Paranoid Park
by Gus Van Sant
List Price:
Our Price: $1.77
You Save: $18.18 (91%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.75 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Daniel Liu, Gabe Nevins, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney, Taylor MomsenDirector: Gus Van Sant
Brand: Genius
Cinematographer: Christopher Doyle
Cinematographer: Rain Li
Editor: Gus Van Sant
Writer: Gus Van Sant
Producer: David Allen Cress
Producer: Neil Kopp
Writer: Blake Nelson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-07
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: 81384
Studio: Ifc
Product features:
- An unsolved murder at Portland's infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to a local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral dilemma where he must deal with the consequences of his own actions. As director of My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, To Die For and Elephant, Gus Van Sant has created some of the most memorable stories about youth ever committed to film. New York Pres
DVD Reviews of Paranoid Park
DVD Review: Quirky, lyrical, brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
Gus Van Sant is by far the most interesting director working today. He's good enough at making mainstream Hollywood movies (like To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Psycho, and Milk) to get funding to make the movies he really cares about, like Paranoid Park, "little" movies that are infinitely more interesting than the big ones. He's made use of Hollywood, but so far he hasn't shown any sign of selling out to Hollywood. After every blockbuster, he goes home to Portland and gets back to work.
Since he follows his own muse (and her alone) in making these little movies, it wouldn't matter if every reviewer here thought they were too slow or boring or pretentious, as a large number do. He obviously makes them to please himself and not any audience, so it's almost a coincidence if anybody else likes them. Fortunately, I'm one who does.
Every "real" Van Sant movie, from Mala Noche to Paranoid Park, is a fascinating invitation to see and hear and (best of all) feel his very personal, quirky, lyrical, surreal, usually gritty and always fascinating take on a tiny little corner of this very wide world. He doesn't care enough what any of us think about his work to make it more palatable. Thank God. Like a true creator, he does what feels right to him. The beauty in that approach is that it gives us access to something completely unique, unavailable anywhere else.
People who insist on being spoon-fed their entertainment in familiar packages tend not to like Van Sant's little independent movies, but those people have many other options. Neatly packaged, predigested entertainment in familiar formats is what Hollywood cranks out by the hundreds every year. For the rest of us, there are the few odd geniuses like Gus Van Sant, willing to share their vision untainted by the public's demands for entertainment. He keeps on making these quirky gems, and they are consistently challenging, brilliant and very distinctive. Nobody would ever mistake a real Van Sant movie for one from The Walt Disney Company.
Van Sant is at heart a painter, after all, not a writer, not a storyteller, not a teacher. He gives us an impression of a story, a glimpse into it, not a neatly sequential, fully wrapped-up and satisfying narrative. He never gives us all the facts or answers every question or ties up every loose end, and he rarely tells a story in chronological order. He never, ever thinks for us. He gives us a glimpse into an experience and leaves us free to get whatever we can out of it.
I'm not saying that Van Sant's movies are just free-associating, chaotic messes. Paranoid Park, for example, is beautifully if unconventionally structured. The ghastly "crime" is in almost the exact center of the movie, with the details and consequences weaving in and out around it in both directions like swirls in a whirlpool.
Like Van Sant's other independent movies (and like all truly great movies), Paranoid Park cannot be fully appreciated in one viewing, or even two or three. That may be one reason some people don't like them--you don't get up from the first viewing as satisfied as if you'd finished a good meal. If anything, you leave hungrier than when you started. Only the second or third time do you even begin to comprehend what you've seen, to appreciate how the various, disparate elements fit together into an emotionally coherent and powerful whole.
I'll give an example. One very unusual thing Van Sant does in Paranoid Park is use background music originally composed for somebody else's movie, in this case several of Nino Rota's 40-year-old themes from Fellini's Juliet Of The Spirits. That music often accompanies one of the long slow-motion scenes of Alex just walking that so many reviewers complain about.
When I was watching Paranoid Park the first time, I noticed that that music sounded familiar, and I liked it, but I didn't recognize what it was until I saw the end credits. So I thought a while about why Van Sant would do such a strange thing, and I started remembering Juliet, and seeing similarities between Juliet's story and Alex's, and how perfectly her music fitted his experiences, and so the second time it was like watching a whole new movie.
That's how great movies are supposed to be. If you get all there is to get the first time, it means there wasn't much worth getting.
I'm tempted to say that Paranoid Park is the best Van Sant movie yet, but that's just because it's the one that's freshest in my mind. I remember Mala Noche, or the River Phoenix scenes in My Own Private Idaho, or the long dolly shot in Last Days, and I have to rein myself in. So I'll just say that Paranoid Park is the latest little masterpiece in a string of little masterpieces that hopefully will keep growing between the blockbusters for a long, long time.
Description of Paranoid Park
An unsolved murder at Portland's infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to a local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral dilemma where he must deal with the consequences of his own actions. As director of My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, To Die For and Elephant, Gus Van Sant has created some of the most memorable stories about youth ever committed to film. New York Press says Paranoid Park boasts "the coolest pop score since Pulp Fiction " and the film was shot by the acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, The Quiet American). Paranoid Park also features a cast of hot newcomers including Gabe Nevins and "Gossip Girl's" Taylor Momsen.It's hard to believe that a middle-aged filmmaker can fully evoke the chaotic, anxious world of a troubled teenager, but that's what Gus Van Sant has done with Paranoid Park. Alex (newcomer Gabe Nevins), a teenaged boy whose parents are going through a difficult divorce, is drawn to the rough community that's built up around the titular skateboarding park in Portland, Ore. One night, when an older boy is showing him how to hop a freight train, Alex accidentally kills a security guard. The movie captures the before and after by looping back and forth in time, focusing far more closely on Alex's state of mind than the investigation that threatens to close around him. Filmgoers leery of the drawn-out, atmospheric sequences of Van Sant's recent films (like Gerry and Last Days) need not fear; though Paranoid Park favors mood over plot, it successfully balances character, mood, and story, resulting in considerable dramatic tension, similar to Van Sant's meditation on the Columbine shootings, Elephant. This is not a thriller; Paranoid Park pays as much attention to Alex's relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer (Taylor Momsen, Gossip Girl) as to the killing. The result is a vivid, compelling portrait of adolescence, in all its messiness and confusion. This may be Van Sant's best film since his early masterpieces, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. --Bret Fetzer
Bestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
OldboyRelease date: 2005-08-23; DVD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
The White RibbonSON; Release date: 2010-06-29; DVD
Best price: $4.85
Price in other shops:
MilkUniversal Studios; Release date: 2009-03-10; DVD
Best price: $1.59
Price in other shops:
My Own Private Idaho (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2005-03-01; DVD
Best price: $23.27
Price in other shops:
![Ken Park (Uncut Uncensored NTSC Region Free!) [DVD] Larry Clark Image](/images/Ken-Park-Uncut-Uncensored-NTSC-Region-Free-DVD-Larry-Clark-B001AZKB8K-X.jpg)
Ken Park (Uncut Uncensored NTSC Region Free!) [DVD] Larry ClarkDVD
Best price: $16.85
Mala Noche (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2007-10-09; DVD
Best price: $14.44
Price in other shops:
GerryBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2003-11-11; Published: 2003-11-01; DVD
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Drugstore CowboyLions Gate; Release date: 1999-10-26; DVD
Best price: $7.33
Price in other shops:
Last DaysHBO HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2005-10-25; DVD
Best price: $2.17
Price in other shops:
Elephant: A Film By Gus Van SantFROST,ALEX; Release date: 2004-05-04; DVD
Best price: $3.13
Price in other shops: