Art School Confidential (2005) DVD Widescreen
- DVD
- Widescreen
- Subtitled English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese
- Dolby Digital
Away from Her chronicles a love story between Fiona and her longtime husband, Grant, played with bearlike stolidity by Gordon Pinsett, as the couple struggle with the onset and acceleration of Fiona's Alzheimer's disease. Moments of lucidity and wry observation pepper Fiona's decline, and Christie gives an unforgettable performance as a woman who is both ordinary and singular to those whom she's touched. The story is set against a frigid Canadian winter, with fields of snow as a background underscoring the bleakness of Fiona's diagnosis; yet life is constant and surprising, in the call of a meadowlark or the resurrected memory of a skunk lily. A sc! ene of Fiona out for her daily cross-country ski shows Christi! e's gorg eous, sensual face in closeup against the snow, framed by a babushka, reminding the viewer of a similar scene of the decades-younger Christie in Dr. Zhivago. It's impossible not to be touched by the gifts of this extraordinary actress, through the life of this everywoman, whose very presence is shot through with grace. --A.T Hurleydvd
Besides the Supremes comparison, one can't talk about Dreamgirls now without revisiting its notorious Oscar snub; though it received eight nominations, the most for any film from 2006, it was shut out of the Best Picture and Director races entirely. Was the oversight justified? While Dreamgirls is certainly a handsomely mounted, lovingly executed and often vibrant film adaptation, it inspires more respect than passion, only getting under your skin during the musical numbers, which become more sporadic as the film goes on. Writer-director Bill Condon is definitely focused on recreating the Motown milieu ! (down to uncanny photographs of Knowles in full Diana Ross mode), he often forgets to flesh out his characters, who even on the Broadway stage were underwritten and relied on powerhouse performances to sell them to audiences. (Stage fans will also note that numerous songs are either truncated or dropped entirely from the film.) Condon has assembled a game cast, as Knowles does a canny riff on the essence of Diana Ross' glamour (as opposed to an all-out impersonation) and Rose makes a peripheral character surprisingly vibrant; only Foxx, who never gets to pour on the charisma, is miscast. Still, there are two things even the most cranky viewers will warm to in Dreamgirls: the performances of veteran Eddie Murphy and newcomer Jennifer Hudson. Murphy is all sly charm and dazzling energy as the devilish Early, who's part James Brown, part Little Richard, and all showman. And Hudson, an American Idol contestant who didn't even make the top three, makes an impre! ssive debut as the larger-than-life Effie, whose voice matches! her pas sions and stubbornness. Though she sometimes may seem too young for the role, Hudson nails the movie's signature song, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," with a breathtaking power that must be seen and heard to believe. And for those five minutes, if not more, you will be in Dreamgirls' thrall. --Mark Englehart
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Driven by intelligent, constantly surprising and moving performances from the film's leads, Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer (Lovely and Amazing) as Lizzie, Scottish mother of Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf and highly intelligent 9-year-old. Constantly uprooting themselves and relocating from town to town, Lizzie and Frankie are on the run from the latter's abusive father, a fact unknown to the boy, who believes his dad is a busy seaman sending letters full of adventure and love. In fact, Lizzie is writing those missives, but she is faced with a challenge when Frankie discovers his father's ship will dock nearby. Lizzie hires a kind, handsome stranger (Gerard Butler) to play Fra! nkie's dad, creating an odd situation in which ever-growing li! es becom e a conduit for love, and Lizzie's repressed desires come to the fore with a man posing as her husband. The moral tangles are of interest in director Shona Auerbach's charmingly paced, quietly insightful drama-comedy, but so is the glorious feeling of watching these characters come fully alive. --Tom KeoghDriven by intelligent, constantly surprising and moving performances from the film's leads, Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer (Lovely and Amazing) as Lizzie, Scottish mother of Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf and highly intelligent 9-year-old. Constantly uprooting themselves and relocating from town to town, Lizzie and Frankie are on the run from the latter's abusive father, a fact unknown to the boy, who believes his dad is a busy seaman sending letters full of adventure and love. In fact, Lizzie is writing those missives, but she is faced with a challenge when Frankie discovers his father's ship will dock nearby. Lizzie hires a kind, handsome stranger! (Gerard Butler) to play Frankie's dad, creating an odd situation in which ever-growing lies become a conduit for love, and Lizzie's repressed desires come to the fore with a man posing as her husband. The moral tangles are of interest in director Shona Auerbach's charmingly paced, quietly insightful drama-comedy, but so is the glorious feeling of watching these characters come fully alive. --Tom KeoghUnited Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Short Film, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: The title character in this bowl of Scottish blarney is a sweet nine-year-old deaf boy (Jack McElhone) who lives a fugitive existence with his beautiful mother (Emily Mortimer) and his chain-smoking grandmother (M! ary Riggans). The family is forced to move every few months to! avoid b eing tracked down by Frankie's violent, abusive father. The happiness of the boy, who is too young to remember the his father revolves around bogus letters penned by his mother posing as his devoted but absent dad, supposedly a merchant seaman. When a ship that coincidentally has the same name as the one his mother invented docks, she hires an impersonator (Gerard Butler) to play his seafaring dad. Although sensitively acted, the movie is a fraudulent mawkish yarn riddled with plot holes and improbabilities. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, European Film Awards, Montreal World Film Festival, ...Dear FrankieWinner of 6 international film festival awards, this entertaining documentary tells the dramatic story behind the making of the epic movie Beowulf & Grendel, starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgard, Sarah Polley and Ingvar Sigurdsson. When Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson and his cast and crew, including Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, set upon Iceland to film! Beowulf & Grendel in 2004, they expected the usual complications involved in making a major motion picture. What they encountered was a ruthless Icelandic winter on a foreboding landscape, financing complications and a bizarre run of bad luck that led some of them to believe they were in an epic battle with the Norse gods themselves. Filmmaker Jon Gustafsson was along for the ride. Hired to play one of Beowulf's warriors, he's one set with his camera as the crew battles hurricane force winds and he's in the backroom as the producers scramble to shore up a collapsing deal, creating an intimate portrait of filmmakers fighting the odds in pursuit of a vision. If you liked "Lost in la Mancha" or "Burden of Dreams" you will probably like this one. DVD Special Features: 2 hours of bonus features, 1 hour exclusive interview with Gerard Butler, exclusive interviews with producers of Beowulf & Grendel, additional & extended scenes, chapter selection, Subtitles: Spanish, German, French, Icelandic, Polish, English, version for the hearing impaired.DVD Features:
Alternate endings
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
Documentaries
Featurette
Other
On the DVD
As befits a horror franchise heavily invested in the idea of "fate," the Final Destination 3 disc carries a "Choose Their Fate" option. In other words, you can watch the movie with occasional choices offered; click on one of two alternatives, and see that version play out. This won't give you the power to let one character live or die; it's more like deciding whether somebody honks her horn twice in a scene, calls heads or tails on a coin flip, or pushes the thermostat to 72 degrees or 76. Not exactly life-changing, but it's kind of fun.
The bonus disc includes a 90-minute "making of" feature called Kill Shot, which covers the produc! tion of the movie in exhausting detail (honest detail, too: filmmakers James Wong and Glen Morgan are funny and blunt about the business they're in, including a section on how the original ending was scrapped in favor of a bloodier finale). It's everything you'd want to know about this movie--but who needs to know this much? A 7-minute cartoon, "It's All Around You," is an amusing meditation on bad luck and laws of probability, while a 25-minute featurette called Dead Teenager Movie spins off from Roger Ebert's theory about the rigid formula of a certain kind of horror film (Ebert weighs in on the subject himself). A few experts opine on the traditions of teenagers dying in horror films; some of them don't seem to be aware that the formula pre-dated the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Audio commentaries, special effects sidebars, and trailers fill out this needlessly authoritative disc. --Robert Horton
A collection of eighty all new poems, Acolytes is distinctly Nikki Giovanni, but different. Not softened, but more inspired by love, celebration, memories and even nostalgia. She aims her intimate and sparing words at family and friends, the deaths of heroes and friends, favorite meals and candy, nature, libraries, and theatre. But in between, the deep and edgy conscience that has defined her for decades shines through when she writes about Rosa Parks, hurricane Katrina, and Emmett Till's disappearance, leaving no doubt that Nikki has not traded one approach for another, but simply made room for both.
After three years of studying with the Empress Bykoda, Jemeryl has learned all that the elderly sorcerer can teach her and is ready to return to Ly! remouth. However, before she leaves, Bykoda reveals a grim secret - an oracle of death, and asks her to perform one final assignment. Jemeryl must take Bykoda's talisman to a place of safety. Failure will mean complete destruction not only in the present, but also the past. While in Tirakhalod, Tevi has been working as an officer in Bykoda's army. It has been a difficult time for her, living in a land where those who cannot work magic are treated as insignificant. Only Jemeryl's love has made life bearable. With the return to the Protectorate drawing close, she heros that the worst is over. However, somebody is after the talisman, and that person is willing to commit murder to get what they want.After three years of studying with the Empress Bykoda, Jemeryl has learned all that the elderly sorcerer can teach her and is ready to return to Lyremouth. However, before she leaves, Bykoda reveals a grim secret - an oracle of death, and asks her to perform one final assignment. Je! meryl must take Bykoda's talisman to a place of safety. Failur! e will m ean complete destruction not only in the present, but also the past. While in Tirakhalod, Tevi has been working as an officer in Bykoda's army. It has been a difficult time for her, living in a land where those who cannot work magic are treated as insignificant. Only Jemeryl's love has made life bearable. With the return to the Protectorate drawing close, she heros that the worst is over. However, somebody is after the talisman, and that person is willing to commit murder to get what they want. Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the sa! me commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This important book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. --Shawn Carkonen