Wednesday, January 11, 2012

District 13: Ultimatum

  • Two years have passed since elite police officer Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli) teamed up with reformed vigilante Leito (parkour originator David Belle) to save the notorious District 13, a racially charged ghetto populated by violent drug dealing gangs and vicious killers. Despite government promises to maintain order, the state of the district has deteriorated, and a group of corrupt cops and
With bone crunching fights and death defying leaps, this adrenaline charged follow-up takes the groundbreaking parkour action from DISTRICT B13 to thrilling new heights. (Fangoria)
Two years have passed since elite police officer Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli) teamed up with reformed vigilante Leito (David Belle) to save the notorious District 13, a racially charged ghetto populated by violent drug dealing gangs and vicious killers. Despite government promises to maintain order, the state of th! e district has deteriorated. A group of corrupt cops and elected officials conspire to cash in on the redevelopment of the district by proposing its destruction under nuclear air strike. Damian and Leito must join forces again, using their martial arts and unique physical skills, to bring peace to the neighborhood by any means necessary.Get ready to chase across rooftops, shatter plate-glass windows, and vanquish the enemy with a priceless van Gogh canvas (explanation forthcoming): the agile battlers from District B13 (a.k.a. Banlieue 13) are back. As played by David Belle (one of the inventors of the building-hopping practice called parkour) and Cyril Raffaelli, the two expert head-knockers from the first film return to fight yet another serious threat against the walled-off neighborhood in a slightly futuristic Paris. This time some corrupt government officials have a devious plot to raze the slum and funnel the rebuilding contracts to their payoff-happy cor! porate pals at Harriburton (a name that bears absolutely no re! semblanc e to any real-life corporate behemoth). Wisely delaying the reunion of our heroes, the movie opens with Raffaelli's epic throw-down against a gang of desperadoes, which he executes while wielding the van Gogh painting as a shield/weapon. Nice. Then Belle gets onstage for a typically graceful parkour workout across various buildings. This action, especially in its overblown, belief-defying later stages, has more than its share of fromage, but isn't that what we expect from writer-producer Luc Besson? Ultimatum isn't as sleek and effective as the first movie, but it has enough deft action and buddy-picture one-liners to justify its existence--and Belle and Raffaelli bristle with real movie-star appeal, especially when doing their Butch-and-Sundance routine. The ending suggests another sequel will need to have a very different setting, but that might not be such a bad thing. --Robert Horton

Heat [Blu-ray]

  • When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squarer off, HEAT sizzles. A tale of a brilliant L.A. cop (Pacino) following the trail from a deadly armed robbery to a crew headed by an equally brilliant master thief (De Niro). Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman co-star. Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 883929073337 UPC:&nb
When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squarer off, HEAT sizzles. A tale of a brilliant L.A. cop (Pacino) following the trail from a deadly armed robbery to a crew headed by an equally brilliant master thief (De Niro). Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman co-star.Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairi! ng of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know,! they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down.! Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff Shannon

The Man with No Name Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) [Blu-ray]

  • Condition: New
  • Format: Blu-ray
  • AC-3; Box set; Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Full Screen; Restored; Subtitled; Widescree
The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Philadelphia Phillies presents all the best moments and personalities in the history of the Phillies. It also unmasks the bad, the regrettably awful, and the unflinchingly ugly. In an entertaining and unsparing fashion, author Todd Zolecki has written a book that sparkles with Phillies highlights, lowlights, wonderful and wacky memories, legends and goats, the famous, and the infamous. You'll relive the rapturous season of the Whiz Kids and the magical 2008 run to the World Series, but also the lows of the historically inept Phillies of the 1930s and the equally historic collapse of 1964. You'll celebrate the incredible majesty of a Mike Schmidt home run, but you'll lament the devastation of Mitch Williams' infamous ! gopher ball to Joe CarterSergio Leone “spaghetti westerns” did not simply add a new chapter to the genre…they reinvented it. From his shockingly violent and stylized breakthrough, A Fistful of Dollars, to the film Quentin Tarantino calls “the best-directed movie of all time,” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone’s vision did for westerns what talkies did for all movies back in the 1920s: it elevated them to an entirely new art form. Fully restored, presented in high definition with their best-ever audio, and including audio commentaries, featurettes and more, these films are much more than the definitive Leone collection...they are the most ambitious and influential westerns ever made.

A Fistfull Of Dollars
Clint Eastwood’s legendary “Man With No Name” makes his powerful debut in this thrilling, action-packed classic in which he manipulates two rival bands of smugglers and sets in motion a plan to destroy both in a series of brilliantly! orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations.

For A Few Dollars More
Oscar® Winner Clint Eastwood** continues his trademark role in this second installment of the trilogy, this time squaring off with Indio, the territory’s most treacherous bandit. But his ruthless rival, Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, High Noon), is determined to bring Indio in first...dead or alive!

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
The invincible “Man With No Name” (Eastwood) aligns himself with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) to pursue a fortune in stolen gold. But teamwork doesn’t come naturally to such strong-willed outlaws, and they soon discover that their greatest challenge may be to stay focused â€" and stay alive â€" in a country ravaged by war.Review for A Fistful of Dollars:
A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success! (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself. --Edward Buscombe

Review for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
If you think of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More as the! tasty appetizers in Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars" trilo! gy of It alian "Spaghetti" Westerns, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a lavish full-course feast. Readily identified by the popular themes of its innovative score by Ennio Morricone (one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time), this cinematic milestone eclipsed its influential predecessors with a $1.2 million budget (considered extravagant in the mid-1960s), greater production values to accommodate Leone's epic vision of greed and betrayal, and a three-hour running time for its wide-ranging plot about the titular trio of mercenaries ("Good" Blondie played by rising star Clint Eastwood, "Bad" Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef, and "Ugly" Tuco played by Eli Wallach) in a ruthless Civil War-era quest for $200,000 worth of buried Confederate gold. Virtually all of Leone's stylistic attributes can be found here in full fruition, from the constant inclusion of Roman Catholic iconography to a climactic circular shoot-out, along with Leone's trademark use of surreal land! scapes, brilliant widescreen compositions and extreme close-ups of actors so intimate that they burn into the viewer's memory. And while some Leone fans may favor the more scaled-down action of For a Few Dollars More or the masterful grandiosity of Once Upon a Time in the West, it was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Leone's reputation as a world-class director with a singular vision. --Jeff Shannon

Cassandra's Dream

  • Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as working brothers whose dreams of better lives leads to desperation, greed and deadly betrayal. When gambling debt and an expensive courtship place them in a financial bind, a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton) offers them an out in exchange for committing murder. Featuring gripping performances from an all-star cast; "this family tragedy puts us
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as working class brothers whose dreams of better lives leads to desperation, greed and deadly betrayal. When gambling debt and an expensive courtship place them in a financial bind, a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton) offers them an out in exchange for committing murder. Featuring gripping performances from an all-star cast; "this family tragedy puts us near the edge of our seats and pulls us right along on its downward spiral" (William Arnold, Seattle Pos! t Intelligencer). Woody Allen returns in razor-sharp form with this "intense, intelligently-written and directed," (Jeffrey Lyons, Reel Talk) thriller that challenges how far a man should go in the name of family.Scottish Ewan McGregor and Irish Colin Farrell play two Cockney brothers who get in over their heads when a wealthy relative asks for a favor. Woody Allen's sleek thriller Cassandra's Dream begins in innocent times: Ian (McGregor) and Terry (Farrell) buy a sailboat and name it Cassandra's Dream. But soon Terry falls afoul of gambling debts and Ian falls head over heels for a sultry actress who doesn't take him seriously, leading them to ask their uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) for money, which he's happy to give them--if they'll get rid of a man who's going to testify against him. The first half of Cassandra's Dream zips along with short, concise scenes and charismatic performances by the lead lads. Newcomer Hayley Atwell (Brideshead Revisited) i! s alluring as the actress, while Sally Hawkins (Persuasion) bri ngs warmth and sympathy to the underwritten role of Terry's girlfriend Kate. The second half--as with many of Allen's later films--seems to run out of steam, though there's still much to admire about Allen's clean, unfussy filmmaking. Regrettably, he seems to have lost the ability to sustain his imaginative spark. The weakness is in the writing; too many of the characters are barely sketched and clumsy lines of dialogue jar the ear in otherwise well-shaped scenes. But just when you're ready to throw up your hands, there's a moment of understated grace, in which Allen's simple visuals capture something with crystalline clarity. Cassandra's Dream is a frustrating movie, but it has its rewards. --Bret Fetzer