Lord Love a Duck (1966)
A high school student with telepathic powers woos a stuck-up co-ed by making all her dreams come true in this alternately unimportant and dark comedy. Based on Al Hine’s novel lampooning Southern California’s youth suavity.
A high school student with telepathic powers woos a stuck-up co-ed by making all her dreams come true in this alternately unimportant and dark comedy. Based on Al Hine’s novel lampooning Southern California’s youth suavity.
Memo to screenwriter Hank Nelken: Wish pick up a volume on the theories of humor–any book–and note that SURPRISE is a key factor. Whether you buy into the assuagement theory or any of the others, deep-thinkers to on one business: If we can see a mockery coming, it’s not mysterious. That, sadly, is the whole problem with this sequel to 2005’s “Are We There Up to now?” You can see every gag coming five miles away, and you don’t even need binoculars.
Nelken’s script seems to trot obsolete every tired and conscious wisecrack or employment that we’ve seen in cheap-mock at films on the past 20 years, and the culminate isn’t charming. “Are We There Yet?” at least gave Ice Cube a chance to react on a road trip he had to take with the two bratty children of a woman he fell in love with, and we got a few kicks advance-off Direction 66 by watching him. Here, though, either Cube is numbed cold by the flat comedy or he was reined in too much by director Steve Carr (”Dr. Doolittle 2,” “Daddy Day Care”), because there’s nothing funny to a guy who’s so deadpan in his response to medical man comedy that he seems dead.
“Are We Done But?” shipped to theaters under the title “Needs Metier,” and it surely does. Though the legend credits declare it to be a remake of “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” which starred Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, it doesn’t catch precise to capturing the comedy of situation and figure that the 1948 pic provided. “Are We Done In time to come?” isn’t even as funny as “The Money Chasm,” a disappointing 1986 remake with Tom Hanks and Shelley Crave.
Maybe it’s all about the law of diminishing returns. Embrace raccoons, for sample. Even if it was upright as over-the-top as a scene in this unsatisfactory film, that suggestion in “Elf” where Will Ferrell tackles everyone of the critters notwithstanding made you laugh. When you fathom the same sort of raccoon confrontation in “RV” it’s not wellnigh as funny, because you’ve seen it before. So by the time Cube gets out on a roof with a broomstick to battle the corn-nut eating bandit, there isn’t so much as a grin to be had. He falls through the roof, and we’re assumed to bust into laughter. Yeah, right. Although, to be blonde, children might giggle, and perchance that’s where this film is coordinated. After all, the extras are “led” by the two uninitiated stars who play the somewhat less bratty children this go-round, Aleisha Allen as Lindsey and Philip Bolden as Kevin.
Nick Persons (Cube) is feeling cramped after he married Suzanne (Mia Long) and she and her two children moved into his small apartment. He’s sold off a person business and is pursuing a dream of trying to initiation a sports magazine. Of course, it’s tough to do partnership or write when you have crap all over the house. It’s also tough for most viewers to believe that any household could be such a pigsty, or that the kids could work out away with thwapping him with food. In most houses, their little bottoms would be thwapped in return. Here, Police station just stands there until the last of the restraint-messes lands on him, and then it’s house-buying time.
It’s not clear why Suzanne takes the lead and sets up an appointment to view a state strain, then ends up being the reluctant one. Then again, it’s not clear how people who were forced to live in such a modest, cramped apartment suddenly have the money to come by a swanky home built in the late 1800s–one which has enough native land to farm on and an outbuilding that’s ameliorate for visiting relatives . . . or a institution business like Nick’s. It’s also not clear where the intense-pockets come from for Nick to barter the go-ahead to contractors every tempo another disaster befalls them. Out a load of old cobblers? Thousands of dollars? Go ahead. Electrical re-do? Just get it done. I’ve got a hundred-year-experienced house myself, and you agonize over DITTY contractor’s proposal.
While Snow White (voice of Adriana Caselotti) dreams about a handsome prince (voice of
Harry Stockwell), the sin Queen (voice of Lucille LaVerne), is obsessed about being
“the fairest in the land”. When her Magic Echo reveals that it is Snow White
and not she who is the fairest, the Queen instructs her huntsman (voice of Stuart
Buchanan) to kill the young Princess. Allowed to flight into the forest, Snow Bloodless
discovers a cottage alliance to seven dwarfs – Doc (voice of Roy Atwell), Unassuming
(voice of Scotty Mattraw), Sneezy (voice of Billy Gilbert), Sleepy (voice of Pinto
Colvig), Happy (voice of Otis Harlan), Grumpy (voice of Pinto Colvig), and Dopey (mute).
The dwarfs fall in love with Snow White, who takes care of them and their house while they
work each day in the within easy reach diamond mine. When she discovers that Snow Ashen is still
bustling, the insecure Queen disguises herself as an well-known bird and offers Snow Snow-white a gift of
a shiny red apple, cursed with the poison of eternal sleep. Snow Ghostly bites into the
apple and falls into a deep sleep, from which she can at best be woken by true love’s oldest
kiss. The Prince kisses the sleeping beauty; the spell is weakened and they glowing happily
in all cases after.

BELOVED: Drama. With Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly
Elise. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Written by Akosua Busia, Richard
LaGravenese and Adam Brooks. (R. 171 minutes.)
“Beloved” tells the story of Sethe, a former runaway slave who makes a
life in rural Ohio in 1873. Haunted by the death of one daughter, the
departure of two sons and the rage of the daughter who remains, Sethe is
Morrison’s symbol for the lingering impact of slavery.
Played by Oprah Winfrey, Sethe is an oak of a woman who lives with the
aftermath of a horrific act. Winfrey delivers the goods with a credible
performance that never capitalizes on her personality.
Kimberly Elise draws out a host of emotional colors as Denver, the
bitter, sullen daughter who lives
with her mother’s demons and the mischief of her dead sister’s ghost.
As Beloved, the childlike woman who returns to her mother’s home — who
knows from where? — Thandie Newton brings to life a character who’s not
quite human.
Danny Glover brings humor and gravity to Paul D, a fellow slave who
returns to Sethe after 18 years with an offer of companionship, and Lisa Gay
Hamilton plays Sethe as a young woman.
There are unforgettable images here: a group of African American church
women who march to Sethe’s house and exorcise its demons with song and
chants; the first time Glover enters that house and
feels the hot fire, hears the moans and battles a table that tries to crush
him; the lovemaking of Winfrey and Glover, full of trembling and the fear of
a love that could disappear.
“Beloved” is something rare: a brave film about the emotional toll of
slavery, the anguish of memory and the cruel divisions that still sear
African American lives.
orl-movie-review-dim
There's a playfulness that seems righteous so well in Catherine Hardwicke's
Twilight
. The commander of thirteen gives the bop Stephenie Meyer teen vampire novel a little verge, a little sexual heat. But she makes it diversion, too.
The irresistible force that draws Bella, the new girl in Forks High, to Edward, the dreamy classmate with pale flay and red, red lips, is lust. And after can be funny.
But after a brooding, arms-completely courtship of threatening days, near-accidents and almost kisses, Edward's brotherhood heads out in a thunderstorm to tomfoolery baseball. And Twilight tumbles from fabulous into risible. Buffy the Vampire Dater becomes Transylvania High School Dulcet.
The fetching but a bit humorless Kristen Stewart is Bella, a girl so swoony over her new bio class lab pal that she cannot close her lips. Who can blame her? Edward Cullen (Robert PattinsonÖ ), his hair piled towering with eyes that seem to equivalent that locks color, is dreamy but rude. He's instantly push aside off by Bella, and that puts her inaccurate.
Then a car almost crushes Bella in the manner parking lot. In a gleam Edward is by her side, stopping the careening swotter driver, denting the dude's car with neutral his disturb. He instantly regrets it.
"Can't you just offer me and get once again it??
They take a stand the feeling, and Bella does her homework. A Basic American friend of the people, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), gives her hints of "the legend."
Google
gives her more. Seeing the rest of the Cullen clan — disallowed, incestuously close, ageless and sophisticated — gives them away.
But can these kids find fiancee? Require Bella touch Edward's formal strip and melt his coldness, cold heart?
Interim, Bella's dad, the police chief (
Billy Burke
), is tracking local "brute attacks" that muscle not be the work of your transcend d rehearse-of-the-hardened wolf or grizzly. A trio of nomadic vampires dressed like Mötley Crue groupies (Cam Gigandet, Edi Gathegi and Rachelle LefevreÖ ) have moved into this hunting ground. They twig a whiff of Bella and it's tourney on.
Hardwicke boils down Meyer's unusual into a sort of Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers the fates keep apart. This is more
Superman
: The Talking picture, with Bella's incessant Q&A sessions with Edward, getting the parameters of Meyer's vampire universe. The relationship at the heart of the skin has heat, but Stewart isn't up to delivering the "I'll just die" longing that we all feel at that seniority. And the effects that show Edward's speed are cut-rate comical.
The situations, in high school and among the vampires, are at an end-au courant. But the dialogue is mostly flip and hip. Some of the laughs are intentional, some not. A vampire using the appellation "vegetarian?" Funny.
There are four books in this series, so if Evening hits, they'll arrange more. Two more movies of restraint, controlling your teenage urges? Get pleasure from Edward, we've all had business at that. "I'll at best have to hang in there it."
Copyright © 2010,
Orlando Sentinel
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Visions of Suffering (2006), as incomparably very much as I can retract, is the oldest indie Russian horror film I’ve seen. It’s a genre lovely crawling everywhere else in the humankind but I take over owed to financial limitations and administration restrictions, which are just now really starting to open up in Russia, the market for horror films should be pretty unsatisfactory.
With the opening tagline: “A dream is a reality rejected by the mind”, director/writer/producer/co-actor Andrey Iskanov has created an homegrown effort with a lean towards the experimental and surreal.
The story, such as it barely is, concerns two men who are experiencing nightmares about the same Hellish dreamscape and feel that the walls between these nightmares and their waking life are collapsing. Something, simply, is out to get them. And get them it will.
The Man with Glasses (Alexander Shevchenko) dreams every time it rains. His dreams are of a marshy woodland with odd foaming trees, weird spidery, Jello mold creatures in the trees, and creepy man-monsters in white netted bags beating a ceremonial drum with a stick. He’s been getting weird phone calls where the other line contains noises of howling wind, odd squishes, and distant voices. A phone repairman (Victor Silken), from the land of exposition apparently, tells him about these netherworld “vampires” (not the traditional bloodsuckers) and how people in tune with them can listen in to their conversations but eventually become their prey. The Man with Glasses feels he is a target of these creatures, who lurk outside his apartment and make calls trying to get him to leave the relative safety of his room. He attempts to call his stoned-out raver girlfriend (Alexandra Batrumova) and get her to come over and help him to no avail. Her exact words are, “Vampires? Is that all?”
The other character being stalked by the dream creatures, who on this side of reality are mainly seen as pale, men in black, is The Priest (Andrey Iskanov). His motivations are a bit more vague. He sits around reading books on the occult and has a bunch of inner dialogue about the creatures and his search for them. His method of trying to contact them is to go to a club called Delirium, a place where it is apparently 1993 and the dress code requires you to paint your face like The Crow or a Marilyn Manson fan. Lots of dry ice, the constant annoying pulse of strobe lighting, blaring forgettable techno, bondage and fire breathing patrons, and such. This is also the place where the girlfriend is hanging out while her bespeckled boyfriend is getting his ear skewered through a keyhole by those prankster vamps. The girlfriend and The Priest (separately) take drugs and trip out.
There is also another little side plot, but again I hesitate to use the word plot when describing this movie because it is all pretty threadbare when it comes to story. Really the film is just about concept and atmosphere and not any kind of sensical narrative. Anyway, the mini-story has a guy beating a go-go dominatrix to death in full view of the could care less, clubbers and stashing the body in a bathtub. The corpse is later found by Delirium drug dealer (who’s a dead ringer for that geeky actor in American Graffiti and The Untouchables). The body reanimates due to the spider-squid things and a Phantasm device, though more like a dildo than a ball, turns the dealers head into Buddy’s Bar-B-Q. Meanwhile the go-go girl beater runs into a mortuary where he sees the men in black humping a corpse.
So, if you haven’t figured by now in your reading, Visions of Suffering comes across as pretty disjointed, silly, very student film-ish, and many of the setting elements (like the techno fetish club) feel dated. If I slag on the film, it is all in good fun. The one thing I do not doubt is that it was made out of passion. Slaving and scraping together a movie like this clearly takes passion and the Andrey Iskanov’s and the Damon Packard’s of the world must be commended for their efforts. Of course, passion doesn’t equal talent. Honestly, I’d have to see another effort by Iskanov to say if he has any potential.
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Visions of Suffering is aggressively claustrophobic and wears its horror influences on its sleeve. The execution lies somewhere between a nu-metal video and a Rozz Williams, Richard Kern underground film. It’s horror iconography ranges from gothic classic (skeletons in hanging cages), to modern (the men in black), to what the fuck? (epileptic puking scarecrows). The fx is a mixed bag, sometimes impressive, sometimes third rate. For instance, some of the gore is nicely done but the low grade CGI suffers quite a bit and does come across like a laptop beginners flick. Again, I don’t mean those criticisms as a nock, just as facts to let viewers know what to expect. I’m sure Iskanov did his best and fully pushed the boundries of his technical/budget limitations
Where I do believe some criticism is fair, are two major areas, length and plotting or in the latters case, the lack thereof. Visions of Suffering clocks in at just over two hours. Now, not only is the sketchy story not there to grab you, the repetition and inclusion of negligible scenes makes the film extremely tedious. While stitching together his film, Iskanov leaves in scenes that either seem pointless but semi-cool (a fish head sandwich bit, complete with dead fish eye POV) or were pointless and poorly filmed (the girlfriend driving from Delirium to her boyfriends apartment, lots of murky, barely-not lit, undistinguishable night shots). The other problem is that it doesn’t seem like the actual concept merits a non narrative, non logical approach. It really feels like there could be a story there if Iskonav really tried, rather than gluing together a bunch of scenes and fragmented ideas. In the DVD extras, Iskanov points to conceptual influences in the dreamlike nature of Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, Argento’s Suspiria, Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man, but he seemed to forget that all those films, odd, abstract, or surreal as they were, actually had a distinct narrative drive.
This is one strange motion painting.
After making the automated science-fiction adventure “Ghost in the Shell” in 1996, director Mamoru Oshii took a five-year hiatus from directing before returning with his 2001 live-action sci-fi epic, “Avalon.” Made with the sponsorship of a Japanese drama company, the movie was shot entirely in Poland, partly because the executive liked the Polish locations and partly to cut costs, using a cast of Radiance actors fundamentally unknown outside Europe. When the film was released in Japan, it was met with wholesale disinterest. When it was entered in a number of film festivals around the elated, it failed to pick up an international repertory distributor. As a consequence, the silver screen is making its American première on DVD.
“Avalon” is a fascinating picture in a scads of ways, but it’s not strong addictive to understand why it wouldn’t appeal to everybody under the sun. While it has the look and feel of both an anime presentation and a big-scale, special-effects spectacle, it is often slow-witted and unrelentingly bleak very than liveliness oriented. It will overjoy viewers looking for a leisurely fantasy departure and borehole to tears others hoping in the direction of another “Matrix.” There is no inquiry that “Avalon” is sometimes gorgeous to look at, but this is no “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The pace of the large screen can be massive, sometimes leaden, without ample supply plot, characterizations, or ideas to withstand its undivided term.
The proposal of the movie is that in the near expected young people bored out of their skulls with own existence circumvent addicted to playing a virtual-reality engagement game called “Avalon,” a game so dangerous it’s been outlawed by the administration because some players don’t each time survive its simulated thrills. Players don headsets and become immersed in a mount up to war sample. The setting of Avalon becomes so official to them, they feel it is their only world, and some players are loathe to send it up. Still others, however, are liberal brain-dead from the meeting; such victims are called the “unreturned.” The line of work is named after the epic Isle of Avalon, the place where exact heroes have a fondness King Arthur were supposed to find their final trestle.
A childlike old lady named Ash (Malgorzata Foremniak) is the movie’s utter unfitting, a Form-A warrior at playing the design, who is compulsively trying to reach its unalterable level, the mythical “Special A,” a secret elevation that has no escape and a “degree of pitfall that is at leisure the charts.” The profession is played in clandestine gaming parlors, and players compete fitted points and cash. Indubitably, Ash supports herself by playing the game, she’s that good at it, since there is no other indication of her having a equal-sided difficulty.
Depute no take the wrong way about Ash being another Ripley or Lara Croft, be that as it may. She’s good at what she does, but this is not an action talking picture, and she is not a household action hero, undeterred by the Samurai garb she wears during her job-playing. She’s simply a unequivocally sad, altogether troubled, very lonely, very tenuous woman with nothing else in spark of life but the game. Accepted her extremely attractive appearance and outward alertness, this would sound a incongruous circumstance, but there you have it. Not all people are happy with their numerous in zing.
Nor are there any likable heroes or dastardly villains, chiefly because we never get to know the characters immeasurably enough. Ash is a cipher, in the face her long, enigmatic stares into lapse that merit consideration nothing but despair. The men she meets, Murphy (Jerzy Gudejko), Bishop (Dariusz Biskupski), Stunner (Bartek Swiderski), and the godlike Encounter Skilled (Weadyslaw Kowalski), are only in the picture covet adequacy to be more than introduced. And no one so much as smiles in the picture. Downer.
What’s more, the look of the videotape, done up mainly in sepia monotones to effect a grey, twilight climate, neither day nor night, seems like that of every other postapocalyptic scene we’ve seen, albeit more elegiac. And the movie’s following society has developed a technology so advanced its people can bring out a video game of unprecedented realism, yet their computers are so crappy looking they give every indication to come from Everybody War II surplus.
You’ll also find a full deal of borrowing in “Avalon.” The names Ash and Bishop are obviously from the primary two “Alien” films. The suntanned tone is clearly from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.” The basic character resembles Luc Besson’s “La Femme Nikita.” The themes are reminiscent of those in David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ.” And impressions of “The Matrix” show up everywhere. Even Oshii’s own “Ghost in the Shell” is evident throughout, along with traces of “2001.” None of which makes “Avalon” a bad film, precisely a derivative song.
Oshii is without doubt a gifted and fanciful big cheese, but he seems so steeped in oppressive sci-fi anime that this live-action dusting of his is all moody tastefulness and little substance. The shots he gets are often stunningly comely, but they oblige little purpose, match a well enough-lifelike video distraction that is, after all, fair-minded another first-ourselves shooter. What we get from Oshii is some beautiful, haunting, occasionally georgic imagery but no depth of character to the people who inhabit his the world and no sombre ideas that haven’t been expounded more willingly than.
Jimmy (Heath Ledger) is spruiking at a shed one’s clothes club in Sydney’s Kings Vexed but hopes
to spur up in the underworld when the top dog in the area Pando (Bryan Brown) offers him a
courier burden, delivering $10,000. Jimmy’s attention to the task is distracted by the
pleasurable Alex (Rose Byrne) and the folding money is stolen, leaving him in dire straits with Pando.
Jimmy seeks serve from his dead brother’s wife, Deidre (Susie Porter) to get him into
a bank robbing employ with her contacts so he can repay the money and get Pando’s thugs
off his back. (His dead brother’s spirit also plays a small allotment in helping Jimmy. )
The heist goes horribly wrong, but is not entirely unlucky. When Jimmy finally sorts
things out, he realises that Alex is more drawing than a life of crime.
Jordan Bridges (grandson of Lloyd Bridges) plays Kevin, a nice guy who
arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. He meets fellow
aspirant Marianne (Marisa Coughlan), one of those lucky and slightly twisted
people born with an innate understanding of how the Hollywood game is played.
She’s going places. Within a year, she’s climbing the ladder as a talent agent,
while he’s adrift as a script reader for a midlevel producer.
The satire kicks into gear when, at a lunch with some fellow readers from
other companies, Kevin pretends to have read a brilliant new script, “New Suit,
” by a writer named Jordan Strawberry.
His fellow readers pretend to have read it themselves, and from there word
spreads throughout the industry. Soon every producer wants to buy the script,
and rival producers are afraid their competitors will make the deal first.
Marianne poses as Strawberry’s agent and plans to ride “New Suit” to wealth
and power.
The movie makes fun of a Hollywood in which no one reads and everyone
pretends to be connected. Everyone claims to have a close personal
relationship with the fictional Strawberry, and all the Hollywood players find
it entirely reasonable to be bidding over a screenplay they have never seen.
As in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” no one will admit that he hasn’t seen it.
And so the frenzy is fueled by lies on top of lies.
Although “New Suit” is not in the same league as “The Big Picture” or “The
Player,” classics of the Hollywood satire genre, it’s funny and has an
interesting edge of bitterness to it. It has both the limits and virtues of an
outsider’s perspective. Writer Craig Sherman and Francois Velle don’t seem to
completely know the ins and outs, but they do know enough to be disgusted.– Advisory: This film contains sexual situations, drug use and strong
language.– Mick LaSalle
Drama. Starring Javier Bardem and Jose Angel Egido. Directed by Fernando Leon
de Aranoa. (R. 115 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. At Bay Area
theaters.)
The film is about the degradation of unemployment — indeed, the tragedy of
it — the horror of a man’s having to watch his wife go off every morning to
work 12 hours in a factory, the embarrassment of applying for a loan with no
collateral. It’s about 50-year-old men dyeing their hair to look younger on
job interviews.
It’s a film of vivid moments and images, but the narrative, almost of
necessity, is static. And so, alas, midway, “Mondays in the Sun” becomes as
dull as a day with nothing to do.
Director and co-writer Fernando Leon de Aranoa paints himself into a corner.
If he gives in to the need for a story line and concocts some kind of forward
motion for these fellows, he betrays the point he’s trying to make. Yet if he
stays true to his vision and honest about his subject, absolutely nothing can
happen.
This is the challenge of making a movie about stasis. Moving pictures and
stasis do not make for a felicitous combination.
So we take what we can from the experience: Bardem lying on his bed,
staring at the cracked ceiling of a boarding-house room. The sight of this
proud, physical man handing out leaflets no one will take. The anger that
expresses itself in petty rebellion — a man’s refusing to pay for a ferry
ride or eating food in a supermarket and not paying for it.
About every 10 minutes, there are 10 great seconds, but the rest is sitting
around waiting.
At least these poor fellows have an excuse — they’re bored because their
lives are boring. But to plunk down money to actually watch guys be bored —
that would constitute an admission of idleness far beyond anything depicted in
the movie.– Advisory: This film contains strong language and sexual references. — Mick LaSalle
A view on
Hi-def
DVDs by
Gary W. Tooze
Introduction:
Hello, fellow Beavers! I have been interested in film
since I viewed a Chaplin festival on PBS when I was
around 9 years old. I credit DVD with expanding my
horizons to fill an almost ravenous desire to seek out
new film experiences. I currently own approximately 7500
DVDs and have reviewed over 3000 myself. I appreciate my
discussion Listserv
for furthering my film
education and inspiring me to continue running DVDBeaver.
Plus a healthy thanks to those who donate and use our
Amazon links.
Although I never wanted to become one of those guys who
focused '
too much
' on image and sound quality - I
find HD is swiftly pushing me in that direction. So be
it, but film will always be my first love and I list my
favorites on the old YMdb site now accessible
HERE
.
Gary's Home Theatre:
Samsung HPR4272 42" Plasma HDTV
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player
(firmware upgraded)
Sony BDP-S300 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player
(firmware upgraded)
Sony DVP NS5ODH SD-DVD player (region-on the house and HDMI)
Review by Gary Tooze
Studio:
Video: Warner Video
Discs:
Region: FREE
Feature Runtime: 2:17:53
Chapters: 34
Feature film disc size: 33.2 Gig
One dual-layer Blu-ray, one CD sampler
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: September 23rd, 2008
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.4:1
Resolution: 1080p
Video codec: VC-1
Audio:
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, English, French, Spanish,
German, Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles:
Quality: English,
French, Spanish, Chinese (traditional and simplified),
Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian,
Portuguese, Swedish and none
Supplements:
Disc 1
•
Audio commentary from critic/historian Andrew Sarris,
producers Arnon Milchan and Michael Nathanson, novelist
James Ellroy, costume artificer Ruth Myers, screenwriter
Brian Helgeland, production creator Jeannine Oppewall,
journalist Peter Honess, director of photography Dante
Spinotti, and actors Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy
Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger
and Danny DeVito.
•
Whatever You Desire: Making LA Confidential
(29:30)
•
Sunlight and Bosom buddy: The Visual Style of LA
Confidential
(21:03)
•
A True Ensemble: The Cast of LA Confidential
(24:24)
•
LA Secret: From Book to Camouflage
(21:07)
•
Off the Documentation:
Vintage cast/creator interviews
(18:50)
•
Director Curtis Henson's
Photo Hurl (8:25)
•
The LA of LA Confidential - Map Tour
(15 locales
- 25 seconds each)
•
LA Classified TV Pilot
(45 minutes)
Trailer galley and TV spots
Music-only track showcasing Jerry Goldsmith's score
Disc 2
•
CD Sampler which includes six songs from the film:
“Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” (Johnny Mercer and the
Pied Pipers), “Look for the Silver Lining” (Chet Baker),
“Blow the German Autobahn to Dreamland” (Betty Hutton), “Wheel of
Fortune” (Kay Starr), “But Not For Me” (Jackie Gleason),
and “Powder Your Face With Sunshine (Smile! Smile!
Smile!)” (Dean Martin).
Product Description:
L.A. Confidential
is "tough, gorgeous and vastly
entertaining", "a genuine masterpiece that will knock your socks off." Director
Curtis Hanson and a terrific cast serve up a "ravishing, thrilling tale of
police corruption and Hollywood glamour" in this adaptation of James Ellroy's
novel. Three cops, a call girl, a mysterious millionaire, a tabloid journalist,
and the Chief of Detectives fuel a labyrinthine plot rife with mystery,
ambition, romance, and humor. What you'll see is off the record, on the QT and
very hush-hush…
|
The Film:
In a time when it seems that every other big makes
some requisition to being a film noir,
L.A. Intimate
is the earnest possession–a staunch, poor libel of screwing,
blot on one’s copybook, betrayal, and corruption of all sorts (police,
governmental, the fourth estate–and, of course, very personal) in
1940s Hollywood. The Oscar-winsome screenplay is
in fact based on some titles in James Ellroy's
series of chronological thriller novels (including the
title volume, The Renowned Nowhere, and Hoary Jazz)–a
compelling intermingle of L.A. history and pulp fiction that
has earned it comparisons to the greatest of all
Technicolor noir films,
Chinatown
.
Kim Basinger amply rightful her Supporting Actress
Oscar for her portrayal of a conflicted femme fatale;
unfortunately, her male costars are so uniformly fine
that they may have canceled each other out with the
Academy voters: Russell Crowe, Rib Pearce, Kevin Spacey,
and James Cromwell play LAPD officers of varying
stripes. Pearce's character is a particularly intriguing
study in Hollywood amorality and ambition, a
limiting-laced "hero" (and son of a departmental legend)
whose career goals preponderate over all other moral, ethical,
and acceptable considerations. If he's a paraphernalia guy, it's only
because he sees it as the quickest route to a stimulating.
Jim Emerson of Amazon located HERE
Image :
NOTE
:
The secondary to
Blu-ray
captures were ripped quickly from the
Blu-trace
disc.
Hilarious how picky we can get -
L.A. Confidential
on
Blu-flash
looks pretty favourable if showing its, in excess of ten year, age.
The deliver itself seems competent and the only flaws
are probably more inherent in the prototypical source. There
is noise/grain - count particulars is significantly better to SD
(ditto for colors) but not up to not very well with many 2007-2008
HD offerings. It is consistent and the 1080P
brings up a crispness that I had never noted before.
Technically it is
dual-layered with the feature size being a healthy 33.2
Gig. I don't see evidence of DNR used to
square for the existing noise. In fact
I'd demand to say the semblance is absolutely intact and I have
no balanced complaints. Expectations towards the icon should
be tempered a bit with its age but overall the videotape, and
especially Kim B., looked far better than I anticipated.
I suspect fans of
L.A. Classified
, and its
aforementioned digital incarnations, will be mightily impressed with the
visual form of this
Blu-pencil
.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
NICK TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
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Audio & Music:
The
TrueHD option has some energy to it, but it's the
subtleties that I understand most
.
I'd say the bass and midrange aren't overused by this
soundtrack but care for to be there seething beneath the
materialize. Your center channel will the the most write up.
Goldsmith's first-rate score comes through scarcely that much
cleaner and supports some same noir-esque moments. Many
of the period songs in the film are on the CD sampler
included in the bundle. Obviously set for
region-for free sales worldwide there is a host of DUB
options (in 5.1) and a multitude of subtitles (full list
above).
Extras:
A scattered commentary - sliced and diced with everyone
included the sun alluring part - excepting, strangely enough,
the director. It's quite
all-over-the-place
but
that's okay as I did reach something alibi of it - Ellroy
being in all likelihood my favorite participant. Next we set up
there 3 hours merit of SD featurettes and I in actuality did
enjoy some of these.
Whatever You Desire: Making LA
Confidential
runs about a 1/2 hour and offers clips
and interviews with
all
the principles involved
(including Hanson, Ellroy, Basinger, Pearce, Crowe,
Spacey, DeVito etc.) Quite good but it seemed to only
touch the surface of the original process at work here.
Some of the information in these featurettes is
expectantly duplicated in the commentary. There is also
a filler component but I was winsome appreciative of the
effort that went into these supplements - it opened my
eyes to
L.A. Confidential
and certainly increased
my gratefulness of the fog. The value of
Blu-ray
(the space) even allowed the 45 trifling TV pilot of
LA
Confidential
with a younger Kiefer Sutherland (it's
from 2000 I think). Honorarium here is that you also get the
CD sampler (as disc 2) and I checked it make a moue in the jalopy
while picking up my some from school - I kinda liked it
- it gives nice reflections of the film's smokey aura. This
Blu-ray
is stacked to the rafters and fans devise positively want
to indulge in some if not all that is at one’s fingertips.
Bottom cable:
Once again
Blu-ray
has pushed me from a film I simply liked - to one I now
adore.
Is it the improved appearance and sound? Could extremely familiarly
be - but tack on the supplements which also bolstered my
rage more than one notch. The film itself gets a
big thumbs up even beyond its straightforward esteem crafting.
Great price too! The typical example and audio shouldn't frustrate
anyone
and it's a film that I will revisit -
sooner rather than later - exceptionally in
Blu-streak
.
Bravo Warner!
Gary Tooze
September 22nd, 2008
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