|
| Art School Confidential | 
 enlarge | Director: Terry Zwigoff
Actors: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Matt Keeslar
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $1.49
You Save: $13.45 (90%)
New (61) Used (73) from $1.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 29437
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Chinese (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Portuguese (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 102
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.2 x 0.2
MPN: COLD15884D
UPC: 043396158849
EAN: 0043396158849
ASIN: B000H6SXSI
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: October 10, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A gifted young draftsman enrolls in a prestigious new york city art school only to learn talent has nothing to do with success. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 03/25/2008 Starring: Max Minghella Anjelica Huston Run time: 102 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com
Bitter, misanthropic, yet sometimes blisteringly funny, Art School Confidential is not a movie for everyone. Jerome (Max Minghella, Bee Season) goes to art school in the hopes of having his genuine ability recognized and cherished--but instead, finds his teachers to be self-obsessed has-beens, his peers jaded and floundering, and himself being investigated for a series of gruesome stranglings. He becomes obsessed with a lovely student named Audrey (Sophia Myles, Tristan and Isolde), but she's more interested in hunky Jonah (Matt Keeslar, Splendor), whose crude yet acclaimed paintings of cars and tanks make Jerome want to tear his own eyes out. The crime-thriller plot of Art School Confidential, however, is merely a contrivance to string together a series of caustic digs at the shallow, narcissistic, talentless hacks who go to art school in the vain hope of achieving fame, wealth, and sexual abundance with little or no effort. For most viewers, who want to think that people are largely well-intentioned and decent, this will seem snide and cruel; but for some viewers, who believe people are foolish and blinkered, Art School Confidential will seem like an oasis in the arid desert of lies and propaganda about the good side of human nature. If this is your movie, you know who you are, and I encourage you to seek it out as soon as possible. Directed by Terry Zwigoff (Bad Santa) and based on the work of cartoonist Dan Clowes; their previous collaboration was the much warmer Ghost World. Also featuring sharp turns from John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich), Anjelica Huston (Prizzi's Honor), and Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge!). --Bret Fetzer
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 The blind leading the blind November 11, 2008
I've just watched Art School Confidential, a 2006 film from Terry Zwigoff, maker of Crumb (1994) and Ghost World (2001), two of my favourite films. It gets wildly divergent responses from reviewers, usually a sign the film maker has hit his mark.
Watch Crumb if you want to know what's wrong with America, dissected by an extraordinarily intelligent, very articulate and devastatingly vitriolic analyst who has worked through his own childhood abuse, art celebrity and exploitation and dysfunctional family life to achieve some kind of clarity. Robert Crumb is not just a talented artist and cartoonist but a master of black humour, whose comments are so accurate they make you feel uncomfortable even while you laugh.
In Ghost World two best friends are in league against the mediocrity that surrounds them, the parents, the nerds, the pretentious advocates of bad taste. Then one of the friends succumbs (grows up). The film has a lot of heart and is much more than satire, but the tasteless, the sellout and the lies we tell ourselves are held up to ridicule until right at the end of the movie when Enid has an epiphany. She learns that if we believe enough, then our bus will arrive.
Art School Confidential, made, like Ghost World, with Daniel Clowes (whose comics formed the basis for both films) attempts a more complex structure than the earlier films and is not entirely successful. Here the structural idea is to parody the teenage expose film genre, as you can tell from the title, with all the stereotype characters and acts of violence, the rivalries and central love affair common to the genre. It's an easy target: even the best of the type, Rebel Without a Cause, now looks a bit dated.
At the same time the pretensions of the art world are skewered (without doubt other professions, like financial analysis for example, have their pretensions. The film doesn't claim there is something unusual about art in this respect. And of course this is not a real art school). John Malkovich is devastatingly good as a teacher whose self obsession makes him less than useless as an instructor. Steve Buscemi has a few good minutes as Broadway Bob, an egotistical gallery owner. The students' critique of each other's work is a marvel of obfuscation. Everybody at this school works really hard on the trappings of art, without creating any art at all. The film really excels here, though the satire is a bit distant. The film makers are not as threatened by the art bureaucracy as Enid and Rebecca were of adulthood in Ghost World. And they can hardly lampoon artists ambitious of financial success while making a movie themselves, a business venture designed to make money.
But there's more yet to the film. The central character, Jerome, wants to be as famous and admired as Picasso. He's shown as a good artist, but his emotional need is the motivation for what he does. He's at art school just as much to find the girl on the school catalog as to outpaint Picasso. While he dedicates himself to his painting he loses his girl and is sneered at by his fellow students. Once he joins the rat race and strives to impress, he gains ground, and when he exploits his notoriety as a suspected serial killer he not only starts to sell paintings, but his girl falls in love with him. He ends up with it all, but is separated from both girl and gallery by a visitors' glass wall in the prison where he awaits trial. So he doesn't get it all, merely the appearance of all. You'd be doing the film an injustice by seeing this as realism, though some surprisingly have done so.
This is a serious attempt though to look at artists' motivations and the many ways you can sell out for success, with all the rewards and punishments this implies. And I wonder if the love affair, with beautiful music from a Beethoven concerto, was not self parody and a sellout as well. The acting was good enough to get me involved but I do have second thoughts. I did feel the love affair and the artistic ambitions illuminated one another.
All told the film tries to do too much and feels as if some of its many producers might have tinkered with the script or tried to interfere with its development. There's a too many cooks air about the film. Perhaps the film makers were just ambitious. My verdict would be that the parts are more than the whole, but that its worth seeing for those parts, especially the ridicule of the art mystique, where the blind very confidently lead the blind. Thank god there are people trying to achieve something as complex as this in film.
A very dark comedy indeed September 29, 2008
Art School Confidential starts out like a million other "virgin at college" movies, but quickly hits its stride with a series of dead-on parodies of art school and art students. John Malkovitch is perfect in his role as the has-been art professor desperately trying to book a show to rekindle his reputation.
Then the film takes a very dark turn- our hero loses the girl, he's depressed, everything's going wrong- and just when you expect the usual turnaround- hero gets the girl, wins the prize- it gets even darker. There's a murderer afoot, and things start to turn very ugly. Actions have dark, unforseen consequences.
I'm not sure the ending worked for me. It's perhaps the most cynical statement in the movie, and leaves a number of threads incomplete. But for the first half- three stars.
TERRY ZWIGOFF, OPUS 4 August 1, 2008
***1/2 2006. Co-produced by John Malkovich and directed by Terry Zwigoff. Jerome always knew he'll be an artist so it's no surprise if he starts his college years at New York City's Strathmore College. But there's a serial killer on the loose in the neighborhood. Great satire of the artistic underworld, ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL speaks about idealism and the distance between art and reality and describes in a very comic manner the life of the parasites who gravitate around the rare ones who finally make it. Recommended.
 An insult to Art Schools ... February 24, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
This film was so bad, and so much of a let down, that I actually gave this DVD to a homeless man to "do what he liked" with because I couldn't sleep with the stink of it near my other movies, films and detritus.
This film had such build-up that a lot of people wanted to see it, but sadly it just did not deliver at all and left a lot of people wanting to "Angry Mob" on the screenwriter.
Several of my friends, who all went to and graduated from different Art Schools, all said the same thing after seeing this film:
"Why is there so many bad films about Art Schools that go absolutely no where and don't capture even a shadow of what really goes on at an Art School? There is more than enough fodder for a decent and compelling movie. Please someone get on it."
I believe that there's a lot more to Art Schools than pretension and stuck-up students as some other reviewers have pointed out. Sometimes people feel this way when, not being any type of artist themselves -- they have nothing to contribute to the world and thus feel threatened by other artists and must ridicule them -- much like how smart kids are often bullied in High School. Go figure, but that's life.
Have I elicited an emotional response yet? Ask yourself this though: Why did everyone initially want to see this film? It surely wasn't the ad campaign. It was because a film about Art School, at least -- sounds -- compelling.
Sorry guys, but bury this one under Spongebob's Pineapple. Maybe Patrick will watch it ... but then again - maybe he won't. I'd probably hunt jellyfish instead, too.
Disappoinment December 11, 2007
The primary reason I have picked this movie to watch is because John Malkovich and Anjelica Huston are in this film. While advertised as comedy, I would hardly label it as such. There are funny moments in this one, but I have a hard time labeling this film as comedy. While I can be sympathetic of young boys looking for true love, I just do not believe, that any young man who is yearning to become a next Picasso would go for stealing someone else's art, present it at the art show as their own -- all for love and recognition of a girl no matter how hot, sophisticate or unattainable she may be. I would say that this is an interesting meditation on art, what art is, what is takes to be an artist and how the world around us perceives the art. Sophia Myles is great in her role of an art model, but she is unconvincing copy of actress Julia Styles in her appearance as a young femme fatale.
|
|
|
Proud member of the JimmyKat Network. Make sure you check out these other great JimmyKat network sites:
Lyrics Database
Celebrity Blog
Celebrity Thing
Celebrity PC
Celebrity Latest
Celebrity Pro
Travel Photos
Quotes
Flash Games
|
Is there a better
price available?
Find out:
|
|
|
|
