"Adventureland". A Review Of The 2009 Film On BLU RAY.

Here is a link to Amazon Uk to buy the BLU RAY at the best price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004UGALLI

"…Summer In Pittsburgh! That’s Harsh!"

It’s Ronald Reagan’s 1987 and curly-haired college dweeb James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfriend Arlene in Scene 1. Then his promised European Road Trip is kyboshed in Scene 2 by his downsizing parents who can’t afford new drapes let alone a graduation present. Then things get really nasty for our sensitive Renaissance student when he’s sentenced to work at the notorious cesspool that is the “Adventureland” Amusement Park in Pittsburgh (title above).

But during a brutally honest induction course from the bug-eyed Joel (great work from Martin Starr) James notices something well worth the pain of puking children and a childhood pest called Frigo who can’t seem to resist jokily kicking him in the privates at every opportunity. The eye-opener James clocks is the seemingly ordinary yet ethereally beautiful Em (Kristen Stewart) who is all Lou Reed and David Bowie teeshirts and smoky eyes and magical long hair. The kind of girl you want to make mix tapes for and even consider joining a gym. From the moment he meets the svelte Em poor James is a goner – hopelessly falling for the emotionally conflicted young woman no matter what extra-curricular crap she pulls on him.

Em’s biological mom has passed two years prior via a long and horrible battle with cancer and she’s left living with a Stepmom she despises (and vice versa) and a father who seems unable to fathom his daughter. Em is therefore feckless in her relationships and reluctant to commit to anything other than drinking and toking and hanging out after work – sappily accepting the occasional rumble in the kitchen with Mike the Rock 'n' Roll star of the Park (a cool and suave Ryan Reynolds). But James the nice guy persists despite customers who try to rob the Giant Pandas and the attention of the playground’s curvaceous babe Lisa P (the deeply sexy Margarita Levieva). Slowly but surely Em begins to see the merits of a nice guy who’s willing to take a few punches for her and equally not allow her to anyone’s punching bag. "You may be the cutest and coolest guy I've ever dated…" she finally admits in a clincher behind the arcades - making James want to go all Johnny Weissmuller and yodel from the trees.

The funniest parts go to Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the odd couple Bobby and Paulette who run the rip-off-for-all-the-family rides and games with a baseball bat and motivational speeches about horse races. Also like Cameron Crowe's wonderful "Elizabethtown" - "Adventureland" has a gargantuan soundtrack – featuring a cool tune from all periods in almost every scene. Lou Reed, The Cure, Big Star, The Replacements, The Rolling Stones, Nick Lowe and Crowded House – to name but a few - the list of appropriate choices is legion and they’re used well (as James watches Em drive – you can see him falling in love as Lou Reed’s lyrics echo his aching for her).

The Blu Ray pictured is defaulted to 16 x9/1.85:1 so its fills the entire screen but because a large amount of the scenes take place at night and in people’s homes – those shots can have some grain and fuzziness. But once outside during the day – and even on some of the indoor restaurant and bar shots - the picture quality is glorious. Audio is DTS 5.1 HD English, DTS 5.1 Italian and Spanish, and Dolby 2.0 Described English. Subtitles come in English, English For The Hearing impaired, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi.

Extras exclusive to BLU RAY are:

1. Frigo’s Tips – A Satiric "How To On Inflicting Unexpected Pain"

2.  Lisa P’s Guide To Style

3. Welcome To Adventureland – Adventureland Commercials, Orientation Training Video and Drug Policy

Other Extras:

1. Deleted Scenes

2. Just My Life: The Making Of Adventureland

3. Feature Commentary with Writer/Director Greg Mottola and Actor Jesse Eisenberg 

"Most people have low standards – I guess I'm different…" James explains to his mates as to why he’s holding out on his virginity (only wanting to lose it to someone special). You can’t help but feel that something special is going on in Greg Mottola’s lovely and funny "Adventureland" (he also Directed the equally witty and touching "Superbad", "Paul" and some episodes of "The Newsroom" Season 1).

Take a ride on this cool rollercoaster. You’ll feel like a kid on the dodgems again - laughing and wanting to go back for more…

 

“Across The Universe”. A Review Of The 2007 Film on BLU RAY.

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"…Is Anyone Going To Listen To My Story…"

Messing with an icon like The Beatles song catalogue is like doing a whoopsie on the Crown Jewels – probably not a smart move – but fun and imaginative nonetheless. And that's why I love the inventive and brave "Across The Universe" - a film that seems to elicit derision and ecstasy in equal measures. The spirit of The Beatles as a group and as individuals was always to move forward – experiment – expand your horizons – and this 2007 movie is extraordinary for doing just that in such a fresh and challenging way.

Director Julie Taymor and Music Production Supervisor Elliot Goldenthal take 33 Lennon and McCartney classics and along with legendary British TV writers Ian Le Frenais and Dick Clement weave them into a story about a poor Liverpudlian dock-worker/artist (Jim Sturgess playing Jude) seeking his absent wartime American father in the USA. There he meets the handsome, well-healed and slightly crazy Max (Joe Anderson) and his preppy American sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Woods) who is waiting for her boyfriend to return from a war far, far away. And on their story goes as the two culturally different types passionately fall in love with each other (much like the USA did with The Beatles and Britain).

The movie is not surprisingly set during the height of the Sixties American Protest movement - Corporate greed, Vietnam and the Draft, racial inequality, freedom from the straight-jackets of parents and old ways are all grist for the “All You Need Is Love” theme that permeates throughout. And it gels more times than it doesn’t because a huge amount of work and imagination went into the making of this movie – choreography, locations, the lyrics craftily woven into the narrative… But most of all it’s the radical restructuring of The Beatles songs that impresses most (and who sings them and how).

The boys get drunk and lark about on the lawns of Princeton University to "With A Little Help From My Friends", a black child sings an Acapella "Let It Be" by a burnt-out car wreck as rioting goes on in the city streets all around him which then segues into a choir crying as they sing the hymnal song at his funeral – a black guitarist called JoJo (Hendrix) arrives in New York off the bus and is greeted by Joe Cocker dressed as a subway bum/pimp doing "Come Together" while U2's Bono turns up as an acid-totting preacher singing "I Am The Walrus" as he exits a psychedelic bus. Jude befriends the reckless Max (brother of Lucy) and they both thumb-it to the Village Scene of New York where Sexy Sadie is their landlady (a great turn by singer Joan Osborne). The Polynesian Prudence (who is a lesbian) literally comes in through her bathroom window while Max later has to enlist in the army to a truly menacing rendition of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" where the draft poster literally comes alive. These are just some of the inspired moments - but there are so many more. Better still however is both Evan Rachel Woods and Jim Sturgess producing aching vocals on radically slowed down mop-top tunes like "Girl" and "If I Fell" that suddenly feel tender in a way they never did before.

It helps that English actor Jim Sturgess is a dead ringer for Macca and has a great accent and voice – but the problems arise when too many of the set scenes feel a bit forced no matter how inventive the visuals.

The Blu Ray picture is defaulted to 2:40.1 (lines top and bottom) but even stretched to 16 x 9 full screen still looks ravishing. There’s 5.1 True HD audio and Subtitles are in Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, English for the hard of hearing, English, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Romanian, Slovene and Turkish. The extras are impressive too:

1. Extended Musical Performances

2. Deleted Scene

3. Commentary with Director Julie Taymor and Music Production Composer Elliot Goldenthal

4. Five Behind The Scenes Featurettes and More

5. Don Mace Art Gallery Featuring Drawings From The Film

 As you can imagine there will be thespians and scholars with their noses right out of joint over "Across The Universe" – I say knob to that. I loved it. Fresh, original and yet warm and deeply respectful to music and people who have literally weaved their way into our DNA - this is a movie and subject matter you mustn’t get precious about. Taymor and Co. went for it and I’m sure John Lennon would be smiling right now at the fact that they did so with such panache and balls…

And in the end – and in the words of the brillo Fabs - isn’t love all that you need…

“(500) Days Of Summer”. A Review Of The 2009 Film Now On BLU RAY by Mark Barry...

This Review and 100s More Are Part Of My E-Book

BLU RAY Keepers and Sleepers (A to G)

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"…The Best Way To Get Over A Woman…Is To Turn Her Into Literature…"

30-something wannabe architect Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has worked for 4 long years in a Los Angeles greeting card company as a slogan writer dreaming of love that somehow seems to elude him. Enter a new ‘average girl’ employee – the heart stopping bug-eyed Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) whose very presence can make ice-cream sales increase and add value to unsellable real estate. Everything about Summer is magical and Tom’s gone-baby-gone in a heartbeat (“This Is Not Good!” his friend quite rightly muses). And therein lies the problem. New Jersey Tom doesn’t just want Summer Finn as a friend...he's thinking Soul Mate - when maybe Michigan's finest isn't thinking anything of the sort…

Possessed of a freshness and wit that is so often replaced with crudity in modern world rom-coms (especially those hoping to be hip, happening and hitting the zeitgeist) – “(500) Days Of Summer” is exceptional is so many ways. It’s lol funny a great deal of the time – visually surprising – beautifully cast and above all just keeps you watching and enjoying right up until its unexpected and satisfying end. Even movie clichés like the dweeb friends to the lead character (superb turns by Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Grey Gubler as McKenzie and Paul) and the smart-arsed child (a droll and grown up performance by tiny Chloe Grace Moretz as his younger sister Rachel) are given such great lines that you’re too busy enjoying yourself to notice piddly little things like time passing. Characters play The Smiths on their Walkman’s, wear Joy Division teeshirts to work, quote Sid Vicious at dinner, want to buy Octopus’s Garden in record shops and even quote Henry Miller for solace (title above). This is a very cool and likeable movie.  

It also uses the brilliant device of an intermittent screen page that tells you which day number we’re on (flicking up and down like a counter clock). If we’re on Day 36 then love is all happy-wappy and new with chirping animated birds and gymnastic sex in showers. But if we’re on Day 329 then the boredom and suffocation on her part has set in - and friendship let alone love is fading fast. Many of the very funny earlier sequences explaining their upbringings are also accompanied by the dry-as-a-cactus-root droll voiceover of Richard McGonagle having a Stephen Fry type hoot with statistics on men, women, shoe size and fate. There’s even a song and dance sequence – a truly infectious sketch played out to the magically upbeat “You Make My Dreams” by Hall & Oates (1981) which is the kind of cinematic genius that is guaranteed to put a smile on the most miserable of mutts.

Defaulted to 2:40.1 Aspect Ratio – the BLU RAY image can be stretched to 16 x 9 without any degradation and is frequently beautiful (especially when Tom shows Summer the beautiful lesser-known architectural wonders of L.A.). There are good extras too:

1. Deleted and Extended Scenes

2. Bank Dance – A feature on the scene choreographed to the Hall & Oates song (as mentioned above)

3. Mean’s Cinemash: Sid And Nancy/(500) Days Of Summer

4. A Music Video to “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap

5. Conversations with Lead Actors Levitt and Deschanel

6. A DVD which includes a DIGITAL COPY of the film

Brilliantly written by Scott Neustadter with Michael H. Weber and zestfully Directed by Marc Webb – “(500) Days Of Summer)” isn’t going to send Oscar committees into raptures – but it should.

The movie’s blurb tells us “This is not a love story – but a story about love…” 

Well - when the story of our hopes and dreams is told this well – then count me in…

“360”. A Review Of The 2012 Film Now On An Artificial Eye 2013 BLU RAY.

Here's a link to Amazon UK so you can buy the BLU RAY:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008X6HSTE

"…Which Way To Turn?...” 

In the bar of Budapest’s Steigenberger Hotel a handsome British Executive Michael Daly (Jude Law) is staring down into a whiskey as he waits for someone. A Slovakian woman arrives at the bar and orders red wine - dressed well enough to get in but sexily enough to be obviously open for business (a fantastic turn by Lucia Siposova). Just as Michael is about to make a mistake that will threaten his marriage to his beautiful wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) – two smarmy businessmen he’d met with earlier in the day arrive to renegotiate (one of whom is Peter Morgan the writer in a cameo). They notice both Michael and the hooker he was heading towards. As they condescendingly look her up sex ratings on the net - Michael takes a mobile phone call from his tiny daughter at home who wants a dog. In Paris Algerian Jamel Debbouze obsessively follows an employee lady friend from the back seat of a taxi desperately wanting to tell her of his passion – in the USA a tattooed twitchy imprisoned convict about to get out talks to his parole office about his urges towards young girls that he now feels are under control (Ben Foster in a stunning turn)  – a bereaved English father (Anthony Hopkins) meets another stray young lady on a plane and at the airport John worries that she (like his daughter) may become another victim – a brutish but essentially decent Ukrainian driver listens to language CDs in his car as Sergei dreams of better things than the whiplash tongue of his odious boss…

The structurally complicated “360” ploughs the same world-citizen territory of 2006’s “Babel” with its ten different stories converging on each other and is equally brilliant for it. This is about ordinary people – good people – struggling to do the right thing while one action carried out somewhere else connects them or threatens to derail them in a domino effect. And how in the end – if you’re lucky and let go enough – life will come full circle and mostly in a good way…

Directed by Fernando Meirelles (“City Of God” and “The Constant Gardener”) from an original screenplay by Peter Morgan (“The Queen” and “The Last King Of Scotland”) – “360” also lets its huge ensemble cast improvise for freshness and cleverly uses split screens to show up to three stories progressing at the same time.

Anthony Hopkins and Rachel Weisz attached themselves to the script early on and clearly got the film made - both loving the process (and it shows). Ben Foster and Jude Law are simply the acting icing on the cake. Each is mesmerizing in their wildly different roles - especially Foster whose part is the most creepy difficult to like let alone empathize with (achieves both). Weisz and Hopkins are so beautifully tender too. There’s a scene where Rose has a extramarital dalliance with a handsome Brazilian gentleman in a bedroom (when earlier she professed undying devotion to her husband Michael) that is amazing - while Hopkins literally rips your heart out as he explains at a meeting for bereaved parents his newfound wisdom of sorts. “360” features great actors at the top of their game allowed by filmmakers smart enough to let them shine.

But while the more famous leads gobble up great writing and parts – what gives “360” its five-star rating is the unknowns who steal the show and give this life’s connections overview such bite and reality. Even as a seasoned watcher - you really don’t know any of these actors from all different nationalities - and yet they etch their characters into your heart to a point where you’re desperate to see them break free from their physical and emotional chains. The ladies in particular are amazing – clearly relishing a generous and humane Director and a writer with a big heart and a sharp eye. But special mention must go to Vladimir Vdovichenkov (Russian) and Gabriella Marcinkova (Czechoslovakian) as the chauffeur and aimless daughter who may leave their sordid worlds behind and literally drive away to new lives…

The BLU RAY picture is defaulted to 2:35.1 so has bars above and below – but even with stretching to 16 x 9 full screen – gives a beautiful picture (the cinematography relishing Vienna, Budapest and Paris in the Winter). Other moments are less defined especially the indoor shots of sleazy photo labs and hotel rooms – filmed with an on-the-go grittiness that’s in keeping with the story. The master audio is 5.1 DTS with English Subtitles. The extras include a short interview with Brazilian Director Fernando Meirelles about the making of the film (financing, plot lines etc.) and interviews with the actors including the 4 principal leads and the Producer Andrew Eaton and Writer Peter Morgan.

Rich in observations and wisdom - “360” is a fantastic film that will stay with you despite its convoluted structure. And whatever turns you may take in life – make sure you visit this humble little gem somewhere along that thorny way…