Art & Artists

Man on Wire

Native New Yorkers know to expect the unexpected, but who among them could've predicted that a man would stroll between the towers of the World Trade Center? French high-wire walker Philippe Petit did just that on August 7th, 1974. Petit's success may come as a foregone conclusion, but British filmmaker James Marsh's pulse-pounding documentary still plays more like a thriller than a non-fiction entry--in fact, it puts most thrillers to shame. Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip, The King) starts by looking at Petit's previous stunts. First, he took on Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral, then Sydney's Harbour Bridge before honing in on the not-yet-completed WTC. The planning took years, and the prescient Petit filmed his meetings with accomplices in France and America. Marsh smoothly integrates this material with stylized re-enactments and new interviews in which participants emerge from the shadows as if to reveal deep, dark secrets which, in a way, they do, since Petit's plan was illegal, "but not wicked or mean." The director documents every step they took to circumvent security, protocol, and physics as if re-creating a classic Jules Dassin or Jean-Pierre Melville caper. Though still photographs capture the feat rather than video, the resulting images will surely blow as many minds now as they did in the 1970s when splashed all over the media. Not only did Petit walk, he danced and even lay down on the cable strung between the skyscrapers. Based on his 2002 memoir, Man on Wire defines the adjective "awe-inspiring." --Kathleen C. Fennessy

On aug 7 1974 a young frenchman names philippe petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the world trade centers twon towers. After dancing for nearly an hour on the wire he was arrested. This documentary incorporates petits footage to show the numerous extraordinary challenges he faced. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 12/09/2008 Rating: Pg13

Your Baby Can Read: Early Language Development System

The Starter DVD is the first video of the Your Baby Can Read! early language development system. Introduces children to 20 key words. Main Program Running Time - Approx: 22 min. / DVD Your Baby Can Read! Volume 1 DVD The Volume 1 DVD is the second video of the Your Baby Can Read! early language development system. Contains over 50 key words plus songs, animals, and an interactive word games segment to enhance your child`s learning. Increases your child`s individual whole-word vocabulary promoting "natural phonics." Main Program Running Time - Approx: 30 min. / DVD Your Baby Can Read! Volume 3 DVD The Volume 3 DVD is the third video of the Your Baby Can Read! early language development system. New words, new songs, more animals and more fun! Includes over 50 new key words and a new "Word Games!" segment to enhance your child`s learning! Increases your child`s reading vocabulary. Main Program Running Time - Approx: 30 min. / DVD Your Baby Can Read! Volume 3 DVD The Volume 3 DVD is the fourth video of the Your Baby Can Read! early language development system. Introduces many two- and three-word phrases that begin to teach your child to read from left to right. Main Program Running Time - Approx: 30 min. / DVD Your Baby Can Read! Review DVD The Review DVD is the final video of the Your Baby Can Read! early language development system. It reviews words from Starter through Volume 3. This video has been specifically designed to be viewed only after children are familiar with the first four videos in the series. Main Program Running Time - Approx: 40 min. / DVD Flash Cards Included

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut (40th Anniversary Two-Disc Special Edition)

The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock & roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD. The film deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it's still a stunning achievement. Abundant footage taken among the massive crowd ("half a million strong") expresses the human heart of the event, from skinny-dipping hippies to accidental overdoses, to unpredictable weather, midconcert childbirth, and the thoughtful (or just plain rambling) reflections of the festive participants. Then, of course, there is the music--a nonstop parade of rock & roll from the greatest performers of the period, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Canned Heat, The Who, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and many more. Watching this ambitious film, as the saying goes, is the next best thing to being there--it's a time-travel journey to that once-in-a-lifetime event. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description
1969 was a year unlike any other. Man first set foot on the moon. The New York Mets won the World Series against all odds. And for three days in the rural town of Bethel, New York, half a million people experienced the single most defining moment of their generation; a concert unprecedented in scope and influence, a coming together of people from all walks of life with a single common goal: Peace and music. They called it Woodstock. One year later, a landmark Oscar®-winning documentary captured the essence of the music, the electricity of the performances, and the experience of those who lived it. Newly remastered, the film features legendary performances by 17 best selling artists. Bonus content includes: • NEW retrospective The Museum at Bethel Woods: The Story of the Sixties & Woodstock.

Stills from Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut

Genre: Music Video: Documentary
Rating: R
Release Date: 9-JUN-2009
Media Type: DVD

The Who: The Kids Are Alright [Blu-ray]

Studio: Uni Dist Corp (music) Release Date: 03/02/2010

Half its members may be dead and its leader may be keeping a low profile, but the Who remains enormously popular. Devotees who haven't availed themselves of Jeff Stein's thrilling, self-mocking 1979 documentary about the group shouldn't wait another minute now that the film has been painstakingly--perhaps heroically--restored to its theatrical-release length from original elements. The sound is clearer than on previous video releases, images are once more crisp and color-rich, and adjustments in tape speed make the Who sound like themselves again, particularly in vintage television performances and filmed club dates from as far back as the band's sonically thrilling, early R&B period. Special features are, shall we say, extensive: 100 or so minutes of multiple-angle footage, an insightful interview with Roger Daltrey, a featurette about the film's restoration, and a mesmerizing, isolated John Entwistle audio track. --Tom Keogh

Dress to Kill

Eddie Izzard, an \executive transvestite" performs his stand-up comedy in San Francisco and covers topics from Scooby-Doo to Stonehenge.
Genre: Performing Arts - Concerts
Rating: NR
Release Date: 26-NOV-2002
Media Type: DVD"""

In Dress to Kill, Eddie Izzard spins free-flowing jokes about San Francisco (where the comedy concert was filmed), transvestitism, squirrels, American optimism, Hitler, the British royal family, mass murder, and Stonehenge--and that's only the first 30 minutes. It's as if this ingenious comedian says whatever comes off the top of his head, but giving that impression demands cunning and skill; Izzard romps through human history and transforms surprisingly complex ideas into biting satire--as well as knockout bits of sublime frivolity, like describing the movie Speed entirely in French. His mercurial patter is sprinkled with four-letter words, but his twinkling glances make this more mischievous than crude. Izzard has delivered some excellent performances in movies (like Velvet Goldmine and The Cat's Meow), but it's on stage that he really explodes with daffy wit and charisma. Simply brilliant and completely addictive; you will want to watch this over and over. --Bret Fetzer

Independent Lens: Between the Folds

A fascinating documentary about the science and art of origami, BETWEEN THE FOLDS profiles brilliant artists, mathematicians and scientists who are reinventing the ancient Japanese tradition of paper folding. With just one piece of paper, and without the use of glue, tape or staples, these offbeat and provocative minds are creating unimaginably beautiful works of art and thought-provoking mathematical models.

Chanel, Chanel

Chanel more than just one of the world's most successful fashion labels, also the name of a woman who led a fascinating life. This Paris designer banished the corset from women's fashion, created the bouclé suit and the famous little black dress, and made costume jewellery socially acceptable. Her elegant but comfortable clothing stressed the new-won freedoms of 1920's women; her perfume made ladies irresistible. Chanel's head designer Karl Lagerfeld explains why her simple style is still today an inspiration. Unique shots and designs from the archives reveal Coco Chanel's passion both for fashion and for life.

Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides

Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides is a truly beautiful, Scottish-German 2001 documentary about artist Goldsworthy, a Scotsman whose medium is nature itself and whose preferred studio is the outdoors, particularly where water forever flows, rises, and/or retreats. The soft-spoken, secluded Goldsworthy is seen hard at work making ephemeral sculptures out of bits of ice in the trees, or building tall, mysterious cones from loose rock, which stand like spiritual sentinels in forests and on shorelines, overgrown by plants or swallowed daily by high tides. Filmmaker-cinematographer Thomas Reidelsheimer goes to great and sometimes inexplicable lengths to make visual corollaries to Goldsworthy's ideas about underappreciated relationships between light, color, movement, balance, and fluidity of form in the real world, making Rivers and Tides a lively and always surprising cinematic gallery. Some of Goldsworthy's most miraculous natural installations--stone walls that snake through hundreds of feet of forest and stream, for instance--show up in the last half-hour. --Tom Keogh

Studio: New Video Group Release Date: 09/28/2004 Run time: 90 minutes Rating: Nr

Buena Vista Social Club

TAKE A SPELLBINDING JOURNEY INTO THE FASCINATING LIVES ANDPASSIONATE MUSICAL POWER OF THE BUEAN VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, THELEGENDARY CUBAN MUSICIANS WHOSE GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING ALBUMSPARKED AN INTERNATIONAL MUSICAL PHENOMENON. ADDITIONAL CONCERT FOOTAGE.

In 1996, composer, producer, and guitar legend Ry Cooder entered Egrem Studios in Havana with the forgotten greats of Cuban music, many of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them long since retired. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club, became a Grammy-winning international bestseller. When Cooder returned to Havana in 1998 to record a solo album by 72-year-old vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, filmmaker Wim Wenders was on hand to document the occasion. Wenders splits the film between portraits of the performers, who tell their stories directly to the camera as they wander the streets and neighborhoods of Havana, and a celebration of the music heard in performance scenes in the studio, in their first concert in Amsterdam, and in their second and final concert at Carnegie Hall. The songs are too often cut short in this fashion, but Buena Vista Social Club is not a concert film. Wenders weaves the artist biographies with a glimpse of modern Cuba remembering its past, capturing a lost culture in music that is suddenly, unexpectedly revived for audiences in Havana and around the world. Wenders makes his presence practically invisible, as if his directorial flourishes or off-screen narration might deflect attention from the artists, who do a fine job of telling their own stories through interviews and music. It's a loving portrait of a master class in Cuban music, with a vital cast of aging performers whose energy and passion belie their years. --Sean Axmaker

Chronos [Blu-ray]

Studio: E1 Entertainment Release Date: 02/13/2007 Run time: 45 minutes

Taking the familiar conventions of time-lapse cinematography to a transcendent level of artistic achievement, filmmaker Ron Fricke circled the globe to make Chronos, a stunning 70-millimeter time-lapse tour of natural and man-made wonders. The entire film has the enhanced, hyper-realistic quality of a laser-etched photograph, and by using special cameras and motion-control photographic techniques, Fricke and his technically expert crew were able to create mesmerizing images guaranteed to spark any viewer's sense of awe and wonder. Accompanied by the hypnotic music of Michael Stearns, this visual journey takes the viewer on a tour of over 50 locations on nearly every continent of the world, including explorations of Paris, the Vatican, the Egyptian pyramids, the African veldt, and many more stunning vistas. The cumulative effect is the feeling that the world--from the busiest metropolis to the most serenely remote wilderness landscape--is dictated by "chronos," the rhythm of time to which all living things must submit. Like Koyaanisquatsi and Baraka, this is one of those eye-candy films that was conceived according to its specific theme, so it's not only a soothing visual experience but a thought-provoking study of our fascinating planet. --Jeff Shannon