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Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City
 
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Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City

Olympia Dukakis (Actor), Donald Moffat (Actor), Alastair Reid (Director) | Rated: Unrated | Format: DVD
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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From Amazon.com

"The City" in question is San Francisco, and the tales are novelist Armistead Maupin's, his romantic, affectionate, and spirited homage to the glory days of his hometown. Maupin's idea of SF's glory days isn't the drug-filled Summer of Love (1967), but rather the drug-filled lust-in of the late '70s. Replacing acid with coke and ludes, psychedelia for disco, this six-hour miniseries (which caused controversy for its open drug use, nudity, and direct depiction of homosexuality upon its initial airing on PBS) follows the romantic struggles and identity crises of a colorful cast of characters. The action--as addictive as the drugs the characters ingest--is seen mostly from the innocent point of view of Mary Ann, the city's newest culture-shocked resident--so its presentation is rather decadent and hedonistic. Because the story originally ran as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle before being compiled into a novel, its serialized structure suffers from typical soap-opera mawkishness and the need to shock with ridiculous revelations. Thankfully, this degeneration mostly occurs during the final two hours, allowing you to just enjoy the personalities and hilarious and often-touching interactions of the richly drawn characters before they're manipulated by plot devices. The performances are all outstanding, especially Chloe Webb's spacey ex-hippie Mona, Marcus D'Amico's romantically doomed Michael, and Olympia Dukakis's Anna Madrigal, the enigmatic mother hen/landlady of many of the film's central characters. --Dave McCoy

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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews
5 star:
 (19)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Would have been perect, but..., Jan 12 2004
By 
S. Antonio Arch (Toronto & Grand Cayman) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (DVD)
To begin, I give Tales of the City itself five stars. I would give it ten if I could. I get sentimental every time I catch it on TV, loved it on PBS ten years ago and just as much now.

My problem is with this DVD Collector's edition. It states very clearly on the box that this is the original, unrated, unedited version. Which is why I buy it, take it home and wait for one of my favourite scenes. Finally Brian picks up Connie Bradshaw at the Laundromat and I'm waiting for that wonderful post-coital confrontation. And I realise that the dialogue has been DUBBED OVER. Over the course of the next three hundred minutes I agonise over the several other scenes that have been cleaned up.

This boxed set is beautiful. It has some wonderful extras including rehearsals and commentaries, but the dialogue has been tampered with and yes it does absolutely detract from the story

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars BEWARE: THIS VERSION IS EDITED, Jun 11 2003
By 
hewasacloud "hewasacloud" (Gloucester, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (DVD)
I've been waiting for "Tales of the City" to come out on DVD for years.
The first intallment of this series is excellent ****** The actors give such fun, humane and real performances. The entire production is a true gem. However, though the DVD box claims it is the unedited version,
all of the "curse" words are over-dubbed with "clean" words. Unfortunately, this really alters the dialogue is certain scenes.
Being such a fan of the series, I sadly returned my copy, and will

continue to watch it on VHS, unless they put out a truly "unedited" DVD.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars great set except for video quality, May 16 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (DVD)
Don't get me wrong: it's great to finally have this series available on DVD with some great extras thrown. But as a previous reviewer mentioned, the video quality is subpar -- very contrasy and the whites are too bright. Wish they could have done a better transfer than this.

As for the content: if you've seen this series on PBS or Showtime or read the book, you know what a great story and set of characters we have here. I used to live in San Francisco, and Armistead Maupin really captured the City and character types so well. It actually makes me kind of homesick when I watch this series -- it's that good. The cast is outstanding all around, but Laura Linney really anchors this series. It's no suprise that she went on to do bigger projects.

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