'Round Midnight
by Bertrand Tavernier
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dexter Gordon, Francois Cluzet, Herbie Hancock, Lonette Mckee, Sandra Reaves-phillipsDirector: Bertrand Tavernier
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Bertrand Tavernier
Producer: Irwin Winkler
Writer: David Rayfiel
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 133 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-07-22
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of 'Round Midnight
Movie Review: Not a jazz lover? You will be after you see 'Round Midnight
Summary: 5 Stars
I like jazz even though I'm not an expert; however, my husband is. He kept telling me you have to see this movie. Well, I did. Dexter Gordon is amazing. The music is amazing. It's as if you're in a time machine and you are right there in the room, in the club, or on a Paris street. Don't miss it. 'Round Midnight touches your spirit.
Summary of 'Round Midnight
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 07/22/2008 Rating: RLike the music it celebrates, Round Midnight is long on atmosphere, short on formal structure, alert and open to improvisation, making this 1986 drama the most authentic glimpse of jazz yet filmed. Its subject, Dale Turner (played by Dexter Gordon), is a composite of brilliant but bruised jazz warriors who left America behind for self-imposed European exile, finding a more tolerant and appreciative audience while never completely eluding their private demons. Drugs and drink have battered the tall, laconic saxophonist, whose diffident, somewhat distracted manner only partly conceals a deeper exhaustion as he plays a 1959 engagement in a Parisian club and tries to stay sober. His burnished solos drift behind the tempo with a languor that can't be fully explained as a point of style. But when an ardent, impoverished French fan (François Cluzet) intercepts his idol and then offers him simple acts of kindness, the gesture inspires a brief but glowing second wind in the aging musician, reflected in his playing. Even as the film contemplates Turner's return to his homeland as a portent of his own death, his moments on the Parisian bandstand suggest a glimpse of redemption.
If Turner's frail character echoes real-life ex-pats like Bud Powell and Lester Young, director Bertrand Tavernier's insistence upon casting the role with veteran tenor player Dexter Gordon breathes startling authenticity into the figure. Gordon's own drug arrests and an extended idyll abroad give him direct access to Turner's isolation, and Tavernier elicits a natural but compelling performance that earned Gordon (who died in 1990) an Academy Award nomination. Likewise, the director cast his cinematic band with world-class musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter, and shot these sequences as live performances. Hancock's score deservedly won both British and American Academy Awards, as well as a French César. --Sam Sutherland
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