Blow Up

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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom Keogh

Description

Taking photographs of a couple making love proves deadly when the photographer enlarges the image and discovers murder. The film and pictures are stolen from his studio and the body vanishes. In this elegant balance of deciet and trickery, the photographer must question the reality of what he has actually seen.

Customer Reviews:

Absolutely Great Film, absolutely worthless commentary........2007-09-06

It's tragic, not giving this disc 5 stars. The film deserves more then 5 stars. But the commentary, is so unbelievably poor, it's almost beyond belief. It's as if this person hasn't seen it in a while, and just gave some worthless criticisms as he watched it for the second time.
I've had discussions with friends while watching this film that would be 100 times more interesting, and enlightening.
Like someone else suggested, please Criterion, do a serious release of this phenomenal film.

Essential film genius: Antonioni's 'Blowup.'.......2007-08-15

The world lost one of its greatest film directors recently. Known for his radical narrative style, Italian film genius Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) depicted the alienation of man in the modern world in his powerful films. His films typically pondered existential questions of mortality, loneliness, emptiness, and moral decadence. While his quintessential film, L'Avventura - Criterion Collection (1960), earned Antonioni international recognition--exemplifying his film aesthetics of slow pacing, spare plot, a narrative structure that relies upon a series of apparently disconnected events, and a theme of spiritual isolation in a world obssessed with material wealth--it was his first English language film, Blowup (1966), that brought Antonioni major success.

Blowup is about the reliability of memory. Inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las Babas del Diablo," Blowup tells story of a mod London photographer, Thomas (David Hemmings) who, in the course of a single day, discovers he may have inadvertently preserved evidence of a murder while taking photos of two lovers in a park, a murder which may or may not involve an enigmatic woman, Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), who later visits him in his studio desperately seeking the film. Once the film is developed, blowups (enlargements) of the grainy photos seem to reveal a body. Or do they? Upon returning to the park without his camera, Thomas finds the body, but the film, pictures, and body vanish while he attempts to find a witness. Like L'avventura, Blowup is an unsolved mystery, so don't expect a typical Hollywood ending. Throughout the film, there is a sense of ennui amidst a swinging 1960s culture of fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex.

The film includes celebrity cameo appearances by Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck playing together as The Yardbirds, and Monty Pythoner Michael Palin in a crowd scene. Blowup was also the first British film to depict full frontal female nudity.

Hopefully the Criterion Collection will add Blowup to its catalog, digitally remastering the film and enhancing the sound quality. Highly recommended

G. Merritt

Antonioni gem.......2007-07-31

With yesterday's death of Antonioni, I feel compelled to say something about this film. Its 1966 release in the U.S. was an adrenalin rush, its plot captivating, its mood seductive. It made a star of Hemmings, not to mention the model Verushka. It caused a frat brother watching it to shout, "There it is!" Watch it and figure out what he was shouting at. Watch it and ask yourself, "What's the significance of the number 3?" This film created lively discussion in my college English class upon its release. A must-see Antonioni film.

Blow-Up.......2007-06-27

Antonioni's existential mystery scandalized some in the 1960s with its cool, casually erotic atmosphere of sex and drugs, but still made a sizeable dent at the box office. In addition to the film's central puzzle--was there a homicide or not?--Hemmings himself is a kind of cipher, playing a detached, unsmiling artist bored with his decadent life. With its mod flavorings and occasional surrealist touches--like a pantomime tennis game--"Blow-Up" is an intriguing, unconventional thriller that makes you question the nature of reality and illusion.

Red Sun.......2007-05-22

BLOW UP (1966) was Michelangelo Antonioni's second color film, and his first in English. Interestingly it was his first film that had a male protagonist. He is considered the master of abstract cinema, and this film continues in that vein. The cinematography was presented in very abstract ways, with most shots framed oddly, blocked by beams, banisters, photographic equipment, windows, and furniture. The camera made no effort to clear these objects in order for us to see the actors. Primary reds were the dominant colors, and in London that seemed easy, passing the double-decker buses and phone booths and pubs, all painted blood red. He painted one apartment building bright blue just for the contrast.

Swinging London of the Mods in the mid-60's seemed so wonderfully dated, captured in its spectacle. Those beehive hair-dos and mini-skirts, smoking that demon joint, the beginnings of the British invasion, that hard rock sound presented in the film by the Yardbirds, the first stages of long hair on men, and the casual way nudity and promiscuity is handled; all old hat to us now, but very brazen then.

I loved the way Antonioni gave us the skewed perspective of an unnamed photographer snapping candid shots of a young couple in the park, while the director shot him doing so; an overlapping sense of three perspectives. What the movie camera saw was not exactly what was snapped by the photographer. I loved the parallel of the photographer hopping over the low fence to hide in the bushes to shoot some shots, and then later discovering in exactly the same pose and framed shot, the sniper, the killer, behind the fence in the bushes. And of course the obvious parallels of the artist's abstract paintings, just so many random dots of color, until he capped the painting with some point of view, some detail that drew it all together -and the blow ups themselves, those photos of photos, with pixels blown up so large that they too look like abstract paintings to be interpreted.

Some have argued that the park represented Nature versus the pandemonium of the city, and yet what is a park? It is just an artificial large garden planted in the middle, or on the edge of a city, and it "represents" nature. We go there and have picnics or our lattes and imagine that we are off in the forest or field. This illusionary concept is important to Antonioni. Add to this the sense of each of us remaining strangers midst the teeming masses. The photographer and the mystery lady (David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave) both remain nameless. People seem to know them, but never refer to them by their name; very existential. It has been suggested that the director gave us several plot lines that were never meant to make sense, like the antique store scenes; and yet that would be a place that a photographer might haunt. His suggestions that his agent would bid on the store, that he might be a real estate speculator is never explored. Unlike a real photographer who asks permission to shoot a subject, Hemmings always shot secretly; even in the opening scenes, where he pretended to be homeless to shoot those old men in the shelter. Then there is the issue as to what was reality. Hemmings thinks he saw a corpse in the park when he visited it again, and yet he was not carrying his ever present camera. Why not? It seems to suggest that any of us alone witnessing something has no validity. We must find another human being to collaborate our find, to verify our conclusions.

Then the director gave us the "Merry Makers", the 8-10 Mimes that traveled around in an open jalopy, panhandling and performing, providing a prologue and epilogue. Their wordless game of tennis became the most "real" thing the photographer encountered, as he accepted their non-reality. As Antonioni made the character disappear in the grassy field, it made us wonder if any of the story had happened, or was it an allegory or dream. A complex and provoking film, it never fails to tantalize, a provoke attempts to make sense out of a senseless act.

Cowboy BeBop The Movie (UMD Mini for PSP)

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Cowboy BeBop The Movie (UMD Mini for PSP)
Starring: Beau Billingslea , Nicholas Guest , Jennifer Hale , Megumi Hayashibara , and Wendee Lee
Director: Shinichiro Watanabe , and Yoshiyuki Takei
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
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Mars. Days before Halloween 2071. Villains blow up a tanker truck on Highway One, releasing a deadly virus that kills hundreds. Fearing a bigger, even more devastating biochemical attack, an astronomical reward is offered for the arrest and capture of the person behind the destruction. On the space ship "Bebop," Spike Spiegel and his crew of bounty hunters (Jet Black, Faye Valentine, Ed and Ein) a

ASIN: B0007Y9JDI
Release Date: 2005-07-26

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Mars. Days before Halloween 2071. Villains blow up a tanker truck on Highway One releasing a deadly virus that kills hundreds. Fearing a bigger even more devastating biochemical attack an astronomical reward is offered for the arrest and capture of theFormat: UMD Genre: ANIMATION/ADULT SWIM Rating: R UPC: 043396113343 Manufacturer No: 11334

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Fairly vanilla sampler from the folks at Hollywood & Vine

Blow-Up
Starring: Various Artists
Manufacturer: Capitol
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Blow Up

ASIN: B0000C2IXY
Release Date: 2003-09-16

Customer Reviews:

Fairly vanilla sampler from the folks at Hollywood & Vine.......2004-03-15

Well, you can't beat the price.

Fans of the acts included on this DVD won't mind ponying up the (insert relatively low dollar figure here) for this glorified in-store promo effort, but there really isn't much of interest included in this set for anyone who is more than a casual fan.

The videos themselves aren't particularly ground-breaking (where have you gone, Russell Mulcahy?); Dandy Warhols fans may be interested to know that the video for "We Used To Be Friends" that is seen on this DVD is not the same version that can be found on the Dandys' website, and fans of Coldplay and the Vines (you know who you are) will doubtless enjoy the live footage of their band. Radiohead fans may feel a bit cheated as their band isn't represented with a proper video clip...and the "footage" was already archival and dated by the time this DVD was released.

There is a "pop-up video"-style video commentary track for each song that can be applied for casual fans otherwise unfamiliar with the artists included, but while the artist selection presented here is as good as can be expected and the price is indeed most reasonable, this video compilation, contemporary for its time, is hardly as interesting as other (far more expensive) DVD collections focusing on the careers of single artists such as the Cult, the Cure, Blur, and (especially) Duran Duran.

Basically I wouldn't recommend NOT purchasing "Blow-Up", but I can hardly say that it's essential viewing for dedicated fans of the acts, either. If you watch it twice you've paid for the rental fee of a movie from Blockbuster or Hollywood, so it's hard to feel that you don't get your money's worth. Take it or leave it for what it is and feel safe with either decision.

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All Dressed Up And No One To Blow DVD - Wicked Pictures

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ASIN: B000V1Z0P8

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Shut Up and Blow Me, Vol. 5

Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000UE4RNC
Release Date: 2001-02-20

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Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000UE4GJW
Release Date: 2000-07-25

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Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000URCUWY
Release Date: 2002-05-28

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Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000URCUXI
Release Date: 2002-11-25

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Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000UDZREG
Release Date: 1999-05-21

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Manufacturer: Digital Playground
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B000UE4B42
Release Date: 2000-03-31

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