It seems every time you look for a new movie in the theaters, one of them is a remake from a TV show. Just recently, we had the release of Get Smart. We have also had The Brady Bunch, Mission Impossible and numerous others. Some of them worked, while others just fell flat. One of the latest Blu-ray imports I watched just so happened to be a TV show previously, and that being Starsky and Hutch. This, thankfully, worked out very well and is an entertaining watch.

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I have seen plenty of Clint Eastwood films throughout my lifetime. I have always been a fan of his although I have yet to watch any of his Westerns, aside from The Unforgiven. Eastwood, for most of his career, has been the typical badass who you didn’t want to meet up with if you were doing something wrong. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s character was the trend setter of what movie cops were to become; the loaner who does things his own way regardless if anyone else likes it or not.

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Honestly, I don’t know what the bigger tragedy is, the fact that John C. Reilly has been a funny performer for years, or the fact that it’s taken guys like Judd Apatow and Adam McKay a chance to show off his comedic talent. For those who don’t know, Reilly was in a hilarious ten-minute blooper reel in Boogie Nights which showed that he could improvise with the best of them. The guy also played Bigfoot in an episode of the Tenacious D show that aired on HBO in the mid ‘90s. But sure, put him in Chicago where he was nominated for an Oscar or in ensemble films directed by some of film’s greatest voices. His true love, that which gives him much joy and pleasure, appears to be when he’s goofing around, like he does in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

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Paramount has been late to the Blu party but more than makes up for it with the recent addition of There Will Be Blood on Blu-ray. The film is such a visually visceral experience that I can now no longer stand to see the recent standard DVD version of the film. Now, it’s important that I clarify that this is not to say that the transfer is anywhere near the best I’ve seen. In fact, I’m a bit disappointed. I’m commenting mostly on how much HD in general complements this film. This is now the second time I’ve watched this film in a relatively short span of time.

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It’s year 4 at Hogwarts, and for me this was the best Potter of the first five films. Hogwarts plays host to the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, and that means putting up students from two other wizard schools. Here we get an inkling of just how large the Potter universe truly is. Up until now our experience has only taken us through the world of Hogwarts and its peripheral environs.

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I have a cousin who is absolutely in love with the Broadway production of Rent currently playing in New York. To date she’s made the trip to New York from the Philly area no less than 3 times and will likely do so again. I attempted to channel that passion as much as I could as I sat down to watch this Blu-ray version of the production. Unfortunately, I don’t believe I was quite successful. From what I can see there is no doubt in my mind that Rent is a phenomenal experience

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There was first the cloned sheep, Dolly. Now today, cloning is actually very popular in science. Just do a simple Google search and you’ll find many articles on cloning that are occurring or have occurred. Heck, there was even an active website at one time about gene banking a pet. How far is science willing to go? The cloning of humans is not so far out of reach but most likely will not happen in my lifetime. When it does, you can bet that government will try and step in and stop it.

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You’ve got to expect some pretty big things from a film that uses the massacre at Wounded Knee as a mere starting point. Add Viggo Mortensen fresh from his stint as Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s excellent Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and how can you not expect big things? And if that’s not enough, we’ll throw in some genuine Arabian sheiks and breathtaking cinematography… oh, and there’s horses.

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Since we have already reviewed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD, some non-format specific sections of this review have been ported over to this Blu-ray review.

After the transformation of the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings books into hugely successful films, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to tackle C.S. Lewis’s famous novels The Chronicles of Narnia.

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I am sure at one point or another in everyone’s life; they wished they could be successful, smarter or healthier than they already are. It is only natural. Now what if I told you that when you have children of your own you could make that decision for them? Would you do it?

Vincent’s (Ethan Hawke) dream is to one day go into space. Since a very young age, he had read every book he could get his hands on to find out what it would take be an astronaut. Vincent fought off his parents urges to give up that dream because they knew he could never do it. Why? It was because he wasn’t created the”natural way.”

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Don’t you just miss the old days of the Cold War? Let’s be honest. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there just haven’t been any interesting bad guys around anymore. Sure, there’s plenty of bad guys out there, more now than likely ever before. But these bad guys are just nasty and about as colorful as a 1 crayon box of crayolas. If you miss those old days, then Crimson Tide is the film for you. It’s one of those last looks back before an era disappears under the horizon never to be seen again.

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I love vampire movies. I remember watching Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee with my father on late night Saturdays when I was a kid. Since those days vampires have evolved. Ann Rice certainly deserves a lot of credit for breathing new life into the undead. Her gothic depictions of the creatures in her Vampire Chronicles stories added a wealth of new mythology and atmosphere to the age old monsters. Underworld would bring us even more vampire lore and, of course, the most attractive vampire to date in Selene.

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Will Smith finds himself in a bit of a career quandary if you ask me. Sure, one of the good sides to being as as he is is that he’s quite the popular guy that nobody wants to see get killed. But the popularity has seemed to stymie him a little bit. When he does dramatic work, it’s clear that the push is for him to win an Oscar, like in Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. So when people look past that intent, even when he might want to do dramatic work, he’s forced to take on slightly darker roles in action films, which I guess serves as his happy medium of branching out while still pleasing the people. I Am Legend is another one of those examples, very similar to another Smith sci-fi film named I, Robot.

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It’s year 3 at Hogwarts, and behind the scenes there have been some significant changes in the Harry Potter universe. Chris Columbus gave up the directing duties to Alfonso Cuaron. While Cuaron was faithful to the traditions established by Columbus, I do believe he did a rather nice job of adding his own dark touches to the Hogwarts landscape. Whether it was a new director or simply greater maturity, there is no question that Cuaron got better performances out of the three major actors.

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A decade or so ago, Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca came to a theatre near you. It received a fair amount of critical acclaim, including a few award nods for production design and music, but wasn’t much of a commercial success. Beats me why not, because the film is right up there with the best in the science fiction genre, at least in my book.

Now on a Special Edition DVD from Sony Pictures, Gattaca has another shot at the mass popularity it deserves. But does the special disc treatment add anything to improve its chances?

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It’s year two at Hogwarts, and now we know who everyone is, so there isn’t going to be any time wasted setting up characters and relationships. I must say that the three actors playing Harry, Hermione, and Ron (Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint) pull off the chemistry in a pleasantly convincing manner. You believe these kids now have some history together, so we’re off to Hogwarts and a new adventure before you can blink your eye.

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It seems like foodies are everywhere these days. Maybe Emeril is to blame, maybe it’s Paula Dean, maybe it’s the Food Network as a whole.I have even been sucked in my Anthony Bourdain myself (whose show is ironically also named No Reservations). Wherever there is a trend, there is guaranteed to be a romantic comedy to follow. Enter Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Eckhart has been doing some fantastic work lately, from his work in Thank You for Smoking to lesser known films such as Conversations With Other Women, he is quickly becoming one of the best actors on the scene today.

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The Resident Evil series has always been one that makes you feel good to be a guy. Each movie has provided the substance to make for a great action movie: little back-story, a lot of guns and explosions and of course hot girls in modest slinky outfits…. oh and ZOMBIES! If this sounds like the popcorn flick stuff you’re made of, than Resident Evil: Extinction is the flick for you.

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I am a sucker for a good biopic. Walk the Line, Ray, Man on the Moon, Cinderella Man… all these films and many more like them feature prominently in my DVD collection. With this release, I am now excited to be able to add this fine film to my collection. Brad Pitt’s James is not the one of fables and adventure books, but one grounded in reality. While charismatic criminals are frequently glorified in these types of films, it is often times hard to remember that in real life these are often times people with severe social problems. The result is a film that is more open and honest than the vast majority of the biopics that have come along in the past decade.

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Barrows, Alaska, is just settling down for a month-long winter’s night. Many of the residents leave for the dark period, but those who remain encounter a series of strange crimes (all the cell phones in town being stolen and melted, for instance). It turns out that the incidents are the work of a man preparing the way for an invasion of vampires. After all, what better hunting ground than a town with no day? Josh Hartnett leads a dwindling band who hunker down and struggle against overwhelming odds.

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Blade Runner: The Final Cut is the fifth version of director Ridley Scott’s 1982 film taking place in a dystopian future set in Los Angeles in 2019. Blade Runner is based loosely on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It places us in a grim future, in a dirty and overpopulated Los Angeles. The Tyrell Cooperation has taken genetic creation to a new level; they now have the ability to create a person. These people are called Replicants, and can be created to have more strength, endurance and intelligence than a normal person.

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The Simpsons Movie is the long awaited trip to the big screen for everyone’s favorite American family. Matt Groening the creator of The Simpsons television series has been talking of making a movie since the shows fourth season and it has now just been released. Production on the movie started in 2001, with many of the shows best writers from the earlier season signing on. As a fan of television series I was very pleased that the movie was much more like earlier seasons with its irreverent humour.

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J.K Rowling has created a wonderful world of fanciful creatures and magical wizardry. The most amazing thing about her Harry Potter series is how popular the books have become. Kids are reading again, and in numbers not seen since the 1970’s when it was book series like The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift that captured that generation’s imagination. Those books were likely as popular with us then as Harry Potter is with the kids today. But Rowling’s achievement is a far greater one

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