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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 19219
Released: January 30, 2001 |
| Our Price: $3.78 |
| Used Price: $3.74 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Bird The year: 1946. The event: Oakland's "Jazz at the Philharmonic." The music streaked into the unknown, daring listeners to grab hold and fly there, too. On stage was the creator of those new sounds: Charles "Yardbird" Parker. In the crowd was the 16-year-old who would someday bring Parker's extraordinary story to the screen: Clint Eastwood. "Americans don't have any original art except Western movies and jazz," observes Eastwood. Movie fans, of course, know that few heroes sit as tall in the saddles as Eastwood. Now the legendary America icon, whose Dirty Harry films have been praised for their jazz scores, ventures deeper into that other original American art. Eastwood produces and directs Bird, a film burnished with the magic of that 1946 concert encounter between legend and future legend and honored with an Academy Award for Best Sound in its spellbinding recreation of a man and his music. Like jazz itself, Bird rings with counterpoints and embellishments. Past and future overlap as the film explores Yardbird's soaring skill and destructive excesses. Forest Walker (Good Morning Vietnam, The Color of Money), in his Cannes Film Festival Best Actor performance, is a candle ablaze at both ends as Parker. Diane Venora (Wolfen, Ironweed, F/X) shares that glorious light, winning the New York Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actress Award for her portrayal of steadfast wife Chan Parker. For Bird's wall-to-wall-to-everywhere digitally-processed Surround Stereo soundtrack, Eastwood went to the source: Parker's recordings (including cuts never before released). Backgrounds were electronically eliminated. These parker "solos" were then rerecorded with accompaniment by modern musicians attuned to Yardbird's bold improvisations. It's "like Bird was in the studio," says music supervisor Lennie Niehaus. He's elsewhere, too. That's why jazz buffs and now film fans have a saying 'Bird liv
Description of Bird:
Clint Eastwood's moody, evocative direction and Forest Whitaker's strong, sensitive performance are the chief proponents to recommend an otherwise muted biopic of '40s jazz legend Charlie Parker, who fell victim to his chemical excesses and convinced the doctor who pronounced him dead that he was a good four decades older than he actually was. The film doesn't try to assign clear blame for Parker's demons, though the era's racism is addressed unflinchingly. Clearly a labor of love, Eastwood's movie structurally attempts to ape the angular music of bebop itself (there are flashbacks within flashbacks, which gets a little confusing), but doesn't quite capture the smolder of the period. Diane Venora registers strongly as Bird's wife, Chan, the woman who can't rescue Bird from the abyss into which he peers. --David Kronke
Bird Reviews:
Bird 
2009-09-12 - Excellent movie. Forest Whitaker's performance as Charlie 'Bird' Parker is superb as is Clint Eastwood's directing. A little long but well worth it.
great actor doing this movie
2009-05-25 - watch it too never seen it before did not know that clinton directed this one either thanks again bill
Go Clint !
2009-04-11 - trivia: the recording techniques of this soundtrack was rather revolutionary at the time (late 1980's)(was featured extensively in MIX magazine, among others pro publications). Always have loved this movie, there should be more like it - true stories about great artists. CAN ANYONE TELL ME IF THERE ARE EXTRAS ON THIS 2 DISC SET, AND IF SO, WHAT ARE THEY?? Thanks.....
Mainly For Fans Of Charlie Parker 
2009-02-02 - The music in here is excellent and makes jazz appealing even to a non-jazz enthusiast like me. It better, because that's what the subject of the film is: jazz, and Charlie Parker, in particular. "Bird" was his nickname, and Parker was a good subject matter for a film - not a pleasant subject most of the time, but for jazz fans the man is a legend.
I thought the acting was good, especially by the two main people: Forest Whitaker, playing Parker, and Diane Venora as wife "Chan."
My major complaint was that it was too long. To make a film over 160 minutes when much of it is a "downer" it tough to sit through. It's generally a story about what can happen to a man who is addicted to drugs, which is what happened to this giant of jazz. That's the part of fhis life that is emphasized,, so it makes this movie a very long, sordid tale, not a happy one.
Unless one is a big jazz aficionado, one viewing of this would be plenty....but it's worth a look.
A saxophonist who truly altered the direction of jazz history with his music...
2009-01-27 - "Bird" traces the life of Charlie Parker, a 1940's soloist jazz great whose improvisation abilities led him to become one of the most acclaimed figure in his own lifetime... However, his self-destructive behavior and association with drugs and alcohol caused him to die before he could fully comprehend the public appreciation of his genius...
Eastwood worked with a cast of relative unknown stars, and managed to create an entire period piece on the relatively low budget show...
Sensitively acted, visually designed, this dramatic story of the troubled life of a man of tremendous warmth and compassion, Eastwood delivers a compelling portrait of an artist with an ambitious presentation of love including a magnificent score, and stunning sound... (The film's sound captured an Oscar.)
Whitaker gives an excellent performance, with an especially inevitable death scene at the age of 34... Diane Venora is impressive as the wife of this great jazz musician... Their last conversation by phone presented the legend Parker's with his conscientious of his near-death, his lost effort, his feeling of loneliness, but also his kindness, his love, and his care to his entire family... A great scene not to be missed!
