Pacino – An Actor’s Vision: The Local Stigmatic (1990), Looking for Richard (1996), Chinese Coffee (2000), Babbleonia (2005) 4 x DVD, download for free

Oct12

Pacino – An Actor’s Vision: The Local Stigmatic (1990), Looking for Richard (1996), Chinese Coffee (2000), Babbleonia (2005) 4 x DVD

by movieworld on October 12th, 2016 at 16:27

Posted In: .Other movies, Documentary, Drama

This four-disc set includes a trio of Pacino films, all inspired by renowned plays. First, Pacino co-directed and stars in "The Local Stigmatic", an offbeat character study, based on the play by Heathcote Williams, about a pair of nihilistic, working-class Englishmen who debate the finer points of everything from politics to celebrity gossip. Paul Guilfoyle, Joseph Maher also star. Next, playwright Ira Lewis' "Chinese Coffee" casts Pacino (who also directed) as a struggling novelist whose one shot at success is sabotaged by his so-called best friend (Jerry Orbach). With Susan Floyd. And, "Looking for Richard" is a unique mix of drama and documentary that follows director/star Pacino and a group of actors (including Alec Baldwin, Aidan Quinn, Winona Ryder, and Kevin Spacey) through rehearsal and filmed scenes for a production of Shakespeare's "Richard III." Includes appearances by John Gielgud and Kenneth Branagh. Also featured is the documentary "Babbleonia," chronicling Pacino's early years as an actor.

Though far from perfect, the films are revealing, because they suggest that Pacino, who started out on the New York stage, is still a theater artist at heart-—a fact apparent not just in his choice of material (and in his often grandiose acting), but in his direction, which manages to be at once cinematic and stagy; all three movies boast odd images, edits and effects that catch the viewer off guard.

2xDVD9 + 2xDVD5 | NTSC | 321 minutes | 23.6 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Espanol
Genre: Drama, Documentary

Extras:

-- Feature Length Commentary for The Local Stigmatic and Chinese Coffee – Both tracks feature Pacino by himself, which allows him to fully explore anything that comes to mind about the productions without interruption. Each of these recordings are certainly worth listening to, as they have Pacino opening up about his experiences making the films like very few directors do. He ignores the trappings that plague many other commentaries; he doesn’t fill it up by talking just to fill dead air. Instead, he focuses on what is going on in the mind of the characters, the important things that help actors become their roles, and perhaps the most interesting thing of all, his experiences behind the camera as both a director and producer. He goes on at length about how he had troubles communicating the way he viewed things to people like his cinematographer, how he can’t watch the films without noticing little things that he wishes he could go in and fix. The commentary for The Local Stigmatic is especially eye opening, as it helps viewers to get a better understanding of what Heathcote Williams was trying to say with his play and causes viewers to look at it in an entirely different light.

-- Each film is also given its own Prologue (6:17 total) and Epilogue (61:22 total), all of which feature Pacino and Richard Brown. making it so that viewers who aren’t sure what they’re about to get in to, or what they just finished watching, can get a better sense of what each film is trying to say. Al goes over what inspired him to make start the projects, the hardships along the way, and what they mean to him now that they’re finished. Each disc also features an additional speaker, Stigmatic has director David Wheeler, Richard has Alec Baldwin, and Coffee has Jerry Orbach.

-- Babbleonia: A Documentary (53:18) – As the fourth disc of this wonderful set, Babbleonia features Pacino and Film Professor Richard Brown at the Actor’s Studio. As something that could have easily been a discussion about Al’s career, it quickly turns in to almost a love letter by Al dedicated to the studio and what it has done for him and others over the years. This extra shows us why the set was titled “An Actor’s Vision,” because this is a nearly hour long feature that has Pacino talking almost non-stop about his early experience with the stage and how his perception of it has changed and evolved over the years; how he has grown to appreciate and understand it to greater lengths. He speaks about his life experiences so passionately that it’s impossible for anyone to watch this and not find a connection with what Pacino is saying.

-- Babbleonia also has an Easter egg of Al getting lost on a tangent. To access it, highlight the Looking for Richard trailer, but instead of pressing "ok," hit your right arrow button. The image of a hand will appear in the lower right, and if you select it, the extra scene will load up.

-- All four discs also feature a Trailer for Looking for Richard.