Glen Hansard Movies
- 2007
- Add The Swell Season: Live from the Artists Den to QueueAdd The Swell Season: Live from the Artists Den to top of Queue
Live from the Artists Den: The Swell Season captures the Oscar winning duo of Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard performing over a dozen songs including "Lay Me Down," "When Your Mind's Made Up," "Star Star," and their most well known number "Falling Slowly," from the film Once. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, (more)
A Dublin-based busker and vacuum-cleaner repairman enters into a fruitful relationship with a piano playing florist in a toe-tapping "video album" directed by John Carney and featuring a cast comprised entirely of professional musicians. He (Glen Hansard of the Frames) was a six-stringed street musician. She (Markéta Irglová) was a flower woman who couldn't afford to purchase a piano of her own. One day, after admiring the musician's songs and asking if he would take a look at her broken vacuum, the flower-pushing piano player discovers that she shares a remarkable sonic rapport with the mechanically savvy guitarist. As their musical sensibilities quickly converge to striking effect, the talented pair soon determines to record an album together. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, (more)
- 2006
- NR
Pupendo and Up and Down director Jan Hrebejk thoughtfully ponders the effect of contemporary events on traditional Czech culture with this engrossing tale of the unlikely romance shared between a desperate young mother and a kindly, but much older, Czech expatriate. Effectively rendered destitute by the floods that washed through Prague in 2002, struggling young father and husband Jarda (Roman Luknar) eventually resorts to stripping stolen cars as a means of supporting his impoverished family. Jarda's wife Marcela (Anna Geislerová) is having difficulty accepting her husband's nefarious new career, though, and before long she is packing her bags and rounding up the kids to seek shelter with her mother. Life at her mother's house isn't easy thanks to the constant presence of her mean-spirited stepfather Richard (Jiri Schmitzer), but it simply seems as if there is no place left to go and Marcela's options have run dry. Meanwhile, aging Czech émigré Benes (Josef Abrhám) is traveling to Prague from his home in Tuscany in order to reclaim a house that was previously seized by the communists. When Benes and Marcela meet in a chance encounter and the benevolent older man clearly takes a liking to the beautiful young woman, the prospect of securing a stable future for her young children soon prompts the confused Marcela to consider leaving her beloved husband behind in order to make a permanent home with the elegant but elderly foreigner. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Geislerová, Roman Luknar, (more)
"The Irish are the blacks of Europe, Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the North Siders are the blacks of Dublin ... so say it loud -- I'm black and I'm proud!" Or so Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) tells his slightly puzzled friends as he tries to assemble a rhythm & blues show band in a working class community in Dublin in Alan Parker's film The Commitments. Jimmy is a would-be music business wheeler and dealer, and he's decided what Dublin needs is a top-shelf soul band. However, top-shelf soul musicians are hard to find in Dublin, so he has to make do with what he can find. However, after a long round of auditions, Jimmy makes two inspired discoveries: Deco (Andrew Strong), an abrasive and alcoholic streetcar conductor who nevertheless has a voice like the risen ghost of Otis Redding, and Joey "The Lips" Fagan (Johnny Murphy), a horn player who knows soul music backwards and forwards and claims to have played with everyone from Wilson Pickett to Elvis Presley. Before long, the band -- called the Commitments -- is packing them in at local clubs. But do they have what it takes to make the big time? Based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, who also co-wrote the screenplay, The Commitments is sparked by fine performances by its young cast and enthusiastic performances of a number of '60s soul classics; the cast, who play their own instruments, reassembled the band for a concert tour after the film became a hit. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, (more)
