No Direction Home Scorcese's documentary on Bob Dylan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Direction_Home#Reviews

Pages in category "Films directed by Martin Scorsese"
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Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro
A
After Hours (film)
The Age of Innocence (film)
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince
The Aviator (2004 film)
B
The Big Shave
The Blues (film)
Boxcar Bertha
Bringing Out the Dead
C
Cape Fear (1991 film)
Casino (film)
C cont.
The Color of Money
D
The Departed
G
Gangs of New York
Goodfellas
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It's Not Just You, Murray!
Italianamerican
K
The King of Comedy (1983 film)
Kundun
L
The Last Temptation of Christ (film)
The Last Waltz
List of Martin Scorsese films
M
Mean Streets
M cont.
My Voyage to Italy
N
New York Stories
New York, New York (film)
No Direction Home
P
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
R
Raging Bull
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Shine a Light (film)
Shutter Island (film) No Direction Home
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No Direction Home

Directed by
Martin Scorsese
Produced by
Susan LacyJeff RosenMartin ScorseseNigel SinclairAnthony Wall
Starring
Bob Dylan
Music by
Bob Dylan
Cinematography
Mustapha Barat
Editing by
David Tedeschi
Distributed by
Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)
July 21, 2005
Running time
208 min.
Language
English
Budget
$2,000,000
No Direction Home is a documentary film by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on 20th century American popular music and culture. The film does not cover Dylan's entire career; it concentrates on the period between Dylan's arrival in New York in January 1961 and his "retirement" from touring, following his motorcycle accident in July 1966. This period encapsulates Dylan's rise to fame as a folk singer and songwriter, and the controversy surrounding his switch to a rock style of music.
Contents[hide]
1 Production
1.1 Development
1.2 Title
1.3 Cover photo
2 Reception
2.1 Reviews
2.2 Awards
3 Shelton biography
4 References
5 External links
//
[edit] Production
[edit] Development
The film was first shown on television in both the United States (as part of the American Masters series on PBS) and the United Kingdom (as part of the Arena series on BBC Two) on September 26–27 2005. A DVD version of the film and accompanying soundtrack album (The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack) were released that same month.
The project eventually titled as No Direction Home began to take shape in 1995 when Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen, began scheduling interviews with Dylan's friends and associates. Among those interviewed were poet Allen Ginsberg and folk musician Dave Van Ronk, both of whom died before the film was completed. Dylan's old girlfriend Suze Rotolo also granted a rare interview, and she later told Rolling Stone Magazine that she was very pleased with the project's results. Dylan himself also sat for ten hours in a relaxed and open conversation with Rosen in 2000.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, an unnamed source close to the project claimed that Dylan himself had no involvement with the project apart from the interview, saying that "[Dylan] has no interest in this . . . Bob truly does not look back." However, work on the first installment of Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. 1, did overlap production of the project, though it's unclear how much, if any, influence Chronicles may have had on No Direction Home.
Though raw material was being gathered for the project, Rosen needed someone to edit and shape it into a quality picture, and celebrated filmmaker Martin Scorsese was approached to 'direct' the documentary planned from the project. Scorsese eventually agreed and came aboard in 2001.
In the meantime, Dylan's office gathered hundreds of hours of historical film footage dating from the time covered in No Direction Home. These included a scratchy recording of Dylan's high school rock band, his 1965 screen test for Andy Warhol, and newly-discovered footage of the famous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert from May 17, 1966, when an angry fan, John Cordwell, called out "Judas!" just before Dylan and the Hawks performed "Like a Rolling Stone." Shot by D.A. Pennebaker, the onstage, color footage was found in 2004 in a pile of water-damaged film recovered from Dylan's vaults.
[edit] Title
The title of the film takes its name from a lyric of the Dylan song, "Like a Rolling Stone", on the Highway 61 Revisited album.
[edit] Cover photo
The cover photo on the DVD package, by Barry Feinstein, shows Dylan standing in front of the Aust Ferry terminal in Gloucestershire, England, in May 1966, shortly before the opening of the Severn Bridge which replaced the ferry.
[edit] Reception
[edit] Reviews
The film received positive reviews from film critics, as review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, based on 14 reviews.[1] Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 4/4 stars, stating that it "creates a portrait that is deep, sympathetic, perceptive and yet finally leaves Dylan shrouded in mystery, which is where he properly lives".[2]
[edit] Awards
The documentary received a Peabody Award in 2006, and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007.
[edit] Shelton biography
No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, Robert Shelton, 1986, Da Capo Press reprint 2003, ISBN 0-306-81287-8
[edit] References
^ "No Direction Home". Rotten Tomatoes. http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/1148076-no_direction_home_bob_dylan/. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
^ Ebert, Roger (2005-09-20). "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan". http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050919/REVIEWS/509200301/1023. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
[edit] External links
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan - A Martin Scorsese Picture at the Internet Movie Database
No Direction Home at Rotten Tomatoes
No Direction Home at bbc.co.uk.
Street Scenes
T
Taxi Driver
W
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Who's That Knocking at My Door
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_directed_by_Martin_Scorsese"

Scorcese The Aviator Life of Howard Hughes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aviator_(2004_film)

Plot
The film begins in 1914 with nine-year-old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease: "You are not safe."
The film next shows him in 1927, as a 22-year old preparing to direct Hell's Angels. Hiring Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) to run Hughes Tool Company, while he oversees the flight sequences for the film, Hughes becomes obsessed with shooting the film realistically, even re-shooting the dogfight himself. By 1929, with the silent film finally complete, Hughes realizes the premiere of the The Jazz Singer, which was the first part-talking film, meaning that sound films would soon become the industry standard. Hughes re-shoots Hell's Angels with sound, costing another year and $1.7 million. Hell's Angels released as a sound film in 1930 is a huge hit, and Hughes also produces Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1943). However, there is one goal he relentlessly pursues: aviation. During this time, he also pursues Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). The two go to nightclubs, play golf and fly together, and as they grow closer, move in together as well. During this time Hepburn becomes a major supporter and confidant to Hughes, and helps alleviate the symptoms of his obsessive-compulsive disorder. As Hughes' fame grows, he is seen with more starlets

Hughes takes an interest in commercial-passenger travel, and purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), the predecessor to Trans World Airlines. In 1935, he test flies the H-1 Racer but crashes in a beet field; "Fastest man on the planet," he boasts to Hepburn. Three years later, he flies around the world in four days, shattering the previous record by three days. Meanwhile, Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), chairman of the board of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) worry over the possibility that Hughes might beat them in the quest for commercial expansion. Brewster has just introduced the Commercial Airline Bill, which will give world expansion solely to Pan Am. Trippe advises Brewster to check into the "disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes."

Hepburn and Hughes eventually break up when she announces that she has fallen in love with her movie co-star (although he is briefly seen but never clearly stated, the viewers already know that the co-star is her would be domestic partner Spencer Tracy).
He soon has a new interest: 15-year old Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner) and later, Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). He also fights the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association over the steamy scenes in The Outlaw. He learns of Pan Am's efforts to run TWA off the map yet secures contracts with the Army Air Forces on two projects, a spy plane and a troop transport. By 1946, Hughes has only finished the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and is building the H-4 Hercules ("Spruce Goose") flying boat.
With the strain of meeting deadlines and budgets, Hughes starts to show signs of alarming behavior, repeating phrases over and over and exhibiting a phobia over dust and germs. That July, he takes the XF-11 for a test flight. One of the propellers malfunctions, causing a crash in a Beverly Hills neighborhood. Rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, he slowly recuperates and learns the H-4 Hercules transport is no longer needed, but orders production to continue. When he is discharged, the whole TWA fleet is built and ready to go, but he is in danger of being bankrupted by the airline and his flying boat.

Afraid of the media trying to find him, Hughes places microphones and taps Ava's phone lines to keep track of any suspicious activity. After being confronted by Gardner, he returns home to find the FBI searching his house for incriminating evidence that he embezzled government funds. The incident is both a powerful trauma for Hughes and gives his enemies knowledge about his condition. Hughes meets with Brewster, who offers to drop the charges if Hughes supports the CAB and sells the TWA stock to Trippe. Hughes sinks into a deep depression afterwards, shutting himself in his screening room, growing ever more paranoid and detached from reality; terrified of germs, he urinates into dozens of empty milk bottles. Hepburn tries to visit him, but is unable to help. Trippe then pays Hughes a visit, but an enraged Hughes vows he will never sell TWA. Trippe warns Dietrich that the world will see what Hughes has become if he goes to the hearings. After nearly three months, Hughes finally emerges and prepares to face the Senate, with encouragement from Ava Gardner, who helps him get cleaned up.

Hughes arrives at the hearings, and starts off with counter-claiming Brewster's charges: "Why not tell the truth, Senator? Why not tell the truth that this investigation was really born on the day that TWA first decided to fly to Europe?" Humiliated and enraged by this turn of events, Brewster formally states that Hughes charged the Defense Department $56 million for aircraft that never flew. Hughes defends himself and reveals that Trippe essentially bribed Brewster to hold the hearings.

Hughes successfully test flies the flying boat himself. After the flight, he talks to Dietrich and his mechanic, Glenn Odekirk (Matt Ross), about a new jetliner for TWA (the Avro C102 Jetliner) and makes a date with Gardner at a celebration party on the Long Beach shoreline. Hughes seems free of his inner demons until he sees three attendants in business suits and white gloves edging towards him, which triggers an obsessive-compulsive fit as he begins repeating "The way of the future." Dietrich and Odekirk take Hughes in a bathroom and hide him there, while Dietrich fetches a doctor and Odekirk stands outside guarding the door. Alone inside, Howard has a flashback to his boyhood, being washed by his mother and resolving he will fly the fastest aircraft ever built, make the biggest movies ever and become the richest man in the world. As the film ends he mutters "the way of the future... the way of the future" into a darkened mirror

Bibliography
Higham, Charles. Howard Hughes: The Secret Life. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2004. ISBN 978-0312329976.
Maguglin, Robert O. Howard Hughes, His Achievements & Legacy: the Authorized Pictorial Biography. Long Beach, California: Wrather Port Properties, 1984. ISBN 0-86679-014-4.
Marrett, George J. Howard Hughes: Aviator. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2004. ISBN 1-59114-510-4.

Roger Ebert described the film and its subject Howard Hughes in these terms:[10]
“
What a sad man. What brief glory. What an enthralling film, 166 minutes, and it races past. There's a match here between Scorsese and his subject, perhaps because the director's own life journey allows him to see Howard Hughes with insight, sympathy – and, up to a point, with admiration. This is one of the year's best films.

Scorcese BOXCAR BERTHA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxcar_Bertha

Boxcar Bertha (1972), one of director Martin Scorsese's earliest films, is a loose adaptation of Sister of the Road, the fictionalized autobiography of radical and transient Bertha Thompson as written by physician Dr. Ben L. Reitman. One of producer Roger Corman's famous exploitation films, the movie was made with a modest $600,000 budget and taught Scorsese how to make films quickly and economically.
Besides the name of the heroine and her freight riding, very little of the film bears any resemblance to the original story written in Sister of the Road. The film tells the story of Bertha Thompson (played by Barbara Hershey) and "Big" Bill Shelly (played by David Carradine), two train robbers and lovers who are caught up in the plight of railroad workers in the American South. When Bertha is implicated in the murder of a wealthy gambler, the pair become fugitives from justice. While this story adheres to certain conventions of exploitation narrative, it also offers a surprisingly frank look at race and gender issues in the 1930s.

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD SCORCESE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Out_the_Dead

Plot
Frank Pierce (Cage) is a paramedic working the graveyard shift in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, a neighborhood in New York City, during the early 1990s. It takes place over the course of three nights, each night pairing Pierce with a different partner (Goodman, Rhames, and Sizemore).
Complaining of burnout, Pierce suffers from insomnia and begins having visions of a young girl named Rose who died while under his care. Once called Father Frank for his ability to save lives, Pierce starts to fear that he will soon face another life he cannot save, and begins attempting to get fired as his visions of Rose become more frequent.
Soon, Pierce bonds with Mary (Arquette), the daughter of a heart attack victim whom he had previously saved, and who visits her father regularly at the hospital. Mary talks to Frank about her compassion toward helping others, which is shown contrasting Frank's feelings of burnout. It is through Mary that Frank is able to reconcile his feelings about Rose, and in the end, sleep, after sleeping with Mary and carrying out a mercy killing of her father.

Abstract (Document Summary)

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/courant/access/26907675.html?dids=26907675:26907675&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Mar+01%2C+1998&author=JOCELYN+MCCLURG&pub=Hartford+Courant&desc=%60BRINGING+OUT+THE+DEAD%27+VIVID%2C+OUT+OF+CONTROL&pqatl=google
If anyone is in desperate need of rescue, it's Frank Pierce, the edgy narrator of "Bringing Out the Dead." Burned-out is too mild a description for the ills that plague Frank after five years on the job in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen: He's constantly hung over, his wife has left him and he's wracked with guilt because he feels responsible for the death of an 18-year-old asthmatic girl named Rose.
Connelly, who was a medic in Hell's Kitchen (a section west of the theater district) for nearly a decade, writes with a frightening intensity that borders on surrealism. It's as though Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver" has met the characters from Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
But Frank has hit a bad patch; his patients keep dying. And they haunt him, literally. "In the last year I had come to believe in such things as spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back, spirits angry at the awkward places death had left them." Rose, the girl Frank "helped to kill," haunts him more than any of the other ghosts that swirl around Hell's Kitchen. And so does Mona. The wife who abandoned him is now a ghostly presence as well.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

The movie is based on a novel by Joe Connelly, himself once a New York paramedic. The screenplay by Paul Schrader is another chapter in the most fruitful writer-director collaboration of the quarter century ("Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "The Last Temptation of Christ"). The film wisely has no real plot, because the paramedic's days have no beginning or goal, but are a limbo of extended horror. At one point, Frank hallucinates that he is helping pull people's bodies up out of the pavement, freeing them.To look at "Bringing Out the Dead"--to look, indeed, at almost any Scorsese film--is to be reminded that film can touch us urgently and deeply. Scorsese is never on autopilot, never panders, never sells out, always goes for broke; to watch his films is to see a man risking his talent, not simply exercising it. He makes movies as well as they can be made, and I agree with an observation on the Harry Knowles Web site: You can enjoy a Scorsese film with the sound off, or with the sound on and the picture off.Now look at "Bringing Out the Dead." Three days in Frank's life.The first day his co-pilot is Larry (John Goodman), who deals with the grief by focusing on where his next meal is coming from. To Larry, it's a job, and you can't let it get to you. Day two, Frank works with Marcus (Ving Rhames), who is a gospel Christian and uses emergencies as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of Jesus; bringing one man back to life, he presents it as a miracle. He drives as if he hopes to arrive at the scene of an accident by causing it. On the third day, the day Christ rose from the dead, Frank's partner is Walls (Tom Sizemore), who is coming apart at the seams and wreaks havoc on hapless patients.

Haunting Frank's thoughts as he cruises with these guys are two women. One is Rose, whose face peers up at him from every street corner. The other is Mary (Patricia Arquette), the daughter of the man who liked Sinatra. After her dad is transferred to an intensive care unit, his life, such as it is, consists of dying and being shocked back to life, 14 times one day, until Frank asks, "If he gets out, are you gonna follow him around with a defibrillator?" Mary is a former druggie, now clean and straight, and Frank--well, I was going to say he loves her, but this isn't one of those autopilot movies where the action hero has a romance in between the bloodshed. No, it's not love, it's need. He thinks they can save each other.Scorsese assembles the film as levels in an inferno. It contains some of his most brilliant sequences, particularly two visits to a high-rise drug house named the Oasis, where a dealer named Cy (Cliff Curtis) offers relief and surcease. Mary goes there one night when she cannot stand any more pain, and Frank follows to save her; that sets up a later sequence in which Frank treats Cy while he is dangling near death.All suffering ends at the same place, the emergency room of Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy (nickname: Perpetual Misry) where the receiving nurse (Mary Beth Hurt) knows most of the regulars by name.Nicolas Cage is an actor of great style and heedless emotional availability: He will go anywhere for a role, and this film is his best since "Leaving Las Vegas." I like the subtle way he and Scorsese embody what Frank has learned on the job, the little verbal formulas and quiet asides that help the bystanders at suffering. He embodies the tragedy of a man who has necessary work and is good at it, but in a job that is never, ever over.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991022/REVIEWS/910220303/1023


"Bringing Out the Dead" is an antidote to the immature intoxication with violence in a film like "Fight Club." It is not fun to get hit, it is not redeeming to cause pain, it does not make you a man when you fight, because fights are an admission that you are not smart enough to survive by your wits. "Fight Club" makes a cartoon of the mean streets that Scorsese sees unblinkingly.

[hide]
v • d • eFilms by Martin Scorsese
1960s
Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967)
1970s
Boxcar Bertha (1972) • Mean Streets (1973) • Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) • Taxi Driver (1976) • New York, New York (1977)
1980s
Raging Bull (1980) • The King of Comedy (1983) • After Hours (1985) • The Color of Money (1986) • The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
1990s
Goodfellas (1990) • Cape Fear (1991) • The Age of Innocence (1993) • Casino (1995) • Kundun (1997) • Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
2000s
Gangs of New York (2002) • The Aviator (2004) • The Departed (2006)
2010s
Shutter Island (2010)
Shorts
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) • It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964) • The Big Shave (1967) • Bad (1987) • Life Lessons (1989) • The Key to Reserva (2007)
Documentaries
Street Scenes (1970) • Italianamerican (1974) • American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978) • The Last Waltz (1978) • A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) • My Voyage to Italy (1999) • The Blues (2003) • No Direction Home (2005) • Shine a Light (2008)
Produced
You Can Count on Me (2000) • Nyfes (2004) • The Young Victoria (2009)