Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Ready to Wear/Prêt-à-Porter (1994) - The Paris fashion week through the Altman lens

8/14/2023

Ready to Wear/Prêt-à-Porter (1994) - The Paris fashion week through the Altman lens

♥♥♥♥

Danish supermodel Helene Christensen sells the film with her beauty but goes uncredited on this poster for Robert Altman's Ready to Wear

Fashion week in Paris: Kitty is a TV personality there to cover the stories: A hated fashion boss suffocates in a sandwich, - but the press screams that it must be murder. Meanwhile the shows take place, the magazine editors schmooze over an Irish photographer, and two foreigners share a room in an over-booked hotel.

Ready to Wear is written by Barbara Shulgasser and co-writer/producer/director, Missourian master filmmaker Robert Altman (The Delinquents (1957)), whose 29th feature it was. The North-American title is a literal translation of the French fashion term that was the title in most of the rest of the world.

Though widely discarded critically, this scathing Altman look at the fashion world is an urbane, bubbly, light dish filled with great clothes and beautiful people. There's fun with cinema icons Sophia Loren (Arabesque (1966)) and Marcello Mastroianni (8½ (1963)) among loads of other stuff in this star-stuffed film that features plenty of slaps and appropriately shallow cheek kisses to the fashion industry.

Related posts:

Robert Altman: The Company (2003) - Campbell, Turner and Altman's fine ballet picture

Gosford Park (2001) - Smith triumphs in Altman & Fellowes' exquisite whodunit

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 18 mil. $

Box office: 46.8 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.6 times its cost)

[Ready to Wear premiered 23 December (New York) and runs 133 minutes. Altman had the idea for the film after attending a Sonia Rykiel fashion show in Paris in 1984 with his wife, commenting: "I couldn't believe what I saw. It was such a circus. It was just too theatrical not to want to film". Shooting took place from March - May 1994 in the US, Paris, France and in Moscow, Russia. The film opened #14 to a 2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked the following weekend at #13, grossing 11.3 mil. $ (24.1 % of the total gross). It was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 2.5/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. Altman returned with Kansas City (1996). Mastroianni returned in One Hundred and One Nights/Les Cent et Une Nuits de Simon Cinéma (1995); Loren in Grumpier Old Men (1995). Ready to Wear is rotten at 24 % with a 4.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (17-24)

8/14/2023

Ready to Wear/Prêt-à-Porter (1994) - The Paris fashion week through the Altman lens

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Eagerly anticipating this week ... (16-24)

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