Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Wrath of Gods

  • Director's Cut, 72 minutes
  • 2 hours of bonus material
  • 1 hour exclusive interview with Gerard Butler
  • Additional and extended scenes & exclusive interviews with the people behind Beowulf & Grendel
  • Subtitles: Spanish, German, French, Icelandic, Polish + Version for the hearing impaired
This touching and humorous movie has earned the raves of critics and won the hearts of audiences everywhere! To spare the feelings of her fatherless boy, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer -- Disney's THE KID) secretly authors letters from his "father" that detail seafaring adventures from around the world. But she cannot maintain this illusion forever. Torn between exposing the truth and protecting her son, Lizzie gets more than anyone bargained for when she hires a handsome stranger (Gerald Butler -- THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE) to play the role of a li! fetime! Winner at both the Heartland Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival, this entertaining motion picture is sure to touch your heart!Driven by intelligent, constantly surprising and moving performances from the film's leads, Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer (Lovely and Amazing) as Lizzie, Scottish mother of Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf and highly intelligent 9-year-old. Constantly uprooting themselves and relocating from town to town, Lizzie and Frankie are on the run from the latter's abusive father, a fact unknown to the boy, who believes his dad is a busy seaman sending letters full of adventure and love. In fact, Lizzie is writing those missives, but she is faced with a challenge when Frankie discovers his father's ship will dock nearby. Lizzie hires a kind, handsome stranger (Gerard Butler) to play Frankie's dad, creating an odd situation in which ever-growing lies become a conduit for love, and Lizzie's repressed desires come ! to the fore with a man posing as her husband. The moral tangle! s are of interest in director Shona Auerbach's charmingly paced, quietly insightful drama-comedy, but so is the glorious feeling of watching these characters come fully alive. --Tom KeoghDriven by intelligent, constantly surprising and moving performances from the film's leads, Dear Frankie stars Emily Mortimer (Lovely and Amazing) as Lizzie, Scottish mother of Frankie (Jack McElhone), a deaf and highly intelligent 9-year-old. Constantly uprooting themselves and relocating from town to town, Lizzie and Frankie are on the run from the latter's abusive father, a fact unknown to the boy, who believes his dad is a busy seaman sending letters full of adventure and love. In fact, Lizzie is writing those missives, but she is faced with a challenge when Frankie discovers his father's ship will dock nearby. Lizzie hires a kind, handsome stranger (Gerard Butler) to play Frankie's dad, creating an odd situation in which ever-growing lies become a conduit for love, and Lizz! ie's repressed desires come to the fore with a man posing as her husband. The moral tangles are of interest in director Shona Auerbach's charmingly paced, quietly insightful drama-comedy, but so is the glorious feeling of watching these characters come fully alive. --Tom KeoghUnited Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Short Film, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: The title character in this bowl of Scottish blarney is a sweet nine-year-old deaf boy (Jack McElhone) who lives a fugitive existence with his beautiful mother (Emily Mortimer) and his chain-smoking grandmother (Mary Riggans). The family is forced to move every few months to avoid being tracked down by Frankie's violent, abusive father. Th! e happiness of the boy, who is too young to remember the his f! ather re volves around bogus letters penned by his mother posing as his devoted but absent dad, supposedly a merchant seaman. When a ship that coincidentally has the same name as the one his mother invented docks, she hires an impersonator (Gerard Butler) to play his seafaring dad. Although sensitively acted, the movie is a fraudulent mawkish yarn riddled with plot holes and improbabilities. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, European Film Awards, Montreal World Film Festival, ...Dear FrankieA GROUP OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDENTS BECOME TRAPPED IN THE PAST WHEN THEY GO THERE TO RETRIEVE THEIR PROFESSOR. THE GROUP MUSTSURVIVE IN 14TH CENTURY FRANCE LONG ENOUGH TO BE RESCUED.Just enough of Michael Crichton's novel survives in Timeline to make it a passable popcorn thriller. It's likely that Crichton fans will lament the shallowness of director Richard Donner's film, and its gee-whiz style of acting lays waste to any scientific credibility that Crichton's scenario might have retained! . Still, the Crichton formula is a sturdy one, following the model of Westworld and Jurassic Park by involving a small band of adventurers in a fantastical realm of danger and death. In this case, a group of archaeologists and combat experts (led by Paul Walker and Frances O'Connor) use a "3-D fax machine" (so much for technobabble!) to time-travel back to France in 1357, in hopes of retrieving Walker's father (Billy Connolly) and returning safely to the present. No such luck! Fending for themselves against marauding hordes of medieval French warriors at war with the invading British, these semi-intrepid travelers find their body count rising, and the deadline for their return home is rapidly approaching. All well and good, so far, and the castles-and-crossbows action reaches a fever pitch, but it's obvious that Donner's too lazy to make the much better film that this could and should have been. Despite its enjoyable highlights, Timeline is perfunctory ! entertainment. --Jeff ShannonWinner of 6 international ! film fes tival awards, this entertaining documentary tells the dramatic story behind the making of the epic movie Beowulf & Grendel, starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgard, Sarah Polley and Ingvar Sigurdsson. When Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson and his cast and crew, including Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, set upon Iceland to film Beowulf & Grendel in 2004, they expected the usual complications involved in making a major motion picture. What they encountered was a ruthless Icelandic winter on a foreboding landscape, financing complications and a bizarre run of bad luck that led some of them to believe they were in an epic battle with the Norse gods themselves. Filmmaker Jon Gustafsson was along for the ride. Hired to play one of Beowulf's warriors, he's one set with his camera as the crew battles hurricane force winds and he's in the backroom as the producers scramble to shore up a collapsing deal, creating an intimate portrait of filmmakers fighting the odds in pursuit of a vision. If you liked "Lost in la Mancha" or "Burden of Dreams" you will probably like this one. DVD Special Features: 2 hours of bonus features, 1 hour exclusive interview with Gerard Butler, exclusive interviews with producers of Beowulf & Grendel, additional & extended scenes, chapter selection, Subtitles: Spanish, German, French, Icelandic, Polish, English, version for the hearing impaired.

Celtic Woman: Songs From The Heart

  • DVD
  • Celtic Woman
  • Format DVD
GRACE OF MY HEART - DVD MovieThe traditions of old-fashioned melodrama are given a hip facelift in this homage to the Brill Building era (the late 1950s to the early 1970s) of pop-music glory, providing a perfect match between writer-director Allison Anders and her excellent cast. Illeana Douglas plays a singer-songwriter (loosely modeled after Brill recording artist Carole King) whose life runs emotionally parallel to popular music trends. John Turturro is a stand-in for "wall of sound" producer Phil Spector and Matt Dillon is a thinly disguised version of maverick Beach Boy Brian Wilson. It's a bit too schematic in the way the central character is always in the right place at the right time, but as a tale of fame and romantic highs and lows in the '50s and '60s the movie is funny, touching, and sincere. It's a lively and loving tribute to timeless! music and the colorful characters who created it. --Jeff Shannon A terrific sampler of greatest hits from the heyday of girl groups and the Brill Building--except that none of the songs are actually from that era. What we have here is an incredible simulation--from Allison Anders' unjustly overlooked 1996 movie about the tempestuous life and career of a Carole King- like singer-songwriter (the magnificent Illeana Douglas) who spends years writing for others before finding her own voice. But instead of just licensing the old Shirelles' recordings of Goffin-King hits, the filmmakers came up with the brilliant idea of doing original songs by combining the sensibilities of contemporary artists and their songwriting forebears. So, for example, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach teamed up to write and perform the power- ballad "God Give Me Strength" (although I wish they'd also included Douglas's even more moving version from the picture); Leslie Gore te! ams with Larry Klein and David Baerwald for "My Secret Love" ! (perform ed by Miss Lily Banquette of Combustible Edison); Gerry and Louise Goffin team with Baerwald for "Between Two Worlds" (performed by Sean Colvin); J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. writes and sings some Brian Wilson/Beach Boys-type stuff ("Take a Run at the Sun," "Don't You Think It's Time"), and so on. Buy the record; see the movie. You won't be disappointed. --Jim EmersonThe traditions of old-fashioned melodrama are given a hip facelift in this homage to the Brill Building era (the late 1950s to the early 1970s) of pop-music glory, providing a perfect match between writer-director Allison Anders and her excellent cast. Illeana Douglas plays a singer-songwriter (loosely modeled after Brill recording artist Carole King) whose life runs emotionally parallel to popular music trends. John Turturro is a stand-in for "wall of sound" producer Phil Spector and Matt Dillon is a thinly disguised version of maverick Beach Boy Brian Wilson. It's a bit too schematic in the way the! central character is always in the right place at the right time, but as a tale of fame and romantic highs and lows in the '50s and '60s the movie is funny, touching, and sincere. It's a lively and loving tribute to timeless music and the colorful characters who created it. --Jeff Shannon Tracks: God Give Me the Strength-Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello, Love Doesn't Ever Fail Us-Williams Brothers, Take a Run at the Sun-J Mascis, I Do-For Real, Between Two Worlds-Shawn Colvin, My Secret Love-Lily Banquette, Man From Mars-Kristen Vigard, Born to Love that Boy-For Real, Truth is You Lied-Jill Sobule, Unwanted Number-For Real, Groovin on You-Juneo, In Another World-Portrait, Don't You Think It's Time-J Mascis, Absence Makes the Heart-Tiffany Anders & Boyd Rice, A Boat on the Sea-Kristen VigardTrack Listing:
1. The Call
2. Fields of Gold
3. When You Believe
4. The Coast of Galiçia
5. The New Ground - Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
6. Non ! C’è Piú
7. True Colours
9. Galway Bay
10! . Goodni ght My Angel
11. O, America!
12. Níl Sé’n Lá
13. The Last Rose Fantasia
14. The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress
15. My Lagan Love
16. Amazing Grace
17. Pie Jesu
18. Slumber My Darling / The Mason’s Apron
19. Danny Boy
20. You Raise Me Up
21. Finale / Mo Ghile Mear

Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780061336218
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Gone Baby Gone is Ben Affleck s directorial debut, adapted by Affleck from the novel by Dennis Lehane "Mystic River".
It is an intense look inside an ongoing investigation about the mysterious disappearance of a little girl. As two young private detectives (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) hired to take the case get closer to finding her, they discover that nothing is as it seems and more dangerous than they ever thought possible. Also starring Academy Award® winners Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) and Ed Harris (Pollack).For his initial offering as director, Ben Affleck returns to the site of his first Oscar: South Boston. (He and Matt Damon shared the award for Good Will Hunting! .) Hot on the heels of his moving turn in Hollywoodland, Affleck's Dennis Lehane adaptation marks one of the more seamless actor-to-filmmaker transitions in recent years. Ostensibly, a procedural about the search for a missing child, class and corruption emerge as his primary concerns. First off, there's low-rent private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, equally adept in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Then there's the girl's drug mule mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She and Patrick grew up in Dorchester, but he took a different path, setting up an agency with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Helene's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), hires the duo to augment the investigation, and they team up with Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Bressant (Madigan's husband, Ed Harris). The authorities don't appreciate the interference, but Patrick knows how to get the local populace talking, an! d he soon finds there's more to the story than anyone could po! ssibly i magine. Hard-hitting, but never soft-headed, the evocative end result proves Affleck has a flair for this directing thing and that his little brother can carry a major motion picture with aplomb. Gone Baby Gone belongs on the list of great Boston crime dramas, along with The Departed and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s take on Lehane. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

The tough neighborhood of Dorchester is no place for the innocent or the weak. Its territory is defined by hard heads and even harder luck; its streets are littered with the detritus of broken families, hearts, dreams. Now, one of its youngest is missing. Private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don’t want the case. But after pleas from the child’s aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everythingâ€"their relationship, their sanity, and even their livesâ€"to find a little girl lost.

Cheese Olamon, "a six-foot-two, four-hundred-and-thirty-pound ye! llow-haired Scandinavian who'd somehow arrived at the misconception he was black," is telling his old grammar school friends Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro why they have to convince another mutual chum, the gun dealer Bubba Rugowski, that Cheese didn't try to have him killed. "You let Bubba know I'm clean when it comes to what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone." Of all the chilling, completely credible scenes of sadness, destruction, and betrayal in Dennis Lehane's fourth and very possibly best book about Kenzie and Gennaro, this moment stands out because it captures in a few pages the essence of Lehane's success.

Private detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, who live in the same working-class Dorchester neighborhood of Boston where they grew up, have gone to visit drug dealer Cheese in prison because they think he's involved in the kidnapping of 4-year-old Amanda McCready! . Without sentimentalizing the grotesque figure of Cheese, Le! hane tel ls us enough about his past to make us understand why he and the two detectives might share enough trust to possibly save a child's life when all the best efforts of traditional law enforcement have failed. By putting Kenzie and Gennaro just to one side of the law (but not totally outside; they have several cop friends, a very important part of the story), Lehane adds depth and edge to traditional genre relationships. The lifelong love affair between Kenzie and Gennaro--interrupted by her marriage to his best friend--is another perfectly controlled element that grows and changes as we watch. Surrounded by dead, abused, and missing children, Kenzie mourns and rages while Gennaro longs for one of her own. So the choices made by both of them in the final pages of this absolutely gripping story have the inevitability of life and the dazzling beauty of art.

Other Kenzie/Gennaro books available in paperback: Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the! War, Sacred. --Dick Adler

Blue Tooth Virgin

  • BLUE TOOTH VIRGIN, THE (DVD MOVIE)
When David, a magazine editor, gives his best friend’s latest screenplay a negative review, he hilariously learns that sometimes the truth isn’t always the best policy. Starring Bryce Johnson, Amber Benson, Karen Black and Roma MaffiaA writer asks a writer friend for his honest, truthful, no-holds-barred opinion on a newly-completely screenplay. This can only end badly. The Bluetooth Virgin is the concentrated tale of this dire situation, rolled out in a series of discrete scenes that (appropriately enough for a movie about writing) highlight the word above all else. Sam (Austin Peck) is the author looking for feedback, and David (Bryce Johnson) is his pal, a magazine editor; the script in question has the frankly terrible title of The Bluetooth Virgin. One high point comes early, on the golf course, as David's initial encouraging reactions to the piece ! gradually give way to admitting that, well, the script had a lot of problems. Primarily a batch of two-person dialogues, the movie also gets boosts from Lauren Stamile and a formidable Karen Black. Writer-director Russell Brown arranges the movie around the Mamet-esque exchanges of his characters, who are generally not really wanting the thing they say they're wanting. This sort of assertively "written" dialogue can be exciting to listen to, especially in an age that values a lax naturalism in movie dialogue, and Brown has a fine ear for self-delusion. The danger in such an approach, and Brown doesn't elude it, is that such a movie can feel like a self-contained system, without room for breath or uncertainty. But it's an undeniably clever system. --Robert Horton

Frozen

  • FROZEN (DVD MOVIE)
A typical day on the slopes turns into a chilling nightmare for three snowboarders when they get stranded on the chairlift before their last run. As the ski patrol switches off the night lights, they realize with growing panic that they’ve been left behind, dangling high off the ground with no way down.
Snow-sport enthusiasts, take note: Adam Green's unsettling thriller Frozen suggests that abiding by the rules and regulations of your local ski resort might not only be polite, but essential to your health. Green's hapless heroes--nice guy Dan (Kevin Zegers, Transamerica), his best pal Lynch (Shawn Ashmore, the X-Men franchise), and Dan's new girlfriend Parker (newcomer Emma Bell)--decided to cut a few corners in pursuit of more time on the slopes. Miscommunication with the staff results in the trio getting stuck on a lift some 60 feet in the a! ir just moments before the resort closes for a three-day weekend. The hope for rescue soon dwindles, and the trio faces the decision to either endure the elements or somehow make their way to the ground without injury. All of the gruesome possibilities inherent to the situation--from frostbite and broken limbs to a pack of voracious wolves--are explored in unpleasant detail, but what sets Frozen apart from a simple splatterfest is the quality of the performances, especially Bell, who rises above her character's initial superficiality to present a wholly sympathetic character. Fans of Green's first film, the abysmal slasher tribute Hatchet, might find the pacing glacial (ahem), but those who admired his sophomore effort, the psychological thriller Spiral, will appreciate his attention to pacing and suspense, which puts Frozen on par with the very similar Open Water. The DVD includes commentary by Green and his stars, along with deleted scen! es and a wealth of behind-the-scenes featurettes focusing on c! onceptio n of the project, as well as the crew's struggles with the genuinely contentious weather at the Utah filming location. --Paul Gaita

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