Heart Burn

Amazon.com

You'd have thought that Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols had remade Heaven's Gate: that was the critical reaction to this film version of Ephron's semiautobiographical novel about her own marital woes. The fact that they had Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep playing thinly disguised versions of Carl Bernstein and Ephron probably made them bigger, fatter targets. In fact, the film was a genuinely funny and painful look at the effects of marital infidelity and divorce, in the story of two married writers and what happens when the pregnant wife finds out the husband has been fooling around behind her back. The film is more dramatic and less quip-filled than Ephron's novel, which made the Ephron character a food writer and was peppered with recipes. Nicholson stepped into his role at the last minute, when Nichols fired Mandy Patinkin for being too intense and not funny enough. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews:

I love it!.......2006-12-15

I fell in love with the movie years ago and just read the book. I love both of them. Reading the book is what is making me now buy the DVD. Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson give excellent performances in this movie that is funny, sad and touching.

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep..what a great combination.......2006-07-09

I've loved this movie since the first time I saw it. If you like Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, you won't be dissappointed with this movie.

heartburn.......2005-09-15

ive been trying to buy this dvd for ages and from many places but i only found it on amazon.com . film was clear and delivery was ok to .

WELL DONE BUT UNINVOLVING.......2005-06-01

I will always sing the praises of Meryl Streep. This wonderfully gifted actress is capable of taking any role and infusing it with such passion and dedication that she can make a dull movie like HEARTBURN entertaining, just to bask in the glow of her performance. Based on Nora Ephron's novel and her marriage to Carl Bernstein, HEARTBURN doesn't really "do" much of anything. Streep marries philandering Jack Nicholson (in one of his more bland performances), has a couple of kids, and finds out he's cheating on her (duh?). Ephron's script cripples its stars by making Streep a little too whiny and self-pitying and Nicholson a little too dispassionate and predictable. One of the true crimes of this movie is Oscar's neglect to praise the movie's showpiece song COMIN AROUND AGAIN. Carly Simon's song poignantly evokes the loss but hope in any kind of relationship; it's pairing with the old children's ITSY BITSY SPIDER is creative genius. The spider gets washed down the spout but always goes back up to try again; in COMIN AROUND AGAIN, the song's emphasis on "I believe in love" mirrors the tenacity of the spider. What a shame Simon wasn't awarded for this feat. You will like HEARTBURN if you are fans of Streep and Nicholson, but it's not one of their best efforts.

The book is so much better!.......2005-05-31

I picked up the book at a yardsale without knowing much about it, and absolutely loved it! It is so smart, funny, and heartbreaking, without ever being sappy. So, naturally, I was curious about the movie too. I figured that because Ephron had written the screenplay too, not much could go wrong. And while the story line followed the book more or less, the movie turned out terrible. I could not have been more disappointed!! First of all, Jack Nicholson is completely miscast, because he essentially plays himself (as usual), not the *interesting* guy that Mark is supposed to be. He is the opposite of charming, funny, tender, lovable, i.e. somebody that the character of the wife (Rachel) would fall so deeply in love with and trust so completely. You suspect all along that he is a cad; therefore, Rachel's utter shock at his betrayal doesn't make sense. Besides, he is too old for the role! Meryl Streep is annoyingly twitchy, but much better in her role as Rachel. Still, she can't carry the movie alone, and her love scenes with Nicholson are flat; there is no spark there. I wonder how happy Ephron was with the movie adaptation of her novel, and whether she really did write all the scenes. The wedding scene, where Rachel has doubts about marying Mark and spends what feels like 5 hours in a room alone agonizing, while the wedding guests wait, is out of place, not to mention boring, not to mention heavy handed. A total dud!

Average customer rating:

an intriguing character study.....
Slow paced story about a 1980s Chinese-American family
Landmark Asian American Film
what a bomb! stay away from this deadbeat.

Dim Sum - A Little Bit of Heart
Starring: Joan Chen , Helen Chew , Jarrett Chew , Kim Chew , and Laureen Chew
Manufacturer: KOCH LORBER FILMS
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B000BRBABA
Release Date: 2006-01-24

Description

In San Francisco, an immigrant Chinese widow welcomes the new year with some unhappiness: she's 62 now, she wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors, a fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll die, and a daughter, Geraldine, remains unmarried. Geraldine does have a boyfriend, but she's not sure she's ready for marriage, and, anyway, he lives in Los Angeles and Geraldine doesn't want to leave her mother alone in her declining years. Mrs. Tan's cheerful brother-in-law tries to help out. Is there any solution that will enable Mrs. Tan to hold onto her culturally-influenced and deep-seated hopes, yet keep those hopes from suffocating Geraldine?

Customer Reviews:

an intriguing character study............2007-08-11

DIM SUM is one of those films that you really have to be in the right space to appreciate. Thankfully, I was in that space and I enjoyed it very much! Director Wayne Wang cast a real life mother and daughter (Kim Chew and Laureen Chew) as his two leads--62 year old Mrs. Tam and her daughter, Geraldine. Mrs. Tam has reached the point in her life where she wants to make a pilgrimage to China to pay her final respects to her ancestors, while her daughter remains unmarried and takes care of her, as they live together as a family unit. We get a sense of the cultural struggles of women in this country (particularly women of bicultural heritage, like Geraldine, who is American-born, with a mother who remains close to her Chinese values). It is also a quietly humorous and gentle journey through their relationship's ups and downs. Though, I noticed that some people criticized it for being "uneventful," I beg to differ. I think this film is charming in its direct and non-flamboyant style and subject matter and that was something I greatly enjoyed. Very well done.

Slow paced story about a 1980s Chinese-American family.......2006-02-20

It is hard to decide if "Dim Sum:A Little Bit of Heart" is a good movie or not. It is a very low-budget, slice-of-life film that shows a Chinese-American family living in San Francisco during the 1980s. There is no false drama imposed on the family, and their life is no more exciting than mine. The dialog is realistic, with awkward pauses and such. The mother speaks mostly sub-titled Chinese, although the rest of the characters speak mostly English. There are some minor plot points. The mother, who thinks that she will die when she is 62 because of a fortune tellers prophecy, would like to see her daughter get married. Often, they just have dinner and chat. Sometimes they watch TV.

And that is the hard part. "Dim Sum:A Little Bit of Heart" can be down-right boring. Nothing really happens. It is just a few days in the life of a family, and not particularly eventful days at that. The characters all seem like nice people. Victor Wong, who I always like, is charming as ever. It is nice to see him in a lead role. The film is very dated. Each item of clothing screams 1980. It seems like a student film, and perhaps it was.

I think that if I had been a Chinese-American living in San Francisco in the 1980s, then there would be more in this film for me. All the cast is talented, and many appear in the most excellent "Joy Luck Club" by the same director. The ending is very heart warming, and worth sitting through the whole film for.

All in all, I recommend "Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart." with some reservations. Know what you are getting yourself in for.

Landmark Asian American Film.......2006-02-02

When I first saw this in 1985, it was the first time I saw on the big screen a genuine portrayal of the Asian American experience. I fell in love with this film. At last! My experience and my culture in commercial media. It rang so true to me, and I was and am thankful that Wayne Wang created such a gem. There are many beautiful shots in this film, and detailed depictions of Chinese American life: ie, the shoes at the front door, which is typical of Chinese American households; the bird cage with the red paper character luck placed upside down, meaning luck will descend upon you (unfortunately such details went right over the head of the reviewer below). The Cantonese is a bonus, it's my native language, and there it is in film, and lots of it.
I saw Chan is Missing later, and that, of course, is another landmark film, portraying the diversity in the Chinese American and Asian American community.

what a bomb! stay away from this deadbeat........2006-01-23

do we need to watch this deadbeat movie? is there director here? what a lousy script. the daughter talked to her mom in english, her mom only answered in cantonese dialect? if the mom understood english, why she never responded in english? so the husband also talked to this wife in english, but she also only answered in cantonese? this movie is in a slow-motion speed. drives you nuts. typically formatted cliches from the very beginning. bored me to death. there are lot of still-life like scenes, such as bird cage, chinese paintings, flower on the table, shoes on the doorstep, again and again, what's the big deal? is there any art in showing some shoes, even plastic shoes to the viewers? any philosophic depth or meaning here? nada. but, if you think you think life is not short and you could afford wasting couple of hours, go ahead, rent it, buy it, watch it, i could not care less.

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Need Better Music For Great Films
Entertainment from the late Teens
There's Gold In Them Thar Hills!
A Pickford Country and Western Double!
One Of Mary's Best With A Great New Score.

Heart o' the Hills
Starring: Mary Pickford
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0007WFXU8
Release Date: 2005-05-03

Description

Heart O' the Hills was one of four films Mary Pickford released in 1919 and the last she would make for a distributor other than her own. It was a tumultuous year for Mary, who was running her own studio, forming United Artists and conducting a clandestine affair with Douglas Fairbanks. A backwoods melodrama about land-grabbing in the mountains of Kentucky, the film gave Mary the chance to extend her range from her previous half-dozen parts. For almost two years, audiences had seen her in a series of urban settings or in familiar roles from popular projects. Heart o# the Hills, with its often brutal subject matter and frank treatment of poverty, could hardly have been a greater change of pace from the lighthearted Daddy-Long-Legs. Mary had played characters like this before; the dramatic result, culminating in a memorable court trial sequence, would prove to be a dramatic and critical success.

Customer Reviews:

Need Better Music For Great Films.......2005-11-07

Heart O' The Hills is the first film presented on this DVD, a cute film about Mavis, a mountain girl who finds herself getting into trouble without really doing anything to deserve it. The role is energetic, but nowhere near as feisty as other Pickford characters such as that in the second film on this DVD, M'Liss. She maintains her femininity throughout the film but makes an appropriately dramatic transition during the "six years later" part. Pickford's co-star played by Harold Goodwin is quite the companion and compliments her role very well.

One of the strongest scenes in the film is the dance sequence, a funny and cute romp that shows off Pickford's penchant for pluckiness.

This film is filled with beautiful scenery, but it is somewhat under-dramaticized by the strange contrast. Perhaps the tinting was not done correctly. The film is also somewhat damaged in places.

The worst part of the film is a score by Maria Newman which is terribly distracting and hardly fitting for the film. There are times when it is adequate, almost good, but in breaks a strange sound effect that ruins it. Perhaps Newman was trying to be unique, bringing a combination of traditional scoring and modern music together, but she failed miserably at producing a decent finished product.

Regardless, no amount of bad scoring could ever ruin a Mary Pickford performance.

M'Liss features the Mary Pickford that fans have by now become accustomed to. She is fun, young, spunky, full of personality, and motherly. The story is reminiscent of an amalgamation of other films such as Tess of the Storm Country and Little Annie Rooney. It is about a little uncivilized girl who finds someone dear to her murdered and another loved one accused.

There are several funny scenes in this film, especially those involving M'Liss in the classroom. They exhibit a mature humor similar to that from The Little Rascals.

The camera work in this film is lovely, with several gorgeous close-ups. For Milestone, the print is a little less than average what with the scratches and artifacts, but in general, the print is good and highly watchable.

Unlike the music for the first film, this score was composed and performed by Donald Sosin and is very appropriate.

The few special features on this disk are still galleries for each of the presented films and an Adobe Acrobat article watchable only through a computer. The still galleries are nice because they feature posters, lobby cards, and rare stills, but they are a hindrance on small television screens because they have been miniaturized. Also, the vibrance of silent film photography is lost.

Entertainment from the late Teens.......2005-10-21

The stronger of the two films presented here is the main feature, 1919's 'Heart o' the Hills.' It's an incredibly cute, sweet, charming film about the lives, loves, losses, and struggles of the backwoods folk of the mountains (complete with the intertitles rendered in their backwoods vernacular). They wish to preserve their simple country way of life against the big city "furriners" who are trying to move in on them, buy up their land, bring their modern way of life to town. There's also domestic turmoil involved, with both Mavis and Jason (Jasie), the main characters, not getting treated so well at home and being too young yet to run away and get married, and Mavis being swindled out of her inheritance. The big city folks do prove to be sympathetic in the long run, though, as they take Mavis in and raise her, trying to make up to her how she was cheated out of her inheritance and how things haven't been so good for her at home since her mother remarried and she's been falsely accused of a crime she admits she was party to but didn't actually commit herself. Jason has also left town to try to polish up his own image and to become the type of man Mavis finds educated, refined, and appealing. Six years pass, and we see whether or not the wrongs of the past will be righted, if the childhood sweethearts will reunite or if Mavis will decide to marry her handsome suitor Grey Pendleton, who is played by John Gilbert in a very early starring role, back when he still professionally went by Jack and was only nineteen or twenty years old. All in all, a really charming fun movie, and presented in a beautifully tinted print. I know some people dislike Maria Newman's scores, but I found the score she created for this picture quite well-suited, apart from the music and sound effects used in the courtroom scene.

The other feature is 'M'Liss,' from 1918. I wouldn't classify it as top-notch Pickford, but it does have a charm to it, and it's great to see long-forgotten screen sheik Tommy Meighan playing her leading man, the schoolteacher whom she falls in love with and who is later falsely accused of a horrible crime we know he didn't commit. This film also uses intertitles rendered in the country vernacular, only this time the characters are out West and not in the backwoods of Kentucky. The reason I didn't find myself liking this film as much as the main attraction was because it took so long for the storyline to really build momentum and get underway, for the plot to really be established. For a long time I couldn't make out what the plot was supposed to be; it seemed more like events were just happening, more like establishing the characters and presenting little episodes in their lives instead of making clear what the plot was too. Once things do get underway, however, it does start to get pretty interesting, and is quite similar to that of 'Heart o' the Hills,' the innocent country people the victims of big city swindlers, the wrong person accused of a crime, a riveting courtroom scene. All in all, this disc is an interesting look back at the type of films people were watching in the late Teens.

There's Gold In Them Thar Hills!.......2005-06-09

Regardless of what Milestone would have us believe, the chief attraction of this disc is the 1918 "bonus feature," M'LISS, a film that's fizzy with Pickford's particular effervescence. The story is a slight one, but Mary's characteristically generous performance as a western firecracker, Frances Marion's sweet-and-sour intertitles and Marshall Neilan's perfectly tuned direction combine to form M'LISS into a picture that's appealing in the extreme and a great first experience for silent film novices. Highly recommended.

When you're done with that, you may want to sample the other film on the platter, THE HEART O' THE HILLS. It's not a bad picture by any means, just a little more ponderous and a little less fun than M'LISS.

A Pickford Country and Western Double!.......2005-05-09

Thanks to Milestone Films once again for another enjoyable Mary Pickford DVD, this one with two full length feature films, the first with a Country theme and the second a Western, both showcasing Mary's wide-ranging talents. In both films she plays a real wild child, but always with an irresistible charm and innocence which endeared her to the public, even when she was swearing, shooting and firing rocks with a slingshot, as she does in these two interesting films. The main feature, "Heart O' The Hills" really captures the feel and the characters of mountain folk in Kentucky, complete with colourful language (which might take a little getting used to at first) and a new orchestral score - a combination of classical and traditional Country/Bluegrass tunes - as well as some other sound effects. While music is a matter of personal taste, I found that it matched the setting and story the film perfectly, and together with Mary's convincing performance, the viewer gets the full impact of the mentality, way of life and the problems facing these mountain dwellers. And as in real life, peace in `them thar hills' is disrupted when greedy city businessmen cheat the naïve folks out of their land, and Mary finds herself in the middle of it all. Also close to real life is the plot of the second film, "M'liss" (=Melissa) which has a distinct Wild West flavour and concerns two city people's cunning scheme to steal an inheritance which turns out to belong to M'liss once her father had been murdered. Around 1919-20, many films suddenly became more sophisticated and artistic, making silent films of the 1920s generally more popular with audiences today, but while lacking the smoothness and style, pre-1920 films usually have a very good story with suspense and drama, and "M'liss" is a good example. Coming right after a high quality production like "Heart O' The Hills", and with only a piano accompaniment, "M'liss" might appear inferior, but I still found the story and Pickford's entertaining performance as good as any of her later films, and a good choice to add to the main feature film. There are also two short but very interesting stills galleries to enjoy, and all up, surely a must for all Pickford fans and anyone curious to see her in other types of roles.

One Of Mary's Best With A Great New Score........2005-05-08

HEART O'THE HILLS was Mary Pickford's final film project before the formation of United Artists in 1919 and was her fourth film of that year. She had recently left Adolph Zukor and Paramount and was stretching her wings as an independent producer (they predicted she would fall flat on her face). It is one of a quartet of new Pickford releases from The Mary Pickford Foundation, Milestone Films and Image Entertainment and is one of Mary's best. The others three are LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY, SUDS, and THROUGH THE BACK DOOR. The film is set in the mountains of Kentucky (it was shot in California) and deals with a young mountain girl's attempt to avenge the murder of her father. It gives Pickford another opportunity to do what she did best, a coming of age story in which she plays a young girl who becomes a young woman by the time the film is finished. The recreation of an isolated mountain community is remarkable although the dialect used in the title cards may annoy some people. It has fantastic scenery, outstanding photography, and mighty fine performances from all concerned. There's a nice turn from veteran silent villain Sam De Grasse and check out the young John (Jack) Gilbert in his first significant role as a lowland suitor. In addition to the quality print used for the video transfer (it's sharp and well defined with color tints), there is a remarkable new score from Maria Newman which captures the flavor of old timey mountain music while still being thoroughly modern in style. For me it enhanced the viewing experience tremendously. In addition the DVD comes with a second Pickford feature, M'LISS from 1918. While it is not as good as HEART and the print is not as well presented, M'LISS still has a lot to recommend it including sure handed direction from Marshall Neilan (Pickford's favorite director) and colorful performances from silent character stalwarts Theodore Roberts, Charles Ogle, and Tully Marshall. All in all an outstanding DVD and my favorite of the set but I do have one minor quibble. What has happened to the printed inserts? None of my recent DVD purchases have them. Are they now being discontinued as a cost cutting measure? If that is the case then that's extremely irritating because we're still paying the same price and there are some of us who want to learn more about the films we're watching especially silent films.

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