Product Description

An epic biopic depicting the early years of legendary director and aviator Howard Hughes' career from the late 1920's to the mid-1940's.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085393893927

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1655 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .38 pounds
• Running time: 170 minutes

Amazon.com

From Hollywood's legendary Cocoanut Grove to the pioneering conquest of the wild blue yonder, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator celebrates old-school filmmaking at its finest. We say "old school" only because Scorsese's love of golden-age Hollywood is evident in his approach to his subject--Howard Hughes in his prime (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his)--and especially in his technical mastery of the medium reflecting his love for classical filmmaking of the studio era. Even when he's using state-of-the-art digital trickery for the film's exciting flight scenes (including one of the most spectacular crashes ever filmed), Scorsese's meticulous attention to art direction and costume design suggests an impassioned pursuit of craftsmanship from a bygone era; every frame seems to glow with gilded detail. And while DiCaprio bears little physical resemblance to Hughes during the film's 20-year span (late 1920s to late '40s), he efficiently captures the eccentric millionaire's golden-boy essence, and his tragic descent into obsessive-compulsive seclusion. Bolstered by Cate Blanchett's uncannily accurate portrayal of Katharine Hepburn as Hughes' most beloved lover, The Aviator is easily Scorsese's most accessible film, inviting mainstream popularity without compromising Scorsese's artistic reputation. As compelling crowd-pleasers go, it's a class act from start to finish. --Jeff Shannon

DVD Features
In his commentary track, director Martin Scorsese offers his own impressions of Howard Hughes and rattles off his memories of experiencing Hughes's films. He mentions how he made Cate Blanchett watch every Katharine Hepburn film from the '30s on the big screen, and observes that Kate Beckinsale had "a real sense of the stature of a Hollywood goddess." But in general he doesn't talk much about the craft of making the film. That area is covered better by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who also appears on the commentary track, and producer Michael Mann makes a few appearances (all were recorded separately). The picture is brilliant, but the 5.1 sound is not as aggressive in the rear speakers and subwoofer as one might expect, other than some nice surround effects in the Hell's Angels flying sequence.

The second disc collects almost three hours of features. There's one unnecessary deleted scene, and an 11-minute making-of featurette that's basically the cast and director heaping praise on each other. More interesting are the short featurettes on visual effects (including the XF-11 scene, of course), production design, costumes, hair and makeup, and score, and Loudon Wainwright discusses his and his children's musical performances. Historical perspective is provided by spotlights on Hughes's role in aviation and his obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a 43-minute Hughes documentary from the History Channel (part of the Modern Marvels series, it focuses on his mechanical innovations and spends less than a minute on his movies). More unusual are DiCaprio and Scorsese's appearance on an OCD panel, and a half-hour interview segment DiCaprio did with Alan Alda. --David Horiuchi

The Personalities of The Aviator

Click the links to explore more movies by these stars.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes "Sometimes I truly fear that I... am losing my mind. And if I did it... it would be like flying blind."

Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn Howard Hughes: "You're the tallest woman I have ever met." Katharine Hepburn: "And all sharp elbows and knees. Beware."

	Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner Howard Hughes: "Does that look clean to you?" Ava Gardner: "Nothing's clean, Howard. But we do our best, right?"

Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow Jean Harlow in Hell's Angels: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?"

Jude Law as Errol Flynn Errol Flynn in Captain Blood: "Up the riggings, you monkeys! Break out those sails and watch them fill with the wind that's carrying us all to freedom!"

Director Martin Scorsese "You get a sense of Howard Hughes being Icarus with the wax wings. Those wings were great for a while, but he flies too close to the sun." --Martin Scorsese

Other Movies by The Aviator's Oscar® Winners

Production Designer Dante Ferretti
Film Editor Thelma Schoonmaker
Costume Designer Sandy Powell
Cinematographer Robert Richardson
See all the Oscar® winners at Oscar Central

The Aviator at Amazon.com

The Aviator soundtrack

The Screenplay

Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator

Howard Hughes movies

Great movies of the 1930s

The films of Martin Scorsese

From The New Yorker
The billionaire madman, the taloned hermit of Las Vegas eating nothing but steak and peas-that was the haggard face in the tabloids that millions of us knew in the years before Howard Hughes's death, in 1976. Martin Scorsese's brilliantly entertaining movie goes back to the period when Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) was an exhilaratingly handsome and daring young man. The narrative, concocted by the screenwriter John Logan, is not meant to be taken literally. It's a fantasia about a studly capitalist prince who produces and directs movies, designs and flies airplanes, and sleeps with dozens of beautiful actresses and starlets. Scorsese and the designer Dante Ferretti press the young tycoon into the svelte Art Deco design of the period; in his tuxedos and casual beige flying duds, Hughes becomes the pictorial embodiment of restless bravado. Toward the end, there are glimpses of the germ-haunted paranoid that Hughes would become, but the movie is consistently lighthearted and engaging, a sort of pop "Citizen Kane." With Cate Blanchett doing a nervy imitation of Katharine Hepburn, Alec Baldwin as Hughes's rival, and Alan Alda as the corrupt Maine senator Owen Brewster. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Drama at its Utter Best
This really is the sort of film that inspires you to find out about the man behind the legendary film. This film is well crafted, well acted, well styled, beautifully shot and just plain well done. Scorsese freely admits to playing around with time lines, but to getting things "Emotionally" right, which I think is correct. The more you know about the lead topic, the less likely you are to be a nice in hindsight review ( Like I think Jude Law is abysmal as Errol Flynn since I am Tasmanian and Jude is as Tasmanian as Jack Daniels when playing Errol... he did not even try; Knowing a subject too well can be a handicap when viewing an artistic endeavour). Anyways, as a soaring, roaring emotional rollercoaster, the events such as the Flight with Cate and Leo in the plane is as passionate as anyone could hope to get. Its beautifully done. The DVD commentary assists in an understanding of how this film was created, and the performances of the supporting cast is just brilliant. You will love this emotional tour de force, and enjoy exploring the passions of the screenwriters version of Hughes, and I hope it does spur you on to read more about the man himself who helped shape Film, Cinema and Aviation as we know it today

paid more than it is selling for in stores, three times more !
I paid $ 19.95 for a dvd that I could have gotten for $5.oo in another store the day after I received it.

One of the Greatest Bio-Pics...
I can't believe this movie receives so many poor reviews. While it is not Scorsese's best, it is still very impressive and quite epic. Howard Hughes remains a mysterious character whose biographies are usually based on speculation rather than truth. Scorsese has done an amazing job of showing one adaptation of Hughes' life from his ambitious beginnings as a filmmaker to his later contributions to the world of aviation. Due to another impressive performance from DiCaprio, Hughes' obsessive-compulsive disorder is shown as both his biggest fault and at times his biggest asset. But the most impressive acting in the film is Cate Blanchett's role as Katherine Hepburn, one of the most famous (and yet still mysterious) actresses in movie history. Blanchett is very convincing as Hepburn, almost as if she had found some way to become possessed by Kate Hepburn's spirit as she frolicked through each of her scenes with biting wit and attractive charm that is shared by both Hepburn and Blanchett, winning her the Oscar she deserved for this role. All together a great film with some stunning visuals, outstanding performances, and a time capsule glimpse into movie history, a film you may want to watch again and again.

I can't believe this movie receives so many poor reviews. While it is not Scorsese's best, it is still very impressive and quite epic. Howard Hughes remains a mysterious character whose biographies are usually based on speculation rather than truth. Scorsese has done an amazing job of showing one adaptation of Hughes' life from his ambitious beginnings as a filmmaker to his later contributions to the world of aviation.

Due to another impressive performance from DiCaprio, Hughes' obsessive-compulsive disorder is shown as both his biggest fault and at times his biggest asset. But the most impressive acting in the film is Cate Blanchett's role as Katherine Hepburn, one of the most famous (and yet still mysterious) actresses in movie history. Blanchett is very convincing as Hepburn, almost as if she had found some way to become possessed by Kate Hepburn's spirit as she frolicked through each of her scenes with biting wit and attractive charm that is shared by both Hepburn and Blanchett, winning her the Oscar she deserved for this role.

All together a great film with some stunning visuals, outstanding performances, and a time capsule glimpse into movie history, a film you may want to watch again and again.