Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151618 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: German, English
• Subtitled in: German

Amazon.com
Todd Haynes, ever unpredictable, follows up his experimental trilogy Poison and his restrained Safe with this flamboyant study in glam rock through the kaleidoscopic lens of Citizen Kane. Christian Bale plays Arthur Stuart, a reporter sent to investigate the legend of rock legend and bisexual pop icon Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as a not-so-thinly veiled David Bowie), who disappeared a decade ago after staging his own mock assassination. But Arthur is flooded with memories of his own adolescence as he interviews Slade's friends and business associates, peeling back the layer of makeup and spangles that was the model of rebellion for a generation of middle-class British kids and discovering a hollow center. Ewan McGregor almost steals the film as the punk pioneer Curt Wild (equal parts Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain), the genuine article to Slade's calculated, coifed image of glitter stardom. Haynes's film lacks nothing in capturing the flamboyance and spectacle of the era with flashy filmmaking and kitschy costumes, and if the plot seems lost in the preening and visual fireworks, perhaps that's the point: behind the façades and manufactured fronts is nothing but glitter, energy, and a beat. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Quite an achievement: the American director Todd Haynes revisits the world of London glam rock and manages to make it look dull. He and his costume designer certainly lay on the peacock flamboyance of the nineteen-seventies, but none of the strange creatures concerned appear to be having any fun. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, of whom great things have been predicted, gives a curiously thin and flat-voiced performance as Brian Slade, a David Bowie figure of suitably indeterminate sexual preference. The real Bowie would not allow his songs to be used, so we get rip-offs instead-accomplished enough, but incapable of generating the required nostalgia. Ewan McGregor has more of a laugh as Curt Wild, a version of Iggy Pop, but the picture refuses to follow his example. It has a busy surface, with Haynes switching between high Ken Russell camp and dreary journalistic investigation, but the tactic feels less like the search for a Rosebud than desperation. Plenty of glitter, though, if you like that sort of thing. With Toni Collette and Eddie Izzard. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

you stroke me like the rain
Ok so. Bowie threatened to sue. And this film isn't exactly the most faithful representation of glam rock. And, yes, the Iggy and Bowie characters are exaggerated a great deal. BUT. It's still a good film. Flaws to be sure. On first viewing one will find it quite incoherent. But on repeat viewing, most glam fans will dig it. Don't take this as a representation of how it actually was though... think of it as a highly dramaticized biopic of a composite Iggy Pop/David Bowie/Lou Reed/Brian Eno type guy. There's a lot of dudes makin out with other dudes. But I mean i guess the whole bi thing was a big part of the scene. Good film.

Worth The $$
Wow - I love this movie. It's one that I had always wanted to own, because I would catch it on cable or whatever every time I could.

Totally worth the money! :)

The Glam Rock Era and all the Glitter that wasn't gold
A film about a British reporter in New York in search of a 70's singer who staged his own death to escape from fame. One sees a bit of Bowie and Cobain in this gritty tale of the dark side of glam rock glitter and all its trappings. A very young Jonathan Rhys-Meyers showcases an incredible talent in this early movie.