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DVD One From The Heart
One of the most famous productions of its time, Francis Coppola's One from the Heart is a "little movie" that grew into a gigantic, studio-bankrupting behemoth. Entirely shot on glorious sets in Coppola's Zoetrope studio, the teeny story follows a bickering Las Vegas couple (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) during a night's madness with others. It would be nice to recommend the film to romantics, or movie-musical mavens, but really this film is for the technologically minded: it's a flashy display of camera trickery and painted sets (anticipating Moulin Rouge). Alas, the techno-dazzle is somewhat at odds with the clunky performances and choppy editorial flow... and it has all the warmth of neon. Since its initial botched release, the film has developed a small but devoted following, in part because of the terrific song score by Tom Waits (sung by Waits and Crystal Gayle). It should be seen, not least as a case study in bravado. --Robert Horton
A great lesson of cinema does not necessarily make a great movie!
It's an interesting piece but it goes in so many directions. It could have been a Felini movie, a US version of Fellini, but the second part is to slow. As a fan of Tom Waits, I had to see it anyway...
And just for the camera movement, you have to see it, but the music hall part is a bit too much.
Poor editing and transfer of this masterpiece
Let me say I loved this movie. I saw it when it was first out (yes someone did go to see it in the theater)and bought the video some years ago. The video (VHS) was true to the theatrical release, unlike the DVD, but the saturated colors (especially the reds) really caused the quality to suffer on tape. What's with cutting the opening sequence? And then again changing the sequencing and cutting of some of the dance scenes? As far as the re-master, there was one sequence where there was a hair on the film? (lower left corner). What's up with that? This is a beautiful movie, ahead of its time. Its a shame they have not done it justice. Those who did not see the original are really missing out.
Movie: 2 stars; DVD: 4 stars
After his disastrous experiences filming "Apocalypse Now" in the Philippines during the '70s, director Francis Ford Coppola decided to play it safe with his 1982 follow-up, "One From the Heart," a modest musical comedy he filmed entirely on the stages of his own Zoetrope Studios.
But the excesses that plagued "Apocalypse" carried over onto "Heart" and Coppola eventually built huge indoor re-creations of the Vegas strip, imported real passenger planes for an airport scene and commissioned detailed, 75-footlong models of the city. The budget ballooned. Upon its release, the film tanked and Coppola's little studio went bankrupt.
Since then, "Heart" has remained discussed but largely unseen, leading curious film fans to wonder, "Could it really be that bad?"
Now it's out on DVD and the answer is available: "Yes, it's really that bad."
"Heart" follows two estranged lovers (Teri Garr and Frederick Forrest) through a charmless musical fantasy. The story and characters are slim and feel slimmer in the midst of the huge, flashy sets. Tom Waits wrote all the songs, but they don't approach his best work. And, ironically in light of the film's title, an air of artificiality hangs over the picture; much like the black ceiling that can clearly be seen above the nighttime streets of Coppola's Las Vegas, the movie's sugary ideas about love and romance feel hopelessly fake.
As an experiment, though, the film is interesting; it borrows the look and feel of classic musicals yet remains a unique attempt, and it's arguably a forerunner of "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago," but that's not enough to redeem "Heart." As a DVD, though, it's worth checking out for the second disk's exhaustive extra features, particularly the documentaries that explore the ups and downs of Zoetrope Studios, the processes behind Waits' compositions and the debacle surrounding this odd, frustrating movie.
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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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Prime Cut is a strangely likeable if decidedly oddball thriller from 1972. A happy collision of gangster genre grit (validated by Lee Marvin's granite-faced lead performance) with a strain of shameless (though shrewd) exploitation not unfamiliar to screenwriter Robert Dillon (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), plus the kinetic, semi-documentary wit of director Michael Ritchie (The Candidate) makes Prime Cut both a straightforward noir and a satire of itself. Marvin plays Nick, an aging enforcer for the Chicago mob, sent to Kansas City to deal with a ruthless cattle baron (Gene Hackman) who owes a half-million to Windy City racketeers. Hackman's character (inexplicably named Mary Ann), dismissive of old-guard crime chieftains, has set up his own heartland empire... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Gene Hackman - Sissy Spacek Director(s): Michael Ritchie DVD Release Date: Released the 14 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Paul Schrader, the director of American Gigolo, brought a similar kind of sexual chic to this explicit horror movie. A remake of the beautiful, haunting 1942 Cat People, this version takes off from the same idea: that a woman (Nastassja Kinski), a member of a race of feline humans, will revert to her animalistic self when she has sex. Arriving to meet her brother (Malcolm McDowell) in New Orleans, she finds herself disturbed by his sexual presence. A zoo curator (John Heard) becomes fascinated by her, but he will discover that her kittenish ways are just the tip of the claw. Schrader dresses the story up in a stylish, glossy production, keyed on Kinski's green-eyed, thick-lipped beauty; it's hard to think of another actress in 1982 who could so immediately suggest a cat... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Nastassja Kinski - Malcolm McDowell - John Heard Director(s): Paul Schrader DVD Release Date: Released the 27 August 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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