Living in Oblivion | 
| Director: Tom Dicillo
Actors: Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Danielle Von Zerneck, James Legros
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.94
Buy New: $4.73
You Save: $15.21 (76%)
New (55) Used (27) Collectible (2) from $4.52
Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 32307
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: COLD07881D
ISBN: 0767882768
UPC: 043396078819
EAN: 9780767882767
ASIN: B00007L4OB
Theatrical Release Date: July 21, 1995
Release Date: February 11, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/13/2008 Run time: 90 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com
You won't find a smarter, more amusing, or more accurate send-up of low-budget filmmaking than Tom DiCillo's 1995 independent feature, Living in Oblivion, wherein a motley cast of would-be artistes blunders its way through a day on the set. Steve Buscemi plays goateed Nick Reve, a harried, sweating director whose crew of numbskulls and egotists seems hell-bent on ruining his film. The trials and tribulations of independent filmmaking are not foreign material for writer-director DiCillo, who cut his teeth as Jim Jarmusch's cinematographer on 1985's Stranger Than Paradise before going on to direct his own work, such as the offbeat 1992 comedy Johnny Suede. Like that film, Living in Oblivion rides a precariously thin line between the real and the surreal, featuring a midget actor and an exploding smoke-effects machine, as well as a ridiculously narcissistic Brad Pittesque character played by James Le Gros. While films like Get Shorty, Francois Truffaut's Day for Night, and Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt suggest that moviemaking is hip and glamorous, Living in Oblivion will have none of that. The film within the film feels like a director's primer on what not to do, and this modest-budget gem both lovingly and caustically strips the "cool" veneer from the filmmaking process. They should show this one to kids thinking of entering film school. It might make them think better of it. --Nick Poppy
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 3.5 stars out of 4 April 13, 2009
One-Line Film Reviews (Ann Arbor)
The Bottom Line:
A smart, biting, and very funny comedy about the perils of independent filmmaking, Living in Oblivion always feels accurate even when it enters the realm of satire--worth a look if you like comedies in which no one farts.
Just watch Keener and Buscemi February 1, 2009
Carol H. Olson (Riverwash, WI)
It's just fun -- a hilarious film. Touching moments as well. Buscemi and Keener are certainly two superb "under-the-radar" actors.
 Not what I hoped for. Much worse. January 3, 2008
Quickbeam (Oconomowoc, WI USA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love the odd art film and had many people recommend this film. It just didn't work for me. I love most of the actors in it and tried really hard to see the funny but I just found it dull and below amateurish in execution. Thank God for Peter Dinklage; he gave me the few laughs I got from the entire production.
Sometimes low budget is just low quality as well. Fortunately, most of the good actors here have moved on to far better fare.
"Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?" October 9, 2007
Galina (Virginia, USA)
"Living in Oblivion" (1995) - is a 91 minutes long low-budget independent movie about trials and tribulations during making a low budget independent movie called.. "Living in Oblivion". Writer-director Tom DiCillo made in 1991 a film called "Johnny Suede" starring a young and unknown at the time actor named Brad Pitt. "Johnny Suede" was a failure with both critics and viewers but an artist can learn from any experience however disappointing or devastating it is. DiCillo wrote a short story from his frustration and turned his experience into a smart, funny, playful, and highly enjoyable second feature "Living in Oblivion" that takes place during one day of shooting a low budget film. Photographed with the color-to-black-and-white transitions, "Living in Oblivions" has surreal, strangely poetic and amusing quality to it.
The cast is solid and consists of DiCillo's friends who are the regulars in his films. Steve Buscemi, the king of independent movies, in the rare starring role, plays Nick Reve, a long-haired, dedicated but frustrated director who in the moments of creative inspiration has to get back to earth and to deal with the tensions between his leading lady (Catherine Keener, before her star-making turn in "Being John Malkovich" but already a wonderfully talented beautiful and sexy actress) with whom he is silently in love and the male star, arrogant egotist Chad Palomino (James LeGros does an un-flattering but hilarious and quite accurate impersonation of the real life model for Chad). If these problems are not enough, there is eye-patch wearing sensitive leather-clad cameraman named Wolf (Dermot Mulroney) who went through a painful break-up right on the set. There is a great scene with an irritated dwarf Tito (Peter Dinklage) who was hired for a dream sequence and who hates dreams with the dwarfs in them: "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don't even have dreams with dwarfs in them. The only place I've seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this!" There is also a smoke machine that explodes every time when turned on...And to top it all, Nick's senile mother surprisingly shows up during the shot and eventually saves the dream sequence and the movie. That's what the mothers are for, aren't they?
 Living in Oblivion July 13, 2007
John Farr
This hilarious send-up is a both a loving tribute to the art of filmmaking and a farcical rendering of DiCillo's real-life experiences on the set of his previous indie breakout, "Johnny Suede." Never before has the absurdity and madness of trying to orchestrate the making of a movie been so nuttily and honestly captured. Keener, Mulroney, and Le Gros (whose character is modeled after Brad Pitt, star of DiCillo's debut) are fabulous, and Buscemi--scrawny, seemingly malnourished, and deeply agitated--has rarely been so funny or sympathetic. In reality a disaster movie, "Oblivion" is ingenious, briskly paced, and full of odd surprises.
|
|
|
