Archive for the ‘Home Entertainment’ Category
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment
Did the Academy Awards sap your movie love? Reduce you to bitter rantings? Make you want to bask in old, beloved favorites? While Hollywood was getting their glitz on, our movie clubs are still going strong.
Over at SciFi Squad, Peter Hall has picked Right at Your Door – a film that delves into a post-bombed Los Angeles, without the usual disaster wasteland. Chris Gorak’s 2006 film stars Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane as a “dirty bomb” goes off in the city, releasing a toxic cloud. Check out the discussion right here.
Meanwhile, Horror Squad’s Brad McHargue dug into Ils (Them), “pure, unbridled tension” surrounding a couple terrorized in their isolated country house. It’s one McHargue feels was “overshadowed by what I felt was the utterly predictable The Strangers.” You can read his commentary on the film right here.
Finally, I dug into the lascivious interludes between Benjamin Braddock and Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols’ classic, The Graduate, choosing to focus on the unseemly story made epic and classic by its stars, music, and look. You can join in on the discussion right here.
The Squads will offer their next picks this Friday, and meanwhile, you can join me and watch Cinematical’s next pick, The Deer Hunter, as I livetweet it this Wednesday, 10 P.M. Eastern time. You can follow me @MBartyzel, and join in on the discussion using both #cinemovieclub and #thedeerhunter.
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment, Shelf Life
Although I’d never argue that what I get to watch for work is anything less than enjoyable, sometimes I want to see movies just for the sake of some fun. Occasionally this means trudging out to a theater, plunking down a few hard-earned dollars and immersing myself in some imaginary world that is probably ridiculous, but really engaging, at least for a couple of hours. But more often than not, “fun” means digging back through some of my old favorites on DVD ir Blu-ray and finding out what made them so memorable when I seemed so much easier to impress.
Enter The Running Man. I mentioned this film a few weeks ago when I covered the Blu-ray release of Last Action Hero, but as coincidence would have it, both Arnold Schwarzenegger films were somehow released within a matter of weeks. As such, it seemed like a good palate-cleanser after the hubbub of the awards season, not to mention a good old-fashioned slice of stupid escapism before I immerse myself in the independent spirit of South By Southwest in the weeks to come.
Filed under: New on DVD, Home Entertainment, Michael Moore, George Clooney
It’s like Oscar night all over again! We have one loser and one winner: which is which?
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
The film snatched two Oscars, one expected (Mo’Nique for best supporting actress), one not (best screenplay adaptation, which was assumed to belong to Up in the Air). Our own Eric D. Snider identified the challenge and held out a hope: “The premise of Precious is so unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn’t want to see it. … That feeling of hopefulness, not the awfulness that precedes it, is what you’ll take with you when the film is over.” Rent it.
Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon
Up in the Air
Jason Reitman’s character drama walked away empty-handed after earning nominations for George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, and Reitman himself. Clooney plays a frequent-flying ‘termination agent,’ firing flocks of people from corporations that don’t want to do the dirty deeds themselves. Kendrick is the new kid on the firing block, proposing to save money by inhuman means, and Farmiga is the fellow foxy frequent flyer who appears to share Clooney’s commitment-phobic allergies.
While not without its moments, it leans heavily on portraying single, childless people as lonely, hollow bastards, while celebrating the joys of marriage and family. Trouble is, none of the families or relationships portrayed are anything close to joyful, so the argument falls flat on its self-righteous face. And it manages to smugly trivialize the consequences of the Great Recession along the way. Rent it if you’re single, unemployed and masochistic, or married, currently employed and sadistic.
Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon
After the jump: saints, dogs, cartoons, capitalists, and a stoning.
Continue reading Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 3/09
Filed under: Warner Brothers, Fandom, Home Entertainment
If any of you aren’t yet aware, there’s a little movie coming out at the end of March called Clash of the Titans. Directed by Louis Leterrier, the film follows the adventures of a young warrior named Perseus (Sam Worthington) as he fights off a horde of magical, mythological beasts. Amazingly, however, this story was previously told, and not just by the Greeks that made it up in the first place: it turns out that director Desmond Davis made a film with the same title in 1981 featuring stop-motion effects work by none other than the great Ray Harryhausen.
In anticipation of their upcoming remake, Warner Home Video released Clash of the Titans on Blu-ray this week, not only to provide improved picture and sound for existing fans, but rekindle interest in both films’ subject matter for a whole new generation. And while I will reserve judgment on the merits of the original’s storytelling, saying only that it used to be one of my childhood favorites, the new Clash Blu-ray is a worthy and well-suited subject for this week’s “Making The (Up) Grade.”
Filed under: Horror, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips
It’s a shame when great films end up floating around the public domain, virtually forgotten by the masses. Herk Harvey’s cult classic Carnival of Souls, however, is one you may never forget. The film relies on dramatic black-and-white photography and a dreamy atmosphere to conjure the horror beneath the everyday.
A young church organist’s life is transformed after a car crash and she becomes haunted by a ghostly figure, played by the director himself. When Mary takes off to start her life anew, she moves into a rooming house where her landlady helps her settle in, much to the delight of her lecherous neighbor across the hall. But Mary isn’t as interested in his advances as she is in an abandoned pavilion she feels inexplicably drawn to.
Carnival of Souls is often compared to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, as both were filmed by production companies specializing in commercial ventures on a modest budget (Souls was made for a mere $33,000). Romero has also cited the film as an influence. Despite being released six years before NOTLD, Souls is often overshadowed by its more obviously frightening counterpart. Harvey’s ghouls are in many ways more terrifying though because of their ambiguity. They could be vampires, zombies … death – all a twisted manifestation of Mary’s psyche.
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment, Columns
The Cinematical Movie Club is a new weekly feature where we pick a film, watch it and then discuss it. Feel free to read our introduction for more info.
What makes a classic? When I think back upon the myriad of films that get tossed into the category, there is a prevalent trend of relatability. No matter how simple or grand the story is, whether it’s detailing everyday mob violence, finding the meaning of Rosebud, or taking an epic journey through Arabia, there’s something that’s familiar. It might be a character you can relate to, a quest you find emotionally inspiring, or a masterful story that makes you feel like the fiction is real.
And then there’s The Graduate. An interesting piece of beloved cinema, it toes the line between mainstream society and tabloid iniquity, being at once both insanely engaging and charismatic, and quite troublesome and questionable. At its simplest, this is the story the poor choices a young man makes when he’s suffering from the angst-filled limbo between youth and adulthood. But it’s also one of the least desirable romantic triangles that Hollywood has given us — the young man, his hard and forlorn older lover, and her optimistic and innocent young daughter.
Filed under: New on DVD, DIY/Filmmaking, Home Entertainment, Interviews, Columns
Where the Wild Things Are was a long time coming for director Spike Jonze, who worked on the project for more than a decade before bringing it to life last year. Needless to say, part of making that process go smoothly was enlisting familiar, talented folks to help him give the film a complete and cohesive feeling. Enter Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O, whom Jonze knew for several years, and who he recruited to provide a musical backdrop for the adventures of Max and his army of Wild Things.
Jonze’s film arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Cinematical caught up with Karen late last year to discuss their collaboration; in addition to talking about Jonze’s mandate for the singer-songwriter, she offered a few insights about her creative process, and clued us in on what’s happening now and what might be next for her and her band.
Continue reading The Keeping Score Interview: ‘Wild Things’ Composer Karen O
Filed under: Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Home Entertainment
One of the things I love to do with my platform here is highlight smart genre flicks that, for whatever reason, didn’t get an audience. Call it a public service announcement for people who share my tastes. I wrote about The Broken last year, and Tormented in January. My latest discovery is Christopher Smith’s Triangle, an outstanding British-Australian supernatural thriller (set in America) that did not get a theatrical release here, and was dumped onto DVD a month ago.
If you like this stuff, you probably already know about Christopher Smith, the Brit who brought us the exuberant, hilarious horror comedy Severance back in 2006, as well as the subterranean monster movie Creep, which I tragically haven’t seen, the year before that. (Horror Squad ran a fun interview with Smith last month when Triangle was released on DVD, though be warned: it gives away far, far too much about the film.) With Triangle, Smith dumps the envelope-pushing, laugh-a-minute outrageousness of Severance, and instead embraces quiet menace, mounting tension, and stretches of deliberate confusion. It’s a gleaming, gorgeous, sharp-as-a-tack horror film.
Filed under: Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Home Entertainment
One of the things I love to do with my platform here is highlight smart genre flicks that, for whatever reason, didn’t get an audience. Call it a public service announcement for people who share my tastes. I wrote about The Broken last year, and Tormented in January. My latest discovery is Christopher Smith’s Triangle, an outstanding British-Australian supernatural thriller (set in America) that did not get a theatrical release here, and was dumped onto DVD a month ago.
If you like this stuff, you probably already know about Christopher Smith, the Brit who brought us the exuberant, hilarious horror comedy Severance back in 2006, as well as the subterranean monster movie Creep, which I tragically haven’t seen, the year before that. (Horror Squad ran a fun interview with Smith last month when Triangle was released on DVD, though be warned: it gives away far, far too much about the film.) With Triangle, Smith dumps the envelope-pushing, laugh-a-minute outrageousness of Severance, and instead embraces quiet menace, mounting tension, and stretches of deliberate confusion. It’s a gleaming, gorgeous, sharp-as-a-tack horror film.
Filed under: Distribution, Home Entertainment
Blockbuster is going down hard, folks. Variety reports that following their “disastrous” third quarter, the company lost $435 million in the fourth quarter, was downgraded from “Caa1″ to “Caa3″ junk status, and sees its shares down 2/3 over last year. The end has got to be very near. Very near.
I remember, long ago, when Blockbuster was the place for movies. I grew up in a small, “Video World” town where only the newest releases, biggest classics, and crappiest B movies ever hit the shelves. One day, after years of mediocrity, I was in a neighboring city and finally got to visit the famous Blockbuster. it was a smorgasbord of films I’d never seen nor heard of. I was in love. If it hadn’t been a half-hour away, I would’ve been there every day.
Fast forward almost two decades and I watched my neighborhood Blockbuster close without the slightest warning. Customers ventured out to return their rentals, and found the windows papered over and the whole biz just gone. The next closest store just had a closing super sale where they sold off their entire collection. The question now seems to be: How many months or days does the biz have left? As they bring back late fees and limit rentals in an attempt to stay afloat, I can’t imagine them hanging on for another year.
