Topic: blu-ray

It’s a TV-on-DVD summer spectacular!

Featuring five shows worth the purchase ... and two that aren't.

Television series
Rod Lott
I don’t watch a ton of TV shows while they’re airing. With a few exceptions, I wait for the DVD and/or Blu-ray sets so I can go on marathons — the only kind of marathons in which I’ll ever participate. Here are capsule reviews of seven such recent tubular trips.

Friday, August 3, 2012

The Raid: Redemption

If there’s a better action film this year, ‘The Raid’ will kick its ass into nonexistence.

Action
Rod Lott
Fans of pure action cinema are apt to grow delirious with glee over The Raid: Redemption, an Indonesian crime thriller that relies so much upon the universal language of violence, one could enjoy it without subtitles.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live

Grab your things / I’ve come to take you home.

Documentary
Rod Lott
I'd say Peter Gabriel has aged wonderfully, judging from the concert film Secret World, but the performance is nearly two decades old, from 1993. Although far removed from his heyday as an MTV idol — the venue looks as if its audience were lifted from a BMW dealership super-sale — he still sounded great.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Cool Breeze

‘Shaft,’ it is not.

Action
Rod Lott
MGM's marketing campaign for 1972's Cool Breeze played up — if not centered around — a connection to Shaft. That connection? Both were blaxploitation films released by MGM. I guess audiences thought that wasn't enough of a lure, because Breeze is an obscure entry in the genre, just now seeing the light of DVD, courtesy of the Warner Archive archivists.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Kill List

Killing, chilling.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Kill List is not your ordinary, average hit-man thriller — it’s an excellent one. The UK film skirts into areas of horror before plunging in at the end, but maintaining an uncompromising level of excellence throughout. It's a strong candidate for that year-end best list. That said, its subject matter will prove to be too much for most to take.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

You’re going to need a bigger boat ... again!

Six bona fide movie classics are headed back to Cinemark Tinseltown.

One of my 10 favorite movies of all time, space and dimension, Jaws, is not only debuting on Blu-ray on Tuesday, but soon will re-surface on the big screen at Cinemark Tinseltown, 6001 Martin Luther King.

The supreme shark flick to end all shark flicks kicks off the Cinemark Fall Classic Series, which features digitally restored prints of half a dozen classic films, Oscar winners all. Each will play for one Thursday only, with showings at 2 and 7 p.m. Here’s the schedule:

• Jaws (1975), Aug. 23
• High Noon (1952), Aug. 30
• Doctor Zhivago (1965), Sept. 6
• Chinatown (1974), Sept. 13
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Sept. 20
• The African Queen (1951), Sept. 27

Tickets are just $4-$6, and on sale now at cinemark.com. —Rod Lott

by Rod Lott 08.10.2012 9 months ago

at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Hunger Games

Not bad — just bland.

Sci-Fi
Rod Lott
My opinion means absolutely squat on The Hunger Games, a massive hit on a global scale. Even those who didn't see it in theaters will want to out of curiosity's sake, like I did, just to see what all the fuss is about. I completely understand.

Monday, August 13, 2012

ParaNorman

Children's
None
If you haven’t seen 2009’s Coraline, you might be more inclined to surrender yourself to the macabre charm of ParaNorman. Both films, works of stop-motion animation by the Oregon-based Laika company, share much in common: an outcast protagonist, ineffectual grown-ups, visually stunning riffs on the supernatural.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Ruby Sparks

In this appealing indie rom-com, a novelist’s girl of his dreams springs from the page to a real person.

Comedy
Rod Lott
In Ruby Sparks, wunderkind author Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood) has a few problems — one being that he is dateless, another that his male dog pees like a girl. More pressing is that he lacks the inspiration to follow up the Great American Novel that landed the high-school dropout on The New York Times best-seller list when he was all of 19.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

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