Andre Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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Product Description ------------------- When Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn-theater directors, writers, actors, and longtime friends-sat down for a stimulating meal in 1981's My Dinner with Andre, they not only ended up with one of cinema's unlikeliest iconic scenarios but launched a film collaboration that would continue to pay creative dividends for decades. The subsequent projects they made together for the screen-1994's Vanya on 42nd Street, a passionate read-through of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and 2014's striking Henrik Ibsen interpretation A Master Builder-are penetrating works that exist on the edge of theater and film, and that both emerged out of many years of rehearsals with loyal troupes of actors. Gregory and Shawn's unique contributions to the cinematic landscape are shape-shifting, challenging, and entertaining works about the process of creation. Review ------ "When André Gregory and Wallace Shawn—theater directors, writers, actors, and longtime friends—sat down for a stimulating meal in 1981’s My Dinner with André, they not only ended up with one of cinema’s unlikeliest iconic scenarios but launched a film collaboration that would continue to pay creative dividends for decades. The subsequent projects they made together for the screen—1994’s Vanya on 42nd Street, a passionate read-through of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and 2014’s striking Henrik Ibsen interpretation A Master Builder—are penetrating works that exist on the edge of theater and film, and that both emerged out of many years of rehearsals with loyal troupes of actors. Gregory and Shawn’s unique contributions to the cinematic landscape are shape-shifting, challenging, and entertaining works about the process of creation. MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ In this captivating and philosophical film directed by Louis Malle (Au revoir les enfants), Wallace Shawn sits down with his friend André Gregory at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, and the pair proceed through an alternately whimsical and despairing confessional about love, death, money, and all the superstition in between. Playing variations on their own New York–honed personas, Shawn and Gregory, who also cowrote the screenplay, dive in with introspective intellectual gusto, and Malle captures it all with a delicate, artful detachment. A fascinating freeze-frame of cosmopolitan culture, My Dinner with André remains a unique work in cinema history. VANYA ON 42ND STREET In the early 1990s, André Gregory ed a series of spare, private performances of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a crumbling Manhattan playhouse. This experiment in pure theater—featuring a remarkable cast of actors, including Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, and George Gaynes—would have been lost to time had it not been captured on film, with subtle cinematic brilliance, by Louis Malle. Vanya on 42nd Street is as memorable and emotional a version of Chekhov’s masterpiece as one would ever hope to see. A MASTER BUILDER Twenty years after Vanya on 42nd Street, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory reunited to produce another idiosyncratic big-screen version of a classic play, this time Henrik Ibsen’s Bygmester Solness (Master Builder Solness). Brought pristinely to the screen by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), this is a compellingly abstract reimagining; it features Shawn (who also wrote the adaptation) as a visionary yet tyrannical middle-aged architect haunted by figures from his past. A Master Builder, like Vanya, is the result of many years of rehearsals, a living, breathing, constantly shifting work that unites theater, film, and dream. P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Set Contains: ------------- "BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES * High-definition digital restoration of My Dinner with André, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; restored high-definition digital transfer of Vanya on 42nd Street, supervised by director of photography Declan Quinn, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack; and high-definition digital master of A Master Builder, supervised by Quinn, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack * Interview from 2009 with André Gregory and Wallace Shawn about My Dinner with André, conducted by their friend the filmmaker Noah Baumbach * “ My Dinner with Louis,” a 1982 episode of the BBC program Arena in which Shawn interviews director Louis Malle * Documentary from 2012 about Vanya on 42nd Street, featuring interviews with Gregory; actors Lynn Cohen, George Gaynes, Julianne Moore, Larry Pine, Shawn, and Brooke Smith; and producer Fred Berner * New interviews about A Master Builder with Gregory, Shawn, director Jonathan Demme, and actors Julie Hagerty and Lisa Joyce * New program featuring Gregory, Shawn, and their friend the author Fran Lebowitz in conversation * Trailers for Vanya on 42nd Street and A Master Builder * PLUS: Essays on the films by critics Amy Taubin, Steve Vineberg, and Michael Sragow; the prefaces written by Gregory and Shawn for the 1981 publication of My Dinner with André’s screenplay; and a 1994 report by Taubin from the set of Vanya on 42nd Street " See more ( javascript:void(0) )