Altman, Robert

Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Season Three

M*A*S*H (Widescreen Edition)

It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing M*A*S*H in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the '60s. Director Robert Altman had labored for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece Nashville). Altman's style of cruel humor, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fueled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. --Robert Horton

One of the world's most acclaimed comedies, MASH focuses on three Korean War Army surgeons brilliantly brought to life by Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould. Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, they adopt a hilarious, lunatic lifes

Popeye

Nothing interests filmmaker Robert Altman more than a contained culture that mixes bare humanity with local eccentricity (think of his M*A*S*H and Nashville). So Altman's Popeye (1980), based on the old comic strip, works best as a portrait of a busy, cluttered, cartoonish town called Sweethaven. But it is much less successful as a comprehensible story about the famous sailor with massive forearms and a relationship with Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall). Robin Williams plays Popeye with his usual brilliance for mimicry, Paul Dooley makes a credible Wimpy, and Paul L. Smith makes an impression as the oversized bully, Bluto. But this strange, disastrous film never becomes more than an expensive workshop airing out Altmanesque themes. --Tom Keogh

A musical version of the cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor Man.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 8-AUG-2006
Media Type: DVD

Nashville

The drama and comedy of the lives of twenty-four major stars as seen in the five days they are in the country music capital of the world.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

This 1975 film sits near the top of any list of the best films of the 1970s, perhaps in the top five and, in some people's minds, at the pinnacle itself. Robert Altman, at his most Altmanesque, spins together plot strands involving two dozen people over the course of one particularly busy weekend in Music City, USA. Though several of the story lines deal with country-western stars--played by Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley and Karen Black--the plot also deals with the country scene's wannabes, the business people who pull the strings and the operative for a mysterious presidential candidate who is trying to get the de facto endorsement of some of the country stars by having them appear at a rally for him. (The unknown but rocketing presidential aspirant was eerily echoed the next year, when Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the presidency.) Blakley is heartbreakingly fragile as a Loretta Lynn-like singer on the verge of total mental meltdown, while Lily Tomlin is outstanding as a housewife-gospel singer who has a dalliance with a randy folk-rock cad, perfectly played by Keith Carradine (who won an Oscar for his song "I'm Easy"). The cast also includes Jeff Goldblum, Scott Glenn, Keenan Wynn, Shelley Duvall, Geraldine Chaplin (hilarious as a fatuous British TV journalist), Barbara Harris, Michael Murphy, and Ned Beatty, with cameos by Elliott Gould and Julie Christie as themselves. Next to Mean Streets, perhaps the most influential film of the decade. --Marshall Fine

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

One of Robert Altman's most provocative films turns the Wild West on it's ear. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are a small-time gambler and a madam who go into business together. Year: 1971Running Time: 121 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: R UPC: 085391105527

Iconoclastic director Robert Altman (Nashville, M.A.S.H.), deconstructs and demythologizes Hollywood's typically romantic vision of the Old West in this haunting, breathtaking masterpiece. A stranger, McCabe (Warren Beatty's best performance), the film's nonheroic protagonist, rides into a dead northwest mountain town (to the mournful sounds of Leonard Cohen), possessing ambitious entrepreneurial dreams of expansion. As the town grows, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie's finest role, as well), a tough madam, arrives and convinces McCabe to join her in a partnership. Neither are typical Western archetypes: McCabe's an insecure braggart, bumbling lover, and horrible businessman, while Mrs. Miller, hardly a whore with a heart of gold, favors her opium pipe to her partner's romantic advances. Altman, meanwhile, buries these central characters within the town's complex, richly detailed tapestry of characters, preferring to eavesdrop on their overlapping conversations and study the bleak, harsh conditions of their lifestyles. At its core, the film addresses the sacrifices of individualism needed in order to build a community, an American concept that the independent Altman views with skeptical irony. The inevitable final shoot-out underscores the theme. Because McCabe refuses to sell the town he built to a corporation, hired bounty hunters are sent. Instead of a showdown at high noon, the finale--one of Altman's most beautiful set pieces--takes place in the snow, guerilla warfare style. As McCabe runs and hides for his life, the town he created preoccupies itself with saving a burning church instead of their creator, while Mrs. Miller, stoned and grinning, detaches herself from either concern. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond captures the town's brutal textures in luminous Cinemascope. --Dave McCoy

A Prairie Home Companion

The movie is a celebrity version of Garrison Keillor's radio show. It adds a slight story of the radio show ending as a new owner (Tommy Lee Jones) has bought the Fitzgerald theater that the show broadcasts from and is going to tear it down. Another fantasy element is thrown in as an angel (Virginia Madsen) stalks the theater to take one of the performers. Keillor plays the lead character coincidentally called GK. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep play the singing Johnson Sisters with Lindsay Lohan as a suicide-obsessed daughter of Streep. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are hilarious as the slightly off-color singing cowboy duo Dusty & Lefty. Kevin Kline is a security guard who tells the story. Maya Rudolph also appears as a pregnant stage coordinator. Contains some mild sexually-oriented jokes.DVD Features:Available Subtitles: English SpanishAvailable Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1) English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)li>Commentary by director Robert Altman and actor Kevin KlineDeleted scenes with optional commentary"Come Play With Us: A Feature Companion" featurette"Onstage at the Fitzgerald: A Music Companion" - extended musical performances and advertisement segmentsSoundtrack preview (jump to songs in the film)TrailerSystem Requirements:Run Time: 105 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 794043105418 Manufacturer No: N10541

Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor combine reality and fantasy in this smooth, ebullient take on the long-running Prairie Home Companion radio show. Set during the show's fictitious last broadcast--the host station has been bought--the film has plenty of elements from the real PHC radiocasts, including a live audience and the sensational Shoe band. The onstage program is mostly music numbers, a beguiling mix of standards and old-style country. However, the show's usual comedy sketches are never presented, save for the commercial parodies--this may be a PHC show, but Lake Wobegone is never mentioned. Instead, the sketches are played out as backstage banter that feautres the Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), a harried stage hand (Maya Rudolph), a former listener turned angel (Virginia Madsen), and Keillor himself (a crusty alter-ego named simply G.K.). A few characters from the real PHC are given life: the singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty and gumshoe Guy Noir are embodied by Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, and Kevin Kline, respectively. Old flames are fanned, stories are spun, new talents are found (Lindsay Lohan has a chance to shine as Streep's daughter) and everyone wonders if G.K. will do something to ebb the tide of cancellation (personified by Tommy Lee Jones as the corporate Axeman). All of the actors do right as singers, and seem to be having the time of their life. Keillor's screenplay is perfect fodder for Altman's usual brand of storytelling, as characters babble on with the camera picking them up often in mid-thought. The film appeared a few months after Altman received an honorary Oscar, and the director is still at the top of his game, creating this smile-inducing, song-filled time, ending with an ethereal last musical number. --Doug Thomas

The Player (Special Edition) (New Line Platinum Series)

A wicked satirical fable about corporate backstabbing--and actual murder--in the movie business, The Player benefits from director Robert Altman's long and bitter experience working within, and without, the Hollywood studio system. Rising young executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is tormented by threats from an anonymous writer. The pressure and paranoia build until Griffin loses control one night and semi-accidentally kills screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), who may or may not be the source of the threats. From that point, Griffin's life and career begin to fall apart. In keeping with the ironic spirit of the film itself, Altman's scathingly funny attack on the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood was embraced by many of the same people it was intended to savage, and restored the director to commercial and critical favor. Michael Tolkin adapted the screenplay from his own novel, and the movie is studded with cameos by famous faces, many of whom appear as themselves. The digital video disc includes a commentary track with Altman and Tolkin, some deleted scenes, a documentary about Altman, and a key to help identify more than 50 of the picture's big-name cameos. --Jim Emerson

Peter Gunn, Set 2

Peter Gunn, Set 1

Vincent & Theo

The eternal struggle between madness and genius takes its toll on the brothers Van Gogh in this "luminous" (LA Weekly) masterpiece from Academy Award®-nominated* director Robert Altman. Tim Roth and Paul Rhys give "stupendous performances" (Rolling Stone) in the roles of tortured artist Vincent and his brother Theo in this "beautiful disturbing and powerful film" (Screen) that is "as rich and tactile as a Van Gogh painting" (New York Post).In life he was impoverished his work largely ignored; yet today paintings by Vincent Van Gogh fetch millions of dollars at auction. This supreme irony is laid bare in the passionate story of an obsessive artist driven by inexorable demons and his alternately devoted and despairing younger brother who seems unable to live with him or without him.*2001: Gosford Park; 1993: Short Cuts; 1992: The Player; 1975: Nashville; 1970: M*A*S*HSystem Requirements:Running Time: 140 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 027616927538 Manufacturer No: M103173

Robert Altman, the great ironist of American movies, can't resist beginning Vincent & Theo with video of an art auction at Christie's, where Van Gogh's Sunflowers attracts dizzying multi-million-dollar bids. Dissolve to the utterly squalid hovel where Vincent (Tim Roth) lives--reminding us that the artist sold but one painting in his poor, tormented lifetime. Vincent & Theo is an unusual and--fittingly enough--impressionistic look at Vincent and his brother Theo (Paul Rhys), the mad genius and the art broker. These parallel lives unfold, with Vincent's celebrated wallow in the fires of art running alongside Theo's neurotic struggle to fit into the real world. Roth is mesmerizing and frightening as Vincent, while Rhys gives a more mannered performance that fits Theo's tortured ambivalence. The eerie buzz of Gabriel Yared's music helps us get inside Vincent's head. If the true-life circumstances are unavoidably grim and Altman's pace is slow, almost druggy, the film nevertheless casts a spell. (Vincent's eloquent letters to Theo are beautifully used in Paul Cox's Vincent, a good companion piece to this version of the artist's life.) --Robert Horton