Shaun the Sheep: A Woolly Good Time
Shaun the Sheep: A Woolly Good Time, the latest one-disc Region 1 collection of Shaun's adventures, debuts on DVD on February
DVD & Blu-ray – Recent Releases
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Feb 9, 2010
Spectacular Spider-Man
“Spectacular Spider-Man” is perhaps the most exciting entertainment for family audiences to come from the small screen in a very long time. I’ve been watching it on DVD with my kids, and with this week’s release of Vols 6 and 7 nearly completing the show’s two-season run to date, it’s apparent that the show just keeps getting better and
Feb 2, 2010
Blu-ray: Casablanca (1942)
The result of this somewhat haphazard collaboration is a breathtaking creative synergy, a perfect storm in which everything happened to come together with magical rightness. The sparkling script balances wittily cynical dialogue, weepy sentimentalism and clear-eyed idealism. The characters that matter are credibly, even seriously flawed, yet remain deeply sympathetic and open to redemption. The tightly crafted plot is at once intricate and elegant, at turns rollicking and stirring, and the snappy storytelling doesn’t come at the expense of rich, moody atmosphere. The top-notch cast are at the top of their games, and the timeless score accents a classic wartime melodrama that hasn’t lost a thing as time goes
Amelia (2009)
The press called her a “lady pilot,” but Amelia Earhart called herself a “tramp flyer.” She seems to have preferred “flyer” to “pilot”; perhaps it was just a manner of speech, or perhaps it was the sky she cared about more than the airplane, the act of flying rather than the mechanics of manning an aircraft. The other word she liked was “vagabonding.” As imagined in Amelia, Mira Nair’s handsome biopic, Earhart craves freedom above all: “no borders, only
Blu-ray: Gangs of New York (2002)
That book, with its breathless vignettes of the 19th-century
lower Manhattan underworld, has no central plot or unifying
storyline. Similarly, the most striking moments in Scorsese’s
film come as glimpses into that time and place. When we see
hordes of immigrants milling about in the unguessed catacombs
beneath the Old Brewery of the Five Points neighborhood, or rival
fire brigades brawling in the streets rather than fighting the
fire, it’s easy to feel that here, surely, is a dark and strange
world that would be interesting to explore, a world in which
memorable stories must have taken
Blu-ray: Walk the Line (2005)
More than other recent biopics such as Ray and Kinsey, which made a show of “warts and all” even-handedness even as they softened the reality, Walk the Line dares to allow its protagonist to be genuinely unsympathetic.
Blu-ray: An American in Paris (1953)
In a conceit both touching and surreal, Kelly plays an
American ex-G.I. in Paris who’s never wanted anything but to
paint, though he’s obviously the best hoofer in
Blu-ray: Maid in Manhattan (2002)
He’s a wealthy, unattached scion of a
political dynasty; she’s a hard-working maid whose mother and
workplace "sisters" discourage her from yearning for more. An
updated "Cinderella" story in the Pretty Woman mold, Wayne
Wang’s Maid in Manhattan (Columbia) makes agreeably
diverting viewing for most of its 105-minute running time, though
after the magic runs out at midnight the movie meanders through
an autopilot resolution that lacks a glass
Blu-ray: Million Dollar Baby (2004)
By the film’s end, Frankie is faced with a choice that the
priest says could lead to his damnation. The film makes the wrong
choice seem right. But it leaves it an open question, I think,
whether making that choice leads to redemption or damnation.
Million Dollar Baby suggests, perhaps, that the right and
most loving thing to do for someone else may entail one’s own
damnation. This is very far from good way of looking at things.
But it suggests a film that is less complacent, more thoughtful,
less like smug propaganda than some of its detractors
Blu-ray: March of the Penguins (2005)
To human observers, the ways in which animal behavior variously resembles or contrasts with human behavior is an inexhausible source of fascination. Catch animals behaving one way, and we can’t help marveling at how “almost human” they seem. Catch them behaving another way, and we’re struck by the unbridgeable gulf between the animal and human
DVD & Blu-ray: Training Day (2001)
Washington’s knockout performance is the main reason to see Training Day. It may also be the crux of the film’s moral
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