Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Bring It On: Fight to the Finish

  • Condition: New
  • Format: DVD
  • AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
BRING IT ON - DVD MovieSunny, happy Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) is the new leader of the Toros, the cheerleading squad of Rancho Carne, an affluent San Diego high school that has lousy football players but one hell of a cheerleading team. National champions, they're the ones who bring in the bodies to the football games with their award-winning moves and sassy grace, and they're poised to take their sixth national cheer title. Torrance's new reign as cheer queen, though, is cut short when she discovers that her snotty, duplicitous forerunner was regularly stealing routines from the East Compton Clovers, the hip-hop influenced cheerleaders of a poor inner city school, and passing them off as the original work of the Toros. Scrambling to come up with a new routine for the Toros--and do the righ! t thing by giving the Clovers their due--Torrance butts heads with the proud and understandably wary Isis (Gabrielle Union), the leader of the Clovers, who wants nothing to do with a rich blond white girl, but does want to get her squad to the championships. Problem is, only one team can take home the national title. Who's it gonna be?

An unexpected box-office hit in the late summer of 2000, Bring It On is a smart, snappy teen comedy that bristles with good cheer (literally) and lively, down-to-earth characters. The story may be fairly predictable (who's going to win the big championship?), but director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jessica Bendinger have fleshed out their characters with formidable strength and provided them with sharp dialogue. Dunst is a radiant comedian, projecting warmth, determination, sincerity, and a sublime airheadedness, and Union is an impressive dancer and counterpart to Dunst, matching her admirably despite her limited onscreen time.! An excellent young supporting cast rounds out the film, most ! notably Eliza Dushku (Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jesse Bradford (Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) as siblings new to Rancho Carne, who become Torrance's best friend and potential new boyfriend, respectively. All in all, a pleasantly surprising and intelligent teen movie. Don't miss the opening sequence, a hilarious send-up of all those high school cheerleading routines you had to sit through at boring pep rallies. --Mark EnglehartBring on the spirit, spunk and sass with everyone's favorite cheerleading series in the Bring It On
Collection! All four high-energy, fun Bring It On movies are here: Bring It On, starring Kirsten Dunst; the hilarious sequel Bring It On Again; the elecChristina Milian stars as sassy cheer captain Lina Cruz, whose world is turned upside-down when her family moves from the urban streets of East Los Angeles to the sunny beach town of Malibu. At her new school, Lina clashes with Avery, the ultra-competitive all-star chee! r captain, while also falling for Avery’s super-cute brother, Evan. Lina’s always been able to rise to a challenge, but can she create a new all-star squad, beat Avery at the Spirit Championships, and still keep her romance with Evan? Hot music, fierce competition and high-flyin’ fun continue in this all-new movie!Like its predecessors in the Bring It On franchise, Bring It On: Fight to the Finish focuses on a perky cheerleader who's taken out of her comfort zone and ends up excelling in her new environment. This time around, the focus is on Lina Cruz (singer Christina Milian), whose family moves from East Los Angeles to Malibu. The streetwise teen makes an instant frenemy of alpha female Avery (Rachele Brooke Smith)--also a cheerleader--at her new school. Never mind that the two girls don't get along. There's more drama when Lina and Avery's brother Evan (Cody Longo) fall for each other. Though Lina describes her new classmates as living "lifestyles! of the rich and annoying" and Avery refers to Lina and her La! tina fri ends as "illegal cheermigrants," the two really aren't that different. Both live for cheerleading and are super driven when it comes to their sport of choice. The viewer gets the impression that if both girls shared the same ethnicity (or at least a similar bank account), they'd be besties at school. The Bring It On franchise was spawned by Kirsten Dunst's hit film from 2000, which clearly had better writing and acting, as well as a larger budget to work with. While films like Bring It On: Fight to the Finish aren't going to win any awards, they do have an appeal to teenage girls and/or cheerleading fans. The plot really doesn't matter so much as the cheerleading choreography and the driving music behind it. And there's plenty of both in this production. --Jae-Ha Kim

Stills from Bring it On: Fight to the Finish (Click for larger image)


Gone in 60 Seconds [Blu-ray]

  • GONE IN 60 SECONDS (BLU-RAY DISC)
Academy Award(R)-winners Nicolas Cage (1996 Best Actor, LEAVING LAS VEGAS; ADAPTATION, MATCHSTICK MEN) and sexy Angelina Jolie (1999 Best Supporting Actress, GIRL INTERRUPTED; LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER) ride an unstoppable wave of speed and adrenaline in this hot, egdy action hit from high-octane producer Jerry Bruckheimer (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, PEARL HARBOR). Legendary car booster Randall "Memphis" Raines (Cage) thought he'd left the fast lane behind -- until he's forced out of retirement in a do-or-die effort to save his kid brother (Giovanni Ribisi, LOST IN TRANSLATION, TV's FRIENDS) from the wrath of an evil mobster! But with speed to burn and attitude to spare, Memphis hastily reassembles his old crew -- a rogues' gallery including Academy Award-winner Robert Duvall (1983 Best Actor, TENDER MERCIES; OPEN RANGE) -- and floor! s it in a full-throttle race to pull off the ulimate car heist: 50 exotic beauties in 24 hours -- and the cops are already on to them! Directed by Dominic Sena and written by Scott Rosenberg, GONE IN 60 SECONDS is an action-packed thrill ride that comes out fast and never slows down.Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) is a cocky young car thief working with a crew to steal 50 cars for a very bad man whose nickname is "The Carpenter." Being young and cocky, Kip messes up, so it's up to his big brother, Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage), to come out of car thief retirement and save him. With a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Cage, and Ribisi, it would be easy to say this story wastes all their talents--which it does, but that's not the point. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. A good story and complex characters would only get in the way of the action scenes and slow the movie down. No, Gone in 60 Seconds (based on the cult 1974 film of ! the same name) is not about the stars as much as it's about ca! rs. Fast cars. Rare cars. Wrecked cars. All cars. Too bad director Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) doesn't come across as more of a gearhead; he seems less interested in fast cars than fast cuts. But is this movie fun? Absolutely, and it's fun because it's so stupid. With pointless car chases and hackneyed dialogue in one of the most predictable plots of the year, Gone in 60 Seconds is a comic film that's not quite a parody of itself, but darn close. --Andy SpletzerStudio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 05/30/2008 Rating: Pg13

Mister Lonely

  • When a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) living in Paris falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) during a performance at a retirement home, the lovestruck pair retreats to a seaside castle in the Scottish highlands populated by a commune of reclusive impersonators. Earning a living can be a difficult endeavor in the City of Lights, and in order to make ends meet, one man
From Harmony Korine, screenwriter of Kids, comes a haunting portrait of life in small-town America. Through a collection of dreamlike and devastating images, Korine offers a glimpse of Xenia, Ohio, a world existing in the aftermath of a tornado.JULIEN DONKEY-BOY - DVD MovieFrom Harmony Korine, screenwriter of Kids, comes a haunting portrait of life in small-town America. Through a collection of dreamlike and devastating images, Korine offers a glimpse of Xenia, Ohio, a world existing in the aftermath! of a tornado.In the summer of 2010, Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers did for underground trend of "trash-humping" what Roll Bounce did for the roller-disco revival a few years earlier. But that doesn't matter anymore. Now you can keep a copy of the film you've tried to forget (we're still talking about Trash Humpers) in the discomfort of your very own home, or whatever it is that you call that place you're staying. This DVD comes with two extra featurettes and a bunch of deleted scenes plus an odor that we can't quite place...Filmmaker Larry Clark reunites with Kids screenwriter Harmony Korine, with some additional directorial assistance from cinematographer Ed Lachman, for this look at a group of troubled teens and their guardians living in Southern California. Ken Park takes its name from the skate park where an ancillary character takes his own life in the film's opening moments, and then proceeds to chronicle the somewhat-interrelated lives of his classmates.

The audience is introduced to Tate (James Ransome), a young man living in relative misery with his board-game-playing grandparents. Also tormented by his living situation is Claude (Stephen Jasso), a quiet, shy teen constantly henpecked by his brutish father (Wade Andrew Williams). Meanwhile, the vapid Shawn (James Bullard) occasionally trades verbal spars with his mother, in between leaving the house for erotic sessions with his girlfriend's mom. Finally there is Peaches (Tiffany Limos), living alone with her devoutly religious father as she covertly experiments with her boyfriend (Mike Apaletegui).

Though Ken Park played at such festivals as Toronto and Telluride in the fall of 2002, it would languish on the shelf for months and months afterward, as its non-commercial content made finding a U.S. distributor near-impossible.

Uncut & Uncensored Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version
English 5.1 & Russian 5.1 Audio Options
Optional Russian SubtitlesMISTER LONELY - DVD MovieFollowing an eight-year hiatus, Harmony Korine returns triumphantly with Mister Lonely, a more traditionally structured drama than his previous experiments, Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy. First recognized for writing the Larry Clark film, Kids, Korine ruled the 1990s for expressing disenchanted youth. As his previous films focused on self-destructive characters, Mister Lonely is a departure though it still points to Korine's interest in the carnivalesque. In this far-fetched fairy tale, a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) living in Paris is invited by a Marilyn Monroe look-alike (Samantha Morton) to join her commune of misfits in a remote Scottish castle. Upon arrival, Michael meets the likes of Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), Abe Lincoln, Madonna, the Queen of England (Anita Pallenberg), and the Pope (James Fox), who is usually drunk. As a dark romance unfolds between Maril! yn and Michael, a second narrative involving missionary nuns in Panama unfolds, revealing stunning footage of them jumping out of planes sans parachutes to test faith. Their airplane is piloted by Father Umbrillo, played by Werner Herzog, who at this point could be called Korine's patron saint. The absurdist, comitragic plot challenges the viewer's suspension of disbelief, and is much less reality-based than Korine's previous movies. His filmic experiments work best when the nuns' story intertwine with the impersonators', presenting deep commentary on faith, embodying another person, and escapism. Throughout, rich color and costuming provide a visually provocative experience. As each film of Korine's is unique in structure and approach, Mister Lonely has been long anticipated and will prod fans to guess what Korine has up his sleeve next. --Trinie Dalton
web log free