The Player (Special Edition) (New Line Platinum Series)

Buy This Item The Player (Special Edition) (New Line Platinum Series) by New Line Home Video  Available from Amazon  $14.49  on 11-27-2008     A wicked satirical fable about corporate backstabbing--and actual murder--in the movie business, <i>The Player</i> benefits from director Robert Altman's long and bitter experience working within, and without, the Hollywood studio system. Rising young executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is tormented by threats from an anonymous writer. The pressure and paranoia build until Griffin loses control one night and semi-accidentally kills screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), who may or may not be the source of the threats. From that point, Griffin's life and career begin to fall apart. In keeping with the ironic spirit of the film itself, Altman's scathingly funny attack on the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood was embraced by many of the same people it was intended to savage, and restored the director to commercial and critical favor. Michael Tolkin adapted the screenplay from his own novel, and the movie is studded with cameos by famous faces, many of whom appear as themselves. The digital video disc includes a commentary track with Altman and Tolkin, some deleted scenes, a documentary about Altman, and a key to help identify more than 50 of the picture's big-name cameos. <i>--Jim Emerson</i> Reader Reviews The Player is a 1992 satire on the indifference and uncaring attitude of Hollywood Bigwigs, and a blackmail mystery, or something--nobody knows for sure. This movie's plot is like Bigfoot. Vague, sketchy information of possible plot sightings have been reported by fringe groups and kooks. The story goes something like this: Anyway, all I can say about this movie is that I want my two hours and four minutes back. I think I'd rather be sitting in an ancient art history class looking at slides of overweight stone cave goddess sculptures with giant mammaries. The producers' mission statement on this movie was an obvious formula for an enduring, ingenious, classic film: Under no circumstances will the cinematographer point their camera at a person who is acting! Eye contact? Overrated! Why build sets when we can just make the movie hanging around the office! Tension? Story? Why bother! My Hollywood friends are here! There was, what, about eight or nine minutes, tops, of movie here. The remaining hour and fifty four minutes were just camera people running around Hollywood flailing about madly screaming in high-pitched voices, "look at me! Look at me! I've got a camera and I'm shooting celebs!" And yes, they were definitely flailing about madly and screaming in high-pitched voices. It's the only logical explanation. This movie wasn't a "who's who" so much as a "so what." Among the diarrhea of cameos: Whoopi Goldberg plays a tampon-flinging cop on the loose, with Lyle Lovett as her canny but streetwise poster child for hairstyles gone bad. Cher showed up--I figure they must have paid her in drugs and plastic surgery. And what parade of Hollywood garbage is complete without Burt Reynolds slamming his fat ugly face onto the screen? Even the nudity managed to suck. Every nude woman on the screen was no bigger than a couple half-aspirins on a cutting board. Worst of all, this movie casts Tim Robbins, an actor I used to like, in a whole new light for me. And here's what I'm told is so delightful about this movie: it's chock-full of Hollywood insider references and jokes. I caught the ones that I caught, and then this movie's advocates tried plaintively to convince me that I was being let in on some really privileged information when I was told the rest. It almost goes without saying, but it just comes off as grossly pretentious. And, as a sure sign that the apocalypse draws nigh, as this movie points out, there were about 4,166 other story ideas that got thrown out so that this movie could be made. I personally would rather have watched Habeus Corpus.

The Player (Special Edition) (New Line Platinum Series) Available from Amazon Price: $14.49 Updated on 11-27-2008.

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