Archive for the ‘2.40:1 Widescreen (16:9)’ Category
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2010
“I always wondered why nobody did it before me. I mean, all those comic books, movies, and TV shows. You’d think that one eccentric loner would have made himself a costume. I mean, is everyday life really so exciting? Are schools and offices so thrilling that I’m the only one who ever fantasized about this? Come on. Be honest with yourself. At some point in our lives, we all wanted to be a superhero. Who am I? I’m Kick Ass.”
You have to give the folks at Lionsgate some serious credit for the way they promoted Kick Ass. The film was generating a lot of buzz almost a year before it actually came out.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2010
Mention the name of George A. Romero to anyone even remotely familiar with horror movies, and the first thing they’re going to think of is zombies. Why shouldn’t they? It was Romero who made what might be the first little film that could. Long before Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Romero set out with his trusty 16 mm camera and a crew of pretty much local Pittsburgh friends, to make Night Of The Living Dead. With this film and the ongoing “Dead” franchise, Romero has pretty much written the rule book on zombies. He is no doubt the zombie king.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2010
Elvis Presley is often referred to as The King Of Rock And Roll, at least to his fans. There’s no denying the impact that he had on the music scene. He was the first rock and roll star, to be sure. Colonel Tom Parker, his long-time manager and partner, created many of the marketing traditions that are commonplace in the industry today. He knew the value of his star, not only as a performer, but as a brand. For the first time, a musician’s image and name started to appear on everything from bath towels to women’s underwear. Fans are often split on their feelings for the self-styled Colonel, but Elvis would not have become the name brand he still is today, without him.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 25th, 2010
“On Robben Island, in Pollsmoor Prison, all of my jailers were Afrikaners. For 27 years I studied them. I learned their language. Read their books, their poetry. I had to know my enemy before I could prevail against them. And we did prevail, did we not?”
Leave it to Clint Eastwood to make even rugby look interesting. Of course, Eastwood himself would correct me and observe that Invictus isn’t really about rugby. As the words of Nelson Mandela above suggest, this movie wasn’t really about rugby at all.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 17th, 2010
For most of this last decade Mel Gibson might as well have vanished from the face of the planet. The once extremely popular actor had charmed the world. Women found his childish grin to be irresistibly sexy, and men bought into the “kick ass and crack a joke” style that made the Lethal Weapon films such a romp of fun. But lately, you expect him to be the subject of a “Where Are They Now” segment from a late show on television. It’s no secret why Gibson climbed so quickly out of the public eye. I’m sure everyone still remembers the drunk-driving arrest where Gibson compounded his already serious case of bad judgment with even worse judgment.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 4th, 2010
In many ways the epic story and film Doctor Zhivago echoes the real-life story of Boris Pasternak, who penned the original novel. Pasternak was a firsthand witness to the events that led to and became the Russian Revolution. He collected 50 years of memories that began with the early days before the revolution and ended with his own confrontations with the USSR government. Like Zhivago in the story, Pasternak’s work was banned in his own country. The manuscript had to be smuggled out of Russia and found its way first to Italy, where it was finally published for the first time. But it didn’t stop there.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 29th, 2010
My dad was an ex-Vietnam officer, 1st lieutenant in the United States Army. He gave a lot for his country but never forced me towards any military service. He wanted me to focus more on my studies and make sure I got a proper education. I don’t think I could comprehend what my father or any military personnel in a war situation goes through. However, with the dramatization in Brothers, I can see on some level the horror that some of our fine soldiers have to live with.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 28th, 2010
Around Thanksgiving of last year, I started to see trailers of a particular movie that quite literally made me laugh out loud. The reason behind it is because I knew with the title of the movie and the obvious plot, there was no way I was not going to review it when it came to dvd & blu-ray. I have a reputation for certain movies, I guess you could say. That movie was Ninja Assassin. Several months later, I am reviewing it for a mass audience. Funny how that works.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 18th, 2010
It’s back to the 1950’s with its telltale alien invasion science fiction matinees. There’s Doo Wop coming out of the radio. The cars have tail fins and plenty of color and chrome. That’s right. This is 1950’s Americana. Well … almost. You see, the alien invaders are humaniacs. They turn the helpless population into mind-controlled zombies, and they eat brains for breakfast. Those sure are the classic cars, all right. But they’re rounded, and instead of wheels they ride on a cushion of air. And then there’s the “people”. They’re green. They have tentacles for hair. And they have only 4 fingers and toes on each hand or foot. Can anyone say, “Give me a high four”?
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2010
When the original 1987 film The Stepfather came our way, the world was a very different place. Of course, that’s true with any titles that are separated by nearly 25 years of time. When reboots or remakes are attempted, as they all too frequently are today, it is often true that some allowances must be made for those inevitable changes in our world. Filmmakers attempt to make whatever adjustments they deem fit and bring the old favorite, or not so favorite, into our current collective consciousness. Like all things, sometimes it works. More often it does not work.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 4th, 2010
“There are stories a river can tell. And truths it cannot hide. There are ways it brings us together that we may never see, connecting us with places never suspected. Places like fear, like betrayal, like murder.”
One thing you have to say for Clint Eastwood. In his later years as a director and producer of films, maybe from Unforgiven onward, he has selected some of the most compelling stories for his film projects. You get the sense that he hasn’t been in this for the money in a long time. You easily believe that he doesn’t make a film unless it reaches him completely and deeply.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 27th, 2010
The original movie production of Fame came out in 1980 and followed a group of students as they progressed four years through the New York High School of Performing Arts. It was gritty, it was harsh, but it was a very deep portrayal of budding students trying to get into the world of singing, dancing and acting. Nearly 30 years later, somebody gets the bright idea of doing a remake. Let’s find out if it is anywhere close to the original.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 26th, 2010
“Look at yourselves. Unplug from your chairs, get up and look in a mirror. What you see is how God made you. We’re not meant to experience the world through a machine.”
Since the time we were kids, we were warned that you can’t tell a book by its cover. That has never been more true in our modern world of the internet. We play in chat rooms where almost no one is who they pretend to be. We lie about our age, looks, and even our gender, and rationalize it as harmless escapism or merely exaggeration. Everyone does it, or so we believe, so it’s actually expected.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2010
“Let me know when the Governor gets here.”
Well, he’s in the house, and I’m going to get a lot of razzing for this review of Last Action Hero. The person who thought I should see a shrink for looking forward to the next Saw film is going to be calling for my outright commitment to an institution dedicated to covering walls with nice padding so we won’t hurt ourselves. I know this film is generally considered “bad” by critics and moviegoers alike. It swept the Razzies in 1993 and has since been only the kind of film 10 year olds would really like to see.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 19th, 2010
“Nature did not intend for you to survive out here. But here you are, and here I am to teach you how not to die…”
Whiteout has taken about as long and hard a road getting made as the characters in the film find themselves on stuck in the Antarctic. It began life as a crude graphic novel written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. It developed a rather loyal cult following and was conceived as a film at around 2002. At one point it was intended as the launching point for a franchise featuring the federal marshal played by Kate Beckinsale
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2010
“Fighting soldiers from the sky. Fearless men who jump and die. Men who mean just what they say, the brave men of the Green Beret. Silver wings upon their chest. These are men, America’s best. One hundred men will test today. But only three win the Green Beret.”
The Ballad Of The Green Beret has become one of America’s most famous marching songs. It has been heavily parodied. The words were written by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler while he was in the hospital recuperating from a leg wound he received in Vietnam. The music was composed by Robin Moore, who went on to pen the book The Green Berets, on which this film was based.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 30th, 2009
Believe it or not, Robert Langdon did not make his debut in the Da Vinci Code novel. He was actually introduced in an earlier, but far less known novel, Angels & Demons. When Hollywood came a knockin’ they weren’t interested in that earlier work. The Da Vinci Code was tearing up the literary world, and Hollywood wanted a piece of that overstuffed pie. That meant a strange series of circumstances for Dan Brown and Robert Langdon. In print, The Da Vinci Code is the sequel to Angels & Demons, but in the cinema Angels & Demons is now the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. You might consider it a trivial point, but it’s not.
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Disc Reviews by Jay Macdonald on November 27th, 2009
James Gray’s Two Lovers revolves around the troubled Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix). Leonard has moved back into his childhood home to recover from his recent break up. In quick succession, two women enter Leonard’s life: Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), an entertaining and peculiar neighbor who transcends Leonard’s world and Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) a classy, traditional woman who is the daughter of a businessman attempting to purchase Leonard’s family business. Leonard becomes confused between desire and love and the story unfolds from there.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 18th, 2009
“Sometime in the 23rd Century the survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch. Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carousel.”
Logan’s Run started life as a pretty successful novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The source material was really quite dark and more like Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner than the 1976 film based on the work.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 11th, 2009
“The perpetrator is an expert marksman. He’s an expert in explosives and tactics. Gentlemen, play this one by the numbers. Maintain your fields of fire… We’re blind and he’s seeing in 20/20… We have not contained him. He’s contained himself.”
“He” is Samuel L Jackson in the 1998 action thriller The Negotiator. Jackson stars as Danny Roman. He’s a Chicago Metro hostage negotiator. As the film opens we get to see him in action saving a little girl from a tight hostage situation. He’s obviously good at his job and he has the respect and admiration of his fellow officers and commanders.
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 18th, 2009
This film is like the Ice Storm in warmer weather. Another portrait of burgeoning suburbia in the 1970s as an island from the rest of civilization instead of an off-shoot. Two families, who are long time friends, coworkers, neighbours and sometime secret lovers, are going through major changes as the children are just about grown, and the parents are falling apart to affairs, tensions and the appearance of Lyme disease in one household.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 12th, 2009
“Four turtles. Four brothers genetically reborn in the sewers of New York. Named after the great Renaissance masters and trained as ninjas. They battled many creatures and foes before defeating their arch enemy, The Shredder. But, now a greater evil is poised to destroy their brotherhood. An evil born 3000 years ago.”
What started as a low budget comic has grown into quite a sensation. The Turtles are everywhere. There are cartoons, books, comics, movies, and thousands of toys. They’ve been translated into just about every language in the world. The 1980’s and 1990’s were alive with Turtle power. With yet another film now in the works, the Turtles are about to make a comeback.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
Who doesn’t remember the original Witch Mountain films from Disney back in the 1970’s. They were clever family films. They were camp, to be sure. But, most of us remember them fondly, if not as particularly outstanding films. While Disney’s reimagining of the franchise doesn’t have a great deal in common with those earlier films, you can pretty much describe the reaction as being spot on. Race To Witch Mountain isn’t going to be breaking any box office records, but it is the kind of film you get a pretty warm feeling for, and like its predecessors, you’ll end up remembering it with fondness.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
“In a time before many can remember, our planet faced its greatest challenge. A warlord named Piccolo came from beyond the stars, bringing darkness and chaos to our once peaceful world. Aided by his disciple Oozaru, the evil pair brought the human race to the brink of annihilation. Cities and countries crumbled beneath them. Countless lives were lost, but finally a group of brave warriors created the Ma Fu Ba, a powerful enchantment that imprisoned Piccolo deep with in the Earth. With his master captured, Oozaru disappeared and balance was slowly restored to our world. And so it has remained for thousands of years…until now.”
Let me begin by stating that I have not had more than a passing exposure to the hugely popular Dragonball anime works.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2009
“What is Echelon? It’s NSA’s central computer. It filters all global communications. Echelon’s a juggernaut. It can access any security system on the planet… Echelon’s been compromised.”
In 1948 British author George Orwell delivered a sobering science fiction novel about a future society where the State has become a parent figure to its people. It watches over everything that you say or do like a …big brother. That term originated with the novel 1984. The work has added such words as “big brother” and “Orwellian” to our lexicon. It was intended as warning against intrusions that weren’t yet possible.
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