Rating: 
Summary: I would give it 5 stars if Life Without Zoe wasn't on here
Review: Life Lessons is a moody and spectacular drama of a fantastic artist, struggling with two issues in his life: his world-famous paintings and his assistant, whom he has fallen in love with. Life Without Zoe is a wasted piece of nonsense that seriously damages the film. However, it redeems itself with Oedipus Wrecks, a wacky Woody Allen story about a grown man whose mother still won't leave him alone. Despite Life Without Zoe, I recommend buying this. You'll have a great time.
Rating: 
Summary: NEW YORK STORIES " LIFE LESSONS" OF A PAINTER
Review: Nick Nolte's performance in "Life lessons" the segment of Martin Scorcesee is unbelievable. As an artist, his prestation in the role of this talented painter let me glue to the coach in front of the T.V.This electric energy. The strokes on the canvas. The way the paintings are shown on screen is magnificent, and the paintings...Who is the painter of the movie, Chuck Connelly? I would like to know more about him, he is a big part of the movie, no? About the other two segment I don't really remember, I just think the segment " Life lessons" is REAL ART.
Rating:
Summary: NEW YORK STORIES " LIFE LESSONS" OF A PAINTER
Review: Nick Nolte's performance in "Life lessons" the segment of Martin Scorcesee is unbelievable. As an artist, his prestation in the role of this talented painter let me glue to the coach in front of the T.V.This electric energy. The strokes on the canvas. The way the paintings are shown on screen is magnificent, and the paintings...Who is the painter of the movie, Chuck Connelly? I would like to know more about him, he is a big part of the movie, no? About the other two segment I don't really remember, I just think the segment " Life lessons" is REAL ART.
Rating:
Summary: the best, the worst, the kind of mediocre
Review: Scorsese's contribution, Life Lessons, is among his finest works. He manages to rein in his excessive style, and concentrates on character. Terrific performances from Nolte and Arquette.The bad news: Life Without Zoe is without doubt the worst film Coppola has made. A new low for this great director, and for movies in general. So stupid and offensive, one wonders what he was thinking... Oedipus Wrecks is amusing, nothing more. Bottom line: After Life Lessons you can turn the tape off without having missed anything special.
Rating:
Summary: One good segment, and it's NOT the Scorsese one
Review: The previous reviews wildly over-rate Life Lessons, theScorsese segment. As a student film, it would be promising - thestory is effectively told and the acting is good - but there are also some serious flaws. Steve Buscemi's supposedly hip, successful comedian is astonishingly unfunny - his success must be down to his trick with the lightbulb. The attempt to make the artist's sub-Pollock working techniques interesting by plastering loud music all over them doesn't come off. The Nick Nolte character hardly develops and fulfills all the worst stereotypes of the artistic temperament.The middle segment isn't worth discussing. I don't know what Coppola was thinking. So why the 5-star review? Oedipus Wrecks, the Woody Allen segment, is very, very funny and will be appreciated by anyone who has ever had parents. IN particular, just thinking about the scene where his domineering mother visits the office makes me laugh. It also lacks the usual Woody foible of having very young women throwing themselves at his character. Buy this and you can use the first hour or so to record a couple of episodes of Seinfeld or something.
Rating:
Summary: Marrying with the Mammoth
Review: The three directors of this video give us three visions of their own genius but also of New York City as a crazy city. Martin Scorsese shows us how a painter, a very succesful painter is in fact a cannibal who needs women to inspire him, but women who are only plastic visions that must resist his domination and escape from his slow devouring passion. He needs their and his suffering to create. So he provokes their departure and resist it at the same time to build his impetus toward the sublimation of this disjaunted situation into some artistic vision. Francis Coppola shows another aspect of this artistic world. It is the story of a girl who is raised in absolute luxury but most of the time without her parents, her mother travelling the world to take photographs and eventually publish books, and the father being an international solo flutist who travels the world from one concert to the next. The daughter is excluded from this world because of her young age and does not know what to do to cope with it. She is growing disjointed and potentially psychotic. Luckily, the mother in some kind of inspired last resort decision takes her on a plane and catches up on her husband and the girl is finally able to see and hear her father in a concert in Athens. The epiphany is possible. But will it last ? Finally Woody Allen gets into one of his favourite themes : the tyranny of a Jewish mother over her son. She wants to choose her son's wives. Woody Allen pushes the situation to an extreme transferring of the mother from earth to the New York sky. And for weeks she imposes her dictatorial presence till the planned new wife leaves and another one is chosen. She then agrees with that new choice and can come back down on earth. There is also a full denunciation of psychoanalysis in this short film, because the psychoanalist is totally impotent in this situation and cannot in any way help the son. This film is a fair entertainment and a vision of New York that is both bracing and disturbing. Does our modern life lead to such deranged people, deranged in their minds, deranged in their social life or deranged in their personal life ? I am afraid yes. But it sure gives some depth to marvellous other masters of literature like Arthur Miller or Saul Bellow or even Bernard Malamud. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris IX and II.
Rating:
Summary: Marrying with the Mammoth
Review: The three directors of this video give us three visions of their own genius but also of New York City as a crazy city. Martin Scorsese shows us how a painter, a very succesful painter is in fact a cannibal who needs women to inspire him, but women who are only plastic visions that must resist his domination and escape from his slow devouring passion. He needs their and his suffering to create. So he provokes their departure and resist it at the same time to build his impetus toward the sublimation of this disjaunted situation into some artistic vision. Francis Coppola shows another aspect of this artistic world. It is the story of a girl who is raised in absolute luxury but most of the time without her parents, her mother travelling the world to take photographs and eventually publish books, and the father being an international solo flutist who travels the world from one concert to the next. The daughter is excluded from this world because of her young age and does not know what to do to cope with it. She is growing disjointed and potentially psychotic. Luckily, the mother in some kind of inspired last resort decision takes her on a plane and catches up on her husband and the girl is finally able to see and hear her father in a concert in Athens. The epiphany is possible. But will it last ? Finally Woody Allen gets into one of his favourite themes : the tyranny of a Jewish mother over her son. She wants to choose her son's wives. Woody Allen pushes the situation to an extreme transferring of the mother from earth to the New York sky. And for weeks she imposes her dictatorial presence till the planned new wife leaves and another one is chosen. She then agrees with that new choice and can come back down on earth. There is also a full denunciation of psychoanalysis in this short film, because the psychoanalist is totally impotent in this situation and cannot in any way help the son. This film is a fair entertainment and a vision of New York that is both bracing and disturbing. Does our modern life lead to such deranged people, deranged in their minds, deranged in their social life or deranged in their personal life ? I am afraid yes. But it sure gives some depth to marvellous other masters of literature like Arthur Miller or Saul Bellow or even Bernard Malamud. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris IX and II.
Rating:
Summary: New York Stories -- Life Lessons
Review: The video is well worth the first vignette - Life Lessons. I've watched it a dozen times now - always the nite before I open in a show. This is strictly about the passion, creativity, angst, loneliness, misery, fears, failed relationships, and sacrifices associated with being an artist - regardless how successful. Unlike some of the reviewers, I think Dobie is wonderfully portrayed and genuine whereas Arquette is an untalented, self-centered "Chippie." The music is the key. It's all hard rock and mind-numbing until Dobie switches to Puccini's aria "Recondita armonia" from Tosca. In the opera, an artist is painting a portrait of a blond, blue-eyed woman (Arquette?) but discovers the features of the woman he loves (Tosca) who has dark hair and eyes - foreshaddowing the young woman at the end? Perhaps like the name of Dobie's truck, some of Life Lessons can be like a game of Russian Roulette.
Rating:
Summary: 2/3 of a good film
Review: There are two-thirds of a good movie in this movie, as New York's three most famous directors each contributed a short film about an aspect of New York life. The opening short, "Life Lessons" by Martin Scorsese and starring Nick Nolte and Roseann Arquette is a unforgiving look at the competitive, abusive, almost cannibalistic world of a megalomaniacal painter. I read somewhere that this short is flawed because Nolte's character doesn't change. That is not a flaw; that's the point. The ego of a successful artist, according to Scorsese, will not soften, will not learn what a conscience is, will not admit that there are other artists in his/her world. Even when the artist recognizes talent in someone else, it is quickly dismissed. The ego lords over all. The final short film, "Oedipus Wrecks" by Woody Allen is typical comic genius. The plot is simple. Woody takes his overbearing mother to a magic show, and the magician makes her disappear. Completely disappear. The magician himself doesn't know how he did it. When mom appears as an apparition in the clouds, and speaks to the entire population of Gotham about her son, the laughs are endless. In between these two films is one directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I can't tell you what it's about. I have yet to sit through more than ten minutes of it.
Rating:
Summary: 2/3 of a good film
Review: There are two-thirds of a good movie in this movie, as New York's three most famous directors each contributed a short film about an aspect of New York life. The opening short, "Life Lessons" by Martin Scorsese and starring Nick Nolte and Roseann Arquette is a unforgiving look at the competitive, abusive, almost cannibalistic world of a megalomaniacal painter. I read somewhere that this short is flawed because Nolte's character doesn't change. That is not a flaw; that's the point. The ego of a successful artist, according to Scorsese, will not soften, will not learn what a conscience is, will not admit that there are other artists in his/her world. Even when the artist recognizes talent in someone else, it is quickly dismissed. The ego lords over all. The final short film, "Oedipus Wrecks" by Woody Allen is typical comic genius. The plot is simple. Woody takes his overbearing mother to a magic show, and the magician makes her disappear. Completely disappear. The magician himself doesn't know how he did it. When mom appears as an apparition in the clouds, and speaks to the entire population of Gotham about her son, the laughs are endless. In between these two films is one directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I can't tell you what it's about. I have yet to sit through more than ten minutes of it.
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