My Dinner With Andre [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Louis Malle

Overview

The quintessential "talk" film. Theater director Andre Gregory meets his old friend actor/playwright Wallace Shawn at an upscale New York restaurant to catch up on each other's lives. Gregory has travelled the world in search of alternate methods of creative and spiritual expression. Shawn plays straight man (and devil's advocate) in this unusual conversation and reminds Gregory of the more down-to-earth pleasures of New York life. While Shawn is a pragmatist, he is understandably impressed by Gregory's exploits. The screenplay was also written by Gregory and Shawn, a "best-of" collection of several tape-recorded conversations between the two. Director Louis Malle provides appropriately minimal direction. Gregory, Shawn and Malle collaborated again in Vanya on 42nd Street.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/16/2015
UPC:	0715515146814
Original Release:	1981
Source:	CRITERION
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:51:00
Sales rank:	3,908

Special Features

Interview from 2009 with actor-writers Andr? Gregory and Wallace Shawn, conducted by their friend the filmmaker Noah Baumbach; "My Dinner with Louis," a 1982 episode of the BBC program Arena in which Shawn interviews director Louis Malle

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Wallace Shawn	Wally Shawn
Andre Gregory	Andre Gregory
Jean Lenauer	Waiter
Roy Butler	Bartender

Technical Credits

Andr? Gregory

Wallace Shawn

George W. George	Producer
Beverly Karp	Producer
Andr? Gregory	Screenwriter
Wallace Shawn	Screenwriter
Jean-Claude Laureux	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Figures xiii

Note on Terminology xvii

Colour plates follow page 22

1 Sikuvut: Our Ice 3

2 Iglulik: The Place Where There Is a House 23

3 The Northwest Passage 46

4 Inuit Odysseys 75

5 Canada's Arctic Dominion 100

6 Human Flagpoles 142

7 Nunavut: Our Land 174

8 Silaup Aulaninga: Climate Change 216

9 Is the Arctic Safe for Polar Bears? 257

10 Tusaqtittijiit: Messengers 281

Appendices

1 Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic 303

2 Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat 312

3 United Nations, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 322

Acknowledgments 337

Notes 341

Bibliography 357

Index 379

Editorial Reviews

It would be difficult to sell Hollywood producers on a movie that was nothing more than an extended conversation between two friends at a restaurant. Yet the risk-taking director Louis Malle turned this talk-fest into an art-house success. My Dinner with André is in many ways the ultimate art-house movie: low budget, highly philosophical, and demanding an intellectual audience's unstinting attention. Malle used two theater veterans, actor-playwright Wallace Shawn and director André Gregory, to play themselves, using a script based on their actual discussions. The film works surprisingly well, primarily because the two men seem to have opposite temperaments: Shawn shy and cynical, Gregory curious and adventurous. The camera rarely wanders away from the dinner table, yet the film's impact is considerable; Malle lets the audience unloosen its own imagination and thoughts, and the effect is much like listening intently to an excellent radio play. My Dinner with André is a one-of-a-kind film, and its success is unlikely to be repeated.

10/06/2014
In This engaging study, Wright, a professor of aboriginal studies at Vancouver's Langara College, takes a multi-pronged approach to explain how the effects of global warming, the history of the Inuit and Canada's desire for Arctic sovereignty present a microcosm of the ways people struggle to reconcile industrial society with environmental destruction. The Earth's climatic fate "will be ruled by what happens as the ice melts," and none recognize this fact more than the Inuit. Wright details the Inuit's near 7,000-year history and explains how Canadian sovereignty in the high Arctic may paradoxically hinge on that region's original inhabitants, whose lives are dependent on the now-vanishing ice. Alleviating Inuit poverty and establishing Canadian sovereignty necessitates the natural resource exploitation that is ultimately driving global warming—a situation that mirrors the problems of the broader modern world. Wright's book is an academic study that is nonetheless deeply moving, clearly written, and suitable for general readers. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to learn about how "humans are inextricably connected to the chain of life on this planet." Tackling global warming rests on us recognizing this deceptively simple fact. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Our Ice Is Vanishing is authoritative and entertaining, original, exhaustively researched, and informed by personal experience. Wright spent years living in the Arctic and it shows. She has written a wonderful book.” Ken McGoogan, author of 50 Canadians Who Changed the World

“Wright's book is an academic study that is nonetheless deeply moving, clearly written, and suitable for general readers. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to learn about how "humans are inextricably connected to the chain of life on this planet." Tackling global warming rests on us recognizing this deceptively simple fact.” Publisher’s Weekly

“Wright succeeds brilliantly in painting a vivid picture not only of the physical grandeur and beauty of the Arctic, but also of the resilience and wisdom of its Inuit inhabitants. Our Ice Is Vanishing is an intimate, fascinating, and stimulating account

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