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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Brand: LEACHMAN,CLORIS EAN: 9780767827904 Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC ISBN: 0767827902 Label: Sony Pictures Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Number Of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Publisher: Sony Pictures Region Code: 1 Release Date: November 30, 1999 Running Time: 125 minutes Sales Rank: 8059 Studio: Sony Pictures Theatrical Release Date: October 22, 1971
Product Description: Story of teenagers in a small Texas town just prior to the hero leaving for Korea and the closing of the town's movie theater. Genre: Feature Film-Drama Rating: R Release Date: 13-FEB-2007 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video: Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early '70s. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who cowrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired. It's also a eulogy for lost innocence and small-town life, so accurately rendered that critic Roger Ebert called it "the best film of 1951," referring to the movie's one-year time frame, its black-and-white cinematography (by Robert Surtees), and its sparse but evocative visual style. The story is set in the tiny, dying town of Anarene, Texas, where the main-street movie house is about to close for good, and where a pair of high-school football players are coming of age and struggling to define their uncertain futures. There's little to do in Anarene, and while Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) engages in a passionless fling with his football coach's wife (Cloris Leachman), his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) enlists for service in the Korean War. Both boys fall for a manipulative high-school beauty (Cybill Shepherd) who's well aware of her sexual allure. But it's not so much what happens in The Last Picture show as how it happens--and how Bogdanovich and his excellent cast so effectively capture the melancholy mood of a ghost town in the making. As Hank Williams sings on the film's evocative soundtrack, The Last Picture Show looks, feels, and sounds like a sad but unforgettably precious moment out of time. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - The Peyton Place of the South
Anyone who buys the Mayberry image of Southern small town life will be greatly shocked after watching this movie. Anarene is definitely no Puritan utopia. The town's residents include adulterers, sex-obsessed teenagers, and even a pedophile, who happens to be the minister's son. This film just goes to show that you cannot always believe what's on the surface. Few films expose small town hypocrisy better than this one, while at the same time treating the characters with respect. This difference ... Read More
Rating: - One of the Great Films
This is just an amazing movie. I saw it at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, NY about 10 years ago and was just blown away. Maybe it was dust and wind blowing up the small town Texas streets. Two young men graduate from high school and struggle with becoming adults as they learn more about the adults in the community and their lives. Larry McMurtry never wrote a better novel than this one nor had a book turned into a better film. (Well, Hud is just as great I think.) Peter Bogdanavich directed ... Read More
Rating: - Face the emptiness of a small town.
The Last Picture Show is considered to be a black and white classic but this film just left me depressed. Cloris Leachman is the best thing in this downer, her performance is so heartbreaking (she won an Oscar for best supporting actress). Cybill Shepherd lives up to her own stereotype, pretty blonde who sleeps with everyone in town, her character is so unlikeable. I just thought this movie was just ok, decide for yourself.
Rating: - An American Classic
Loosely based on gossip and scandal that surrounded various residents of Larry McMurtry's hometown of Archer City, Texas, the novel THE LAST PICTURE SHOW was much admired by critics--but didn't really explode into public conciousness until adapted to the screen, when it became one of the cinematic touchstones of the generation that had shed 1950s mores in favor of less restrictive attitudes.
The film has no plot per se: it is simply a portrait of those who live in and around Anarene, Texas ... Read More
Rating: - The Best Last Picture Show
A black and white portrait of a dying Texas town complete with tired businessman, bored wife, all the problems of adolescence in a place where nothing goes on. The spectrum of life from young man/woman hood to adults trying to make meaning of life (and concluding that adultery is the only way), to a whole used-up life expiring, is brilliantly portrayed with obliterating dust, emptiness, banging screen doors. The lack of color is as it should be. The only "color" in their lives is a saucy waitress who dishes ... Read More