Thursday, December 1, 2011

Bomb the System

  • In the first feature length film in over 20 years to focus on graffiti, Anthony Blest (Mark Webber) is one of the most talented and notorious artists in New York City. Despite the tragic loss of his older brother during a nightly bombing foray with a graffiti crew, Anthony has the same insatiable addiction. With the other members of his crew, Justin (Gano Grills) and Kevin (Jade Yorker), Anthony p
Anthony ‘Blest’ (Mark Webber) is one of the most talented and notorious graffiti artists in New York City. Despite the tragic loss of his older brother during a nightly 'bombing' foray with a graffiti crew, Anthony has the same insatiable addiction. With the other members of his ‘crew,’ Anthony parties, shoplifts spray-paint and 'tags' virgin walls with his signature 'Blest.' He does his best to avoid run-ins with the cops and hostile rival crews, but he can’t avoid the pressure from his m! other to attend college, and from his girlfriend to leave New York with her. As tensions rise, a physical threat from the cops causes the crew to intensify their bombing excursions, calling an all out war on the city. When the inevitable confrontation happens, a tragedy results that pushes Anthony to make a decision that has even darker consequences.To "bomb" is b-boy slang meaning to create graffiti. In Adam Bhala Lough's striking debut, the "system" is the NYPD's Vandal Squad. Anthony (Mark Webber, Broken Flowers) is a 19-year-old bomber--tag name "Blest"--with plans to go legit, like Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat back in the "wild style" 1980s, who went from New York's mean streets to its most exclusive galleries. Alas, both met tragic ends. Blest, too, appears to be on the fast track to artistic success...or personal decline. He may have skills, but he's also a thief and a drug user. When he meets the politically minded Alex (Jaclyn DeSantis), it seems he! 's finally found the angel he needs to guide him in the right ! directio n. After all, he already lost his brother to the graffiti game. Alex wants him to run away with her, but that's easier said than done. Bomb the System is the kind of ambitious first feature where, despite the best of intentions, style trumps substance every time. That said, the look NYU grad Lough achieves--an impressionistic world of black skies, glowing lights, and saturated colors--helps his rather obvious message that crime doesn't pay go down with ease. The tragic tale gets a welcome boost from El-P's ominous instrumental score along with moody tracks from Schoolly D, Madvillain, and Radiohead. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger

Flightplan (Widescreen Edition)

  • DVD Details: Actors: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Robert Schwentke, Alec Hammond
  • Directors: Robert Schwentke, Karen Inwood Somers
  • Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
  • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
  • DVD Release Date: January 24, 2006; Run Time: 98 minutes
Academy Award(R) winner Jodie Foster (Best Actress, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) gives an outstanding performance in the heart-pumping action thriller FLIGHTPLAN. Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's (Foster) 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter! . From the producer of APOLLO 13 and A BEAUTIFUL MIND, FLIGHTPLAN is an intense, suspense-filled thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire flight.Like a lot of stylishly persuasive thrillers, Flightplan is more fun to watch than it is to think about. There's much to admire in this hermetically sealed mystery, in which a propulsion engineer and grieving widow (Jodie Foster) takes her 6-year-old daughter (and a coffin containing her husband's body) on a transatlantic flight aboard a brand-new jumbo jet she helped design, and faces a mother's worst nightmare when her daughter (Marlene Lawston) goes missing. But how can that be? Is she delusional? Are the flight crew, the captain (Sean Bean) and a seemingly sympathetic sky marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) playing out some kind of conspiratorial abduction? In making his first English-language feature, German director Robert Schwentke milks the mother's dilemma for all it's worth, and Foster's intense yet su! btly nuanced performance (which builds on a fair amount of pos! t-9/11 p aranoia) encompasses all the shifting emotions required to grab and hold your attention. Alas, this upgraded riff on Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (not to mention Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing) is ultimately too preposterous to hold itself together. Flightplan gives us a dazzling tour of the jumbo jet's high-tech innards, and its suspense is intelligently maintained all the way through to a cathartic conclusion, but the plot-heavy mechanics break down under scrutiny. Your best bet is to fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the thrills on a purely emotional level -- a strategy that worked equally well with Panic Room, Foster's previous thriller about a mother and daughter in peril. --Jeff Shannon

The Man with No Name Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) [Blu-ray]

  • Condition: New
  • Format: Blu-ray
  • AC-3; Box set; Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Full Screen; Restored; Subtitled; Widescree
Sergio Leone “spaghetti westerns” did not simply add a new chapter to the genre…they reinvented it. From his shockingly violent and stylized breakthrough, A Fistful of Dollars, to the film Quentin Tarantino calls “the best-directed movie of all time,” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone’s vision did for westerns what talkies did for all movies back in the 1920s: it elevated them to an entirely new art form. Fully restored, presented in high definition with their best-ever audio, and including audio commentaries, featurettes and more, these films are much more than the definitive Leone collection...they are the most ambitious and influential westerns ever made.

A Fistfull Of Dollars
Clint Eastwood’s legendary “M! an With No Name” makes his powerful debut in this thrilling, action-packed classic in which he manipulates two rival bands of smugglers and sets in motion a plan to destroy both in a series of brilliantly orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations.

For A Few Dollars More
Oscar® Winner Clint Eastwood** continues his trademark role in this second installment of the trilogy, this time squaring off with Indio, the territory’s most treacherous bandit. But his ruthless rival, Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, High Noon), is determined to bring Indio in first...dead or alive!

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
The invincible “Man With No Name” (Eastwood) aligns himself with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) to pursue a fortune in stolen gold. But teamwork doesn’t come naturally to such strong-willed outlaws, and they soon discover that their greatest challenge may be to stay focused â€" and stay alive â€" in a! country ravaged by war.Review for A Fistful of Do! llars:
A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himse! lf. --Edward Buscombe

Review for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
If you think of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More as the tasty appetizers in Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars" trilogy of Italian "Spaghetti" Westerns, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a lavish full-course feast. Readily identified by the popular themes of its innovative score by Ennio Morricone (one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time), this cinematic milestone eclipsed its influential predecessors with a $1.2 million budget (considered extravagant in the mid-1960s), greater production values to accommodate Leone's epic vision of greed and betrayal, and a three-hour running time for its wide-ranging plot about the titular trio of mercenaries ("Good" Blondie played by rising star Clint Eastwood, "Bad" Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef, and "Ugly" Tuco played by Eli Wallach) in a ruthless Civil War-era! quest for $200,000 worth of buried Confederate gold. Virtuall! y all of Leone's stylistic attributes can be found here in full fruition, from the constant inclusion of Roman Catholic iconography to a climactic circular shoot-out, along with Leone's trademark use of surreal landscapes, brilliant widescreen compositions and extreme close-ups of actors so intimate that they burn into the viewer's memory. And while some Leone fans may favor the more scaled-down action of For a Few Dollars More or the masterful grandiosity of Once Upon a Time in the West, it was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Leone's reputation as a world-class director with a singular vision. --Jeff Shannon

The Chronicles of Narnia Set, Books 1-7: The Magician's Nephew; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; Silver Chair, Last Battle

The Road to Bonneville

  • Feature Run Time: 61 Minutes
  • + Over 45 minutes of Bonus Footage
Faced with the decision of a lifetime, Arvilla Holden (Jessica Lange) hijacks her two best friends (Kathy Bates, Joan Allen) and sets off in a vintage '66 Bonneville convertible across the great American West to deliver her husband’s ashes to her step-daughter. What begins as a simple trip, will end up becoming a chance to rediscover themselves, their friendship, the importance of promises - and of living life to the fullest.Sentimental, but not too sugary, Bonneville proves there's a road movie for every taste and demographic. While the testosterone-fueled Easy Rider took aim at the young and the disaffected, this female-centric offering targets a more mature, less cynical audience. After her husband, Joe, passes away, Arvilla (two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange) faces the prospect of homelessness as he ! neglected to update his will. Her single-minded stepdaughter, Francine (Christine Baranski), now in possession of the property, intends to sell their Pocatello home if she doesn't hand over her father's ashes, so Arvilla and Mormon best friends Margene (Kathy Bates) and Carol (Joan Allen) pile into Joe's refurbished 1966 Bonneville Pontiac convertible with the urn and head to Santa Barbara. On their trip through Bryce Canyon, Lake Powell, the Vegas Strip, and other Western wonders, they meet helpful skateboarder Bo (Victor Rasuk, Raising Victor Vargas) and chivalrous trucker Emmett (Tom Skerritt), who takes a shine to the widowed Margene. Though nothing goes quite as planned, friendship helps smooth the bumpy ride from Idaho to California--and beyond. The characters in Bonneville may be older and wiser than the women of Thelma and Louise or Fried Green Tomatoes, in which Bates appeared, but this smaller-scale effort shares the same sisterly value! s and the central trio establishes a touching rapport. Supplem! ents inc lude a making-of featurette, deleted and alternate scenes, and a short gag reel. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Beyond Bonneville on DVD


Watch Little Miss Sunshine on DVD

Check out Imagine Me & You on DVD



Stills from Bonneville (Click for larger image)



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Join hot rod builder and filmmaker Brian Darwas as he rides shot gun with two of the most significantly influential hot rod builders of this generation for an epic cross country adventure that you will want to experience again and again. You've heard the stories and you've seen the photographs, but now for the first time you can ride along side of Ken Schmidt and Keith Cornell of The Rolling Bones as they travel over 2,300 miles, through ten states from New York to Nevada in their famous 1932 Ford Coupes, "The Wicked Sisters." Pit next to The Hop Up Race Team and The Bean Bandits at what most people consider to be the birth place of hot rodding, The Bonneville Salt Flats. Watch Dan Parker and the other members of The Rolling Bones Race Team hit the salt for Speed Week. Get on the ground with Keith Cornell while he swaps the gears out of a vintage Halibrand rear and stand next to Ken Schmidt as he gets under the hood to re-jet carbs between runs! Peer over the shoulder of renown hot rod photographer Peter Vincent while he shoots two of the world's most beautiful hot rods in one of the world's most beautiful settings, and witness The Rolling Bones hop in George Poteet's '32 roadster and hit speeds of up to 175 miles per hour! Get an in depth look inside the shop at Greenfield Center in New York. Go down to the Maxton Monster Mile in North Carolina for a test run, and travel all the way across the country to Bonneville for the time trails at Speed Week. This film is a true lesson in hot rodding that is not to be missed! - Feature run time approx. 61 minutes + over 45 minutes of bonus features! -

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

  • The magical world of C.S. Lewis' beloved fantasy comes to life once again in PRINCE CASPIAN, the second installment of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA series. Join Peter, Susan, Edmund Lucy, the mighty and majestic Aslan, friendly new Narnian creatures and Prince Caspian as they lead the Narnians on a remarkable journey to restore peace and glory to their enchanted land. Continuing the adventure of T
The magical world of C.S. Lewis beloved fantasy comes to life once again in Prince Caspian, the second installment of The Chronicles Of Narnia series. Join Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, the mighty and majestic Aslan, friendly new Narnian creatures and Prince Caspian as they lead the Narnians on a remarkable journey to restore peace and glory to their enchanted land. Continuing the adventure of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe with more magic and a brand-new hero, Prince Caspian! is a triumph of imagination, courage, love, joy and humor your whole family will want to watch again and again.More exciting than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian continues the movie franchise based on C.S. Lewis' classic fantasy books. The movie picks up where the first left off... sort of. It's been a year since the Pevensie children--Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley)--returned to England from Narnia, and they've just about resigned themselves to living their ordinary lives. But just like that, they're once again transported to a fantastical land, but one with a long-abandoned castle. It turns out that they are in Narnia again--and they themselves lived in that castle, but hundreds of years ago in Narnia time. They've been summoned back to help Prince Caspian (Stardust's Ben Barnes, resembling a young, cultured Keanu Reeves), the rightful heir to! the throne who's become the target of his power-hungry uncle,! King Mr az (Sergio Castellitto). And he's not the only one threatened: Mraz's people, the Telmarines, have pushed all the Narnians--the talking animals, the centaurs and other beasts, the walking trees--to the brink of extinction. Despite some alpha-male bickering, Peter and Caspian agree to fight Mraz alongside the remaining Narnians, including the dwarf Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) and the swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard). (Also appearing is Warwick Davis, who was in Willow and the 1989 BBC Prince Caspian.) But of course they most of all miss the noble lion, Aslan, who would have never let this happen to Narnia if he hadn't disappeared. Prince Caspian is epic, evoking memories of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. (Some of the battle elements may seem too familiar, but they were in Lewis's book.) And it's appropriate for kids (Reepicheep could have come out of a Shrek movie), though the tone is dark and there is a lot of death, albeit bloodless. After two! successful films, Disney and Walden Media's franchise has proved successful enough that many of the characters are scheduled to return in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. --David Horiuchi




Stills from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Click for larger image)











Hell Ride

  • The story deals with the characters Pistolero, the Gent and Comanche and the deadly, unfinished business among them. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 796019810876 UPC: 796019810876 Manufacturer No: 81087
Actor Larry Bishop, who made his name in the '60s as the star of biker pictures like The Savage Seven, revives the genre with Hell Ride, a rough and raunchy action-drama produced by indie director and cult film aficionado Quentin Tarantino. Bishop, who wrote, produced and directed the film, is also top-billed as Pistolero, chief of the outlaw Victors, who cruise the sunbaked Southwest to avenge a fallen mama. Their target is Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones), head man for the Six-Six-Sixes, and Michael Madsen, David Carradine and Dennis Hopper (himself no stranger to biker flicks) are along to make sure that the job is completed. As pure exploitation,! Hell Ride delivers the goods: the cast overacts with relish, and the on-screen excitement is divided equally between chopper action, fistfights and shootouts and plentiful female nudity, all set to a soundtrack of new and vintage fuzztone rock. However, those expecting the complexity and sheer cheek of Tarantino's own features may find the picture a little too retro-minded for their own tastes, and Bishop's pulpy dialogue is more overcooked than Tarantino at his most self-indulgent. Still, those craving old-school cycle movie satisfaction are likely to find that action with Hell Ride. Bishop is front and center for the DVD commentary, in which he explains in the most passionate of terms how he conceived and executed the project with Tarantino's help; featurettes on the cast (split between male and female) are brief and flashy, with "The Guys of Hell Ride" providing the most juice by focusing on the veteran actors. There's also a look at the film! 's custom made bikes, but the most "special" of the Special Fe! atures i s Michael Madsen's video diary, which gives amusing insight into his distinctly offbeat perspective. -- Paul Gaita

Stills from Hell Ride (Click for larger image)

 

Actor Larry Bishop, who made his name in the '60s as the star of biker pictures like The Savage Seven, revives the genre with Hell Ride, a rough and raunchy action-drama produced by indie director and cult film aficionado Quentin Tarantino. Bishop, who wrote, produced and directed the film, is also top-billed as Pistolero, chief of the outlaw Victors, who cruise the sunbaked Southwest to avenge a fallen mama. Their target is Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones), head man for the Six-Six-Sixes, and Michael Madsen, David Carradine and Dennis Hopper (himself no stranger to biker flicks) are along to make sure that ! the job is completed. As pure exploitation, Hell Ride! deliver s the goods: the cast overacts with relish, and the on-screen excitement is divided equally between chopper action, fistfights and shootouts and plentiful female nudity, all set to a soundtrack of new and vintage fuzztone rock. However, those expecting the complexity and sheer cheek of Tarantino's own features may find the picture a little too retro-minded for their own tastes, and Bishop's pulpy dialogue is more overcooked than Tarantino at his most self-indulgent. Still, those craving old-school cycle movie satisfaction are likely to find that action with Hell Ride. Bishop is front and center for the DVD commentary, in which he explains in the most passionate of terms how he conceived and executed the project with Tarantino's help; featurettes on the cast (split between male and female) are brief and flashy, with "The Guys of Hell Ride" providing the most juice by focusing on the veteran actors. There's also a look at the film's custom made bikes, but the! most "special" of the Special Features is Michael Madsen's video diary, which gives amusing insight into his distinctly offbeat perspective. -- Paul Gaita

Stills from Hell Ride (Click for larger image)

 

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Signet Classics)

The Pyjama Girl Case

  • BASED ON THE INFAMOUS REAL-LIFE MURDER CASE THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD! When the mutilated corpse of a young woman is found on an Australian beach, retired detective Thompson (Oscar(r) winner Ray Milland of THE LOST WEEKEND and DIAL M FOR MURDER) involves himself in the investigation. But before they can find the killer, the police must first identify the victim. Who was this once-beautiful girl fo
An FBI agent with deep rooted past issues is on the prowl for the infamous Serial Killer, " Giallo ( Yellow) " as he is known. No ordinary Killer ...he seeks victims that are beautiful women only to disfigure and eventually kill them off. This time he has captured a beautiful model and our Agent ( Brody) must find him before he commits his latest victim's fate. Chilly Thiriller from master Director, Dario Argento.... Not to miss"Giallo" films are characterized by extended murder sequences featuring ex! cessive bloodletting, stylish camera work and unusual musical arrangements. The literary whodunit element is retained, but combined with modern slasher horror, while being filtered through Italy's longstanding tradition of opera and staged grand guignol drama. The genre had its heyday in the 1970's, with dozens of Italian giallo films released. This collector's set has a trio of Giallo's that fit that genre perfectly - Blood and Black Lace, Bird With a Crystal Plumage and Watch Me When I Kill. All three movies will be individually wrapped and sold together in this all new collector's slip case. Bonus Features: Blood and Black Lace: Photo Galleries, Bios, Commentary by Tim Lucas (Editor of the Video Watchdog), Interviews with Mary Dawne Arden and Cameron Mitchell, Bonus Music Track by composer Carlo Rustichelli| Original theatrical trailer. Bird With a Crystal Plumage: Interactive Menus, Bios, Theatrical Trailer, New Dolby Stereo Surround Track,! Enhanced 16x9 Transfer, Bonus: Contains the complete origina! l music sound track. Watch Me When I Kill: Original :30 second and :60 second radio spots, Antonio Bido Biography, Scene Selection. Specs; 3-DVD9s; Dolby Digital; 281 minutes; Color; 16x9 Widescreen Aspecat Ratio; MPAA - NR; Year - 1964, 1970 & 1981; SRP - $29.99.BASED ON THE INFAMOUS REAL-LIFE MURDER CASE THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD!

When the mutilated corpse of a young woman is found on an Australian beach, retired detective Thompson (Oscar(r) winner Ray Milland of THE LOST WEEKEND and DIAL M FOR MURDER) involves himself in the investigation. But before they can find the killer, the police must first identify the victim. Who was this once-beautiful girl found clad only in yellow pyjamas? Why would the authorities put her nude body on public display? What sexual depravity did she endure before her murder? And even if Thompson can crack the baffling case, will he survive to see her killer brought to justice?

Mel Ferrer (THE ANTICHRIST, NIGHTMARE CITY), Howard Ros! s (THE NEW YORK RIPPER) and the luscious Dalila Di Lazzaro (FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN, PHENOMENA) co-star in this unique giallo written and directed by Flavio Mogherini and featuring a pounding score by Riz Ortolani (MONDO CANE).

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