Dazed and Confused (1993)

You remember high school? Really remember? If you think you do, watch this film: it'll all really come racing back. After changing the world with the generation-defining Slacker, director Richard Linklater turned his free-range vérité sensibility on the 1970s. As before, his all-seeing camera meanders across a landscape studded with goofy pop culture references and poignant glimpses of human nature. Only this time around, he's spreading a thick layer of nostalgia over the lens (and across the soundtrack). It's as if Fast Times at Ridgemont High was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The story deals with a group of friends on the last day of high school, 1976. Good-natured football star Randall "Pink" Floyd navigates effortlessly between the warring worlds of jocks, stoners, wannabes, and rockers with girlfriend and new-freshman buddy in tow. Surprisingly, it's not a coming-of-age movie, but a film that dares ask the eternal, overwhelming, adolescent question, "What happens next?" It's a little too honest to be a light comedy (representative quote: "If I ever say these were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself."). But it's also way too much fun (remember souped-up Corvettes and bicentennial madness?) to be just another existential-essay-on-celluloid. --Grant Balfour Amazon.com

"....Sweet Emotion...."

Buy it. If you are considering this movie, have specifically come searching for this movie on here just do it. I had the regular version, had actually completely forgotten about this movie and then for some reason decided to watch it one day and fell in love all over again. Went online to get more information and found this. I had it sent to me in Japan and it was the best 50$ I have spent in a while (postage etc).
The movie and extras more than lived up to expectations. The second disc has a ton of interviews, both from the time of shooting and the 10 year 'reunion'. Everyone is classically young and somewhat normal at the cusp of some great careers. They are casual, cocky, tired, nervous, but at the heart of it all entertaining. The deleted scenes were interesting to see and in my opinion the right ones to cut. You can see the attempt to build more character development but that would have definitely changed the tone of the movie.
The book is v. interesting and insightful with some great 'essays' written about the movie, the cast, and more importantly the time that that this movie attempted to portray. It did all the things it was meant to do; remind me of my school days, make me nostalgic for lost youth and wonder where all the friends I had lost touch with ended up, made me want to ride shotgun in my boyfriends sexy muscle car, made me want to smoke that joint.
The movie itself is great, the criterion collection addition to it just makes it something more. September 22, 2008

DVD Purchase

My first purchase on Amazon.com was very easy anyone could have made this purchase with just a few clicks on the keyboard,I was very pleased with the ease in finding and making the purchase of the product I needed and getting it shipped ontime as a birthday gift without even leaving my home,delivered to my door.And the selections are amazeing you can find almost anything you want or need.

David C. Greenville SC












August 11, 2008

Swing & miss

Supposed to be about the era when I graduated High School. It's not. At least not on this planet. Instead it's a parade of stereotypes, over used prop-gags, and a hodge-podge of someone else's confused idea of what might have been happening, some place. To someone. May 20, 2008

A Modern Classic that captures an era as perfectly as looking through an old photo album.

Richard Linklater's first picture, SLACKER, made on a shoestring, earned him a lot of attention, and he somehow managed to persuade Universal Pictures to spend $6 million on his sophomore effort, DAZED & CONFUSED, which follows a group of two dozen suburban Texas kids on the last day of high school in 1976. The studio that financed AMERICAN GRAFFITI several years before may have been hoping that lightning would strike again, and indeed there are intriguing similarities between the two movies. Both of them are ensemble pieces introducing a slew of talented young actors; both observe the cruising and dating rituals of a diverse gang of kids on a single afternoon and night; both feature wall-to-wall scores of golden oldies.

But the differences between the two movies are striking as well. AMERICAN GRAFFITI, set in 1962, was a chronicle of the last days of innocence. In DAZED & CONFUSED, innocence is already long gone. These kids, some of them as young as 14 or 15, booze it up, smoke dope, search for sex, and speak in a rush of profanities that might make the characters in a Scorsese movie blush, Unlike the idealistic kids in GRAFFITI, these teenage slackers are aimless and nihilistic. The film is more honest than George Lucas's reminiscence in acknowledging the tensions among the different cliques of high school kids, and it's psychologically perceptive about their conflicting impulses toward conformity and defiance. Linklater's alter ego, the incoming freshman Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), is flattered by the attention he gets from the older jocks even while he despises their infantile high jinks.

The performances are persuasive down to the smallest part, and Linklater has a fine ear for the unexpectedly loopy turns of phrase that make these teenagers come to life. He renders all of them -- the drugged out space cadet, the vascillating quarterback, the goons who take an almost psychotic relish in paddling freshman, the nerdy intellectual and the budding feminist -- with wit and affection. To anyone from the AMERICAN GRAFFITI generation, the teenagers in DAZED & CONFUSED may seem as alien as a band of Martians, but Linklater's passionate concern for the clan he's conjured should keep everyone mesmerized.
May 10, 2008

anyone from 18-35

Most people under 40 should enjoy this movie. Sensationalized end of summer film that takes place in 70's Texas. Mary janes beers and Footbal, girls and a new freshman class to haze, what could be better!

ben affleck is great! and parker posey is all star. Go SUNY-Purchase! March 25, 2008

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