Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Full Screen Edition)

  • The next installment in the Harry Potter series finds young wizard Harry Potter (DANIEL RADCLIFFE) and his friends Ron Weasley (RUPERT GRINT) and Hermione Granger (EMMA WATSON) facing new challenges during their second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as they try to uncover a dark force that is terrorizing the school. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY Rating:&nb
From Christopher Munch, the director of The Hours and Times, comes this unforgettable tale of intense brotherly love. Harry (Bryce Johnson) is a 23-year-old former boy-band idol who is watching his 16-year-old brother Max (Cole Williams of Boys Life 4) follow in his footsteps. Harry escorts Max on a long-promised camping trip to Los Angeles' San Gabriel Mountains. What starts out as fun quickly turns serious as they bond in ways that neither could have anticipated. Artful and provocative, sexy and controversia! l, Harry and Max proves that the road to adulthood is never a straight line.The "Blue Max", a coveted medal for achievement in flying, is ruthlessly sought by Peppard, a poor-boy german soldier who climbs out of the trenches and into the aristorcratic air force. He is met with prejudice by the other contestants, wealthy snobs whoThe Blue Max is highly unusual among Hollywood films, not just for being a large-scale drama set during the generally overlooked World War I, but in concentrating on air combat as seen entirely from the German point of view. The story focuses on a lower-class officer, Bruno Stachel (George Peppard), and his obsessive quest to win a Blue Max, a medal awarded for shooting down 20 enemy aircraft. Around this are subplots concerning a propaganda campaign by James Mason's pragmatic general, rivalry with a fellow officer (Jeremy Kemp), and a love affair with a decadent countess (Ursula Andress).

As directed by John Guillermin (who later! made The Battle of Britain in 1969), the film's main ! assets a re epic production values, great flying scenes, and stunning dogfights. The weak point is the sometimes ponderous character drama, not helped by Peppard, who is too lightweight an actor to convince as the driven antihero. Clearly influenced by Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1958), The Blue Max is a cold, cynical drama offering a visually breathtaking portrait of a stultified society tearing itself apart during the final months of the Great War. --Gary S. DalkinThe next installment in the Harry Potter series finds young wizard Harry Potter (DANIEL RADCLIFFE) and his friends Ron Weasley (RUPERT GRINT) and Hermione Granger (EMMA WATSON) facing new challenges during their second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as they try to uncover a dark force that is terrorizing the school.First sequels are the true test of an enduring movie franchise, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets passes with flying colors. Expanding upon the lavi! sh sets, special effects, and grand adventure of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry's second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry involves a darker, more malevolent tale (parents with younger children beware), beginning with the petrified bodies of several Hogwarts students and magical clues leading Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) to a 50-year-old mystery in the monster-laden Chamber of Secrets. House elves, squealing mandrakes, giant spiders, and venomous serpents populate this loyal adaptation (by Sorcerer's Stone director Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves), and Kenneth Branagh delightfully tops the supreme supporting cast as the vainglorious charlatan Gilderoy Lockhart (be sure to view past the credits for a visual punchline at Lockhart's expense). At 161 minutes, the film suffers from lack of depth and uneven pacing, and John Williams' score mostly reprises established themes. The ! young, fast-growing cast offers ample compensation, however, a! s does t he late Richard Harris in his final screen appearance as Professor Albus Dumbledore. Brimming with cleverness, wonderment, and big-budget splendor, Chamber honors the legacy of J.K. Rowling's novels. --Jeff Shannon

Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut)

  • The Lost Tape - 15 minutes of terrifing footage
  • Special Report - Zombie Invasion
  • 12+ minutes of deleted scenes
  • Commentary with director Zack Snyder and producer Eric Newman
Packed with more blood, more gore, and more bone-chilling, jaw-dropping thrills, Dawn of the Dead Unrated Director's Cut is the version too terrifying to be shown in theaters! Starring Mekhi Phifer, Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley in an edgy, electrifying thrill-ride.

When a mysterious virus turns people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, a handful of survivors wage a desperate, last-stand battle to stay alive…and human.Are you ready to get down with the sickness? Movie logic dictates that you shouldn't remake a classic, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead defies that logic and comes up a winner. You could argue that George A. Romero's 1978 original was sacred ground for hor! ror buffs, but it was a low-budget classic, and Snyder's action-packed upgrade benefits from the same manic pacing that energized Romero's continuing zombie saga. Romero's indictment of mega-mall commercialism is lost (it's arguably outmoded anyway), so Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn compensate with the same setting--in this case, a Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak--a well-chosen cast (led by Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer), some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. Horror buffs will catch plenty of tributes to Romero's film (including cameos by three of its cast members, including gore-makeup wizard Tom Savini), and shocking images are abundant enough to qualify this Dawn as an excellent zombie-flick double-feature with 28 Days Later, its de facto British counterpart. --Jeff S! hannon

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

  • Get ready for a hilarious fun-filled adventure starring Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore), a diamond-clad ultra-pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua who gets lost while on vacation in Mexico. Papi (voiced by George Lopez), an amusing Chihuahua who's crazy about Chloe, springs into action and heads south of the border to rescue her, while Chloe gets help from Delgado (voiced by Andy Garcia), her newfoun
Get ready for a hilarious fun-filled adventure starring Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore), a diamond-clad ultra-pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua who gets lost while on vacation in Mexico. Papi (voiced by George Lopez), an amusing Chihuahua who's crazy about Chloe, springs into action and heads south of the border to rescue her, while Chloe gets help from Delgado (voiced by Andy Garcia), her newfound friend and self-appointed protector. Beverly Hills Chihuahua from Walt Disney Pictures is a h! eartwarming and outrageously funny tale proving once again that good things do come in small packages. It's a real treat for the whole family. This DVD has fullscreen or widescreen capabilities.

Bonus Features:
*Deleted scenes with introductsion by director Raja Gosnell
*Blooper scooper
*Legend of the chihuahua
*Feature audio commentary by director Raja Gosness (Widescreen version only)
Beverly Hills Chihuahua finds director Raja Gosnell back on the talking-dog beat (following his live-action Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleased), this time in an ambitious, tongue-in-cheek comedy with a fun cast of onscreen and vocal actors. Piper Perabo plays Rachel, niece of a Beverly Hills eccentric (Jamie Lee Curtis) who spends much of her fortune pampering Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore), a spoiled Chihuahua used to pacing through this world with booties on her paws. Chloe gets dog-napped while ! Rachel takes a vacation in Mexico, and finds protection from a! misfit German Shepherd named Delgado (Andy Garcia), who has a painful secret in his past. The two get into and out of a lot of scrapes, trying to stay ahead of a vicious dog (Edward James Olmos) working for the head of an illegal dogfight gambling syndicate. Computer effects turn the film's many four-legged characters into talking critters capable of leaping onto train boxcars and leading the heroine into the Indiana Jones-like ancestral home of the chihuahua breed. The comedy is crisp and kid-friendly, the story of Chloe rise out of silliness into canine authenticity, plus the film's surprising ambitiousness, are all very winning. --Tom Keogh


Stills from Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Click for larger image)












D.O.A. - Dead or Alive

  • Four gorgeous women are invited to a remote island to participate in a fighting tournament. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 796019796941 UPC: 796019796941 Manufacturer No: 79694
Four gorgeous women are invited to a remote island to participate in a fighting tournament.Based on the popular video-game series, Corey (The Transporter) Yuen's DOA: Dead Or Alive brings together cheesecake titillation and martial-arts action in a lightweight slice of exploitation that's sure to keep its largely young and male audience happy. Jaime Pressly (My Name is Earl) is top-billed as a pro wrestler who joins a no-holds-barred brawling competition on a remote island; once there, she discovers that the tournament's sponsor, Donovan (Eric Roberts at his toothiest and oiliest), has nefarious plans up his sleeve, and the competitors (which include Devon Aoki, Ho! lly Valance, and the always impressive Kane Kosugi) must bond together to fight a common enemy. As with 2007's The Condemned, DOA: Dead Or Alive is the 21st century equivalent of an early '70s drive-in movie: Proudly loud and lunkheaded, its main function is to cram as much fighting and bikini-clad women into its running time as possible, and to that end, it's enormously successful. Director Yuen understands this, and wisely skews the tone towards the broadly (ahem) tongue-in-cheek; Pressly (whose knack for comedy doesn't get as much mileage here) and the rest of her castmates look good and move well, and the fighting, while not on par with Hong Kong or Thai standards, is plentiful and flashy. If you come expecting this and nothing else, you'll have a fine time with DOA: Dead Or Alive. --Paul Gaita

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: (Great Books edition) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

  • ISBN13: 9780140283341
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
These deluxe editions are packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front.

"A glittering parable of good and evil . . . a work of genuine literary merit."--The New York Times

Other Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
My Antonia by Willa Cather
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
White Noise by Don DeLillo

Enemy At the Gates : Widescreen Edition

  • Widescreen
BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF WORLD WAR II RUSSIAN HERO VASSILI ZAITSEV, WHOSE FAME THRUST HIM INTO A PERSONAL WAR WITH THE NAZIS' BEST SHARPSHOOTER.Like Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II--the German invasion of Stalingrad--re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amid the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed ! Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment.

There's love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and David L. Robbins's novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth. --Jeff Shannon
Genre: Action/Adventure
R! ating: R
Release Date: 19-MAY-2009
Media T! ype: Blu-RayLike Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II--the German invasion of Stalingrad--re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amid the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment.

There's love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet off! icer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and David L. Robbins's novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth. --Jeff Shannon Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/02/2011 Rating: RDVD

Flight of the Red Balloon

  • Inspired by Albert Lamorisse'sic 1956 Academy Award®-Winning short*, Flight of the Red Balloon is the latest masterwork from director Hou Hsiao Hsien (Three Times, Millennium Mambo). Expanding on the key elements of Lamorisse's short - a young boy, a red balloon and Paris - Hou weaves the tale of a boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu) dealing with the increased fragility of his loving yet preocc
Inspired by Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 Academy Awardr-Winning short, Flight of the Red Balloon is the latest masterwork from director Hou Hsiao Hsien (Three Times, Millennium Mambo). Expanding on the key elements of Lamorisse's short - a young boy, a red balloon and Paris - Hou weaves the tale of a boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu) dealing with the increased fragility of his loving yet preoccupied mother, Suzanne (Academy Awardr - Winner Juliette Binoche of The English Patient, Cach‚). When a Taiwanese film stud! ent, Song (Fang Song), is hired to help care for Simon, a unique extended family is formed - utterly dependent on each other yet lost in separate dreams mirrored by a delicate, shiny red balloon.

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