"Hellboy II: The Golden Army" is visually arresting and packed with interesting characters, though even at two hours its story feels rushed. Ron Perlman's Hellboy -- tasked with stopping an indestructible army led by a vengeance-seeking fairy prince -- seems to race from set piece to set piece, which is a shame given the amount of work that went into creating various locations and creatures. Still, the movie looks great, and moving to the small screen helps disguise less good sequences like the patently back-lot New York City street during a tree god battle.
Though the packaging boasts three discs, the third is a digital copy of the film, leaving the movie and featurettes on what's really two discs. The Collector's Edition also comes with a Golden Army warrior figurine, creature design sketchbook, poster and more.
DVD Bonus Features:
The Good: The Troll Market tour is amazing. A huge amount of work went into creating the set, and director Guillermo del Toro lets no intricate amount of detail go unnoticed. That's enough to make me wish the bulk of the movie had been spent there. Hellboy fans will want to check out "In Service of the Demon," more than two hours of behind-the-scenes documentary (not including the now-standard featurettes on pre- and post-production). More casual viewers will be relieved to know "In Service to the Demon" is broken into short, easily digestible chapters.
Sabtu, 15 November 2008
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Three-Disc Collector's Edition)
Fireproof
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: PG
Director: Alex Kendrick
Writer: Alex Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick
Synopsis
At work, inside burning buildings, Capt. Caleb Holt lives by the old firefighter's adage: Never leave your partner behind. At home, in the cooling
The Wackness
Winner of the audience award at Sundance this year was THE WACKNESS, an idiosyncratic coming of age story from writer/director Jonathan Levine.
It’s set in New York in 1994 where hip-hop is raging and Luke, (JOSH PECK), has just finished high school and is whiling away the summer months before going away to college.
He pushes his ice-cream van around the streets dealing dope in a city that Mayor Giuliani is determined to clean up.
One of his more eccentric clients is psychiatrist Dr. Squires, (BEN KINGSLEY), who trades his shrinkage for a quarter of an ounce.
Most of his peers have left the city for the summer but there’s one significant person who has stayed. She’s Squires’s stepdaughter Stephanie, (OLIVIA THIRLBY)
Luke is such a passive creature that he almost sucks the blood out of the early part of the film, but it picks up when he and Stephanie go to Squires’s holiday home on Fire Island for a few days.
Some real emotion enters the film at this point and combined with Squires’s less than satisfactory marriage to Kristin, (FAMKE JANSSEN), the real focus of the film starts to come into play, which is the relationship between Luke and Squires.
The performances are all very fine, but the standout is Ben Kingsley’s Squires. It’s so unexpected. He’s a man in deep pain as Luke will be.
The Wackness has its charms but it has its unevenness too.
Dying Breed
Matt, (LEIGH WANNELL), and his Irish girlfriend, Nina, (MIRRAH FOULKES), accompany Matt’s friend, Jack, (NATHAN PHILLIPS), and HIS girlfriend Rebecca, (MELANIE VELLEJO), on a trip into the Tasmanian interior to hunt for Tasmanian tigers.
Nina has another motive; her older sister drowned on a similar search eight years earlier.
The locals, who are descendents of a cannibalistic convict known as The Pieman, aren’t exactly friendly.
The first requisite for a horror film which places young people in jeopardy is, you would have thought, to make us care about the characters so that when they’re in danger we share their distress. This is a notion alien to director Jody Dwyer and his co-screenwriters Michael Boughen and Rod Morris.
Jack is so odious and obnoxious that he forfeits any sympathy and Matt is a wimp. The women are marginally more interesting, but not enough to encourage you to invest in their plight.
So this poor man’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE fails on just about every level. It tries hard to be horrific and gruesome, even introducing a bit of fashionable torture near the end, but only the most credulous will find it genuinely scary.
I enjoy a really good horror film, but DYING BREED is an exceedingly feeble addition to the genre.
Sex Drive
Ian, (JOSH ZUCKERMAN), who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, is still a virgin.
He secretly adores his best female friend, Felicia, (AMANDA CREW), but she resists his shy advances, so, with the encouragement of Lance, (CLARK DUKE), he decides to borrow the prized vintage Pontiac GTO belonging to his overbearing, homophobic brother Rex,(JAMES MARSDEN), to drive 500 miles to Knoxville where a girl he met through the net, Ms Tasty, has promised she’ll go all the way with him if he meets her.
Essentially, this is a re-working of the excellent 1985 Rob Reiner film, THE SURE THING, and while it’s not on the same level as that, it’s often surprisingly funny.
A lot of the jokes and situations are crude, as you’d probably expect from this kind of movie, but the film works as a bit of a guilty pleasure because the three central performances are so good.
JOSH ZUCKERMAN is really quite sweet as the painfully shy Ian and AMANDA CREW is excellent as Felicia who thinks she loves him but doesn’t want to spoil their friendship.
The film is very successful at depicting this all too common and, for teenagers, difficult situation. The third good performance is that of
CLARK DUKE as the seemingly nerdy but actually quite self-confident Lance, and there’s strong support from JAMES MARSDEN as Ian’s horrid big brother and SETH GREEN as an Amish farmer with an interesting approach to life.
Rabu, 05 November 2008
Simon Cowell dumped by girlfriend
American Idol judge and reality TV series mogul Simon Cowell, 49, has been given the boot by his girlfriend of six years, former model Terri Seymour, 34, because they disagreed about having children. Cowell’s publicist, Max Clifford, released a statement that reads: “Terri phoned Simon and finished it in September, about six weeks ago. They are going to remain close friends. Simon thinks the world of Terri and that isn’t going to change. He also understands her reason for ending it. In the past Terri has said that she wants kids but that just isn’t Simon. Nobody else is involved, certainly not on Simon’s side.” According to reports, Cowell bought a $5 million house in Los Angeles for Seymour in appreciation of their time together.
Lesbian doctor leaving Grey’s Anatomy
Brooke Smith, who plays Dr. Erica Hahn on the ABC TV series Grey’s Anatomy, has been let go. Her character first appeared last season, and became a regular this season, indulging in the show’s first lesbian relationship with a newly-divorced character (played by Sara Ramirez). Creator Shonda Rhimes denies that the decision to let Smith go was related to the gay story line, saying in a statement released by ABC: “Brooke Smith was obviously not fired for playing a lesbian. Clearly it’s not an issue as we have a lesbian character on the show – Calliope Torres. Sara Ramirez is an incredible comedic and dramatic actress and we wanted to be able to play up her magic. Unfortunately, we did not find that the magic and chemistry with Brooke’s character would sustain in the long run. The impact of the Callie/Erica relationship will be felt and played out in a story for Callie.” Smith’s final episode airs this Thursday.
Hannah Montana episode pulled by Disney
A controversial episode of Hannah Montana has been pulled by the Disney Channel. In the episode, entitled No Sugar, Sugar, Miley (played by Miley Cyrus) has to deal with her friend Oliver’s diabetes diagnosis. The third season episode, which was scheduled to air on November 9, screened early in an on-demand version to parents, according to the New York Daily News. A spokesman said: “During the scriptwriting stage of the Hannah Montana episode in question the matter of depicting a character with diabetes was reviewed by our Standards and Practices executives who consulted with medical experts to inform the story and ensure that it was told responsibly. Notwithstanding the measures we took, and based on the episode’s preview and early feedback from parents, we removed the episode from Sunday’s schedule and are now reevaluating it.” Another episode – Ready, Set, Don’t Drive – has been moved to the November 9 time slot. The story revolves around 15-year-old Miley’s first driving experience.
Cheers: The Tenth Season [4 Discs]
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