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MOVIES / ON DVD / WONDROUS OBLIVION
Wondrous Oblivion

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Wondrous Oblivion (2006)

67%
64%
85%
N/A
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N/A
67 %
Reviews Counted: 39 Fresh: 26  Rotten:13 Average Rating: 6.3/10
 
Consensus: Wondrous Oblivion wants to be touching, but is too often sappy. This coming-of-age/cricket tale wants to be touching, but is too often sappy. more
 
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Theatrical Release: Nov 3, 2006 Limited
Synopsis:
Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and build a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960's England, and when the... [More]
Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and build a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960's England, and when the neighbours start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David's family are caught in the middle, and he has to choose between fitting in and standing up for the new friends who have turned his world upside down. [Less]

Genre: Comedies

Starring: Sam Smith, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Townsend, Emily Woof, Richard Ashton

Director: Paul Morrison

DVD Info

Release:

Mar 20, 2007

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Region 1
  • Keep Case
  • Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - English
  • Closed Caption - English

Additional Release Material:

  • Audio Commentary - Paul Morris - Director
  • Featurette - Making Of

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Reviews

 
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The challenges of friendship across color lines.

Full Review | Comment
06/17/07 09:58 AM
Jules Brenner
Cinema Signals
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review | Comment
05/12/07 03:33 AM
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Evocative, beautifully photographed and skillfully directed.

Full Review | Comment
03/01/07 03:29 AM
Maria Garcia
Film Journal International
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David's favorite exclamation is "wondrous!" %u2014 which happens to be a fitting description for the talents of writer/director Paul Morrison.

Full Review | Comment
02/01/07 08:14 AM
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
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Wondrous Oblivion is a timeless tale of an 11-year-old South London boy putting aside boyish things. Writer-director Paul Morrison affirms PG-rated life lessons that could appeal to 11-year-olds and their elders alike.

Full Review | Comment
01/12/07 03:01 PM
Bill Stamets
Chicago Sun-Times
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N/R

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Full Review | Comment
12/30/06 04:28 AM
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
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For all its bright-hued nostalgia (the cricket greens are practically incandescent), Wondrous Oblivion edges up to hard truths, most powerfully expressed in Lindo's towering performance.

Full Review | Comment
12/30/06 04:28 AM
Sam Adams
Los Angeles Times
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A touching rite-of-passage flick which simultaneously sends several valuable messages about friendship, fidelity, tolerance, and reaching for the stars.

Full Review | Comment
12/28/06 08:24 PM
Kam Williams
Upstage Magazine
Ratings Image

You don't have to know anything about the sport of cricket to be charmed by Wondrous Oblivion, a British film that is finally getting a well-deserved theatrical release after opening the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2004.

Full Review | Comment
12/22/06 03:19 PM
G. Allen Johnson
San Francisco Chronicle
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...Thanks to solid performances and very nice cinematography, it hits, if not a home run, at least a solid double (or the British equivalent).

Full Review | Comment
12/15/06 03:47 PM
Marc Mohan
Oregonian
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A family film with a difference, Wondrous Oblivion displays real bite as it incisively tackles such adult subjects as racism, anti-Semitism, adultery and the plight of immigrants in an intolerant land.

Full Review | Comment
11/23/06 06:44 PM
Shlomo Schwartzberg
Boxoffice Magazine
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It's a delight to see Delroy Lindo -- perpetually cast as tough cops and tougher crooks -- playing a tender father and decent (if struggling) husband.

Full Review | Comment
11/06/06 06:20 PM
Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger
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Amid the mawkish mess rests a genuinely touching love story between two people who are considered outcasts by mainstream society. Too bad they're not the stars of the movie.

Full Review | Comment
11/03/06 02:59 PM
Ethan Alter
Premiere Magazine
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It's sweet-as-pie, nicely acted and boasts a marvelous vintage ska-reggae-calypso soundtrack featuring some of the best, bounciest songs of the era, including 'Sugar Dandy,' 'Rudi, A Message to You' and of course, Millie Small's 'My Boy Lollipop.'

Full Review | Comment
11/03/06 12:50 PM
Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide
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The film feels like the Cliffs Notes version of what might have been a much longer and certainly more satisfying story.

Full Review | Comment
11/03/06 12:49 PM
John Anderson
Newsday
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It loses direction, turning contrived and sentimental.

Full Review | Comment
11/03/06 12:48 PM
V.A. Musetto
New York Post
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Good intentions and some nicely playful moments go a long way toward balancing out Paul Morrison's uneven story of British immigrants in the early 1960s.

Full Review | Comment
11/03/06 12:46 PM
Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
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Form and content fight to the death in Wondrous Oblivion, Paul Morrison's defiantly gauzy tale of racial friction in 1960s England.

| Comment
11/02/06 07:12 PM
Jeannette Catsoulis
New York Times
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A small and intimate English film about playing cricket, coming of age, and the respect for diversity that seems so hard to learn.

Full Review | Comment
11/02/06 06:29 PM
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice
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Lindo gives a powerhouse performance of immense feeling and subtlety.

Full Review | Comment
11/02/06 03:07 PM
Peter Rainer
Christian Science Monitor
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