner With Andre," which somehow manages to hold the viewer's interest with its interesting dialogue and enjoyable setting. This film, however, is a yawn, and it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense either. Throughout the movie we mostly see three things - the faces of the three characters talking, in front of some nameless postmodern background. As if this weren't visually boring enough, things get worse when we have to use our ears. Each in turn, the characters spew a lot of ridiculous monologues at the viewer in affected, self-serious voices. Somehow this is all supposed to tie together into one of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Hare DVD Release Date: Released the 08 February 2000 Usually ships within 5 to 6 days
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Waking Life is a film that never settles down. Or maybe it never wakes up. Regardless, Richard Linklater's animated meditation seems to strike a perfect balance between the plotless meanderings of Slacker and the unquenchable knowledge-seeking of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Any way you look at it, this is a weird, original movie.
As he attempts to figure out what separates dreams from reality, the protagonist (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) hears an earful from everyone he stumbles upon. Ramblings range from the scholarly (Linklater's former college professor Robert C. Solomon gives a monologue) to the banal (of which there are plenty). Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Adam Goldberg all get animated cameos, basically playing themselves.... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 07 May 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Something like a perfect artistic union is achieved in the major components of Paris, Texas: the twang of Ry Cooder's guitar, the lonely light of Robbie Muller's camera, the craggy landscape of Harry Dean Stanton's face. In his greatest role, longtime character actor Stanton plays a man brought back to his old life after wandering in the desert (or somewhere) for four years. He has a 7-year-old son to get to know, and his wife has gone missing. The material is much in the wanderlust spirit of director Wim Wenders, working from a script by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. If the long climactic conversation between Stanton and Nastassja Kinski renders the movie uneven and slightly inscrutable, it's hard to think of a more fitting ending--and besides, the achingly empty American... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Harry Dean Stanton - Nastassja Kinski - Dean Stockwell Director(s): Wim Wenders DVD Release Date: Released the 14 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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