Factbites
 Where results make sense
About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   PR   |   Contact us  

Topic: Jan Sverak


Related Topics

  
  The Movie Chicks - Interview - Jan Sverak and Eric Abraham
Jan: It was while we were editing Kolya, we had already started to think about this project.
Jan: We had only two Spitfires and one bomber - and the bomber was not only used in the picture, but also as a camera-ship because it has all the holes, gun sights everywhere, so you can put the cameras there.
Jan: For the pilots, it's also different because you are not encountered face-to-face with injuries and death.
www.themoviechicks.com /jan2002/mctdarkblueworld.html   (2657 words)

  
 Central Europe Review - Film: Jan Sverak's Jizda
Sverak captures the atmosphere of a hot lazy summer perfectly and brings a truly spontaneous touch the trios antics: deliberately crashing the car, stealing ice-creams and breaking into a holiday home.
The plot does not seem to press, but Sverak holds you just enough with the sexual tension between Ana and the boys and the dramatic tension with her ever approaching boyfriend.
As it happens, in the end, Sverak manages to pull out a definite end to this tale, although you might not particularly feel that you are being led anywhere as the story unravels itself in its unhurried way.
www.ce-review.org /kinoeye/kinoeye17old2.html   (753 words)

  
 Variety.com - Jan Sverak
Sverak's been there before in 1992, with a best foreign-language film nomination for his first feature, "Elementary School." "It was good that 'Elementary School' didn't win.
As he gears up for the new project, Jan Sverak already is projecting into the future and anticipating the vagaries of helming bigger-budgeted films.
Sverak says of his father, "He knows how I work and puts all the details in he script." Details that make for a rich film that ripens with repeat viewings.
www.variety.com /article/VR1117792713?categoryid=13&cs=1   (886 words)

  
 MovieMaker Magazine | Archives   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
Jan Sverak says the film reflects on both his life and his father's situation as a young man.
Sverak directed Zdenek in both the 1991 film Elementary School and 1994's Accumulator I. Their collaboration on Elementary School proved to be a fruitful one, garnering the director his first Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Sverak says working with his father has actually strengthened their relationship.
www.moviemaker.com /magazine/editorial.php?id=299   (744 words)

  
 Jan Sverák @ Filmbug UK
Jan's ability as a filmmaker was confirmed by his sci-fi ecology documentary dealing with a newly discovered species, supposedly flourishing in the devastated region of the then Northern Czechoslovakia.
Jan Sverak directed ACCUMULATOR 1 (1994), an action fantasy about television's vampire-like capacity to suck out a person's life force and deplete their energy, which he wrote with Jan Slovak, a member of the theatre company Sklep.
Jan Sverak's road-movie JIZDA (THE RIDE) (1994) was also a hit with audiences in the Czech Republic.
www.filmbug.co.uk /db/36694   (699 words)

  
 Kakiseni.com - Czech Cinema on the Oscar Trail: The Films of Jan Sverák
Jan Sverak is one of Czech Republic's most noted filmmakers and a darn good actor too, and his father Zdeněk Svěrák is a Czech actor, humorist and scriptwriter and one of the most popular Czech cultural personalities.
This film was written by Zdenek and directed by son Jan, and was nominated for Best Foreign Film in the 1992 Academy Awards.
Igor is half-dictator, half-hero, although in truth a bit of a charlatan, and he fabricates a heroic past involving countless military campaigns, which alongside his philandering ways with the female population, makes him a role model for Eda and his school friends.
www.kakiseni.com /events/film/NzYxOQ.html   (641 words)

  
 Kolya - Nitrate Online Review
Jan Sverak draws a remarkable performance out of the young Andrej Chalimon as Kolya that is the heart and soul of the film.
The Sveraks have remarked on the challenge of "dressing down" Prague to insure that there were no advertisements on walls or trams, and Zdenek Sverak tells the story of how Jan noticed that his shoes were too clean for a Socialist era bachelor.
Markedly different one from the other in style, tone and budget, Jan Sverak's ouevre to date seems a conscious effort by a filmmaker of great flexibility and ambition to work in as many voices as possible.
www.nitrateonline.com /rkolya.html   (1169 words)

  
 The British battle of Czech mates - theage.com.au
Kolya was the fourth Oscar-nominated film Sverak has written, and the second directed by his son, Jan (who was also at the helm of 1991 Oscar nominee Elementary School).
From his home in Prague, Jan Sverak discusses his new film, the World War II romantic drama Dark Blue World, which was produced predominantly in his homeland.
Indeed, one of Sverak's small victories during production was being able to wrap shooting in South Africa in time to be back in Prague for the birth of his son.
www.theage.com.au /articles/2002/04/19/1019020699491.html   (987 words)

  
 Jan Dara   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
After his mother dies while giving birth to him, Jan is raised by his father who hates him.
When Jan is accused of molesting his sister, he is expelled from the household, with quiet relief.
Though three years later, Jan is summoned back to the household to fulfill an order of revenge.
debbieg.com /DVDS/details/826.html   (74 words)

  
 Metroactive Movies | Kolya
Zdenek Sverak (father of director Jan Sverak) plays Frantisek, an apolitical but politically fllisted cellist in the last days of Russian occupation in Czechoslovakia in 1988.
Sverak is a student of commercial westernized camerawork, so Kolya doesn't look static even when the plot gets that way (as in a well-staged sequence in which Kolya gets lost on the Prague subway).
It's heavy on the local color, and the views of the country are as sunny as the unthreatening view of families.
www.metroactive.com /papers/metro/02.13.97/kolya-9707.html   (495 words)

  
 Biography for Jan Sverak
He was born as son of writer, director and actor Zdenek Sverak.
He studied on Film University in Prague in section of documentary film and finished in 1988.
This page was created by Jan Lipsansky on 11th November 1996.
www.geocities.com /Hollywood/Hills/2765/jsverak.html   (124 words)

  
 Movie Database - [TV Guide Online]   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
Jan Sverak's sincere study of a crusty classical musician whose life is transformed by an unlikely chain of events is a modest film about flawed people and their relationships.
On the eve of Czechoslovakia's 1989 "Velvet Revolution," veteran cellist Louka (Zdenek Sverak, the filmmaker's father, who also penned the screenplay) -- once a mainstay of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra -- has fallen on hard times, reduced to making ends meet by playing funerals at the city crematorium.
Director Sverak elicits a sturdy performance from his actor father, but, more importantly, he draws the viewer subtly into the perspectives of both the child and his new guardian, letting the camera tell the story of their slowly developing friendship.
online.tvguide.com /movies/database/showmovie.asp?MI=38727   (248 words)

  
 Jan Sverak at Hollywood.com
Sverak was raised in the Czech film world as the son of star actor Zdenek Sverak, who also starred in and scripted "Kolya".
(Sverak was rejected in his application for the narrative branch of the school and had to take courses in the documentary branch instead.) While still a student, he began directing for Czech TV with "Conversation" (1986).
Sverak made his feature film debut with "Elementary School", the story of a new teacher in post-war Prague.
www.hollywood.com /celebrity/Jan_Sverak/187299   (801 words)

  
 kolya
The heart-pulling manipulative drama is directed by Jan Sverak ("The Ride"/"Accumulator 1") and is scripted by his father Zdenek Sverak, and is based on a story by Pavel Taussig.
The 55-year-old apolitical Frantisek Louka (Zdenek Sverak) is a talented cellist in the Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia of 1989, a confirmed bachelor, a happy go lucky sober-minded lady's man and someone who dutifully looks after his politically-minded nationalist elderly mother (she shouts out for the Ruskies to go home).
New Wave Czech director Jan Sverak has made a film with absolutely no edge that disappoints as a lumbering mainstream pic that is all too familiar to Americans.
www.sover.net /~ozus/kolya.htm   (423 words)

  
 Kolya DVD review - Time Out Film   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
The bogus bride, armed with her new Czech papers, exits to join a lover in West Germany, thus threatening to land Louka in trouble with the authorities, and lumbering him with her five-year-old son Kolya (Chalimon).
With each film, Czech director Jan Sverák moves ever closer to the mainstream: the oddball sci-fi parody Accumulator 1 and the dark social insights of the road movie The Ride are here replaced by sentimental comedy-drama.
The script (by the director's father and lead actor) is contrived, obvious and shallow, and benefits not a jot from being set during the decline of communism.
www.timeout.com /film/dvd.php?id=98434&redirect=true   (219 words)

  
 Akumulator   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
Czech writer/director Jan Sverak offers a possibility in this satirical tale of televisions that suck the life-force from every living thing.
And when he is driving down a road, we get a good look at the concerned snails he barely misses on the roadway.
CAST: Jan Slovák Jan Sverák Zdenek Sverák Cast (in credits order) Petr Forman as Olda Soukup Edita Brychta as Anna Zdenek Sverák as Fisarek: a natural healer, Bolek Polívka.
www.homestead.com /czechmoviehouse/Akumulator.html   (561 words)

  
 dOc DVD Review: Dark Blue World (2001)
World War II heroism has served filmmakers well as rousing subject matter for better than sixty years now, and Dark Blue World is a worthy addition to that roster of movies.
Director Jan Sverák's follow-up to his popular and critically acclaimed Kolya, it's a reasonably ambitious movie that yearns to tell its story on an epic scale.
The Making of Dark Blue World (33m:12s) is a pretty haphazard affair, blending on-set footage, clips from the movie, and interviews with cast members and the filmmakers; unfortunately none of them are identified by name, so we're left to divine that the screenwriter, Zdenek Sverák, is the director's father.
www.digitallyobsessed.com /showreview.php3?ID=3586   (1287 words)

  
 SPLICEDwire | "Dark Blue World" review (2002) Jan Sverak, Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Tara Fitzgerald
Director Jan Sverak ("Kolya") defies the film's small budget, making every round of ammunition, every dropped bomb and every smoking plane smashing into the sea below feel so personal and dangerous you almost want to check your back for a parachute.
But then Sverak turns on the sap as if it's coming out of a fire hose.
As with this movie's wealthier cousin, "Pearl Harbor," there was a memorable, historically important war story here that could have been very well told -- if only the filmmakers had dropped the ineffectual romance and stayed on target.
www.splicedwire.com /02reviews/darkblueworld.html   (721 words)

  
 Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel
Music, Ondrej Soukup.Produced by Eric Abraham & Jan Sverak.
Cast: Zdenek Sverak (Louka), Andrej Chalimon (Kolya), Libuse Safrankova (Klara), Ondrez Vetchy (gravedigger Mr.
His father Zdenek Sverak wrote the script AND plays the top role of Louka.
www.prairienet.org /ejahiel/kolya.htm   (1167 words)

  
 Dark Blue World | 636-637 | movies : ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Dark Blue World, directed by the sappy Czech journeyman Jan Sverak (Kolya), has the distinction of being photographed in lovely saturated colors and of holding about as much dramatic interest as ''Pearl Harbor'' minus the attack sequence.
Sverak's film is built around an even blander love triangle.
On an RAF base, where the Czechs have arrived to help fight in the British air war, Franta (Ondrej Vetchy), an experienced flyer, trains the young, fresh-faced Karel (Krystof Hadek) in how to be a fighter pilot; the two end up in...
www.ew.com /ew/article/review/movie/0,6115,194851~1~0~darkblueworld,00.html   (293 words)

  
 Variety.com - Jan Sverak
Sverak says he has transferred that type of tight editing process to his film work.
Sverak found himself filming his father's childhood reminiscences.
A human relationship is something else," Sverak says.
www.variety.com /article/VR1117792713?categoryid=13&cs=1   (886 words)

  
 SPLICEDwire | "Dark Blue World" review (2002) Jan Sverak, Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Tara Fitzgerald
An incredibly visceral portrayal of air battles over Britain dominates the second act of the movie, riding in the cockpits and on the wingtips of Slama and his young protege Karel (Krystof Hadek) as they engage in stunning dogfights over England and France.
Director Jan Sverak ("Kolya") defies the film's small budget, making every round of ammunition, every dropped bomb and every smoking plane smashing into the sea below feel so personal and dangerous you almost want to check your back for a parachute.
As with this movie's wealthier cousin, "Pearl Harbor," there was a memorable, historically important war story here that could have been very well told -- if only the filmmakers had dropped the ineffectual romance and stayed on target.
www.splicedonline.com /02reviews/darkblueworld.html   (721 words)

  
 Cinequest VII kolya
Principal Cast Zdenek Sverak, Andrej Chalimon, Libuse Safrankova, Ondrej Vetchy, Stella Zazvorkova, Ladislav Smoljak;
Working from a script bu his father Zdenek, Sverak weds the fond familial drama of his debut, Elementary School, with the offbeat humour of his most recent film, The Ride.
The result is a warm and funny portrait of a man who, as the Iron Curtain crumbles around him, experiences a revolution of his own.
www.cinequest.org /97/catalog/kolya.html   (318 words)

  
 Jan Svěrák: waiting for his chance - Prague Daily Monitor
Jan Svěrák: waiting for his chance - Prague Daily Monitor
Actor-screenwriter Zdeněk Svěrák (left) and his son, director Jan Svěrák, will end their partnership with the release of their new film.
If you don't have a MonitorPlus account, please consider subscribing to support the Prague Daily Monitor.
www.praguemonitor.com /en/35/cinema_in_prague/2329   (381 words)

  
 The Movie Chicks - Review - Dark Blue World (Tmavomodry Svet)
The film is a character study about a friendship that is put to the test by love and war.
While the story is not based on any real people, the writer, Zdenek Sverak, spent a great deal of time talking to pilots that lived through these times (and similar situations) - which gives the film a realistic tone.
Dark Blue World succeeds at showing a love triangle during a war - something that Pearl Harbor tried to do, but didn't quite pull off - mostly because the situations here are more believable.
www.themoviechicks.com /jan2002/mcrdarkblueworld.html   (501 words)

  
 DARK BLUE WORLD - SPECIAL EDITION DVD
Taking its name from a song sung during the course of the film, Oscar-winner (for 1996's Best Foreign Language Film Kolya) Jan Sverák's Dark Blue World is a historical melodrama set mostly in WWII-era Britain that's notable because its elaborate battle sequences appear to have been carried off without the aid of CGI.
The film is lacklustre and puzzlingly paced--apologists would call it leisurely, I call it lugubrious--and though the story at its core is indeed compelling and rich for exploration, Sverák's instinct towards sentimentality leads to one too many shots of sad-eyed dogs, exhausted under the weight of their status as beleaguered metaphors for loyalty and friendship.
This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
filmfreakcentral.net /dvdreviews/darkblueworld.htm   (837 words)

  
 DARK VICTORY: Film Freak Central Interviews Jan Sverak, Director of Dark Blue World
In 1994 Jan Sverák directed Jizda, a film referred to by many as the "Czech Easy Rider" because of its road movie structure and pushing of the moral boundaries for a new generation of Czech filmmakers.
It's proof that Jan is both deeply rooted and specifically Czech, but also universally accessible.
Film Freak Central was lucky enough to sit down with Jan Sverák to talk about heroism and the artist, family, learning to fly, and how film can change the world.
filmfreakcentral.net /notes/darkvictory.htm   (2943 words)

  
 KOLYA - Good Jan Sverak Foreign Drama 1996 - PG-13
Produced by Eric Abraham and Jan Sverak; Miramax
Wonderful Czech film about a 55 year old cellist named Louka who loses his job with the Philharmonic when he refuses to cooperate with the Russians occupying his native town of Prague.
The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union bring joy to the town, and Louka and his adopted son are now free to live life the way they want.
www.movies2go.net /review/Kolya.html   (167 words)

  
 Barnes & Noble.com - Dark Blue World -- Jan Sverák - DVD - Wide Screen
Jan Sverák, Ondrej Vetchý, Tara Fitzgerald, Oldrich Kaiser
The friendship of two men is tested by war, political upheaval, and romantic rivalry in this drama from Czech filmmaker Jan Sverak, whose Kolya became an international success.
Franta Slama (Ondrej Vetchy) is a top pilot in the Czech Air Force who is assigned to train a promising young flier, Karel Vojtisek (Krystof Hadek).
video.barnesandnoble.com /search/product.asp?ean=43396082755   (748 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)

Factbites
  About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   Press   |   Contact us  
Copyright © 2005-2007 www.factbites.com Usage implies agreement with terms.