This is a great film, very witty and quite unique, I think some of the ideas presented have a cultural slant and may be more familiar to our European neighbours but there is still much to enjoy. Peter O'Toole and Colin Firth are on top form.
The DVD is available, I got my copy under its German title Hotel Zur Unsterblichkeit (it includes the English language soundtrack).
I cannot find a trailer on youtube except this Czech one, still it gives you an idea of what to expect..
ReviewIts what happens when you die, maybe. Playing about with the fickle nature of fame, your stay in the afterlife and the comforts that you enjoy there will be governed by how well you are remembered and loved back in the land of the living. Valentin, a once great movie star enjoying the last years of his life sometime in the 1960s is murdered by anonymous writer Brian Smith, furious that Valentin stole and claimed his work as his own. Smith also dies in the ensuing chaos and both end up in a very grand hotel populated by the likes of Hemmingway, Einstein, Lassie, and a bunch of others who may be famous dead people, or may be inventions to avoid lawsuits (like the anarchists). Valetin and Smith play a cat and mouse game of minds and both chase the same woman. There are philosophical questions to be asked, religious notions to debunk, charlatans to expose, and much fun is had with the changing parameters of fame such as humiliating room swaps and the fear of an eternity swimming in limbo. But for a lucky one there is also a chance for a second life, now in the 1980s present.