Picking Up the Pieces

United States

2000

95 Min

Color

2.35:1

Spanish, English

Currently 2.0/5 Stars.
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EXEC Alfonso Arau, Mimi Polk Gitlin, Donald Kushner, Peter Locke

CAST Woody Allen, David Schwimmer, María Grazia Cucinotta, Cheech Marin, Kiefer Sutherland, Sharon Stone, Andy Dick, Alfonso Arau, Fran Drescher, Richard Edson, Elliott Gould, O'Neal Compton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Griffin, Jon Huertas, Kathy Kinney, Mía Maestro, Lupe Ontiveros, Dyana Ortelli, Lou Diamond Phillips, Tony Plana, Jeannine De La Torre, Angélica Aragón

Woody Allen stars in Picking Up the Pieces, playing a butcher named Tex who cuts up his adulterous wife (played by Sharon Stone) in a jealous rage. On his way to bury the pieces, he loses her hand on the side of the road, where it’s found by a blind woman – and miraculously gives her back her sight. Before long, the hand has become a religious relic, drawing huge crowds to the small town of El Nino, New Mexico.

Director

Alfonso Arau

Alfonso Arau (born January 11, 1932) is a Mexican actor and director.

Arau was born in Mexico City, the son of a doctor. He directed the films Zapata: The Dream of a Hero, Like Water for Chocolate (adapted from the novel written by his ex-wife Laura Esquivel), A Walk in the Clouds with Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn, and the Hallmark Hall of Fame production A Painted House, adapted from the John Grisham novel of the same name. Among many roles in his career, Arau has played “Captain Herrera”, a lieutenant of Federale general “Mapache”, in Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 western, The Wild Bunch, chief bandit “El Guapo” in Three Amigos (USA, 1986), a comedy with Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Chevy Chase, and the smuggler “Juan” in Romancing the Stone which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Arau appeared in the 1972 Mexican film El rincón de las vírgenes (“The Virgins’ Corner”), where he played the assistant of a fake mystical doctor traveling from town to town, who reminisce… read more

Alfonso Arau (born January 11, 1932) is a Mexican actor and director.

Arau was born in Mexico City, the son of a doctor. He directed the films Zapata: The Dream of a Hero, Like Water for Chocolate (adapted from the novel written by his ex-wife Laura Esquivel), A Walk in the Clouds with Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn, and the Hallmark Hall of Fame production A Painted House, adapted from the John Grisham novel of the same name. Among many roles in his career, Arau has played “Captain Herrera”, a lieutenant of Federale general “Mapache”, in Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 western, The Wild Bunch, chief bandit “El Guapo” in Three Amigos (USA, 1986), a comedy with Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Chevy Chase, and the smuggler “Juan” in Romancing the Stone which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Arau appeared in the 1972 Mexican film El rincón de las vírgenes (“The Virgins’ Corner”), where he played the assistant of a fake mystical doctor traveling from town to town, who reminisce about their travels, when a group of women decide to propose the doctor for sainthood. The movie was set in 1920s rural Mexico.

Arau has made many appearances as a character actor in American and TV series and plays. In the 1972 episode of Gunsmoke titled “Hidalgo”, Arau portrayed the bandit “Mando” who shoots and wounds marshal “Matt Dillon”.

In 1973, Arau acted in and directed Calzónzin Inspector (“Cazonci” or “Caltzontzin” was the term used in the Purépecha culture, to name their emperors.), a movie based on a character from the Mexican comic Los Supermachos of Mexican cartoonist Rius, who co-wrote the screenplay. The movie, which is influenced by Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, centers around two Mexicans who are mistaken for government inspectors from Mexico City by the corrupt mayor of a small town. It is a humorous political critique, aimed squarely at the then ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its paramilitary caciques, at a time when freedom of speech in politics was highly restricted. There are at least two versions of the movie, with one having some scenes deleted by State censors, the most notable of which depicts the killing of a renegade farmer by a police officer, who shoots the farmer in the back.

In December 2004, the Santa Fe Film Festival honored Alfonso Arau for his work in cinema.

In 2010 he directed the Italian-language film, The Trick in the Sheet. —Wikipedia

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