Cecil Taylor - The Jazz Master Class From NYU - DVD

Advantages: This film draws you in from start to finsih with brillinat characterizations and a wonderful soundtrack - and I'm NOT a jazz fan!
Disadvantages: None

...in the first-class cabin. Danny Boodman (Bill Nunn), christens the boy Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900. Danny raises the boy in the bowels of the great ship where he ends up being called simply 1900. Growing up, he knows nothing of the world outside of the coal room, other than what he can see through the porthole. When his adopted father is killed in a tragic accident, he is revealed to the Captain and is threatened with exposure to the authorities. A chance wandering into the first class lounge provides his means of staying. He finds a piano, begins to play and finds he has a hidden talent. He is a musical prodigy. The Captain decides to keep him on board to entertain the passengers. Some thirty years later, we meet Max (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince) who is down on his luck. Once a jazz musician, he is about to sell his trumpet in an old... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Entertaining
Disadvantages: But ultimately flawed

...a lower rated movie than the director hoped for. The real star is Selma Blair, who as Cecile brings an innocence and vibrancy to the role that Uma Thurman failed to achieve in her portrayal. You actually believe she is naive and willing to learn from the master. Buy it, enjoy it, but follow it up with Dangerous Liaisons afterwards to see how it should be done.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Good acting and good story
Disadvantages: None

...I saw this film when it first came out, in the theater, and it has remained one of my favorite films. It was the first film I bought when I got a VCR. This is one of those elegant Merchant-Ivory productions, which also include Maurice and A Passage to India, other E.M. Forster adaptations to film, that sets the late Victorian/early twentieth century world in upper- to upper-middle class England in such gracious light. The stars of this film include Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy Honeychurch, the heroine, and Julian Sands as George Emerson, her free-spirited suitor, who shocks everyone by doing such risque things as running around without a jacket, or kissing someone (willing) in a field of poppies. However, this flies in the face of convention, which in Victorian and post-Victorian England simply isn't done. Lucy has already been... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful