Off the Map

Starring:Amy Brenneman, Valentina de Angelis, Joan Allen, Sam Elliott, J.K. Simmons, Boots Southern, J.D. Garfield, Jim True-Frost, Matthew E. Montoya, Kathy Griego, William Hart McNicholas, Timothy Martinez, J.D. Hawkins, Kevin Skousen
Director: Campbell Scott
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Off the Map avoids conventional drama (hardly any event leads to an outcome you could expect) but the lean, sharp dialogue and superb performances make this movie a rich, human comedy. A young girl named Bo, living in the New Mexico desert, rebels against her bohemian parents by reading Forbes magazine and applying for credit cards. Her father Charley (Sam Elliott, Tombstone) has sunk deep into a paralyzing depression; her resilient, industrious mother Arlene (Joan Allen, The Upside of Anger) alternates between gently supporting Charley and railing against his zombie-like state. Into this off-balance family comes a tax auditor (Jim True-Frost, Singles), who--after being stung by a bee and lapsing into a sudden fever--becomes an accidental catalyst for change. In her movie debut as Bo, Valentina de Angelis gives a wonderful performance, head and shoulders above most actors her age. Campbell Scott's direction, as with his first film Big Night, is warm but not sappy; he has a gift for letting a story wander without it ever getting lost. The New Mexico landscape glows in the sun and helps give Off the Map a quiet but mysterious vision of life. --Bret Fetzer
Description
Bo (Valentina de Angelis) is eleven years old and lives in a remote desert area of New Mexico with her mother (Joan Allen), a free spirit who tends to the garden in the nude, and her father (Sam Elliott), who is losing a battle with his inner demons. One day they receive a visit from an IRS agent (Jim True-Frost) who is there to audit the family even though they make a very modest income. Realizing the simple yet profound way that Bo and her family are living, the IRS agent abandons his work to live with the family and surrender to the mystique of the desert landscape. Eventually he becomes the catalyst for major changes and discoveries by every member of the family. Off the Map is a story of self-discovery that reveals unexpected moments of grace and the unpredictable enduring nature of love.

Average customer rating:

let the finer details sink in

Flight From Eden

Horrible Movie ! ! !

Complete Garbage

Off the Map, but oh, what a destination

Off the Map
Starring: Amy Brenneman , Valentina de Angelis , Joan Allen , Sam Elliott , and J.K. Simmons
Director: Campbell Scott
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0009S4J1O
Release Date: 2005-08-09

Amazon.com

Off the Map avoids conventional drama (hardly any event leads to an outcome you could expect) but the lean, sharp dialogue and superb performances make this movie a rich, human comedy. A young girl named Bo, living in the New Mexico desert, rebels against her bohemian parents by reading Forbes magazine and applying for credit cards. Her father Charley (Sam Elliott, Tombstone) has sunk deep into a paralyzing depression; her resilient, industrious mother Arlene (Joan Allen, The Upside of Anger) alternates between gently supporting Charley and railing against his zombie-like state. Into this off-balance family comes a tax auditor (Jim True-Frost, Singles), who--after being stung by a bee and lapsing into a sudden fever--becomes an accidental catalyst for change. In her movie debut as Bo, Valentina de Angelis gives a wonderful performance, head and shoulders above most actors her age. Campbell Scott's direction, as with his first film Big Night, is warm but not sappy; he has a gift for letting a story wander without it ever getting lost. The New Mexico landscape glows in the sun and helps give Off the Map a quiet but mysterious vision of life. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Bo (Valentina de Angelis) is eleven years old and lives in a remote desert area of New Mexico with her mother (Joan Allen), a free spirit who tends to the garden in the nude, and her father (Sam Elliott), who is losing a battle with his inner demons. One day they receive a visit from an IRS agent (Jim True-Frost) who is there to audit the family even though they make a very modest income. Realizing the simple yet profound way that Bo and her family are living, the IRS agent abandons his work to live with the family and surrender to the mystique of the desert landscape. Eventually he becomes the catalyst for major changes and discoveries by every member of the family. Off the Map is a story of self-discovery that reveals unexpected moments of grace and the unpredictable enduring nature of love.

Customer Reviews:

let the finer details sink in.......2007-05-08

Being here so many fine reviews of the movie, I am not to add any more briefings of the plot... its a slow tempo movie as a way to feel that time indeed can be slow once you are away from the mundane.. maybe the characters are a little unbelievable.. but then again, life tells you sometimes that fact is starnger than fiction... the movie is to reflect on the various subyacent plots that hit you after seeing the movie... for example, the girl's godfather is almost socially retarded...but he does gets married to a woman who only speaks spanish and he got elected mayor of a town in Mexico.. yet the events are totally hidden..this is magical realism and makes you see that redemption comes from the least expected sources.. indeed this is what the movie is all about.. redemption...its not only the super setting (never mind if they "used" it too muchor too little) everyone here is redempted (hope thats the way the verb is declined).. the travelling IRS guy who is able to find his calling as an artist and live to paint the curvature of the earth (another of those great messages for those who can see it).. the father who outgrowths his depression.. in a way, Joan Allen's character is like the Arizona desert.. its the support of everything that goes on around her... in this movie I appreciate her beauty and character

Flight From Eden.......2007-04-27

In 1994, Campbell Scott, full-time actor and sometimes writer/producer/director attended a play of OFF THE MAP in Massachusetts. It was written by Joan Ackerman. He loved the dramatic event, and immediately took out the option to film it. But per usual for these kinds of aspirations, he took 10 years to put the project together. In the interim, he directed three other films, BIG NIGHT (1996), HAMLET (2000) starring himself, and FINAL (2001).

He brought his film crew in 2002 to a remote corner of New Mexico, north of Taos, not far from the old D.H. Lawrence ranch. They constructed the "Grodin" house with lots of extra windows. Scott, and his crack cinematographer, Juan Ruiz Anchia, used the intense southwestern sunlight and the breathtaking high desert landscape like another member of the cast.

This is the story of a woman in her late 30's, Amy Brenneman, who reflects upon the summer she was 11 years old -the summer her father was depressed -the year a stranger came into her life and joined the family. Nothing was ever the same after that.

Valentina de Angelis played young Bo. In her film debut she shows great promise, rivaling other grand performances by young girls, like Mary Badham in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and Tatum O'Neal in PAPER MOON. She played a precocious intelligent child who although she dearly loved her father, she needed to grow up and escape the narrow, albeit natural, limits of the Eden he had created for his family. Sam Elliott played Charley Grodin. This is one of his finest roles. Playing against type, he reveals a rare vulnerability and emotional fragility that he has withheld from us in the past. He habitually stands in shadow and is often nearly mute -but we always know he is there and that he is in tremendous pain. Joan Allen, plays the wife and mother, Arlene, as a feisty sexy half-Hopi earthy long-haired hippie -who adores her eccentric husband and her fussing child, and thrives in the lifestyle that Charley has created out of inventiveness and a lot of useful items from the County Dump. She is struggling with the role of matriarch since her spouse is shut down with his crippling emotional issues. Jim True-Frost excels in the pivotal role of William Gibbs, the IRS pariah who wandered in lost off the desert -becomes first mesmerized by Arlene and then is stung by Grodin honey bees and falls into a near coma and fever. Emerging from his vision quest, he has an epiphany -quits the IRS, continues to live with the Grodins, and becomes an artist. J.K.Simmons does a nice turn as well as the loyal, although dim best friend, George.

This is a slow moving yet sparkling film that merits a good look. It is an important tale of love and loss, and it makes us reassess the quality of our own lives.

Horrible Movie ! ! !.......2007-01-26

Stay away from this post-feminist tripe. It casts a precocious 12-year-old girl along with three weak, ineffectual, dysfunctional, middle-aged men. Couldn't she have been given a childhood (for god's sake!) with friends, her own age, perhaps? And that sailboat? Very lame.

Complete Garbage.......2006-12-04

I am stunned by all the good reviews of this movie-my husband and I were nearly offended by how bad the whole thing was. The writing was sophmoric, the plot was a joke and that precocious kid was the worst part of all-an adults idea of an interesting kid, every note rang false. The whole movie was full of forced whimsy which gets irratating after the first 5 minutes. Yikes-how did this fool so many people?

Off the Map, but oh, what a destination.......2006-10-03

The descriptions in the Amazon synopsis seem to omit some crucial elements of the gentle but evenly paced gem. The acting is superb. The direction is elegant, with poignant pauses that allow the furniture to creak dialogue, the desert's army of owls and coyotes to offer chorus. 1974, Korean war vet Sam Elliot, a very Sam Shepard inspired character, who is the mold for individualism and self-sufficiency, lives in a humble but radiant cabin in the high desert north of Taos with his wife and daughter. During the summer the film is set in, his precocious, charming and near criminally brilliant 11 year old daughter, Bo, begins what is to become the narrative diary that carries you through her fathers unexpected slip into clinical depression. Her mother, Joan Allen, is a full blooded Hopi Indian and a naturalist of sorts, auto mechanic, gardener, hunter, gatherer, who teaches reading to convicted felons, and herself the voice of nightly readings to the family by oil lamp from Two Years Before the Mast. She tries to keep the family in check on less than $5000. annual income and help her husband through this draining ordeal, when suddenly they receive notice that the IRS will audit them for not paying taxes for 7 years. The IRS agent arrives and never leaves. He falls victim to, at first, a hornet sting that has him fevered for days. His own demons surface, having as a child discovered his mothers suicide by hanging in the front hall of his Brookline MA home andte weight of his self-imposed responsibility. On the road to recovery, he falls in love with Joan Allen, as we all do, and the love between all characters is simply amazing to observe. There is much more to life than working and paying taxes. The child, Bo, steals the show from an outstanding cast, a surreally serene setting, a scrumptious script, a soundtrack that sounds like Calexico or Friends of Dean Martinez, blended with The Delfonics, Billy Paul, Cliff Noble and Nixon's brilliantly placed resignation speech. Indian mysticism, White man's futility, peoples compassion and unbridled desire to experience are the underlying rhythms. The way in which the characters work their own way out of their personal traps is an inspiration. Written as a play and first presented on stage in Great Barrington MA, Off the Map is what it's title declares, but oh, what a destination.

Average customer rating:

A Great Compliment to Slane Castle
Definitely Cali - Fornicate
Sorry folks...no way the best!!
out of this world
OFF THE MAP

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Off the Map
Starring: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Manufacturer: Warner Bros / Wea
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Rock | Styles | Music

General | Music Video & Concerts | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( R ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Live at Slane Castle
Funky Monks
The Red Hot Chili Peppers Phenomenon
Red Hot Chili Peppers - What Hits?
Scar Tissue

ASIN: B00005Q3KM
Release Date: 2001-12-18

Amazon.com

The continued survival and huge commercial success of the Red Hot Chili Peppers may come as a surprise to some, but Off the Map finds them in fine form. Recorded live on the last night of their all-conquering Californication world tour, the set veers from the Funkadelic-influenced rock that made their name to the more mature, thoughtful side that has always underpinned their work. Thus "Suck My Kiss," "Blood Sugar Sex Magik," "Right on Time," and "Me and My Friends" are all franticly funky, but the band is far more effective on the elegant sweep of "Californication," "Scar Tissue," and the classic "Under the Bridge." Despite their advancing years, the Chilis still ensure a high level of performance--the visuals are a mass of swirling limbs and instruments, while the crystal-clear sound is dominated by Flea's pulsating bass. --Phil Udell

Description

Off the Map is the first concert home video since 1991 from one of rock's greatest live experiences, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Off the Map is also the band's first concert DVD--the only way to witness the funk-funk-rockmetal-rap musical orgy of one of today's most popular bands. Songs: Around The World, Give It Away, Usually Just a T-Shirt #3, Scar Tissue, Suck My Kiss, If You Have to Ask, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Otherside, Blackeyed Blonde, Pea, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Easily, What Is Soul?, Fire, Californication, Right On Time, Under The Bridge, Me And My Friends.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Compliment to Slane Castle.......2007-04-11

This was pretty much what I expected, having seen them on this tour. The quality and presentation aren't quite as nice as Live at Slane Castle but the older and more diverse setlist definitely makes up for it. It's actually very representative of that tour in that the performance and production are a little sloppier and less perfect (in a good way) and there are only a handful of songs that appear on both dvds. A must-have for longtime fans, maybe not so much for the "I only like their new stuff" types.

Definitely Cali - Fornicate.......2007-03-15

This DVD is for everyone who liked Californication.The songs, although are from a mix of their previous albums,have an edge in their performance as they are touring & promoting for the same.As always they make you laugh as they perform, but the most unusual feature in this DVD was the lyrics as subtitles & I was not aware of it when I bought it.Its the first time I came across such a feature in a live performance DVD.As for the performance it met my expectations & was worth it.

Sorry folks...no way the best!!.......2006-11-17

All I have to say is I guess most of you have never seen "Psychedelic Sexfunk Live from Heaven"!!! If you had there's NO WAY you could give this 5 stars.
Of course that's hard to do when IT'S NOT ON DVD!!! What's up with that Peppers?!?!? THAT is raw, live Peppers!!! Those of you that haven't seen it need to break down and buy the VHS (available used here on Amazon) and help me lobby the Peppers to release it, along with the Positive Mental Octopus video collection. In fact they could take a lesson from their early 90's competition Faith No More and release them together as a low-priced double DVD!!!
Not to say there's really anything wrong with this DVD, I like all Peppers, but the "Mothers Milk" CD remains my favorite and, after all, Sex Funk IS filmed on the Mothers Milk tour in their home town (which greatly adds to the overall atmosphere) and also has back stage footage.
Bottom line...if you are a fan, buy this, just remember it's not the best visual record of the Peppers!!!!!!

out of this world.......2006-11-11

The chili's rocked harder than ever on their Californication tour, which this DVD supports. The set-list is excellent as it feautres some of their memorable songs from the 80's as well as a good mix of songs from their newest albums. Features Sir psycho sexy' as a bonus track and special features are very good also, featuring backstage interviews and footage. Also features a short version of John's 'Usually Just a T-shirt #3' as a lead in to Scar Tissue. A good buy, well worth the money. Its cheaper than a concert ticket and you can watch it over and over again in the comfort of your home.

OFF THE MAP.......2006-03-24

Well, I bought this on amazon a month ago and it arrived fairly quickly. I watched it and it is very good. Although it shouldn't be compared to Slane. It is the chilis in a very "raw" state, compared to slane, where everything is perfect, from the vocals, to the camera views and such. I recommend this to anyone who really is a fan, not so much to the casual listener. If you want to see a "perfect", buy not completely authentic get slane, buy if you want an example of the real chilis, then off the map should be in your hands.

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