Product Details

• Actors: Tom Aldredge, Bill Buell, Greg Russell Cook, Annie Golden, Mark Manley
• Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Plum Pictures & Bns
• DVD Release Date: February 22, 2005
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00074CBZ6
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #42,136 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Literally out-of-this-world, The American Astronaut is a post-Eraserhead, black-and-white comedy set on an asteroid that serves as an outpost for desperadoes, mad scientists, and paranoid travelers. Director Cory McAbee, frontman for the dynamic, experimental rock band the Billy Nayer Show, has constructed a seedy, surreal vision of conquered space that includes rocket ships operated by junkyard parts, barflies with a increasingly pathological sense of humor, and handguns that reduce people to a bucket's worth of sand. In this nightmarish, sometimes funny, sometimes tedious fantasy noir, a distressed astronaut (McAbee) agrees to swap a caged, embryonic female for a captive male on one planet and deliver the latter to the man-hungry (if peculiarly antebellum) women of Venus. The film doesn't necessarily hold up as a singular work, but there are several remarkable sequences, including a dance number in a scummy restroom and an unsettling comedy routine. Special features include an interesting interview with McAbee. --Tom Keogh

Product Description
Written, directed, and starring Cory McAbee of The Billy Nayer Show, this space western musical uses flinty black-and-white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier to bring the film, set in the dirty, isolated vastness of outer space, to life. The film also stars Rocco Sisto and Gregory Russell Cook. THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT follows the adventures of an interplanetary trader (McAbee) through his Homeric intergalactic journey to provide the all-female population of Venus with a suitable singular male, all the while being pursued by the cold-blooded and childish killer, Professor Hess (Sisto), an enigmatic figure from his past. The film features an original soundtrack by the The Billy Nayer Show.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guy Maddin meets early David Lynch...in outer space!, March 2, 2005

By	Cubist (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

The American Astronaut is the missing link between Guy Maddin and the early films of David Lynch. Cory McAbee's movie is shot in glorious black and white film stock with unabashedly lo-tech special effects that reside at the opposite end of the spectrum of another retro-SF film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The American Astronaut has the same grungy, industrial look and feel as Lynch's Eraserhead with the same fierce, independent spirit.

Writer-director-star Cory McAbee has created a unique movie quite unlike anything else out there. While he shares the lo-tech retro look of Guy Maddin's films he isn't interested in recreating the silent era of cinema. McAbee does share a fascination with industrial machinery and the `50s with David Lynch, but he isn't interested in exploring the dark underbelly. McAbee is far more optimistic. The American Astronaut is a fun, off-beat film for people who like something a little different. It has more energy and inventiveness than most of the big budget Hollywood films out there proving yet again that a lot of money can't make up for a lack of ideas and how necessity truly is the mother of invention.

There are several galleries that include a series of cool, sidewalk artwork promoting the movie on various city streets all over the country by Cory McAbee; on-the-set pictures; storyboards and the corresponding stills from the movie; a collection of movie posters; and production artwork.

"Ceres Jump Test Footage" is a brief clip of McAbee hopping around a city street trying to mimic the lo-gravity depicted in the movie.

There is an audio commentary by McAbee that was shot live at a screening in a Brooklyn bar. McAbee enthusiastically answers questions and recounts production anecdotes in this engaging, entertaining track.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, refreshing, weird, March 9, 2005

By	HMVincent (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

When you sleep, your brain gets bored. Your brain searches through file cabinets and pulls out elements, possibly at random, to string together into a movie, a dream, which it then shows to the brain cells. Sometimes you get to watch the movie, too, but it isn't for you. On really creative nights, your brain will connect the elements with a plot that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

"The American Astronaut" is a dream with a plot and a score, escaped from Cory McAbee onto film, which we now have the privilege of viewing. It is strange and rough and tender, and we come to care about the characters who live in a world we cannot enter, only watch.

The actors are uncommonly skilled: you can sense their characters' backstories without any explanation, by the way they interact with others. The black-and-white hides things you don't need to see, and stimulates your imagination to see the things the story requires.

Just when you think you have it all figured out, here comes another element from a file cabinet across the room. AND YET IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In space, EVERYONE should see this movie!, February 18, 2005

By	Devin T. Quin "unkiedev" (Brooklyn, Ny United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

American Astronaut is brilliantly imaginative. If you need to read reviews or watch clips then please do, but don't find out TOO much; You'll be constantly and pleasantly amazed by the strange and nuanced ideas packed into every well composed shot.
I like eccentric films but I have never seen a movie reinvent what movies can offer in order to create its own engaging world...not to get stodgy: It's still full of Rock and Roll, Space barns, ray guns, shaving and dance contests. Unreal.
Some movies off the beaten track are cheap vehicles for bizarre humor or gimmicks. This is just simply the most Original, Innovative and Imaginative movie I saw in 2004.