Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2009
“The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something that I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘OK. I’ll be a part of this world’.”
We all know by now that No Country For Old Men became last year’s “must see” Academy Awards Best Picture.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 6th, 2009
My paying job in life is spent as a computer system administrator (unfortunately it is not writing reviews and columns). Often, I have wondered why I’m in the cubicle jockey life and not tried to find some job where I could use my writing skills more effectively and get paid for it. There is also a lot of bs and chicanery in the corporate world that annoys me to no end. It is little wonder that I was interested in the movie Side Effects which deals with the pharmaceutical sales industry. I wasn’t interested in pharmaceuticals but I was interested to see how one deals with the corporate crap that does go on. It made for an interesting experience.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 3rd, 2009
To Catch A Thief is not typical Alfred Hitchcock territory, but then again, it really is. It’s not a terribly suspenseful film coming from the acclaimed “Master of Suspense”, nor is it at all a frightening film even though it was directed by one of horror’s genius minds. What really is scary, however, is how close to a different film this almost was. Cary Grant had exiled himself into retirement. If you can believe his statements at the time, he was concerned that the moviegoing public was pretty much sick of seeing him and preferred the younger actors just then coming of age. He turned Hitchcock down for the role at least twice, before Hitch made a personal visit and appeal to the Hollywood legend.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 3rd, 2009
It’s amazing what a difference a hit movie can make. Your less worthy films are drummed out of obscurity. Not only that, but your billing even on these other films is suddenly pushed to the top of the class. Almost overnight, everything you did before gets pushed toward the public’s eye, for good or bad. Kristen Stewart has enjoyed a deserved boost to her career with the success of the teen vampire film, Twilight. Now the independent film The Cake Eaters is being released in time to coincide with Twilight’s own DVD release.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 1st, 2009
For first time screen writer Allen Loeb, Things We Lost In The Fire is quite an ambitious script. It relies almost completely on the writing and the performances that can be gotten from the acting leads. There’s really no place to hide in this story for anybody. And while I certainly found several elements of the story forced or contrived, there was an underlining emotion to the whole thing that carried through strong enough for the actors to find some very solid grounding. With that grounding Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro delivered what should have been award winning performances.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 31st, 2009
Open relationships have never really been in my repertoire. I’m a pretty committed guy. I find a girl or she finds me and we stick it out until one or both of us feel otherwise. Some people will argue that it is not natural to simply have one mate, instead we have to find multiple people to share relationships and intercourse with. In the movie Fling, it deals with an open relationship between Samantha & Mason. My money is on the fact that one of them goes too far in their openness and the relationship becomes strained. Let’s see how good my guesses are today.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 28th, 2009
Barbra Streisand’s 1983 Historical Epic/Fable/Musical/Vanity Project comes to DVD for the first time ever in this deluxe release. Exciting news for a large chunk of our population, though in this instance it’s a case of “good news/bad news” for rabid Barbra fans. With Yentl, Streisand is in full-on quadruple threat mode, as director, producer, co-writer, and Star (yes, the capital ‘s’ is necessary), and her Herculean labours in getting this film made are probably as well known as the film itself. Her obvious passion for the project and the fact that she had a hand in it at every level gives access to a wealth of incredibly detailed information in the special features, including “Materials from Barbra’s Archive”. However, there are some technical shortcomings in this volume that will lessen the experience, even for fans.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 26th, 2009
On January 23, 2002 Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and eventually killed by terrorists while working in Pakistan. A Mighty Heart is based on this true story. The narrative comes from the book by his wife Marianne Pearl. While this is certainly the tragic tale of a murdered reporter, this film is more the story of Marianne and her struggle to locate Pearl in the 10 days from his capture until a video tape surfaced depicting his beheading.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 26th, 2009
I was very eager to revisit this film now that it has come our way on Blu-ray and high definition. There are issues that I struggled with in my own viewing that I will discuss later in this review. In high definition this film becomes a case study in contradiction. It’s amazing how pretty a thing can be when it really isn’t very pretty at all. We are witness to bad things, but the director chooses to present these things amid a flurry of beauty. It’s a rather striking contrast, made more so on Blu-ray. It actually made for a much more effective experience, even if most of my initial feelings about the film remain unchanged.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 26th, 2009
The WTO or World Trade Organization came into being on the 1st of January in the year of 1995. It was the successor to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and was designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. In their ministerial conference of 1999, they decided to have the conference on US soil. The site chosen was Seattle, Washington. The WTO had drawn criticism from protestors around the globe that proclaimed that the WTO was pursuing commercial interests ahead of human principles.
![Things We Lost in the Fire [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/things-we-lost-in-the-fire-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![A Mighty Heart [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/a-mighty-heart-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Kite Runner [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-kite-runner-blu-ray-large.jpg)
