Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 4th, 2010
The film begins in the middle of the story, at the end of one journey and the beginning of another. Marlon (Aldemar Correa) and Reina (Angelica Blandon) are illegal Columbian immigrants, and have just arrived in New York City. They are staying in a beyond-seedy hostel in Queens, and Reina has just spent their last coins on a fruitless phone call. Frustrated, Marlon hits the street, and after a panicky encounter with the police, winds up lost in NYC. So begins his second journey one that is both a search for belonging as well as his beloved Reina, that is intercut with flasbacks to the trip that brought Marlon and Reina to the city in the first place, beginning with their leaving the relative comfort of their lives in Medillin and tracking their increasingly nightmarish trek to the States.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 4th, 2010
On February 11th, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from the Victor Verster Prison is often seen as the symbolic end of apartheid in the country of South Africa. However, the apartheid was not fully removed until the elections of 1994. Furthermore, the story was way more complex than the African National Congress leader’s freedom. The story that was more focused on Willie Esterhuyse, Thabo Mbeki and Michael Young. These names might seem foreign to most of us, but they are perhaps three of the most important names to the recent history of South Africa.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 30th, 2009
Disney has a knack for turning television shows into profitable movie franchises-- Lizzy McGuire, Hannah Montana, and now The Wizards of Waverly Place. Since the formula hasn’t deferred much, it should come as no surprise that its latest show has caught on like wildfire. In the wake of a Harry Potter-crazed nation of tweens, Disney’s latest show follows the Russos—former wizard father Jerry (David DeLuise), non-magical mother Theresea (Maria Canals-Barrera) and their three wizards-in-training.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 23rd, 2009
Eight-year-old Buddy (T. J. Lowther) likes living in the Alabama countryside with cousing Sook (Julie Harris in a tiny role), but circumstances dictate that he go to New Orleans for Christmas, there to stay with the father he has never seen (Henry Winkler). Old dad is, it turns out, a con artist with an inflated sense of self-importance, currently wooing Swoozie Kurtz, whose mother (Katharine Hepburn) recognizes Winkler for what he is. This being a Christmas movie, hard lessons and redemption will be called for.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 23rd, 2009
Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald) has fled her abusive husband and begun a new, solitary life for herself in Chicago, where she fends off the romantic interest of a number of men, and the curiosity of a great many people who all want to know how she received her black eye. One night, leaving the office, she sees a man about to jump from a building roof, and her scream startles him, breaking his suicidal trance. The man is Frank Logan (Michael Keaton), a contract killer. No longer interested in killing himself, he tracks down Kate, initially intending to kill her, since (though she doesn't realize this), she saw him moments after a hit. He collapses with pneumonia before he can carry out his plan, and she helps him to the hospital, whereupon a most unlikely relationship begins to bloom between two wounded people.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 14th, 2009
The Tudors returns for a rather triumphant third season. The series attempts to modernize the story more than a little. Henry’s attire is more akin to a rock star than a 16th century ruler. The language is also more updated, often filled with modern colloquialisms and the like. The story of Henry VIII is well known, but this is not the Henry your history teachers told you about. This Henry is a slim, energetic man. There are only hints in regard to his famous lust for food. His appetites for women are not so subtly portrayed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 14th, 2009
Erle Stanley Gardner wrote crime fiction, and while many of his 100 or so works are unknown to most of us, he created a character that has become as identified with criminal lawyers as any other in fiction. It was in these crime novels that Perry Mason first faced a courtroom. He developed a style where he would investigate these terrible crimes his clients were on trial for. He would find the real killer, and in what has become a Hollywood cliché, reveal his findings in a crucial moment during the trial. While we may not remember the novels, we all remember the man in the persona of Raymond Burr.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 14th, 2009
“The man is Richard Kimble and, not surprisingly, the man is tired. Tired of looking over his shoulder, the ready lie of the buses and freight trains. Richard Kimble is tired of running…”
The elusive “one armed man” is one of the best known television icons of all time. The plight of Dr. Richard Kimball has been the subject of numerous imitations and even a feature film staring Harrison Ford as Kimball and Tommy Lee Jones as his pursuer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2009
Things are tough all over. It seems that even the television networks aren't immune to the growing trend of cutting back. Fox decided that the answer was Bogota, Colombia. No, they didn't turn to the cocaine market. They all tried that in the 70's and we ended up with Joannie Loves Chachi. This time Bogota is an option for producing new television shows. The idea is that you can take an American cast, with a token Brit in this case, and ship them off to Columbia to do the show on the cheap. The good news is that you can hire crew for six bucks a day. The bad news is that the show ends up looking like it cost about six bucks
Posted in: 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.
![Angels & Demons [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/angels-demons-blu-ray-large.jpg)
