Evening - GeneralCatalog.Info

Price: $11.99 List Price: $19.98
Sales Rank: 2329 in DVD

Average Customer Review: (based on 67 reviews)
Publisher : Universal Studios
Format : AC-3,Color,Dolby,DVD-Video,Subtitled,Widescreen,NTSC
Label : Universal Studios
Actor : Claire Danes,Toni Collette,Redgrave,Wilson
EAN : 0025193344625
Binding : DVD
Release Date : 2007-09-25
Manufacturer : Universal Studios
Number Of Items : 1
UPC : 025193344625
Aspect Ratio : 2.40:1
Audience Rating : PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region Code : 1
Running Time : 117
Studio : Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date : 2007-06-29
Brand : UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAIN.

Editorial Reviews for Evening:

• Product Description
  
An all-star cast of the greatest actresses of our time - including Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave Academy Award winner Meryl Streep Toni Collette Claire Danes Natasha Richardson and Glenn Close - come together in this passionate and heartwarming story. As Ann (Redgrave) reflects on one beautiful and life-changing weekend with the one true love of her life her daughters (Collette and Richardson) come to their own understanding about the power of the past and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters family and the loves of their lives.System Requirements:Running Time: 117 Mins. Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 025193344625
• Amazon.com
  
A star-studded cast brings richness and texture to Evening, a lyrical tale of regret, unrequited love, and hope, written by novelists Susan Minot (Rapture) and Michael Cunningham (The Hours), based on Minot's book. Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) lies ill, deliriously remembering when she came to the summer home of her best friend Lila to be Lila's maid of honor (her younger self is played by Claire Danes). But the young Ann is soon caught between the hungry need of Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) and the magnetic outsider Harris (Patrick Wilson). Meanwhile, the elderly Ann is watched by her two daughters, Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson), who wrestle with unresolved feelings towards their mother, their choices in life, and each other. Evening starts off feeling a bit stiff and literary, but gradually finds its rhythm. While the emotional peaks and precious images feel inflated and hollow, the little ephemeral moments--the heartbreaks, yearnings, disappointments, and comforts, the flash of a smile or the widening of an eye--glimmer with warmth and honesty. It's rare that such restraint can be so compelling and so rewarding; Evening is well worth watching for the accumulating emotional power of these small moments. Also featuring Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. --Bret Fetzer

Beyond Evening

Evening the novel by Susan Minot

Vanessa Redgrave Essential DVDs

More DVDs with Claire Danes

Stills from Evening (click for larger image)

Customer reviews for Evening:

• Sentimental, but in a good way (2008-07-28)
  
I had the chance last night to catch Evening, an ensemble piece starring some of the most heavy-hitting female actresses working today. I thought it was wonderfully sentimental, and I enjoyed watching it.

Ann (Vanessa Redgrave/Claire Danes) is on her deathbed, reflecting on some of the defining moments of her life. Her two daughters, Connie (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette), grapple with the complications of their own lives and the idea of their mother's passing.

In her waning moments, Ann primarily dwells on a single weekend in her life, when she serves as the maid of honor at her friend Lila's (Mamie Gummer/Meryl Streep) wedding. During the weekend, Ann meets Harris (Patrick Wilson), whom she falls in love with and never truly forgets. However, due to a tragic accident during the wedding weekend (and relationships they share with others), Ann and Harris do not end up together. They both marry, have children, and lead separate lives. And as she is preparing to leave this world, Ann wonders if not being with Harris (and not pursuing her dream of becoming a professional singer more devotedly) is the biggest mistake of her life.

As the story continues, the viewer begins to see that maybe there ARE no mistakes in life. Only choices, the choices that make us who we are and shape our experience. (This reminded me much of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you go around trying to change what you've done or erase what you think you shouldn't have done, you are not going to be the same person. You won't know the same things, feel the same things, learn the same things.) Maybe the only thing we can do, upon reflecting, is be as satisfied as we can be that we are the sum of the choices we've made.

At any rate, the film is beautifully written, gloriously performed, and lovely to look at. It will make you think a bit, too. And with a cast of Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Meryl Streep, Natasha Richardson, and a small role by Glenn Close, you can't go wrong.


• Morning, Noon and... (2008-07-15)
  
Don't be fooled by the stellar cast: "Evening" is an endless B-movie bore from start to finish. There's enough plot for three films -- and with so many false endings you may feel as if you've been watching for that long -- but none of it means anything. The pace is glacial, the script trite, the characters whiny. And it's all presented as an extremely "important" exploration of love, loss and the human condition. Hogwash. This is an "Art" film that's so self-consciously "artsy" I wanted to run screaming from the theater. (And I LIKE art films.) Two stars for the costumes, art direction and the ever-reliable pro performances of Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep and Toni Collette; none of which is enough to justify this stultifying waste of film.


• a mixed bag but with some fine performances (2008-07-05)
  
A stellar cast, consisting of Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, is reason enough for watching "Evening," one of those high-toned, slightly stuffy, intergenerational family dramas that is all about lost loves, wasted lives and missed opportunities, this time among the champagne-sipping elite of Newport, Rhode island.

Redgrave stars as Ann Grant, a terminally ill woman whose dementia is leading her to reveal secrets on her deathbed that have been locked away in her memory for years. Collette and Richardson play her two adult daughters who are able to glean only a few tantalizing nuggets about their mother`s past as they emerge randomly and still partially obscured from the fog of her delirium. These scenes set in the present are intercut with those from the past, the 1950's in fact, when a young Ann (now played by Danes) fell in love with Harris (Patrick Wilson), the servant of her best friend, Lila (Mamie Gummer, who looks for all the world like a young Meryl Streep, who indeed steps in as Lila for the present scenes). Lila also happens to be in love with Harris, but she is instead marrying Karl (Timothy Kiefler), mainly because his aristocratic pedigree mixes better with her family's blue blood (echoes of the much-better "Atonement" abound throughout). Further complicating matters is Lila's kid brother, Buddy (Hugh Dancy), who appears to be in love with both Ann and Harris at one and the same time.

Needless to say, much of this plays like a tony, high-class soap opera, but at least two of the characters manage to rise above the suds and fully engage our interest: Colette's Nina, whose paralyzing fear of commitment and of making life-altering mistakes threatens to leave her a bitter, lonely woman; and Dancy`s Buddy, whose conflicted sexuality brings an unforeseen complexity and depth to the character. Most of the rest of the characters are considerably less interesting, including Ann (both the one in the present and the one in the past) whose personal revelations are supposed to be the glue holding this overpopulated story together. Harris is a particularly bland and uncharismatic figure for a man who is supposed to be such an irresistible magnetic attraction for at least three of the principal characters in the story.

The burden of transferring Susan Manot's novel to the screen has fallen on the shoulders of director Lajos Koltai, whose metier seems to consist primarily of pretty landscapes, dusky lighting and tinkling pianos. And yet, amid all the soap opera trappings, the movie has some important things to say about not just letting go of the past but of having the courage to move into the future.

"Evening" is decidedly a mixed bag as far as moviemaking and drama go, but the powerhouse performances (particularly by Collette, Richardson, Redgrave and Dancy) make for worthwhile viewing.



• Horrible turgid piece of cow dung (2008-07-03)
  

What a waste of such grerat talent. Nothing is believable. I think I lost it when the fireflies swarmed around Vanessa Redgrave, the dying matriarch. Really shows what an overrated piece of claptrap "The Hours" was. Nothing more needs to be said than what some of the others have opined.


• Lovely Movie (2008-07-01)
  
If your a romantic by heart you should see this movie. Plus it has a great cast.