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© DR -STUDIO 54 de Mark Christopher (1999) p14
24/04/2013 09:40
A Film Review by James Berardinelli (fin) ouf! j'commençais à déprimer un peu là
For those who are in search of a relatively undemanding look at the disco era, 54 more than adequately fills the bill. Likewise, for viewers who didn't appreciate the grim downside of Boogie Nights, 54 offers the rise of a young would-be superstud without concentrating on the fall.Overall, however,54 delivers less than one might expect from the premise. Too often, the film is more like a soundtrack with visuals than a well constructed, fully developed motion picture.
© 1998 James Berardinelli
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© DR -STUDIO 54 de Mark Christopher (1999) p15
24/04/2013 09:53
En lisant les critiques,je m'aperçois au fur et à mesure qu'elles sont toutes + ou - négatives envers ce (premier) film de Mark Christopher. Ce n'est PAS intentionnel de ma part...souris. Moi j'ai apprécié,passé un bon moment
*
La Critique du N.Y Times mag
Years from now, if Mark Christopher's timid, meandering film "54" is spoken of at all, it will probably be lumped together with Whit Stillman's "Last Days of Disco" as one of two movies released in 1998 to bungle the same opportunity. Both films, while purporting to examine New York City's voracious late-1970s disco culture, adopt a primly distanced attitude toward a moment, just before the AIDS epidemic struck, when voluptuous hedonism became a kind of mass hysteria. Sex, drugs and disco: you couldn't ask for a juicier mix. But when it comes to squeezing juice, both movies come up dry.
By STEPHEN HOLDEN -
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© DR -STUDIO 54 de Mark Christopher (1999) p16
24/04/2013 10:05
Kerry Hayes/Miramax Films
Mike Meyers plays Steve Rubell, one of the owners of Studio 54, in the film "54." He has all the money, drugs and friends he could want.Christopher's film is an informal history of Studio 54, the disco culture's ultimate pleasure dome and celebrity hangout, a kind of floating Andy Warhol party whose glory days ended abruptly when the place was raided by the Internal Revenue Service.
Unable to decide if it's a retrospective expose, a "Saturday Night Live" spoof or a "Saturday Night Fever" retread, "54" ends up a confused mishmash of all of the above. You see garbage bags filled with cash, a lot of avid cocaine snorting and fleeting glimpses of Warhol and Truman Capote, but it all feels ho-hum.
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© DR -STUDIO 54 de Mark Christopher (1999) p17
24/04/2013 13:05
Kerry Hayes/Miramax Films (suite)
While the production notes for "54" list an impressive roster of vintage disco hits on the soundtrack, hardly any of them seem to have made it into the actual movie,which feels strangely truncated,both musically and dramatically How could a movie about the king of all discos not include a single note of music from the era's two reigning disco queens, Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor?
Even in its abbreviated dance-floor scenes, "54" never surrenders to the beat. The film provides only scattered intimations of the tribal ecstasy, the beat-driven synergy of light, sound, drug-enhanced eroticism and the giddy narcissistic euphoria of imagining yourself at the center of the world, which was the essence of the Studio 54 experience.
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© DR -STUDIO 54 de Mark Christopher (1999) p18
24/04/2013 14:38
Kerry Hayes/Miramax Films (suite)
The disco scenes in Stillman's movie are set in a fictional club that suggests a sedate hybrid of Studio 54 and its arch-rival, Xenon. Although "The Last Days of Disco" has a fuller, more richly nostalgic soundtrack, the music serves only as an unobtrusive nostalgic backdrop for another one of Stillman's articulate comedies of New York WASP manners. The director conveniently forgot that the decibel levels in those clubs were much too high to allow his characters to carry on their witty analytical dialogues in anything less than a shout.
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