| | | A Film by Clint Eastwood.
Features: DVD
Clint Eastwood brings a lifelong love of jazz to and won a Best Director Golden Globe Award for this gripping story of pioneering jazzman Charlie "Yardbird" Parker. Like a spellbinding jazz riff, past and future overlap as the movie explores Bird's soaring skill and destructive excesses. In his Cannes Film Festival Best Actor performance, Forest Whitaker in the title role is a candle ablaze at both ends. Diane Venora shares that glorious light, the New York Film Critics Best Supporting Actress choice as steadfast wife Chan Parker. Skillfully blending Parker solo recordings with modern musicians, Bird comes alive most mightily on its soundtrack, honored with a Best Sound Academy Award. In Eastwood's hands, Bird truly, stunningly lives.
"A compelling mix of music and misery as Bird flushes himself down the can." Empire
"Exhilarating! Clint Eastwood's consummate directing and a flawless cast send Bird soaring!" Gene Shalit, Today
"Extraordinary. The best American film ever made about jazz." Jack Kroll, Newsweek
"It's more than a labor of love -- it's a powerful summoning of devoted craft, conveying the pain and complexity of a great musical innovator..." Jay Carr, Boston Globe
"...a hypnotic, darkly photographed, loosely constructed marvel that avoids every cliche of the self-destructive-celebrity biography..." Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail
"...the most serious, conscientious, and accomplished jazz biopic ever made, and almost certainly Eastwood's best picture as well." Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
"...a remarkable directorial effort, Eastwood shows a great flair for atmosphere and composition...Whitaker gives a towering performance..." TV Guide
Editor's Note
Charlie "Bird" Parker had been a hero of Clint Eastwood's since childhood, and Eastwood, having been disappointed in such jazz biopics as YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, really wanted to make a true jazz fan's movie about the music. He cast Forest Whitaker as Parker, the legendary alto sax player, and Diane Venora as Chan, Parker's wife. The film shows how Parker, a genius who changed the face of modern music, was hampered and eventually destroyed by his appetite for women, food, and drugs. The two leads do a great job giving a recognizable human face to the characters' complex relationship. With wit and warmth, BIRD tells the story in direct and honest terms, avoiding all sentimentality. Eastwood's love of Parker's music comes across in the tremendous care that he and composer Lennie Niehaus took with reconstructing it, using Parker's original solos. Eastwood and cinematographer Jack N. Green also patterned the dark, moody look of the film after old photos of musicians who used to appear in jazz magazines. Music lovers will be thrilled with the result, and movie lovers will find plenty to engage them in this moving tale of a great man battling his demons.
Plot Summary
Director Clint Eastwood indulges his lifelong passion for jazz with this dark, brooding interpretation of the life of revolutionary bebop saxophonist Charlie "Yardbird" Parker. Starting with Parker's early years, when he used to sneak into Kansas City clubs to listen to Count Basie's band, the film moves through the many ups and downs of Parker's troubled but brilliant career--which ended all too soon. The doctor who examined Parker soon after his death estimated that the musician was somewhere between 50 and 60 years old; he was actually only 34 when he died.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | Bird - DVD Review By: Katey Rich - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 7/25/2008 10:10 AM | | The film's pitch-black, occasionally murky cinematography makes for rough viewing on a small television, but would be a treat for anyone looking for the way Eastwood's distinct visual style has evolved over the years (and who has a substantial home theater setup). Bird is a classic example of a difficult, arty movie-it was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes-but offers much to enjoy, especially for those with any knowledge of jazz ...read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 7/22/2008 |
| Original Release Date: 1988 | | Catalog ID: 1000036880 | | UPC: 00883929008650 | | Number of Discs: 2 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
British Academy Awards (1989) | | | Alan Robert Murray, et. al., Nominee, Best Sound | |
Golden Globe (1989) |  | Clint Eastwood, Winner, Best Director - Motion Picture | | | Diane Venora, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | | | Forest Whitaker, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama | |
British Academy Awards (1989) | | | Lennie Niehaus, Nominee, Best Score | |
Oscar (1989) | | Les Fresholtz, et. al., Winner, Best Sound | |
Cannes Film Festival (1988) | | Bird, Winner, Technical Grand Prize | | | Clint Eastwood, Nominee, Golden Palm Award | | Forest Whitaker, Winner, Best Actor |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"...The music is everywhere....A labor of love..." 09/26/1988 p.C19Los Angeles Times
"...Few Hollywood biographical movies have shown more devotion to their subject than Clint Eastwood's BIRD....In this movie and its hot, fast bursts of bop, Charlie Parker gets a fitting elegy..." 10/14/1988 p.C1 Mojo
"[T]he adroit combination of Whitaker's understated performance and Eastwood's flashback images achieves pathos while avoiding sentimentality." 12/01/2004 p.57 Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "A labour of love for director Clint Eastwood, this ambitious biopic of Charlie Parker digs a little deeper than most mainstream musical biopics..." 04/01/2006 p.144 Sight and Sound
"[Eastwood] does full justice to Parker's extraordinary musical gifts." 04/01/2006 p.87 The Washington Post 8 of 10
Images, not ideas or a cohesive narrative, are what we take away from "Bird." Though it's a Hollywood studio picture, the film has a calculated art-house look. Beginning with Parker's attempt to kill himself by drinking iodine after a squabble he's had with his wife Chan (Diane Venora), Eastwood and scriptwriter Joel Oliansky present us with nearly three hours worth of fragments from the revolutionary alto saxophonist's life. And by the time we reach the artist's death at the age of 34, these fragments have collected into a sizable, though inconclusive, mountain of impressions..."Bird" isn't the great movie about jazz that some jazz writers are proclaiming it to be. Structurally, it's too scrambled, and ultimately we're too frustrated by the leaping around to feel we understand its subject or even what the filmmakers want us to know about him. But even though, thematically, the movie won't come clear, Eastwood has succeeded so thoroughly in communicating his love of his subject, and there's such vitality in the performances, that we walk out elated, juiced on the actors and the music...Forest Whitaker's brilliance is the force that holds the scattered pieces of "Bird" together. Only rarely in movies do characters achieve this sort of palpability, and then only when presented to us by a remarkable performer. And this is a remarkable performer giving a gentle, exuberant, charismatic performance. - Hal Hinson
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
I've seen two documentaries about Charlie Parker recently, but I haven't seen a lot of Parker. In an age when archives are filled with newsreel footage and videotape on even the most obscure of public figures, Parker seems always to have been somewhere else when the cameras were on. There is a shot of him accepting a Downbeat Award at a banquet, where the master of ceremonies solemnly informs him that jazz is color blind (if so, then why the reassurance?), and another brief clip of him playing with Dizzy Gillespie. There are a few minutes of silent footage, too, and that's it. No complete performances on film...No interviews. No home movies...That's one reason why Clint Eastwood's "Bird," a musical biography of Parker, is so valuable. It supplies us with images to go with the music, and it provides an idea of the man, more than 30 years after his death. If we are to judge by Forest Whitaker's substantial performance, Parker was a large, warm, gentle man who was comfortable with himself and loved his work..."Bird" is a long, complex, ambitious movie, and it contains a lot of great music..."Bird" wisely does not attempt to "explain" Parker's music by connecting experiences with musical discoveries. This is a film of music, not about it, and one of the most extraordinary things about it is that we are really, literally, hearing Parker on the soundtrack. - Roger Ebert
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