LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Guy Maddin: Saddest Music
built 223 days ago
From Canada's cult auteur Guy Maddin ("Careful") comes this highly stylized take on the legendary Bram Stoker vampire story that features the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Maddin uses silent movie techniques, an orchestral score, and beautiful dancing in his fanciful vision, which focuses on Dracula's sexuality and the tale's symbolism. With Wei-Qiang Zhang and Tara Birtwhistle. 75 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: Dolby Digital stereo music score; audio commentary; behind-the-scenes footage; interviews; photo gallery. Silent with music score.
Source:
Guy Maddin’s recent films include Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary, Cowards Bend the Knee, and The Saddest Music in the World. A collection of his writings, From the Atelier Tovar (Coach House Press), appeared last year.
Source:
Guy Maddin makes movies unlike any others. His signature style draws on the look and feel of silent films, and his stories trace their roots back to the cinema of German Expressionism, campy horror, and the avant-garde. Since May 9, he's been touring the country presenting his new Brand Upon The Brain! in an unusual live setting: While the film flickers onscreen, a narrator will read live while musicians and Foley artists create the soundtrack in real-time. (For a schedule of performances, visit the film's official site.)
Source:
Even the reckless curiosity of Careful couldn't prepare you for Maddin's forceful adaptation of that infamous novel of bloodletting by Bram Stoker. Performed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (SFIFF 2003) is both elegantly composed and deliriously absurd and, with its woozy sexuality, strangely Victorian—or, better yet, strangely Victorian's secret. Yet the frothy film that insures Maddin's eternal life is not Dracula, but The Saddest Music in the World, a joyously stilted comedy wed to the extravagance of a dizzy '30s musical. Though it his most mainstream undertaking, in no way does Maddin forsake the idiosyncratic delirium of his earlier work; rather, his wit is wiggier than ever. Set in Depression-era Winnipeg, the film follows bewitching beer baroness Lady Port-Huntley (the ever-enchanting Isabella Rossellini), who announces a competition to determine which nation possesses the most sorrowful song. Based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Saddest Music in the World plays out in a frosty never-never land of oedipal intrigue.
Source:
Perhaps the best compliment ever paid to Guy Maddin's cinematic work came from the world's best-known film watcher. In the opening line to a review of Maddin's critically acclaimed 2003 feature, "The Saddest Music in the World," Roger Ebert wrote: "So many movies travel the same weary roads. So few imagine entirely original worlds."
Source:
In 1991, Maddin released the 34-minute Indigo High-Hatters. It told the true story of a 1920s Canadian jazz band that play their every performance gagged and almost completely immobilized by thick cords that bind them hand and foot. Despite this self-imposed adversity, they manage to play a full range of instruments and produce some effectively bizarre music.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Saddest Music