The Michigan Daily Online an Australian import based on the life of classical pianist david helfgott, Geoffrey Rush stars as david helfgott, a troubled and brilliant pianist, http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1997/jan/01-22-97/arts/arts4.html
Extractions: Daily TV / New Media Editor "Shine" is an Australian import based on the life of classical pianist David Helfgott, a man blessed with prodigious musical talent, but cursed by the pressures of an over-zealous father (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Newcomer and prime Oscar-candidate Geoffrey Rush plays Helfgott, who first appears scampering through the rain toward a small cafe, seemingly euphoric. Looking haggard and acting hyperactive, Rush demands attention from the opening scene, ending his staccato outbursts with, "Oh yes, the tragedy of it all, the tragedy." Rush's performance rightfully deserves praise, as he comfortably fills the shoes of a man who suffers and succeeds because of his obsessive relationship with music. In a refreshingly different move, director Scott Hicks ("Strictly Ballroom") then cuts to flashbacks of Helfgott's childhood and troubled adolescence. Most of the film centers on Helfgott's growing years, which send him spiralling toward a nervous breakdown. Under the reign of an overprotective, controlling father who was traumatized by the Holocaust, young David (Alex Rafalowicz) grows into a fragile, socially overwhelmed teen-ager (Noah Taylor). Rafalowicz is adorable and convincing in the role of little Helfgott, a boy who never knew the release of a free-wheeling childhood because he was too busy fulfilling his father's expectations. By the time Rafalowicz passes the baton to Taylor, some sort of catastrophe seems imminent. For audiences who like a little unpredictability with their dramatic tension, "Shine" may not seem as brilliant as the hype surrounding the film would have you believe. Yes, this is one of 1996's brighter cinematic offerings, but no, it is not the Hope Diamond of bio-dramas.
SHINE (An Illusion Review By Joan Ellis.) In his real life, pianist david helfgott is once again playing concerts, includingone penciled in to coincide with the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. http://www.joanellis.com/reviews/SHINE.htm
Extractions: The unexplained whys and wherefores and the too facile assumptions of the film evaporate under the light and joyous performance of Geoffrey Rush. Without Geoffrey Rush's amazing performance as classical pianist David Helfgott, "Shine" might have been an ordinary movie. With it, we are all too happy to brush aside the questions that would otherwise diminish the movie. His performance simply obliterates the problems. The complexities of David's father, Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl), manifest themselves as rigid Prussian cruelty. Peter's parents, and those of his wife, were killed in the Holocaust, and he guards his own family fiercely, controlling every aspect of their lives. He escorts his young son, David (played at various ages by Alex Rafalowicz, Noah Taylor, and Geoffrey Rush), to piano competitions as if the boy were a puppy, his father's exhibit. After David loses the competition while trying to play a piano that is rolling away from him, Peter's scorn and disappointment etch themselves on the boy's heart. When David earns a chance to go to America to study, his father vetoes the trip with the desperation of a man who believes that, if he cannot hold his family within his house, he cannot protect them. "I'm not going to let anyone destroy this family," is his response to anything that might dilute his control.
Shine david is a reallife, award-winning Australian pianist who was driven mad either by For years helfgott the elder controlled david with words of love, http://www.rambles.net/shine.html
Extractions: Shine opens on a dark and stormy night. Not many films could recover from that, but not many films offer viewers a protagonist like David Helfgott. David is a real-life, award-winning Australian pianist who was driven mad either by his overbearing father or from playing Rachmaninoff. That's the one subject on which Shine is a bit vague. By the age of 13, David already had more potential than most teens have acne. Within a few years, he was winning scholarships to prestigious international schools like London's Royal Academy of Music. But there was a price to pay for those scholarships: he had to incur the wrath of his father. To say that David's father was overbearing is to say that the Grand Canyon is a pretty good-size hole. For years Helfgott the elder controlled David with words of love, when the only thing he loved was control. If there's a down side to The Lion King Shine has pegged it. Yes, men carry their fathers around inside of them. And yes, those internalized fathers often lead their sons, or drive them, to fulfill their destinies or self destruct. It took three bodies and five pairs of hands to play David Helfgott on the screen: Alex Rafalowicz played David as a child, Noah
Film - December 1996 Based on the troubled life of Australian concert pianist david helfgott, ScottHicks s playful Shine steers clear of the linear arc of conventional biopics http://www.theatlantic.com/ae/96dec/96decflm.htm
Extractions: B ased on the troubled life of Australian concert pianist David Helfgott, Scott Hicks's playful Shine steers clear of the linear arc of conventional biopics while maintaining a broad accessibility that won the movie top prizes from both the press and the public at the 1996 Toronto Film Festival. The movie darts back and forth in time, mimicking the structure of a concerto as it traces the roots of David's emotionally unstable adulthood to his unhappy youth under the repressive wing of his ambitious father (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a Polish-Jewish refugee whose rigidity is outstripped only by devotion to an abstract idea of family unity that cripples his sensitive son. Escaping England to study under the legendary music teacher Cecil Parkes (John Gielgud), David suffers a complete collapse after a triumphant performance and returns to a life spent in and out of mental institutions in Australia. Brilliant performances by Noah Taylor ( The Year My Voice Broke ) as the young David and Geoffrey Rush as the adult David convey not only his nerdy pathos but also the hyperkinetic charm that drew so many kind people to him, including the astrologer (Lynn Redgrave) who helped to salvage his life and career. Jan Sardi's screenplay, though witty, presses almost every line of dialogue into the service of a simplistic master narrativedamaged father produces damaged sonthat stops this touching, expert, and often wildly funny movie just short of greatness. Still, one is left hungering for a sequel that chronicles the astonishing match between David and his astrologer.
Shine DVD The scintillating story of damaged pianist david helfgott, Hicks brings togethera love of subject and intuitive cinematic magic to realize this celebration http://www.filmsondisc.com/dvdpages/shine.htm
Extractions: Shine DVD/ A, A New Line/1996/105/ANA 1.85 Shine is director Scott Hicks brilliant gift to film lovers. The scintillating story of damaged pianist David Helfgott, Hicks brings together a love of subject and intuitive cinematic magic to realize this celebration of film, art and life. Ten years from inspiration to completion, Shine is realized to perfection. Hicks not only chronicles Helfgotts life, he makes a fascinating study of the pressure to perform, while examining family relationships with an extremely sharp lens. The screenplay by Jan Sardi is literate and elegant, carefully choosing those moments in Helfgotts life that altered its course. But the film finds its greatness it the editing room. Hicks has worked the images into a musical life all their own. Shifting back and forth in time before moving to a linear conclusion works brilliantly with this material. Hicks makes all the right choices. The photography of Geoffrey Simpson is glorious. Careful lighting yields reveals subtleties of the directors vision. Characters live in shadow with light sources offering hope at pictures periphery. Take note of the beautiful Australian sunset when David visits Katharine Prichard. It is actually a night shoot with sunset created by Simpson lights.
Shine Based on the ultimately triumphant life of classical pianist david helfgott, Shine focuses on helfgott s painful retreat into a private world while still http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/178976
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Musical Autographs: Catalog 63 CASADESUS, Jean SP 8 x 10 photo of Robert Gaby s pianist son who was killed in helfgott, david- SP 5 x 7 color shot at the keyboard staring down a http://rgrossmusicautograph.com/instrumental63.html
Shine, Review By Harvey R. Greenberg, M.D. The career of david helfgott, a prodigiously gifted Australian pianist, was cutshort in his twenties by devastating psychotic illness. http://doctorgreenberg.net/shine.htm
Extractions: contact the doctor regress SHINE Keys to Recovery Hollywood has chiefly elected to film the biographies of tormented artists over their happier counterparts, presuming that boffo box office was more likely to be generated by the spectacle of Chopin coughing blood over gleaming keys or Van Gogh's demented self-surgery than by Mendelson's tediously contented life. Typically, magna opera like A Song To Remember (l946) and Lust For Life (l956) emphasized the anguish precipitated by the artist's disorderly nature and/or the wounding world. The scenarios of such fare also featured a stolid by-the-numbers narrative trajectory. Progress from the cradle to a usually untimely grave unfolded with every trauma and triumph canonically in place, as the Great Man struggled to fulfill his vision against the obstacles strewn in his path by fate and the Philistines (women were virtually excluded from the pantheon).(l) A classic sketch from the Fifties' TV review, Your Show Of Shows, hilariously reprised nearly every bromide of the suffering artist sub-genre. The incomparable Sid Caesar played a composer who has labored for years in impoverished obscurity to complete his masterpiece. On the eve of its debut, a brick falls on his head, rendering him into an instant amnesiac, and he wanders ever farther from home and vocation. While his Vergessene Symphonie (a title which one suspects sprung from Mel Brooks' demented wit) is growing world famous, the composer deteriorates into terminal bumhood. Then, one dark and stormy night, he hears the strains of his music outside a concert hall. In a flash his memory is restored: he shuffles down the aisle, takes the baton from an amazed conductor, to receive a standing ovation from a weeping crowd which if memory serves predictably includes his overjoyed wife and kids.
David Helfgott To Shine In Wollongong david helfgott to Shine in Wollongong. Australian pianist david helfgott, thesubject of the multiaward winning feature film Shine, will perform at the http://media.uow.edu.au/archive/oldbytes8/media/helfgott.html
Extractions: 2 August 1999 Australian pianist David Helfgott, the subject of the multi-award winning feature film Shine, will perform at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre on Friday, 3 September. He studies in London before suffering an illness which prompted his return to Australia in 1970. He emerged in 1984 from more than a decade of obscurity to give his first recital in 12 years. He has been in constant demand ever since, touring Europe, America and Australia as a recitalist and concerto soloist.
Extra 4 A sellout performance by pianist david helfgott was one of the highlights of aconference on eccentricity and alienation in the creative arts hosted by the http://media.uow.edu.au/archive/oldbytes9/extra/extra4.html
Extractions: A sell-out performance by pianist David Helfgott was one of the highlights of a conference on eccentricity and alienation in the creative arts hosted by the University recently. Helfgott, the subject of the multi-award winning Australian feature film Shine , received a standing ovation from an admiring crowd at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre. The talented artist, who was lost to the arts world for 10 years after suffering a mental breakdown, played works by composers including Rachmaninov and Granados. Other guest artists at the conference hosted by the Faculty of Creative Arts in conjunction with the Research Centre for Artistic Exchange and Innovation (CAXI), included author David Malouf and Alessandro Servadei. Passion . As assistant curator of the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, he questioned whether Grainger was truly deserving of a monument to his own greatness.
The Age the story of acclaimed pianist david helfgott in the Oscarwinning 1996 In the movie Shine, david helfgott is depicted in a similar plight after a http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Police-chase-Piano-Man-leads/2005/05/17/1116
Extractions: @import url("http://theage.com.au/css/theage.css"); @import url("http://fdimages.fairfax.com.au/cui/netstrip-20050427.css"); NEWS MYCAREER DOMAIN DRIVE ... register Login below if you have a Fairfax Digital username, or have registered for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, RugbyHeaven, or Realfooty. Username: Password: Forgotten your password? Note! You do not need to login every time you visit, provided your browser accepts cookies. More About registration: You are now required to register for full access to The Age. Please fill out the short form below to register. Contact us if you are blind or vision impaired. Indicates required information Step 1: Create your account Create a Username: Minimum 4 characters. No spaces allowed. You can use your email address. Create a Password: Minimum 4 characters. No spaces allowed. Case sensitive (a is different from A) Confirm Password: Email Address: You will not be spammed as a result of registering with us. More Email Format: HTML (with graphics) Plain Text
The Age His story echoes the 1996 Oscarwinning film Shine , in which actor GeoffreyRush played Australian pianist david helfgott, who overcame a nervous http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Who-is-the-Piano-Man/2005/05/16/111609589745
Extractions: @import url("http://theage.com.au/css/theage.css"); @import url("http://fdimages.fairfax.com.au/cui/netstrip-20050427.css"); NEWS MYCAREER DOMAIN DRIVE ... register Login below if you have a Fairfax Digital username, or have registered for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, RugbyHeaven, or Realfooty. Username: Password: Forgotten your password? Note! You do not need to login every time you visit, provided your browser accepts cookies. More About registration: You are now required to register for full access to The Age. Please fill out the short form below to register. Contact us if you are blind or vision impaired. Indicates required information Step 1: Create your account Create a Username: Minimum 4 characters. No spaces allowed. You can use your email address. Create a Password: Minimum 4 characters. No spaces allowed. Case sensitive (a is different from A) Confirm Password: Email Address: You will not be spammed as a result of registering with us. More Email Format: HTML (with graphics) Plain Text
Pianists - Biography | Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops Margaret helfgott, Tom Gross Out of Tune (david helfgott and the Myth of the film based on the life of classical pianist david helfgott. http://www.schwartzbooks.com/cgi-bin/category/1548888
Compare Prices And Read Reviews On Shine At Epinions.com out just like a master pianist would play a concerto, from beginning to end.In the beginning, david helfgott (Alex Rafalowicz portrays his childhood) http://www.epinions.com/content_110147178116
Extractions: The comparison that immediately comes to mind when I think of Shine is A Beautiful Mind . Both films feature Oscar-winning performances by Australian actors whom portray real-life insane, yet brilliant people, but Shine and its lead performer are by far superior to A Beautiful Mind Shine gives about the real-life David Helfgott because the film does not have the ridiculously polished ending of A Beautiful Mind Shine is the way that it progresses to the end. The film is not chronological and begins close to the ending. This unnecessarily muddles the plot and is a film technique employed in far too many films. Director Scott Hicks should have let the movie play out just like a master pianist would play a concerto, from beginning to end.
Extractions: Full Review Sad to say, my first introduction to Sergei Rachmaninov 's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor was the film Shine , in which Geoffrey Rush brilliantly portrayed troubled pianist David Helfgott . The work became almost a character in and of itself in the film, proving to be both triumph and tragedy for Helfgott. After watching the film, I was delighted to find that my wife had a recording of the concerto, performed by a Russian, no less. This monolithic piano work promptly insinuated itself into my classical music consciousness as one of the most affecting pieces I have ever experienced. Though I cannot lay claim to any musical expertise (as can munkus , and peacheater ), I shall now do my best to convey my sense of this work as my entry in
Dallasobserver.com | | Film | Lost Keys | 1996-11-21 When we first see the character of middleaged Australian david helfgott helfgott is a real pianist and dubs most of the piano playing in Shine. http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/1996-11-21/film4.html
Extractions: When we first see the character of middle-aged Australian David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he's standing in the driving rain and tapping at the window of a wine bar after closing time. Let inside by a sympathetic waitress, he keeps up a nonstop nonsensical patter that makes him sound like a Lewis Carroll character on speed. Returned to his rundown rooming house, David flops out on the floora windup toy temporarily at rest. We then flash back about 30 years to his childhood in the '50s and realize with a jolt that this stringy-haired, wild-eyed jabberer was once a piano prodigy. Shine, which continues to whirl in and out of flashback in a manner intended to be "musical," is about how David came to be what he is. It's also about his redemption. Helfgott is a real pianist and dubs most of the piano playing in Shine. Director Scott Hicks and his screenwriter, Jan Sardi, have incorporated those elements of Helfgott's actual life that suit their purposeshis giftedness, followed by a breakdown that placed him in mental hospitals for years, and his triumphant return to the concert stage. They've also gone in for some rather heavy embroidery work.
Shine Stars Geoffrey Rush (david helfgott, Adult), Armin MuellerStahl (Peter david is becoming quite a talented pianist under his father s tutelage and, http://www.moviemusicuk.us/shine.htm
Extractions: Director: Scott Hicks; Producer: Jane Scott; Screenplay: Jan Sardi and Scott Hicks; Photography: Geoffrey Simpson; Production Design: Vicki Niehus; Editing: Pip Karmel; Music: David Hirschfelder. Stars: Geoffrey Rush (David Helfgott, Adult), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Peter Helfgott) Noah Taylor (David Helfgott, Adolescent), Lynn Redgrave (Gillian), Googie Withers (Katherine Susannah Pritchard), Sonia Todd (Sylvia), Nicholas Bell (Ben Rosen), John Gielgud (Professor Cecil Parkes), Justin Braine (Tony), Chris Haywood (Sam) A film nowadays rarely achieves perfection. Shine comes damn close. Taken at first glance, the true story of an Australian child prodigy pianist who suffers a mental breakdown and spends years in institutions, only to re-emerge and become a concert pianist would normally have the multiplex audiences running for the exits. But wait and, please, give Shine a chance to prove that it is one of the most finely crafted films for a long time. Shine As I said, in description
International News - Study In Australia Honorary doctorate for classical pianist david helfgott. 200410-13. Classicalpianist david helfgott, who became widely known as one of the best pianists http://www.study-in-australia.org/news_314.php
Extractions: Country Selection International News Newsletter Student Service Info Classical pianist David Helfgott, who became widely known as one of the best pianists in the world after the film Shine, which was based on his life, has received an honorary doctorate for his contribution to the arts from Perths Edith Cowan University . The honorary doctorate is his first tertiary tribute, as the 54-year-old was forced to leave the Royal College of Music in London at 19, due to a mental breakdown. Back to news listing Country Selection International News Newsletter Last update: 2004-09-17 Editorial system by XHTML 1.1 CSS 2.0 The material on this internet site is made available for the purpose of providing access to government information and not as professional advice. For further information please refer to
Extractions: Mini-lecture audio files for our online Beginning Tarot Class, Interpreting Tarot: Reading the Book of Life , are available now in the Tarot Suite of The Auditorium . Initial lessons are open as samples to the public. The three lectures available now for Premium Members focus on working with Reversed Cards. The Piano Strings by Robert Rabbin In the movie a young pianist named David Helfgott wanted to perform Rachmaninoffs "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor." At first his mentor tried to dissuade him. He said that no one so young would be mad enough to attempt to play the piece; it was too dangerous. David said he was mad enough to try. His teacher relented, but he told David that he would have to learn every single note as it was on the page. He would have to memorize it, he would have to play it blindfolded. And then he would have to forget them. He had to learn the notes, then forget them. That is when the music could be truly played. David practiced and practiced. His fingers became demons of speed and agility. His practice carved new routes of responsiveness in his brain. He was told to be bold. He attacked with single-minded focus. He learned the notes and the piano shook. He grew in his madness.
