Aznavour, Charles

The Adventurers

Despite the tumultuous events in this sleek, handsome 1970 adaptation of Harold Robbins' bestselling novel, The Adventurers is arresting entertainment from the constantly inventive director of the original Alfie, Lewis Gilbert. Smoldering Yugoslavian actor Bekim Fehmiu stars as Dax Xenos, son of a revolutionary hero in an unnamed South American nation. As a child (played by Loris Loddi), Dax witnessed the murder of his mother and sisters by government goons, and he helped insurgent leader Rojo (Alan Badel) execute those responsible. As Dax grows up, his destiny is inexorably tied to the fate of his country and the whims of an increasingly despotic Rojo. But before he realizes that, the hunky gadabout chases women and races in the streets of Rome, spends some time as a gigolo (romancing a wealthy, heartbreakingly sympathetic Olivia de Havilland), marries and separates from a lovely heiress (Candice Bergen), and becomes a pawn in a terrible plot by Rojo to consolidate his power. The outstanding cast in this nearly three-hour film includes Fernando Rey, Charles Aznavour, Leigh Taylor-Young, and Ernest Borgnine. Gilbert's production is endlessly imaginative and exciting. Long before crowd scenes in movies could be computer-generated, directors such as Gilbert really did have to assemble thousands of extras for moments as spectacular as the battle sequences in The Adventurers. --Tom Keogh

THE ADVENTURERS is an irresistible mega-movie loaded with all the trappings and treacheries, power plays and passions, intrigues and in-fighting of the world's super-rich. At the center of the jet-setting story is troubled playboy Dax, raised far from his South American homeland of Corteguay. Amid the high society and political intrigue of Italy, Dax uses romance as a stepping stone to success... and all the while schemes to bring vengeance on those who once wronged him and his family.

The Truth About Charlie (including with original movie 'Charade')

It seems blasphemous to remake Stanley Donen's classic romantic thriller Charade, but The Truth About Charlie achieves its own unique identity. Rather than mimic the inimitable chemistry of the original, director Jonathan Demme takes a vividly contemporary approach, with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton well cast in roles originated by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The plot's essentially the same, kicking into high gear when Newton--the unwitting courier of a priceless treasure--is chased around Paris by her murdered husband's military cohorts, an avuncular embassy official (Tim Robbins), and a suave stranger (Wahlberg) whose true identity remains elusive. In a film filled with twists and turns, Demme fails to find a consistent tone of humor, romance, and danger. But he's crafted a peculiar Parisian valentine, seasoned with Gallic cameos (singer Charles Aznavour, Anna Karina, director Agnès Varda) and vibrantly alive with music, style, and forward momentum. Charade it's not, but that's not necessarily a complaint. --Jeff Shannon

Shoot the Piano Player - Criterion Collection

A man runs through deserted night streets, stalked by the lights of a car. It's a definitive film noir situation, promptly sidetracked--yet curiously not undercut--by real-life slapstick: watching over his shoulder for pursuers, the running man charges smack into a lamppost. The figure that helps him to his feet is not one of the pursuers (they've oddly disappeared) but an anonymous passerby, who proceeds to escort him for a block or two, genially schmoozing about the mundane, slow-blooming glories of marriage. The Good Samaritan departs at the next turning, never to be identified and never to be seen again. And the first man--who, despite this evocative introduction, is not even destined to be the main character of the movie--immediately resumes his helter-skelter flight from an as-yet-unspecified and unseen menace.

The opening of Shoot the Piano Player, François Truffaut's second feature film, is one of the signal moments of the French New Wave--an inspired intersection of grim fatality and happy accident, location shooting and lurid melodrama, movie convention and frowzy, uncontainable life. At this point in his career--right after The 400 Blows, just before his great Jules and Jim--the world seemed wide for Truffaut, as wide as the Dyaliscope screen that he and cinematographer Raoul Coutard deployed with unprecedented spontaneity and lyricism. Anything might wander into frame and become part of the flow: an oddball digression, an unexpected change of mood, a small miracle of poetic insight.

The official agenda of the movie is adapting a noirish story by American writer David Goodis, about a celebrated concert musician (Charles Aznavour) hiding out as a piano player in a saloon. He's on the run as much as the guy--his older brother--in the first scene. But whereas the brother is worried about a couple of buffoonish gangsters, Charlie Koller is ducking out on life, love, and the possibility that he might be hurt, or cause hurt, again. Decades after its original release, Shoot the Piano Player remains as fresh, exhilarating, and heartbreaking--as open to the magic of movies and life--as ever. --Richard T. Jameson

Francois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful, anarchic film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of the mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags, guns, clowns, and thugs, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague.

Ararat

This remarkable, intricate movie from Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) centers around the making of a film about the genocide of Armenians in Turkey in 1915--but this is not a dry, didactic historical re-enactment. Ararat unspools multiple storylines around Ani (Arsinee Khanjian), an art historian hired as a consultant on the film; her son Raffi (David Alpay); his stepsister, with whom Raffi is in love even though she believes that his mother is responsible for her father's suicide; an actor (Elias Koteas) hired to play the Turkish officer who organized the genocide; and a customs officer (Christopher Plummer), who holds Raffi for questioning under suspicion of smuggling heroin. All these characters, combined with the movie within the movie, intertwine in a complex yet powerfully emotional examination of memory (both cultural and personal), loyalty (to one's family, to one's heritage), creativity, and the subjectivity of truth. --Bret Fetzer

After coming home from Turkey, a young man recounts to a customs official, how his life changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-MAY-2005
Media Type: DVD

Johann Strauss - Die Fledermaus / Domingo, Te Kanawa, Prey, Royal Opera Covent Garden

Most opera houses ring in the New Year with Johann Strauss Jr.'s most popular operetta--the festiveness of which is appropriate for the occasion--and this December 31, 1983, Covent Garden performance follows suit. An exceptional cast--led by Hermann Prey and Kiri Te Kanawa as the couple whose marriage survives the comic indiscretions of three long acts--obviously has as much fun as the audience. Plácido Domingo leads the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House through its paces with panache. Prince Orlofsky's Act II party is always a splendid opportunity to pull out all the stops with surprise "guests," and this performance makes the most of its chance: entering the proceedings to sing one of his tailor-made chansons, "She," is French crooner Charles Aznavour, who is followed by dancers Merle Park and Wayne Eagling, their delightful pas de deux flashily choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton. --Kevin Filipski

Kiri Te Kanawa is featured in this glittering Covent Garden Opera production of Johann Strauss' masterpiece. Placido Domingo conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. Other soloists include Hermann Prey, Hildegard Heichele, Benjamin Luxon.

Candy

Candy, based on the naughty, notorious erotic satire by Terry Southern, whose wicked pen contributed to Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider (among other '60s classics), and adapted for the screen by the sly Buck Henry (The Graduate and Catch 22), is a bizarre second-hand reconfiguration of Candide for the permissive '60s. Swedish teen beauty queen Ewa Aulin is Candy, all breathy, wide-eyed innocence as a curvy blond kewpie doll--think Lolita, Barbarella, and Baby Spice all rolled into one--whose naiveté lands her in the sack with one dirty old man after another on a sexual odyssey. Guest cads include Ringo Starr as an embarrassingly unconvincing Mexican gardener; James Coburn preening as a surgeon who puts the "theater" into his operating theater; Walter Matthau as a snarling, insane general; and French crooner Charles Aznavour as a humpbacked spider man. Richard Burton stands out as a soused, sex-mad poet with an ever-present wind machine dramatically blowing his hair, and Marlon Brando's phony guru with a seductive line of mystic patter is downright hysterical.

Despite luscious cinematography by longtime Fellini collaborator Guiseppe Rotunno and gorgeous opening and closing sequences of space flight by Douglas Trumbull, this clumsy misfire has all the cutting satire of a Monkees episode and only half the style. Director Christian Marquand lets the film ramble interminably while his cast mercilessly mugs their way through ill-conceived roles (except Aulin, who remains a passive, almost alien presence in the center of the chaos). The result is a sloppy all-star sex farce with blunt, misdirected attempts at social topicality buried in teasing peekaboo pinup photography and sexual romps, pleasing enough eye candy but hardly the erotic, satirical, transgressive portrait the picture promises. --Sean Axmaker

The Blockhouse

What if you survived a bombing but no one knew? Based on a harrowing true story from World War II The Blockhouse paints an indelible picture of the psychology of despair. Starring screen legend Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove) in a rare dramatic role "this real-life horror story" (Monthly Film Bulletin) captivates as it chills.The Allied bombardment of Normandy sends seven forced laborers into a concrete bunker. At first they are ecstatic to discover a plethora of food wine candles and other necessities until they realize they are completely trapped. As time passes fear gives way to boredom which in turn gives way to despondency. Each man struggles to keep a grip on his sanity and maintain hope. But can there be a rescue if no one knows you're alive?System Requirements: Running Time 92 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616924681 Manufacturer No: 1008438

Aznavour & Minnelli au Palais des Congrès de Paris

Un taxi pour Tobrouk

Shoot the Piano Player

A man runs through deserted night streets, stalked by the lights of a car. It's a definitive film noir situation, promptly sidetracked--yet curiously not undercut--by real-life slapstick: watching over his shoulder for pursuers, the running man charges smack into a lamppost. The figure that helps him to his feet is not one of the pursuers (they've oddly disappeared) but an anonymous passerby, who proceeds to escort him for a block or two, genially schmoozing about the mundane, slow-blooming glories of marriage. The Good Samaritan departs at the next turning, never to be identified and never to be seen again. And the first man--who, despite this evocative introduction, is not even destined to be the main character of the movie--immediately resumes his helter-skelter flight from an as-yet-unspecified and unseen menace.

The opening of Shoot the Piano Player, François Truffaut's second feature film, is one of the signal moments of the French New Wave--an inspired intersection of grim fatality and happy accident, location shooting and lurid melodrama, movie convention and frowzy, uncontainable life. At this point in his career--right after The 400 Blows, just before his great Jules and Jim--the world seemed wide for Truffaut, as wide as the Dyaliscope screen that he and cinematographer Raoul Coutard deployed with unprecedented spontaneity and lyricism. Anything might wander into frame and become part of the flow: an oddball digression, an unexpected change of mood, a small miracle of poetic insight.

The official agenda of the movie is adapting a noirish story by American writer David Goodis, about a celebrated concert musician (Charles Aznavour) hiding out as a piano player in a saloon. He's on the run as much as the guy--his older brother--in the first scene. But whereas the brother is worried about a couple of buffoonish gangsters, Charlie Koller is ducking out on life, love, and the possibility that he might be hurt, or cause hurt, again. Decades after its original release, Shoot the Piano Player remains as fresh, exhilarating, and heartbreaking--as open to the magic of movies and life--as ever. --Richard T. Jameson