NEW TO DVD MARCH 03, 2008

NEW TO DVD TUESDAY, MARCH 06, 2008

ALL HAT-R for language and some sexual content-starring Luke Kirby Keith Carradine, Lisa Ray, Ernie Hudson, and Rachel Leigh Cook. WESTERN “He crossed the wrong people.” I always get a kick out of the tag lines—so easy to poke fun at. To be fair, however, it really is hard to cram everything into a one-liner without being cheesey. This is based on a novel by Brad Smith. This is more of a modern day western involving thoroughbred racing.

EVIL WOODS, THE-R-for pervasive language, some violence, nudity, and drug use-Starring Tamara Czartoryski, William Van Noland, Brad Smith (no, not the author from above), Ivory Dortch, and Dedan Donovan. HORROR. This appears to be the typical horror movie with all the horror elements. Stop me if you’ve seen this one— 1) a group of kids go camping in the woods (2) a stranger comes along and tells them of a legend about a ghost haunting the forest where they are camping (3) scary things start to happen like the tires of their car get slashed, preventing them from leaving (4) they lose cell phone reception, which cuts them off from the outside world (5) as dusk approaches, the kids start to go missing, one by one. You’ve seen it, right? It’s not that it looks bad, it looks….. tired.

EYE, THE-PG13-Starring Jessica Alba Alessandra Nivola, and Parker Posey. HORROR. This is a remake of the 2002 Jian Gui (Gin Gwai-literally “seeing ghosts”). The original was nominated and won awards, was reportedly super creepy. This one, however, didn’t get nearly the same feedback. In fact, most called this an unnecessary remake. The ending of the remake has also been changed. Sydney (Alba) has been blind since she was a child due to an accident as a child. Thanks to an anonymous eye donor, she undergoes surgery in hopes of restoring her sight. Soon after the surgery, as her vision begins to return, she is plagued with shadowy images (and are they disturbing?). Soon, these images evolve into seeing the doomed being dragged away from the living world into another. Not knowing if the images were part of the recovery process, if she is becoming mentally unstable, or if they were real, she begins to think that her suspect donor has seen secret things that now only she can see.

FLAWLESS-PG13 for brief strong language-starring Demi Moore, Michael Cane, Lambert Wilson, and Joss Ackland. THRILLER/HEIST. Set in the 60s, this is filled with a strong cast (obviously). Laura (Moore) is the typical competent executive at the London Diamond Corporation, who finds herself bitter and frustrated when male colleague after male colleague is promoted ahead, in front of, around, and through her despite her efforts, experience, and ability. Cane’s character is the janitor who is equally as bitter for being overlooked in his position, who happens to know the security system inside and out. He accurately assesses Laura’s disgruntled attitude with the company, and ropes her into a ingenious heist, targeting the hand that feeds them. The plan, however, may be a bit more extensive than he originally let on.

MEET THE SPARTANS-UR PIT OF DEATH VERSION-Starring Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Ken Davitian, and Kevin Sorbo. COMEDY. Yeah… this looks really far from good. This is clearly a spoof on 300. Leonidas leads only 13 people to war against the Persians. His small and dysfunctional army consists of Ghost Rider, Rocky, Transfromers, and yes, Paris Hilton, who happens to be hunchbacked. Shrek, Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell, and Paula Abdul are in there somewhere too. Includes a gag reel and a trivia game.

ONION MOVIE, THE-UR-Starring Len Cariou and everyone. This movie sat for about five years after failing to wow test audiences. This is SATIRE. Wahoo! It also looks raunchy as heck. Boohoo. Of course, this is based on the newspaper of the same name.

SEMI-PRO-Starring Wil Ferrell-COMEDY. I saw this screening, and if you know me at all, you probably know I wouldn’t have gone had it not been a free ride. I would never have paid to see a slapstick comedy in the theatre. One redeeming quality, however, was the setting—near and dear to me—Flint, Michigan. Wahoo! Even before GM bailed, Flint was not winning any city of the year awards, but post-oil crisis, and pre-GM bail out was the setting for the film, and depicted the pit Flint was at the time. After the bailing out of GM, partially due to the oil crisis, unionization, tax disadvantages (oh, shut up, if it were your company, you would relocate to wherever it was cheaper to run it, too), along with Flint’s inability or unwillingness to make accommodations to attract other types of businesses, Flint simply TANKED into the absolute wretched waste of space it is today. Roger and Me (Roger Moore—ugh) shows a pretty vivid picture of what it looked like post-GM bail out, although offers a fairly skewed version as to the whys, which is not surprising given Moore’s anti-big business, anti-democracy, and anti-US sentiment. [hey, if you think another country’s health care system is so superior, get on the boat…] Back to Semi-Pro… Will Ferrell is funny, yes—he usually is, but also predictable. The story is fairly amusing, and overall the movie was redeemed by Woody Harrelson, who made the movie tolerable to watch. I still can’t figure out why he was in such a production, but for my sake, I was glad he was there. Of course, the whole concept of the famous basketball term, which was, per the movie, purportedly “invented” for a particular move was complete hogwash, and I won’t go into great detail about the origin of the word other than to say it has ties to the circus world, and originally had nothing to do with basketball. The basketball world stole the term “alley-oop” from this circus world after it had already been well established, and then they assigned it to this famous move. Word origins is kind of my thing, because I’m geeky that way, and so during the movie, that kind of threw me. As if you care. Just don’t go around after the movie telling people that the word alley-oop was something a basketball person came up with, because it wasn’t. Thieves! Overall, the movie was semi-funny, and Harrelson saved the day. There were some intermittent funny one-liners that elicited a giggle or two from me. Mike, on the other hand, laughed hysterically through the entire thing. Then again, he thought Talladega Nights was terribly funny as well, which I thought was absolutely worthless, and drove me away from the TV after the first 10 minutes.