BLACK SWAN

arrived on time. good quality

I had already seen Black Swan at the cinema and was blown away. For the record, I don't know the first thing about ballet, I took my wife to see the film as I knew she was very keen already. The film is something special, dark, intense and gripping, Portman is breathlessly excellent throughout - even if you think this would not be your sort of film - STILL GO AND SEE IT! The blu-ray transfer is sharp - despite the often grainy shots - as it was intended, to capture the visceral, bone-grinding intensity of ballet in its warts-and-all depiction. The sound to is crisp and adds to the several intense, almost hallucenagenic scenes. The direction is tight and imtimate, the cast is consistantly excellent (including a welcome reappearance by Winona Ryder) and the film itself is a rare beast - beautiful,dark and gripping all the way through. A rare find. Go and see it.

Film: Black Swan is an erotic psychological thriller, portraying the main character Nina (Natalie Portman in her Oscar-winning performance) as the mentally fragile ballerina, who has just been cast as the Swan Queen in a New York City ballet company's production of Swan Lake. The film is all about Nina's desperate attempts to achieve artistic perfection in her new-found dream role, which consumes her and begins to disintegrate her sanity. Imagine Repulsion [DVD] [1965 ] meets The Red Shoes - Restored [DVD ], with elements of David Cronenberg-style body horror sprinkled on top, and the result is Black Swan. The film's intense psychological nature won't be to everyone's taste, and it really does get more and more disturbing the more you watch, as you are delving into the psyche of a someone whose mind is unraveling by the minute. Darren Aronofsky's direction is bold and Portman's performance is the finest of her already-impressive career, and the final 30-40 minutes is nothing short of wild. Black Swan gets under your skin, but it is thrilling from start to finish, and I cannot recommend it enough. Blu-Ray Quality: A lot of people have been complaining that the Blu-Ray transfer is bad. That is wrong. Yes, the picture is grainy and dull compared to other recent Blu-Ray releases, but this is not because of the transfer, but because of the way the film was shot. Aronofsky and his team did not shoot using a 35mm lense camera, and instead shot the film mostly using a handheld 16mm and video-capable DSLRs. 16mm cameras yield a grainier and softer picture, especially in dark shots. Why did they use a 16mm camera if it is going to look more grainy? There are numerous possible reasons: 16mm cameras are much cheaper (Black Swan was filmed on an extremely tight budget of $13 million), they are smaller and hence easier to carry around (Black Swan was mostly filmed hand-held), and maybe Aronofsky preferred the intimate, grainy, documentary-like look of the picture. Like it or not, this is the way the film was shot, and has nothing to do with the blu-ray transfer itself. The blu-ray does well in staying true to the original source material visually, whilst the sound effects are highly impressive (esp during those tense horror-moments). Extras: I would have given this Blu-Ray a 5 had it not been for a disappointing lack of extras. The only extra feature of note is a badly edited 'making of' documentary titled 'Metamorphosis', and the rest are just 3-5 minute interviews with the cast and crew about their characters, filming, preparation etc. Nothing too in depth. No deleted scenes, no alternate edits, no outtakes and barely any pre-production footage.

Been waiting to watch this film for years. Arrived really fast, great story,

I'm always a little wary of films which have received a lot of hype and this one was no exception. So many of my friends enthused about it and urged me to watch it, so I finally gave in and decided to find out for myself if it really deserved all the praise and plaudits. I have to say that this film more than exceeded my expectations and they were very high! Natalie Portman is always watchable anyway but her performance as the ambitious ballet dancer Nina, who is becoming increasingly unhinged, is outstanding. Watching her character unravel, I went through so many different emotions, I was positively wrung out at the end. I think that my heart fractured slightly, watching everything her character goes through. The performances of the main leads are all exceptional, in particular, Barbara Hershey, who gives an emotionally taut performance as Nina's mother. The choreography is amazing and the ballet scenes are mesmerizing. All in all, I would say that this film comes as close to perfection as any film possibly could. It's haunting, chilling, disturbing, offbeat and brilliant!

I must admit, I bought this movie because of the hype about it when it came out last year. Just before I went to write this review, I noticed the across-the-spectrum opinions represented in the Amazon ratings, and that sums up the "quality" of this film better than anything else. To be fair, it is well done in many aspects: well acted (Natlie Portman is wonderful), well filmed, etc. It is a psychological drama, and very well done as far as that goes. There are moments of increasing horror along the way, and the premiere performance of Swan Lake at the end of the film is very exciting and beautiful and well worth watching. What this film needs is a plot. A very little one will suffice. Think "Psycho" or "Vanilla Sky" or even "Flashdance". That much plot will do, but alas it is lacking. The only story is her preparation for the "big night", and her only character development is the slow abandonment to her disease so that she can dance the perfect performance. As she herself does not fully understand this development, the movie lacks structure. I myself am employed in the classical performing arts, and the total sacrifice of self for the sake of art is not, even for me, a satisfying theme when unaccompanied by any other. The end of the movie is (in the classical tradition) very predicable, and there are no lessons learned. This film is worth a rent if you have sympathy for the way ballerinas suffer for the sake of beauty. It is not, however, in my opinion, worth a Best Picture nomination. "Flashdance" really is the better movie.

In this 2010 psychological drama, insecure Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) auditions for principal dancer in Swan Lake after the forced retirement of Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder). Performing flawlessly as the White Swan she lacks the ferocity to play the Black Swan and when she asks the director to rethink, he forcibly kisses her and she uncharacteristically bites him. Gaining the part she returns home as her hallucinationsintensify and finds scratches on her back, but what does it all mean? I found the acting, photography and audio to be above the norm with some good special effects thrown in, but the script held no surprises as it was obvious Nina is a schizophrenic self harmer on the verge of a breakdown from the start, all we see in the first half is her gradual decline under pressure [lose a *]. The reality is, this documents a breakdown under stress and insecurity in the workplace, which many people can identify with, which explains its success, but the start is too drawn out although the last quarter is action packed and intense [regain a *]. The story simply reflects the ballet itself, so holds no real surprises. The disc goes to a main menu offering play, set-up [English, English audio descriptive, subtitles; English Hoh, Portugues, Suomi, off, more= Scandinavian and east European], scenes and extras [black swan metamorphosis; chapters 1, 2 & 3]. Rated 15 this uses the F word, contains ‘adult’ sexual conversation, has temperamental violence, self harm, masturbation, partial nudity, graphic groping, oral sex, drug taking and some intense scenes, it’s not really family viewing. A phenomenal box office success and strangely voted number 1 in Cosmopolitans most erotic film scenes list, its really the final quarter that lifts this above the dross gaining a grudging *****.and I believe if the cast had been unknown, this would have been an 18 rating and much derided.

Oscar nominated……why? One of the most tedious movies I’ve ever watched. Acting wooden. Story infantile. Tedious. Physical DVD fine, just a bad movie

Perfecto

Black Swan is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I just saw it a few days ago and I plan to see it a few more --or maybe a few more than "a few" times-- before it leaves the theaters. And I know I'll buy the DVD when that comes out and watch it more times with the luxury of being able to study why it worked so well by virtue of my DVD player's pause, rewind, and slow-motion buttons. In this review I will explain why the movie had such an impact on me and then in a section below the word "spoilers" I will make a few comments about the plot and particularly the ending. Why was it so compelling a film? Because it was a powerful story, brilliantly executed, and with incredible performances by four of the lead cast. The story line is quite gripping. We watch someone who is beautiful, talented, driven to perfection and incredibly fragile take on a performance that quite literally pushes her into a psychotic break. We cheer for Nina Sayers; we pity her; and we fear for her as the twisty plot unfolds springing surprises on the viewer along the way. The film is beautifully staged. It made ballet accessible for me and I imagine a lot of other people who were not into it. I found both Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis's dancing to be very convincing and moving. The film deftly presents us with moments of beauty (especially Nina's ultimate performance as the Black Swan) and moments of horror when the film plays its little tricks to convince us she is losing her mind. The performances were what sold it in the end. Natalie Portman's portrayal of Nina was utterly convincing as someone teetering on the edge of madness. And I suspect I'm not alone among guys who would find themselves wishing they could rescue her from her plight. Mila Kunis, Vincent Kassel, and Barhara Hershey also did tremendous work. Mila made a wonderful foil to Nina as Lily, the embodiment of what the Black Swan should have been...a carefree, beautiful, sexy woman. Vincent Kassel in the role of Thomas Leroy gave a performance that ensured a character that could have amounted to a hateful cliche was believable and one could easily understand why Nina would find him so captivating and overwhelming. Finally, Barbara Hershey turned in a fine performance as Nina's damaged mother, someone who loved her daughter but in a way that was twisted and malign and profoundly unnerving. <SPOILERS> You'll notice I left out Winona Ryder from my list above. It's not that she did a bad job in the part she played of Beth, the former prima ballerina. It's just that the character was such a small part...it could have been done by anyone. I find myself wondering if there were scenes involving her that wound up on the cutting room floor since a draft of the shooting script I saw had more scenes with her in it. It's not a flaw to the movie but I do wonder why an actress of Ryder's caliber was willing to do such a small role. A lot has been made of "anger and ecstasy fueled lesbian hate sex" between the characters of Nina and Lily. I actually thought there were other scenes that were sexier (Nina "touching herself" and a scene where Thomas shows Nina what it's like to be seduced). It's also important to remember that Nina and Lily's encounter was just a figment of Nina's burgeoning psychosis and also an indicator of how repressed she was (it was pretty clear she was a virgin). I also think that critics who describe the relationship between Lily and Nina as a "twisted friendship" are missing the boat on that. The friendship is only twisted as seen through Nina's distorted view. I think that Nina's psychosis assigned Lily, the role of nemesis and rival that she really did not play in reality. Finally, here are my thoughts about the ending. It's been the subject of a lot of debate on the Internet Movie Database. Some people are convinced that Nina died in the end after giving a phenomenal performance as the Black Swan...that when she thought she killed her "rival" Lily, she only managed to wound herself with a shard from the mirror she broke. I think the movie is deliberately ambiguous about what really happened. My interpretation of what did was that Nina did manage to hurt herself but not all that badly...which would explain why she was able to to perform as the Black Swan and the White Swan instead of being found in a pool of her own blood in her dressing room. I flatly reject the idea that she could have danced the way she did if she was as badly hurt as she was. I think it's more believable to conclude that Nina may have been convinced she had mortally wounded herself but was simply overcome by her psychosis and the fact that in the end she really had pulled it off and become perfect.

DVD non visionné , je ne peux donner mon avis sur le produit ; acheté après avoir lu le résumé ; pour avoir vu des extraits lors du lancement du film.DVD visionné, quelles émotions!!!!c'est beau,magnifique,sublime et terrifiant dans ce qu'il peut entraîner!!!Black swan est un pur diamant noir.N Portmam donne la pleine mesure de son talent. Nina une jeune femme voue sa vie à la danse.Son rêve..devenir la reine du "lac des cygnes". Ambigu Mais celle ci prise entre une mère abusive,sa soif de perfection,en vient au début par chorégraphe veut qu'elle soit parfaite et la pousse au maximum de ses possibilités sans faire attention à la personne qu'elle est. Mais prise entre une mère abusive et la perfection en vient au début à s'automutiler, descendre dans les méandres les plus profondes de la folie. Son interprétation est sublime jusqu'à se confondre dans son rôle. Magnifique prestation de N Portman ,inoubliable dans ce rôle,inhibée du personnage on se demande comment elle peut s'en sortir.Vincent Cassel troublant dans son jeu qui use de tout pour arriver à ses fins. Cela laisse entrevoir les dangers de vouloir atteindre la perfection,des ravages causés psychologiquement et ce qui en résulte à trop se donner à son art......Très minutieusement traité.... UN VRAI BIJOU DE PERFECTION!!!!!!MAGIQUE MAGNIFIQUE FÉERIQUE MAIS ATTENTION AU REVERS DE LA MÉDAILLE!!!!!!

Ballettstücke filmisch wiederzugeben ist ein verzwicktes Ding, da durch fehlende Dia-/Monologe es nur auf die reine Zuschauerinterpretation ankommt bzw. man auf schon vorherige publizierte Interpretation zurück greifen muss. BLACK SWAN ist ein Stück im Stück - es erzählt von einer Ballettaufführung des "Schwanensee"'s von Tschaikowsky, der Geschichte, wo der weiße Schwan in einen schwarzen Schwan verzaubert wird und nur durch die Liebe ihres Prinzen (das Klischee ruft) errettet werden kann - und beschreibt dieses gleichzeitig im Handlungsgeschehen. Anfangs bereitet der Film durch die Kameraführung, es scheint als ob immer jemand hinterher läuft, durch das ständige Ruckeln Kopfschmerzen, doch spätestens wenn Natalie Portman das erste Mal auftritt, ist alles vergessen. Die Schauspielerin mit der wunderbar weichen und weiblichen Figur mutierte innerhalb von einem Jahr und täglichem 8 Stunden Training zu einer durchtrainierten und trotzdem weiblichen Sportlerin. Balletttanzen allein ist schon schwer, dabei aber auch noch zu schauspielern beheerscht sie perfekt - also einen verdienten Oscar. Das Drehbuch wirkt eigentlich wie eine Kurzgeschichte, man erfährt weder was ihre Mutter - die einen unterschwelligen, versteckten Druck auf ihre Tochter Nina (Natalie Portman) ausübt, sie animiert und ihre unerfüllten Träume in ihr auslebt - arbeitet, noch wo der Vater ist, man erfährt nicht was Nina arbeitet, ob sie Freunde hat, ob es für sie auch ein Leben außerhalb von Tanzen, Erbrechen oder Zweifeln gibt. Sie selber mimt die Perfektionistin, tut jedoch scheinbar nichts dafür. Sie KÖNNTE die Beste sein, sie weiß es, doch setzt sich selber nicht unter Druck, nicht mal die Mutter scheint Druck zu machen, der Druck wird eher als Kontrollzwang versteckt/als Kontrollzwang getarnt. In der Ballett Academy von Nina wird "Schwanensee" neu aufgeführt - allerdings sollen diesmal beide Schwäne von nur einer Tänzerin aufgeführt werden. Nina wäre nach Meinung ihres Trainers der perfekte weiße Schwan, doch ihr fehlt das gewisse Etwas, das Verruchte, der Sex-Appeal für den schwarzen Schwan. Doch sie gelangt trotzdem an die Rolle(n) und kommt gleich darauf das erste Mal in den Genuss von Konkurenz, durch Lilly ( Mila Kuris, kein großartig zu heraus hebende schauspielerische Leistung, aber wichtige Rolle und traumhaftes Sex-Appeal gepaart mit Schönheit), die all das verkörpert, was für die Rolle des schwarzen Schwans nicht in ihr steckt. Nina's sonst so verschreckte, schüchterne Art bekommt einen Spiegel vorgehalten, wodurch sie anfängt an sich selber unter Druck zu setzen und sich aus den Fängen ihrer Mutter zu befreien. Lilly nimmt sie mit in die Welt des Verruchten, Sex, Drogen, Freiheit. Freiheit - Freiheit, was in Tschaikowskys Stück genau die Endessenz ist, was der Segen sein soll, als Fluch scheint und schluss endlich doch der Segen ist und zum gewünschten Ergebnis führt. Spätestens als sie eine schwarze Schwanenfeder aus ihrem Rücken zieht, sind die schizophrenen Züge, unrealistische Wahrnehmung und manchmal selbst für den Zuschauer kein Unterscheiden mehr zwischen Nina's Sicht und der Zuschauersicht, die Folgen davon. Nina verwandelt sich langsam mental in den schwarzen Schwan, haluziniert, beginnt einen Hang zur Autoaggression aufzubauen doch tanzt, wie vom Trainer und sich selbst verlangt, den perfekten schwarzen Schwan, sie lebt ihn. Genau DAS, was ihr nicht möglich war, das was sie wollte, die komplette Perfektion, die sich im Endeffekt selbst auffrisst. Alles in Allem: ein grandioser Film, der zurecht dem Genre "Psycho-Thriller" zugeordnet wird - die Schreckmomente kommen nicht zu kurz. Der Gastauftritt von Winona Ryder wird kurz gehalten, hat trotzdem einen entscheidenen Sinn für die Handlung. Perfektion, Leistungsdruck, Eifersucht, Beklemmtheit und Selbstzweifel spielen in einem wundervollen Quintett zusammen und zeigen nicht nur die Abgründe von perfektionierten oder perfektionsstrebenden Tänzern, sondern lassen viel Raum für den Zuschauer, sich in der einen oder anderen Situation selbst wieder zu erkennen. Musikalisch gesehen kann man mit nichts gegen den Film halten - selbst wenn man denkt es ist keine Steigerung mehr möglich, schafft es der Musikdirektor Fletcher Henderson noch einen drauf zu legen. Ein Film, den man sich entweder im Kino oder mit sehr guter Musikanlage anschauen und hören sollte.

Bellissimo film con una brava e bellissima Natalie Portman