Magdalen

Starring:Jace Gaffney, Phil Hooven, Nathan Hopson, Terry Jones, Moira Rankin, Suzanne B. Repasky, David Semonin, Alix D. Smith
Studio: Alpha Video
Product Type: DVD

Testimony - Tony Palmer's Story of Shostakovich / Ben Kingsley

Average customer rating:

Really awful
Great Film of a Great Composer, but....
Cinematic work of art captures Shostakovich's art and times.
Great film but a terrible dvd
something truly special

Testimony - Tony Palmer's Story of Shostakovich / Ben Kingsley
Starring: Ben Kingsley , Sherry Baines , Magdalen Asquith , Mark Asquith , and Terence Rigby
Director: Tony Palmer
Manufacturer: Kultur Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

( T ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Shostakovich Against Against Stalin
Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos - An Owner's Manual: Unlocking the Masters Series (Unlocking the Masters)
Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was / Tony Palmer
Tony Palmer's Film About The Salzburg Festival
Sonata for Viola

ASIN: B000G1ALES
Release Date: 2006-07-25

Description

Testimony is one of those comparatively rare events nowadays - a real piece of cinema. Tony Palmer's prowess as an editor, his knack of juxtaposing image and music - something which has remained his forte since he first caused a stir back in the Sixties with Buddhist monks burning to The Beatles - has a field day in Testimony. Most importantly for a movie about a composer, there is always the feeling that Palmer understands the music. For a start he puts to rest the hoary old cliché that the private Shostakovich is only to be found in his chamber music - try listening to the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth symphonies - but he also brings vividly alive musical details (like the composer's use of unison scoring) in colour sequences showing the orchestra, as in the climax of the Fifth..... a truly remarkable film. Starring Ben Kingsley.

Customer Reviews:

Really awful.......2007-06-05

I wanted to like this film but it is long and boring. Ben Kingsley did a nice job with what he had but this movie is ill-conceived. There are lots of shots of machinery, train engines and molten steel set to Shostakovich's music. The integration of black and white with color did not help. This is only for the really hard-core Shostakovich fan and then don't expect many insights. I want my 2 1/2 hours back !

Great Film of a Great Composer, but...........2006-10-29

... the video transfer appears to be absolutely awful. It looks like it might have been transferred from video table instead of from the original negative or even a good print. In order to squeeze a movie that is more than two hours long onto a single-sided DVD they must have used lower quality compression. Rather expensive for a DVD of such low quality.

If you haven't seen the movie before and you love Shostakovich, buy a used copy, save your money, and enjoy. You won't be disappointed.

Cinematic work of art captures Shostakovich's art and times........2006-10-01

In addition to faithfully capturing Shostakovich's inner life as revealed in the composer's memoirs, this film is a wonderful cinematic work of art in its own right. Unlike most filmed biographies which take pains to introduce every character and explain every event, this film assumes that viewers are already familiar with Shostakovich's life and the events and people that surrounded him. This is just one of the many elements that helps to lift this film above the level of the typical, dumbed-down biopic.

I taped this film when it was shown on TV years ago and have been waiting for a DVD release for the longest time. I don't have this DVD, so I can't comment on the transfer, but I will say that a copy of this film belongs in the library of everyone concerned with Shostakovich. I guarantee that if you love Shostakovich, you will love this film.

This DVD will, no doubt, come under attack by the same forces that have attacked the composers memoirs. Apologists for the Soviet state were upset that Shostakovich's memoirs showed that he was not a faithful party member whose work blossomed under communist rule. Shostakovich's memoirs showed, on the contrary, that he hated the brutal regime and that his work was a testimony to the tens of millions slaughtered by the workers paradise. Practically every family member and friend of Shostakovich has gone on record as stating that the printed memoirs do indeed reflect the thoughts and feelings of the composer.

Great film but a terrible dvd.......2006-09-28

The image quality of this dvd is so bad that even the VHS copy I taped years ago from Dutch television is much better. Absolutely no image restoration! But a great film though. I hope there will be a better version in the future to do this film justice.

Rob Kwak.

something truly special.......2006-09-17

A film unlike any other, even among Palmer's impressive body of work, Testimony is an unrelieved, excruciating, gallantly bitter ride, riveting in conception and execution from beginning to end. It's a film of epic sorrow and pain, a film of and about truth, subversion, and art. It's filled gloriously with Shotakovich's defiantly eternal music, and Ben Kingsley's performance as Shostakovich is shocking and profound, his masterfully trained actor's voice used like a needle point intelligence through every frame, tracing his character's fate with a mocking sing-song sarcasm that tells volumes. I believe Kingsley's beautifully cadenced performance reveals the film's intent as effectively as do Shostakovich's scores. Hyper-alert to every cinematic possibility, Palmer proves himself again and again every bit as much editor as fantasist. He maintains a close to the bone intent throughout, and his fastidiousness as a filmmaker is stupefying. Palmer uses cinematic artifice brilliantly, devotedly - the way Mozart used humor, and Bach faith. Every scene stings, nothing is wasted, every gesture feeds the overwhelming whole. The film's ending recruits the 13th Symphony ("Babi Yar") as tragic chorus, delivering a harrowing climax - the Easter Island-like statue head of Stalin tumbling with fire and chasing Shostakovich becomes a fantastic spectacle of delirious terror ultimately impossible to forget, grotesque and exotic. Palmer clearly refuses the bandwagon of tired old fools carping ignorantly decade after decade about Volkov's exacting and undeniable book, finding in it the truth about tyranny - Shostakovich's truth. The film is a masterpiece - a word one is careful using about Tony Palmer's work simply because he has committed more than one! - but let that praise be heard here. Testimony is a film awash with the gifts of genius. Especially noteworthy: Ronald Pickup ("The Life of Verdi") as Tukhachevsky, Felicity Palmer's luminous singing in the 14th Symphony, John Shirley-Quirk's amazing singing in the 13th, Barshai's vivid conducting, which commands the inner power of Shostakovich's music with consummate finesse, and discerning art direction by Paul Templeman and Chris Bradley. One's understanding of Shostakovich's great music is incomplete without knowing this potent work of cinematic art. Recommendation with nary a trace of reservation.

Average customer rating:

A Godard Admirer

Magdalen
Starring: Jace Gaffney , Phil Hooven , Nathan Hopson , Terry Jones , and Moira Rankin
Manufacturer: Alpha Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

4-for-3 All DVDs | 4-for-3 DVD | Stores | DVD | Video

( M ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

All Deals | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

Customer Reviews:

A Godard Admirer.......2004-05-11

FROM THE BACK COVER:
"WANT TO BUY SOME ILLUSIONS?
Magdalen is a tavern Scheherazade, a prostitute who sells stories in a seedy Philadelphia dive bar. Her clients include Mr. Jones (HORRIBLE acting!), an angry black businessman who wants to hear the same graphic, sexual fantasy every night; Jace, a droll, Mishima-loving slacker/writer looking for an ending to his novel; Phil, a precocious skater-boy who wants to understand his dead father; and Edward, a shy 53-year-old virgin looking for love.
Alix D. Smith is Magdalen McElhinney, a tough, brainy femme noir, whose name suggests that the film's director is the father she talks about obsessively. In a solo session with a video camera, Magdalen's one stab at self-narration rapidly morphs from self-portrait into a portrait of the filmmaker - brillant, destructive, god-identified, narcissistic and absent from her existence.
Littered with literary and cinematic allusions, the film's unreliable narrators make Magdalen part Warholian confessional and part Brechtian taproom comedy."

This film tries really hard to be smart and sometimes succeeds, mostly, through the efforts of Alix D. Smith's droll, deadpan, world-weary delivery. She is the best part of Magdalen.

I enjoy films that attempt to interject philosophical ideas into, or at least, in support of, the story and I give credit to McElhinney's script. The scene where Magdalen interviews McElhinney is interesting.

Although McElhinney dedicates this film to Louis Feuillade, (Les Vampires - by the way, a MASTERPIECE!! and whose film making history dates back to 1906 and over 700 films), Magdalen has the "FEEL" of a Jean-Luc Godard French New Wave film such as: Band Of Outsiders, Les Carabiniers, My Life To Live (before any Godard fanatics claim blasphemy, please note I said -FEEL- of course, it does not even come CLOSE to any of Godards films!).

However, where Godard always, masterfully succeeds and excels with interlacing philosophical dialogs with, sometimes, banal plot devices, McElhinney seems to just throw stuff out and see if it sounds profound (even so, it's worthy of a look).

The DVD is acceptable in overall quality, although he sure could have used a compressor to edit out the annoying hiss throughout the film.

Overall Quality of DVD: **1/2 /**** Sound: *1/2 /**** Plot: **1/2 /**** Acting: **/**** Cinematography: **/**** Direction: **1/2 /****

MARY MAGDALEN: An Intimate Portrait
Average customer rating:
MARY MAGDALEN: An Intimate Portrait
Starring: Mary Magdelen-Intimate Portrait
Manufacturer: View Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video
Documentary | Independently Distributed | Stores | DVD | Video
Special Interests | Independently Distributed | Stores | DVD | Video
Used DVDs | Stores | DVD | Video | Action & Adventure | African American Cinema | Animation | Anime & Manga | Art House & International | Classics | Comedy | Cult Movies | Documentary | Drama | Educational | Fitness & Yoga | Gay & Lesbian | Horror | Kids & Family | Military & War | Music Video & Concerts | Musicals & Performing Arts | Mystery & Suspense | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Special Interests | Sports | Television | Westerns
Independently Distributed | Indie & Art House | Stores | DVD | Video
DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video
( M ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Secrets of Mary Magdalene

The Iran Hostage Crisis: 444 Days to Freedom (What Really Happened in Iran)

The Nativity Story

Hollywoodland (Widescreen Edition)

Eragon (Two-Disc Special Edition)

ASIN: B000GAKE0A
Release Date: 2006-06-26

Description

She stood by the cross after His male disciples had fled. She watched His body laid to rest, fearless in her grief. On the third day, it was to her that Jesus first appeared. Some say she was the closest to Jesus of all his followers. But others called her a prostitute.

Who was Mary Magdalen? Was she the love of Jesus' life or simply the strongest of his followers? How did she become the bad girl of the Bible...the forbidden woman...the saint who was made into a prostitute?

DVD:

DVD

20th Century Epics: Ben Hur / Gone With The Wind / Doctor Zh

DVD: All About Eve

Voodoo Dawn