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Topic: Mother Night (film)


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In the News (Sat 28 Nov 09)

  
  Whyaduck Productions, Inc. -- Weide's Mother Night
This scene, filmed faithfully from the novel, has been made especially effective by the cinematic identification between Resi the adult, so happily hopeful in her role as Helga, and Resi the child, nihilistic to the point of having no personhood at all.
In Mother Night his Howard Campbell is a more conventionally aesthetic artist; in fact, it is Campbell's motivation as an aesthete that corrupts his drama and his fascination with playing the ultimately tragic role of hero that damns the world with his propaganda.
In his film Robert Weide stops short of such self-judgment, preferring to let the watching prison guard make sufficient comment with a simple exhale of smoke, a reminder of his earlier comment of how strapping the legs of the executed Rudolf Hess felt exactly the same as strapping shut his suitcase.
www.duckprods.com /projects/mothernight/mn-klinkowitz.html   (3525 words)

  
  Mother Night - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mother Night is a novel first published in 1961 and written by the American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Mother Night was made into a film in 1996 by writer / producer Robert B. Weide; it was directed by Keith Gordon and starred Nick Nolte.
So I was right to trust him"; when asked about the degree of artistic influence Vonnegut had had over the film, Vonnegut said "Almost none.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Mother_Night   (440 words)

  
 filmcritic.com Movie Review: Mother Night
The fact it is that Mother Night is one of a cadre of films that is swept under the rug due to the fact that it hits some cultural hot button to the average (slightly prejudicial) person.
Although the Nazis in the film cheer at this, this is a backhanded insult towards them and a joke at their hypocrisy and stupidity.
The true moral in Mother Night, in addition to not pretending to be something you're not, is that you have a mind, and that you should exercise it instead of going on the propaganda life spoon feeds you.
www.filmcritic.com /misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/5fce63a41b229c43882567da00057192?OpenDocument   (1286 words)

  
 Not a good 'Night'
The problem is twofold in even discussing "Mother Night" critically; one doesn't want to give away the twists and turns of the very convoluted plot (as they are largely effective), but it is almost impossible to point out the film's flaws without rupturing this densely woven storytelling net.
"Mother Night" is Keith Gordon's third film as director, as well as his third adaptation of literary pedigree.
Judging from the fact that Gordon has already, on at least one occasion, explained to audiences about to see "Mother Night" that the film will attempt to approach certain serious matters in a ridiculous way, it's as if he was too afraid to push the envelope of good taste as far as he should have.
www.usc.edu /student-affairs/dt/V129/N47/09-night.47c.html   (742 words)

  
 DVD Review - Mother Night   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Gordon and Wiede’s 1996 celluloid translation of "Mother Night" conscientiously preserves Vonnegut’s dry-like-fire irony and tragic understanding that "we are what we pretend to be," played out against the backdrop of one of this century’s darkest chapters.
New Line’s record of providing outstanding, high quality video transfers for their DVDs remains intact with "Mother Night." Mastered from a source free of defects, the 1.85 anamorphic widescreen image is sharp and clean.
Even during low-light or night scenes, the video transfer unerringly transmits the stark reds and muted grays dominating the color sequences, while the fl and white scenes exhibit good gray scale and accurate contrast levels.
www.dvdreview.com /fullreviews/mother_night.shtml   (1579 words)

  
 MOTHER NIGHT & WAKING THE DEAD - DVDs   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
They are transvestite hermaphrodites." Perhaps Mother Night is one of the few artistically successful cinematic adaptations of a Vonnegut work because its director avoids semicolons in his filmmaking--scenes rarely become run-on or two-ply with Keith Gordon at their helm.
Mother Night and Waking the Dead come to us on DVD, from New Line Home Video and USA Home Entertainment, respectively, in similarly executed Special Editions (neither of which is billed as such).
Note: Mother Night's omissions are in pristine anamorphic, but Waking the Dead's have been mastered in 4:3 from a dub of workprint material.
www.filmfreakcentral.net /dvdreviews/motherwaking.htm   (1316 words)

  
 DVD Review: Mother Night
"Mother Night" is based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut; I've never read the book, but I found this attempt to bring the film to the screen to be an interesting one, well-performed and well-told.
As the film begins, he is about to go on trial for being a war criminal, and the flashbacks that proceed afterwards examine which side he was on, and who he harmed more.
MENUS:: The menus are non-animated, with film themed art; it may be basic, but it seems appropriate for the film.
www.currentfilm.com /dvdreviews/mothernightdvd.html   (987 words)

  
 Metroactive Movies | Mother Night
The film is didactic to a fault, pushing a lesson about the importance of shunning Nazism, which most of the audience is not going to need.
Mother Night the novel was a study fit for a post-Holocaust Lubitsch, an acid comedy about a moral relativist's comeuppance; Mother Night the movie is designed to please Elie Wiesel.
Mother Night (R; 113 min.), directed by Keith Gordon, written by Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, photographed by Tom Richmond and starring Nicky Nolte and Sheryl Lee.
www.metroactive.com /papers/metro/11.14.96/mother-night-9646.html   (782 words)

  
 Film Review: Kurt Vonnegut's `Mother Night' loses punch in new film version (11-8-1996)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
"Mother Night," which debuted locally last month in the Mill Valley Film Festival and begins its theatrical run next Friday, Nov. 15, centers on a stylish, powerfully built American playwright, Howard W. Campbell (Nick Nolte, in the most moving performance of his career).
The moral ambiguities in "Mother Night" are accentuated by Nolte's playing of Campbell as a victim swamped by forces beyond his control.
Yet "Mother Night" still doesn't knock the wind out of us, despite the accomplished work of director and producer Keith Gordon (who also wrote and produced HBO's upcoming adaptation of Elie Wiesel's "Dawn").
www.jewishsf.com /bk961108/etfilm.htm   (608 words)

  
 Compare Prices and Read Reviews on Mother Night at Epinions.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Mother Night compels the viewer to reflect upon his or her own beliefs about the morality of Campbell's actions.
During important moments of Mother Night, spotlights are used to focus the audience's attention of what is happening.
Mother Night is a film that offers great insight into the nature of life, and, more importantly, love.
www.epinions.com /content_81698721412   (1340 words)

  
 "Who Am I This Time?" Kurt Vonnegut and the film Mother Night Literature Film Quarterly - Find Articles
The introduction to Mother Night describes Vonnegut's "personal experience with Nazi monkey business," strengthening the reader's sense of an implied author standing behind the first person narrative of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., and providing valuable clues about how Vonnegut would like his novel to be read.
In Keith Gordon's film Mother Night, the moral passes through Campbell's thoughts as he makes love to his wife, a German actress who does not know that he is a spy.
If the introduction to Mother Night had its own title it would probably be "Nazis and me," a phrase that Vonnegut uses to signal the end of his recollections and the beginning of his speculations about what he would have done if he had lived in Nazi Germany.
findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9169231   (908 words)

  
 SPLICEDwire | "Mother Night" review (2003) Keith Gordon, Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee
This is one of those rare films that survives the transition to the small screen virtually intact.
Nick Nolte is one of those actors that will draw me to a film without any other motivation, and he owns every moment of "Mother Night," a cerebral and crafty World War II spy drama adapted from a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
As he is in literally every scene of the 113-minute film, the audience becomes a party to Nolte's consciousness as an American playwright living in Germany as the Nazis come to power.
www.splicedonline.com /96reviews/momnite.html   (784 words)

  
 'night, Mother - Marsha Norman   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Mother dismisses her daughter's intention for the first three quarters of the play.
In fact, from our perspective, she is mad, while the Mother weeps and blames herself for Jessie's unhappiness, as she explains the girl's motive.
The mother's effort to understand elicits our sympathy for her, whereas the girl's nominal aim to spare her Mother grief is only minimally credible.
www.culturevulture.net /Theater7/NightMother.htm   (863 words)

  
 Literature Film Quarterly: "Who Am I This Time?" Kurt Vonnegut and the film Mother Night
The introduction to Mother Night describes Vonnegut's "personal experience with Nazi monkey business," strengthening the reader's sense of an implied author standing behind the first person narrative of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., and providing valuable clues about how Vonnegut would like his novel to be read.
In Keith Gordon's film Mother Night, the moral passes through Campbell's thoughts as he makes love to his wife, a German actress who does not know that he is a spy.
If the introduction to Mother Night had its own title it would probably be "Nazis and me," a phrase that Vonnegut uses to signal the end of his recollections and the beginning of his speculations about what he would have done if he had lived in Nazi Germany.
www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200301/ai_n9169231   (1208 words)

  
 village voice > theater > 'Night, Mother by Michael Feingold   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Some plays move you no matter who performs them, and it's just as well that Marsha Norman's 1984 spine-chiller 'Night, Mother is one of those, because its current revival is one of those solid, competent, uninspired events that might have produced, with a lesser script, only a damp fizzle.
Norman's tense drama depicts the night on which a suicide-bent daughter confronts the mother with whom she's lived in muted misery for years.
Brenda Blethyn, as the distraught mother, works with a painstaking skill that, except very near the harrowing end, only seems to underscore her distance from the role; Edie Falco, as her determined daughter, creates and sustains a powerful figure who's barely within nodding distance of the character Norman wrote.
www.villagevoice.com /issues/0446/feingold3.php   (201 words)

  
 Mother Night   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Mother Night actually works better when it is somewhat serious, and if it could resolve itself in a consistent tone, the film would be much improved.
However, once the film goes off track, it careens recklessly into blatant farce involving, among other things, a fl Nazi, the reappearance of people thought dead, spies, counterspies, and a lot of unneccessary extra plot.
There are a few divergent amusements here, but Mother Night is trapped by its framing device (the whole story is told in serious flashback), and so when the farce tries to go straight again, we are in for another jolt, and left to question if it was worth the ride.
www.cinematter.com /movie.php3?mothernight   (277 words)

  
 Fine Line Features | Mother Night
Award-winning writer/producer/director Robert B. Weide has been creating films and television specials since 1982, when at the age of 22 he produced and co-wrote "The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell," a PBS documentary that was received with critical acclaim and was one of the networks' highest rated programs of the decade.
Light Sleeper premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and internationally at the Berlin Film Festival while The Comfort Of Strangers and Patty Hearst were both presented to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival.
She is also involved in the development of a number of projects and hopes to reteam with Gordon on his next film.
www.finelinefeatures.com /mnight/filmbios.htm   (1436 words)

  
 Mother Night . Salt Lake City Weekly . 07-21-97
The film then adopts a back-and-forth chronology, moving between Campbell's memories of the war and his postwar life, which are in color, and the fl and white scenes in his prison cell, which lend the film a surreal tone.
Gordon's film is filled with a sad sense of resignation that is reflected nowhere more sharply than in a wartime scene with Campbell's young sister-in-law, played by Kristin Dunston, who again shows incredible depth for an actress so young.
While the film is weighted with existential dread, Vonnegut's comic analgesia comes in the form of a bizarre trio of bumbling White Christian Minutemen, who make Campbell their hero.
www.filmvault.com /filmvault/slc/m/mothernight1.html   (900 words)

  
 Sack[!] -- _Cahiers du Cinema_: _Mother Night_ Review
Mother Night is a story about a poor player who finds that he can never quite leave the stage after his strutting has come to an end.
However, the story is interesting and the few sections where the film seems unsure whether it is a farce or a drama does little to take away from its success.
Campbell's struggle to resurrect an identity distinct from his Nazi persona is the essence of the film, as is his internal struggle with the possibility that he did more to perpetuate the Holocaust than to stop it.
www.geocities.com /wwgees0/sack/night.htm   (513 words)

  
 Algonkuin Theatre Company Presents 'night Mother
Motivated by the need to love and be loved, this all too human family has gone to the candy dish once too often in an attempt to sweeten up the painful truths of their lives, truths that should have been confronted, rather than hidden and denied.
One night, in a disparate attempt to come to terms with a life without purpose or promise, Jessie asks for and learns the truths her mother has kept hidden from her, truths that would have profoundly changed the course of Jessie’s life.
If you or someone you love suffers from Depression, ‘night, Mother can be a valuable lesson in the importance of uncovering the truth before living hurts too much to bear.
www.jacneed.com /Archives/032505Algonkuin.htm   (276 words)

  
 Rotten Tomatoes Forums - I saw a film by Keith Gordon yesterday...
Emotionally it's candid, and the passifistic message is not to be avoided, but the film has a sense of honesty and beauty about it, and it also have real characters, so it never ends up feeling like a "message" picture...
However, the only other film of his I have seen is the solid MOTHER NIGHT, which is tied with SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 as the best Vonnegut adaptation - though that's hardly a competitive field.
MOTHER NIGHT is a fine choice, even if you are not familiar with Vonnegut.
www.rottentomatoes.com /vine/showthread.php?t=287638   (965 words)

  
 'night, Mother, a Review of the Play by Bill Johnson
Briefly, `night, Mother is a play one act with two characters on the stage, Jessie Cates, late thirties to early forties, who lives with her mother, Thelma.
The territory that 'night, Mother explores is that the more reasons Thelma tries to grasp to convince Jessie not to kill herself, the more she reaffirms Jessie's belief that her life is useless and it's simply better to end her suffering with a clear mind.
This is an important exchange, because it sets the story on a course of exploring the emotional terrain of both Jessie's life and her life with her mother.
www.storyispromise.com /night.htm   (1798 words)

  
 "Mother Night"   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
"Mother Night", a new movie based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel, begins with Bing Crosby's seminal crooning of "White Christmas" hanging over the first scene -Israel, 1960.
The glue that holds the film together is Nick NolteÕs incredible performance as Howard Campbell, who manages the ambiguity needed to make the story work, to keep it unpredictable.
"Mother Night" is not one of the rollercoasters playing at all the multiplexes.
www.siue.edu /ALESTLE/library/fall1996/nov.21.96/mothernight.html   (402 words)

  
 The Film Connection
The Film Connection is a community of film lovers, social activists and lifelong learners who use our non-profit online film library to watch, discuss and act on compelling films from around the globe.
Aligning with like-minded partners in the global film community is core to The Film Connection's mission to increase cross-cultural understanding and honor lesser-known filmmakers.
A multi-faceted documentary project filmed on location in 11 countries with 120 experts and politicians as well as hundreds of street interviews examining the dominant discourse on terrorism in the U.S. and Europe.
www.thefilmconnection.org   (324 words)

  
 Mother Night   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Mother Night is Kurt Vonnegut's story of an American playwright living in Germany at the beginning of World War Two.
While he is awaiting trial in an Israeli prison, where he becomes acquainted with Nazi operative Adolph Eichmann, Campbell is required to write his memoirs for the court and comes to realize–for the first time–the magnitude of the game he thought he was playing and how much it helped the Nazis.
The film's director, Keith Gordon, says the main question Mother Night raises is, "If you try to do something good, and evil results, are you good or are you bad?" It's a question well worth pondering, and this is a film well worth seeing to drive the question home.
www.svtoday.com /svt/mother.htm   (481 words)

  
 Review: Mother Night   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-28)
Mother Night eventually recovers from this misstep for a thought-provoking ending, but the bad taste lingers.
As Campbell warns in his voice- over narrative, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." His appearance as an anti-Semite does at least as much to forward the Nazi cause as it does to help the United States.
Early in the film, Nolte gives us a cocky, passionate man. Later, as the scene shifts from Germany to America and Israel, he shows us a world-weary, morally uncertain person who views life as an aimless journey through purgatory.
movie-reviews.colossus.net /movies/m/mother_night.html   (1068 words)

  
 Mother Night
Mother Night is a fine film of a Kurt Vonnegut book.
Gordon's pacing and movement between segments of the film is crucial to its success, and the director does not miss a beat.
It’s a layered film, layered and segmented: the settings are dramatically very different, though it’s shot in the same way in each place.
www.filmsondisc.com /DVDpages/mother_night_dvd_review.htm   (706 words)

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