Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 4th, 2010
Tell Them Anything You Want displays the nuances of a genius. Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs chronicle the successes and troubles of a pillar in children’s literature. Maurice Sendak became massively famous with the success of his book Where the Wild Things Are. In his career he has written over 100 children’s books and his work has been widely accepted as “brilliant, enchanting and masterful”. The film is full of intimacy; Jonze and Bangs display their obvious affection and interest in Maurice Sendak with this portrait.
The troublesome part of this documentary is Sendak’s unhealthy obsession with death. The film spends a considerable amount of time on the subject with it finally culminating with Jonze stopping the interview to give Maurice a break from the questions. Sendak elaborates on a problem with a permanent dissatisfaction with his career and how it sours his personal life. All of this comes from his personal difficulty with the enormity of the success of Wild Things. It is refreshing to see a portrait of an artist that is uncompromising with how the person is represented. All of Sendak’s work is cherished and yet there is an un-quenchable thirst that exists within him. Jonze and Bangs examine this dissatisfaction in an entirely diplomatic fashion by chronicling his personality as well as his work.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 4th, 2010
Infinity Entertainment's latest themed grouping of public domain movies deserves some props for originality: eight features that were up for Best Picture during the first decade of the Oscars. Not a single one actually won the prize, but as we all know, that doesn't mean they weren't worthy of doing so.
In chronological order, then, here are the nominees:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 2nd, 2010
The Prisoner was a television show that ran in the UK from September of 1967 to February of 1968. It starred Patrick McGoohan as the Prisoner who was trying to understand what the Village was and how to escape from it. Enter 2009; we have a remake and this time we have Jim Caviezel in the familiar role. However, this time things go just a little bit differently.
Michael (played by Jim Caviezel) just resigned from the corporation Summakor. However, the events that follow are unclear until he awakes in a desert surrounded by nothing but sand. He struggles to get to his feet and walks for a bit until he sees an old man (played by John Whiteley) running. The man is being pursued by armed guards who shoot at him until it appears he is gunned down.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 2nd, 2010
"Boggis, and Bunce and Bean. One fat, one short, and one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were none the less equally mean."
Roald Dahl was one of the more eccentric writers to come upon the scene. While he often wrote for children, his work is most decidedly dark and often quite sinister. He's most known for such tales as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. His work has not been adapted to film as often as you might suspect given his popularity. The most famous was certainly Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, which was far brighter and more cheerful than the original work. It took Tim Burton and his trademark brand of darkness to create the story Dahl intended in a more recent film which used the correct title of the work. This is not the first stop motion film to be adapted from his stories. Quite a few years ago we were given James And The Giant Peach, which enjoyed little box office acclaim. Wes Anderson is obviously a Dahl fan and immersed himself in the author's world as he prepared his screenplay for Fantastic Mr. Fox. The effort shows in the way Anderson captures Dahl’s pointed wit and social sarcasm. I think that if you're looking for something Dahl himself might have created, this is your movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 2nd, 2010
"The story of a man in a mountain climbing accident who cut his own friends off the rope to save himself. Convicted of second degree manslaughter, that's compelling stuff."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 2nd, 2010
"In December 2005 a tragic accident began a series of extraordinary events that thrust a grieving family and the small Victorian town of Ararat into the media spotlight. This film is a record of those events."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2010
"The year is 208 AD. After 30 years of civil war, a deathly calm has fallen over northern China. One by one the rebel warlords have met their end under the sword of Prime Minister Cao Cao. Now even the Emperor bows before his power. Yet, from the south a challenge is heard. Two leaders rise against Cao Cao's tyranny. The aging Liu Bei and the inexperienced Sun Quam. So Cao Cao petitions the Emperor to brand these men as traitors and declare a new war against the peaceful southlands."
And so the stage is set for John Woo's enormous epic Red Cliff. The scale of this film is simply one that must been experienced to quite understand. It has the grandeur of any of the largest films in Hollywood's history. But this film is not a product of Hollywood. Woo filmed his massive triumph in his native China. You won't find a bigger story told with more elaborate sets or with such a legion of actors, required to bring these historic battles to life. Gladiator. Kingdom Of Heaven. The Ten Commandments. Red Cliff deserves to stand with the best of them, and it will.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2010
"More of this is true than you would believe."
What was intended as a somewhat thought-provoking quirky comedy looks a lot like something you would expect to see on a late night rerun of The X-Files. All of the subject matter has been covered there, just not quite in this way. It all started with a non-fiction book written by Jon Ronson. He claimed to have researched various government studies in human behavior that entered into the world of the paranormal. It was part of an ideology of waging non-lethal war. It was a strange combination of 1980's new age mysticism and actual studies that showed that soldiers in World War II were, in fact, quite reluctant to kill or even harm the enemy. The study claimed that almost 80% of the soldiers deliberately looked for excuses not to fire or merely aimed inaccurately to avoid killing. The study went further and claimed that of the minority that did shoot with deadly results, most of them suffered terrible guilt over the experience, often making them unable to remain effective soldiers. The study regards the remainder of the study group, the ones who did fire accurately and did not suffer guilt as psychopaths. In short, the book gathered a lot of speculative ideas and put them into a rather oddball collection of "facts".
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2010
"Maybe I'm not being clear enough. Maybe I need to be honest with you and tell you what I want. I want your soul to open up for me."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2010
An ancient facility beneath Antarctica becomes the launching platform to the lost city of Atlantis. Atlantis is buried beneath an ocean in another galaxy and can only be reached with an additional symbol on the Stargate. Because of power limitations this trip, at least for the time being, is a one-way adventure. A crew of scientists and military officers from many countries assemble to explore the Pegasus Galaxy from the Atlantis gate. Led by scientist Dr. Weir (Higginson) and Maj. John Sheppard (Flanigan) they take over the Atlantian command center and begin to explore. In their initial investigations they accidentally awaken the area’s top bad guys, The Wraith. These vampire-like beings suck the life-force out of humans.
When Stargate SG-1 was about to enter its ninth year, there was speculation that after season 8 the series would bow out gracefully with the anticipated exit of Richard Dean Anderson. With that plan in mind, the folks at Stargate Command decided it was time to spin off the franchise, and so was born Atlantis. Stargate Atlantis boasts pretty much the same production team as SG-1. The quality of the production and tight storytelling have translated well to this sister series. Stargate Atlantis took a little getting used to. I wasn’t sure the characters had enough chemistry or were even dynamic enough to carry the high expectations for a Stargate series. Those concerns eventually evaporated by the time Atlantis began to live without the SG-1 companion series. These characters really took off, and they’ve developed into nearly as strong a group as SG-1 ever was.
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