DVD Exchange House

Anthony DSouza - Blue (Widescreen) (2009)

Editorial Reviews

If I may broadly categorize Bollywood films into two camps. One, the original works, which might even extend to remakes of films from the other regions in the subcontinent, but seldom seen outside of it. The masala formula would work its magic into creating an entertaining tale filled with a song and dance extravaganza. Then the other would be the stitching together of elements from other films, seldom referred to as paying homage or acknowledged if at all, and trying to pass them off as originals. These tend to be predictable, and plainly concealing a bad, if non-existent story. Blue unfortunately falls into the latter category.

I had originally wanted to watch this on the big screen, given its tooting of the horn that it's the first to feature stunning underwater photography in a Bollywood action film. But the result here, for an actioner, is something that left much to be desired. While references to Into The Blue can be discounted by virtue of it being just another treasure hunter movie set in the high seas, the other sequences here were something that you would have seen before, from boring MI:2 motorcycle chase scenes, the Bourne Ultimatum for fisticuffs on board a boat, to the one that takes the cake involving a gunfight that was a lift out from Bad Boys 2.

Lines were also found lifted from films like Hitch, but thankfully this was kept to a minimum. Set in the Bahamas with locations like Thailand also included, this film dwells on the search for the missing sunken ship Lady in Blue, which is said to contain treasures beyond a man's widest dreams. A simple, carefree fisherman Sagar (Sanjay Dutt) holds key to the location of the ship, given a diving expedition with his dad when young which resulted in a tragedy. His good friend, rich playboy Aarav (Akshay Kumar, whose films this year had rather mediocre box office returns) desires that Sagar would come to his senses and make them both richer, but to Sagar it's a secret that he would bring to the grave.

Enter Sagar's reckless brother Sam (Zayed Khan) who's being pursued by thugs all the way from Thailand for a sum of 50 million dollars that he owes, and you know just what the solution is for our reluctant Sagar. As mentioned the film got made through the stringing of action sequences one after another, with room for some romance between Sagar and Mona (Lara Dutta, and Sam and Nikki (Katrina Kaif in a short supporting role), but the much touted underwater action scenes turn out to be nothing more than a drop in the ocean, much of it against faceless thugs who seem to appear quite conveniently to challenge our testosterone filled trio.

There's a nice twist to the story about families which gave the weak story some sense, but alas this was too little too late, as the finale was one hurried affair that seemed more like a haphazardly inserting a coda just for the sake of, damage having already been made by the uninspiring action and plot. If only it had taken time to further develop the characters beyond their cardboard caricatures, which would have made it all the more palatable in terms of story, rather than to stick its guns to the action which were cobbled from films made in the West.

Region Free DVD by Shemaroo Entertainment comes presented in gorgeous anamorphic widescreen format, except for an opaque watermark which pops on screen at the bottom right corner every now and then. Audio is presented in its original Hindi/English track and you can select from a 5.1 Dolby Digital or plain Stereo. Subtitles are available in English, French, Dutch, German and Arabic, and Scene Selection is over 18 chapters.

Staple to Bollywood film DVDs, the Songs section is separate, and allows you to choose specifically which track you want to revisit, either Rehnuma (3:59), Aaj Dil (3:09) or Kylie Minogue's Chiggy Wiggy (4:25). There's a play all function as well, and all songs once completed will lead you back to the menu.

Other Special Features include the standard Making of the Movie (20:16), presented in letterbox format, which goes behind the scenes at the shoot, as well as interviews with the cast and crew. A lot of time got devoted to the making of the action sequences here, and you'll even see Akshay Kumar get hurt while filming underwater. Some of the clips here also had segments from the respective Making of the Songs such as Chiggy Wiggy (6:58) and A.R. Rahman's Fiqrana (5:26).

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
250 ft deep lies the secret of Blue. Treasure hunters come in droves, lured by tales of a fabled treasure. But none but one has ever returned from the deadly depths of the Pacific Ocean; leaving behind a bloody trail and even more intriguing rumors... For not only is the treasure inaccessible; its guarded night and day by deadly sharks. Aarav (Akshay Kumar), Sagar (Sanjay Dutt), and Sam (Zayed Khan) - three men with differing motives - find themselves diving deep into these murky depths - to hunt for the treasure. For wealthy Aarav, it's about the intoxicating high of more money and more risk. For honest Sagar, it's only about saving his girlfriend Mona (Lara Dutta) and his brother. For dare devil Sam, it's simply a matter of life and death - his own. As emotions run high and motives run deed, the dark side of human nature lays bared. And hundreds of feet underwater, Aarav, Sagar, and Sam grapple, initially with sharks, and then with the demons of greed, betrayal and above all, their own pricking conscious...

Product Details

Actors: Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Zayed Khan, Katrina Kaif
Directors: Anthony D'Souza
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Hindi (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English, French, Dutch, German, Arabic
Disc Origin: Region All (INDIA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphich)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating UNRATED
Studio: Shemaroo Entertainment
DVD Release Date: October 16, 2009
Run Time: 116 minutes

David Lam - Hong Kong Gigolo aka Heung Gong Mo Nam (1990)

Editorial Reviews

Hey, he had a mean and naughty streak too, Mr. David Lam! In between mature works like Goodbye Mammie came the punishing hostess melodrama Girls Without Tomorrow (aka Call Girl '88) and the entertainingly violent Women's Prison so why not turn to the gigolo movie starring the man easily picked for such a part, Mr. Simon Yam. Although signaling very late his intent for Hong Kong Gigolo, it has also signaled a huge risk to take with this episodic tale. It attempts substance, heartache and harsh violence but when all spices are spread over this Category III exploitation trash (in the good sense), it becomes more favourable when merely looking at it AS exploitation. It has its huge positives and drawbacks that.

The plot is more about little plot strands centered around a trio of gigolos whose madam is the Petrina Fung character Maria. All of them naturally are in need of hiding their profession from loved ones, including David (Simon Yam) whose sister (Meg Lam) is a police woman. Her superior Wilson (Robert Middleton) has laid his eyes on David though but since he has refused him, he sets out to screw up whatever he can in David's life. Horse (Alex Man) is the veteran on the downslide and not being able to keep custody of his son, his next steps become increasingly desperate and darker. Joe (Mark Cheng) is new in the group and goes along with every perverted desire his clients wish upon. So much so that a video taped arrangement leads to major trouble with the law...

In quite amusing fashion, it seems David Lam is almost setting out to lure in the female audience first and foremost as the trio of males (well two of the more fit ones) work out, look oily and shower in the moody cinematography. Alex Man is not part of this equation and even comes off as the slimey one out of the trio when he picks up a French girl near the beginning. Neatly turning the tables later and getting the most dramatic value out of Man's story, you still have to remember that being scattershot with the plot also means putting logic on the line. That's why some initial sexual encounters that have to do with tragedy also is played out with a sense of goofiness. David Lam did not lace up his skates before going onto this slippery ice but it's fun watching him do all manner of crazy, very noticeable stuff.

We learn by the end of the movie that being a gigolo pretty much spells doom for your life. Keeping it a secret and being demanded to marry, form a family and have money, the trio try and keep their dignity as humans as best they can which is a valid, morally correct argument to have hovering over the film. Not easy though when people literally bring in God and your soul into the argument against the profession. Wrong angle. Mentioning this content every now and again matches the feeling one get from Lam's direction. It's serious intentions mixed up with fairly well done erotica, exaggerated acting (Western cast member Robert Middleton is noticeable to say the least), exploitation worthy of the III rating and gory melodrama allowed to be that since Lam IS playing with the rating. The best bits from this slightly random behaviour comes via Alex Man's performance. In no way subtle but very well handled, Lam brings up notions of Horse being the mentor who's lost it and is picked up by his students. Frustration, patience and reconciliation between him and Simon Yam's David who's the saint in the trio... when this story is allowed to breathe, we get a sense of warmth and hope present in the picture. It's unfortunately smothered in the story but it's enough of an emotional anchor for us to be invested.

That investment coupled with harsh violence, events and tragedy that like karma come flying in at the trio of characters at the same time, it makes Hong Kong Gigolo watchable when taping together the scattered elements that work. A cohesive whole you won't be able to make out of it but David Lam does enough right as an actual filmmaker in combination with over the top Category III, DARK shenanigans. It's actually a quickly digested but in general well seasoned product.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
Cheng, Wai, and Joe are Gigolo's. Cheng, once very popular, is loosing his color because of age. Wai's "profession" brings his sister a broken leg and his mother a broken heart. Joe is persuaded to betray his client by videotaping their intercourse for the clients husband and causes him to be involved in a murder case...

Product Details

Actors: Mike Abbott, Mark Cheng, Sophia Crawford, Bo-Bo Fung, Meg Lam
Directors: David Lam
Format: NTSC, Color, Widescreen, Letterbox, Subtitles, Dolby Digital
Audio Language: Cantonese (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono), Mandarin (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: English, Traditional Chinese
Disc Origin: Region 3 (HK) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Letterbox)
Number of Disc: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: CAT III
Publisher: Universe Laser (HK)
DVD Release Date: March 1, 2000
Running Time: 97 Mins. (approx.)

Man Kei Chin - The Forbidden Legend: Sex & Chopsticks 2 (2009)

Editorial Reviews

The category III sexploitation revival continues with “The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks 2”, the next instalment of director Chin Man Kei’s adaptation of the Chinese text ‘Jin Pin Mei’, a.k.a. ‘The Plum in the Golden Vase’. Chin is certainly more than qualified to reintroduce viewers to the crazy excesses and pleasures of the form, having been responsible for some of its finest hours during the heyday of the mid 1990s, including “Sex and Zen 2” (Starring none other than Shu Qi) and “The Eternal Evil of Asia”. Thanks no doubt to the presence of a gorgeous bunch of brave actresses and AV starlet beauties, the films have proved a surprise success, hopefully with more of the same on the way, apparently including a forthcoming 3-D sex film set in Ancient China.

The plot begins where the original left off, with Simon Qing (Lam Wai Kin, an old hand at the genre, having starred in “Chinese Erotic Ghost Story” some years back) feeling pretty happy, having added Lotus (AV star Hayakawa Serina) to his collection of concubines after murdering her husband Wu Da Lang (Ng Chi Hung). Needless to say, the sex obsessed man is soon lusting after a new challenge in the form of Pinky (AV star Uehara Kaera), who reminds him of the woman he lost his virginity to. Since she is married to one of his friends, this sets in motion a whole new series of wicked schemes as he tries to make her his. Matters are complicated when Wu Da Lang’s brother Wu Song (Wu Qing Zhe) returns for revenge, reminding Lotus of a passionate encounter from the past. Trying to keep one step ahead of Wu Song and his increasingly unhappy wives, Simon enlists the help of family maid Plum (Winnie Leung, who previously starred in a number of horror films, including “Deadly Camp”, “Dial D for Demons” and “New Blood”), though it seems that even he may not be able to worm his way out of trouble this time.

As can probably be gleamed from the above synopsis, “The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks 2” is a pretty convoluted affair, with a plot that resembles a psychotic soap opera, packed full of scheming, double dealings and betrayals. Simon Qing is a great, if not exactly likeable protagonist, utterly obsessed with his own carnal desires and increasingly ruthless in his willingness to sacrifice others in pursuit of his own satisfaction. The film really is quite dark, much more so than the rather silly original, especially towards the end, when the bodies start to pile up and as things build towards a truly shocking finale. All of this works very well, and the film serves as a reminder of the very best that the category III genre once offered viewers a decade or so ago. Thanks to the intricacies of the plot, the film remains engaging outside of the crazy couplings, and is surprisingly tense, with director Chin doing a great job and wisely remembering that more than just sex scenes are required to hold the interest.

This having been said, gratuitous sex and nudity is certainly the film’s raison d’être and on this score it certainly delivers, with a fairly non stop parade of graphic scenes of almost every variety imaginable. Some of these are pretty far out and wacky in the finest style of the genre, including lots of swinging, red ropes and the hilariously inappropriate use of grapes. Although it is not to suggest that the film is a tasteful affair, Chin’s camera does at least linger instead of leer, and despite the nasty edge during the latter stages, there is a sense of fun to most of its encounters. The actresses are all beautiful, whether unclothed or wearing push up bodices that put “Curse of the Golden Flower” to shame and the film is certainly easy on the eyes, thanks also to some surprisingly handsome production values. This gives it a further boost, and sets it several notches higher than its predecessors of old.

It really is great to see this kind of film still being made today, and with such obvious dedication to the form. “The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks 2” certainly stands as one of the better examples of the genre, and as a great reminder of the highly questionable, though very enjoyable kind of off the wall nonsense that Hong Kong cinema used to produce.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
After her husband was murdered Lotus (Serina Hayakawa) had no alternative but to become Simon Qing's concubine. Yet Simon (Lam Woi Kin) was still not content. He seduced Pinky (Kaera Uehara), the wife of his good friend Hua Zi-xu (Tam Kon Chung), while plotting his death. Pinky became his third concubine. Wu Song, Wu Da-lang's (Ng Chi Hung) brother, vowed to avenge his brothers death. Before he could do so, he was set up by Simon's maid, a foxy lady named Plum (Winnie Leung) who wrongfully accused him of raping her. Wu Song was sentenced to go into exile. To reward Plum, Simon took her as his concubine as well. Henceforth, he led a corrupt life with his wife and his concubines, indulging in all sorts of sex games and perversions, like SM and threesomes. Such decadence would not go unpunished. Very soon Simon realized that his virility was totally dependent on drugs. That spelled the beginning of his downfall...

Product Details

Actors: Tam Kon Chung, Serina Hayakawa, Wai Kin Lam, Kin-Yan Lee, Sammuel Leung
Directors: Man Kei Chin
Format: NTSC, Color, Widescreen, Anamorphic, Subtitles, Dolby Digital, DTS
Audio Language: Cantonese (Dolby Digital 5.1), Cantonese (DTS 5.1), Mandarin (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: Simplified Chinese, English, Traditional Chinese
Disc Origin: Region 3 (HK) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of Disc: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: CAT III
Publisher: Joy Sales (HK)
DVD Release Date: June 26, 2009
Running Time: 93 Mins. (approx.)

Paul Mones - Saints & Sinners (Uncut Euro Version) (1995)

Editorial Reviews

What is Special About this DVD?

Actress Jennifer Rubin's plentiful nude scenes, "3 way" footage, and the scene where she uses her mouth to demonstrate the importance of safe sex (apply a condom - image captures are shown below) are certainly a major reason why collectors worldwide are frustrated that they can't find this in local stores on DVD. Don't worry, we've got it, and its great!

Who is Jennifer Rubin?

Jennifer was a fashion model who brought her soft, sex-swollen lips and her warm, brown eyes to the Silver Screen! Her body is long, tawny, and toned, as befits the hot lights of the runway. Her breasts? Double handfuls of billowing nirvana topped by a pair of the most active stand-up nipples ever captured by the leering lens. Right here is her most sought after movie on DVD

Plot Summary

Tagline: Guns - Drugs - and Sex
Plot Synopsis: Jennifer Rubin plays Eva, who has a torrid love affair with multiple partners, but does she know what she's getting into? After many years Pooch has returned to his neighborhood. To Big Boy, his best friend, Pooch is valuable asset in his plans of becoming local crime lord. To Pooch, this reunion is painful because he is, actually, undercover cop sent to bring Big Boy down.

Product Details

Actors: Damian Chapa, Jennifer Rubin, Scott Plank, William Atherton, Damon Whitaker
Directors: Paul Mones
Format: Color, Dolby, Full Screen, PAL
Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Durch
Disc Origin: Region 2 (European Union) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Full Screen)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: 18
Studio: MDP Worldwide
DVD Release Date: April 19, 1995
Run Time: 100 minutes

Janet Greek - Spellbinder (1988)

Editorial Reviews

SPELLBINDER was a favorite of mine in the 80’s and being that the genre didn’t knock on movie theater doors last week, I gave it another whirl. And yup, it still held up like a pair of silicone tangies perking out for air today. I gotta say this though, good luck in finding this sucker on DVD within the USA (I own the VHS). Word has it that Kelly Preston’s husband John Travolta bought all of the US rights to this one to keep it on the down-low (probably because it deals with Satanism and they’re Scientologists). It is available on Aussie DVD though (Region 4).

SPELLBINDER came out strong right off the bat, opening with a hook that all men can relate to and then building off it gradually, jacking up the surrealistic jive, whacky characters and chase sequences along the way. Its mystery had me guessing for the most part as well which is always a plus. I love it when a movie keeps me on my toes and this one did the whole way through. Although gore-less 99.9% of the time the moments of random suspense hit the spot and so did the novel scary imagery. Wait till you see that bit with all those faces pressing against the outside of a window, going at it so hard that they made the window bend outwards…CREE and PY! And looking at the film again, it’s easy to see how this was the one that made me fall in pure, untamed lust with Kelly Preston at the time. The gal was BEAUTY incarnated here (even with that puffy hair) and she hit the sexy, vulnerable and weirdo notes perfectly. A very good role for her and she aced it! I can’t see anybody else doing it better!

Then there was the subject matter at hand punching in hard. For reasons that only my shrink and his shrink knows for sure, Satanism inclined movies always frighten and fascinate me more than the norm. Is it because Cults folks like this truly exist? Or that this dark religion has been slumming around for ages? Not sure to be honest. All I know is that it just does it for me within the horror genre big time. No further insight needed. Add to all that occult loving a handful of groovy set pieces (love that car elevating in the air bit), an even pace that kept me on the line, a MUCHO messed up scene with Andra Lindley (Mrs White) going no holds barred buck nuts and an ending that yes, ripped off a well known 70’s Brit flick, but that still uppercut me straight on and sent me to the mat and you get a cool little chiller that’s worth a gander. NOTE: Am I the only one that’s totally fascinated with the “4” shaped pendant that Miranda wears? I want one! Not to wear or anything, I just want one, step off, am in no mood ; )

On the slip-up side of the banana, the film was a low budget party and it showed at times in terms of the look and the production values. The visuals screamed TV Movie of the week now and again hence taking away from it. And where were the gore, sex and violence in this Zoo? Out for a stroll? An affair of this ilk should be on top of its goodies in my opinion; here it felt like they were holding back for unknown reasons. Dumb moves to serve the plot were in the house too. For example; any dude that nails a stranger and then lets her STAY in his pad while he goes to work the next day is just ASKING for it. COME ON MAN! Think dammit! THINK! Granted, nothing too critical, but it needed to be said. Finally, the flick lagged a tad during its middle section; thankfully it didn’t take long for Plot Point #2 to kick in and the macabre shenanigans to start rolling again.

All in all SPELLBINDER parallels that clichéd expression that I never heard anybody use verbally: it was a jewel in the rough. It’s a little known, little seen supernatural jamboree, that although flawed, still wound up being a tight ride and then some. Seek it, acquire it, watch it and then wonder why it never got a wider release. Let’s see if ya fall for this one’s charm like I did!

Plot Summary

Tagline: A chance encounter. A dream come true. A man would do anything for a girl like Miranda.
Plot Synopsis: When Jeff and his friend rescue a young beautiful woman (Kelly Preston) from an apparently abusive boyfriend, the trouble starts. Jeff unknowing becomes involved with Miranda (Kelly) and the web of intrigue that follows her. Miranda is on the run from the witches coven (to which she belongs). Miranda tells Jeff of her situation, but not the entire truth. Jeff willingly helps Miranda out of her troubles, but creates his own.

Product Details

Actors: Tim Daly, Kelly Preston, Rick Rossovich, Audra Lindley, Anthony Crivello
Directors: Janet Greek
Format: Color, Dolby, Letterboxed, Widescreen, PAL
Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region All (Australia) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Letterboxed)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: M
Studio: Shock
DVD Release Date: September 23, 1988
Run Time: 96 minutes

Gérard Kikoïne - Lady Libertine (Uncut Version) (1983)

Editorial Reviews

Lady Libertine (1984) is the long awaited DVD issue of "Frank and I," an erotic film based on the anonymously penned Victorian novel of the same name. It is an example of 1980s "couples erotica," originally shot in Europe for late night American cable showings on the Playboy Channel. It is most notable for the court battles it inspired. Supporting actress Sophie Favier became a respectable TV presenter in France after she made this film, and she sued to prevent it from being re-released. She lost the case, so we now have a chance to see Umbrella Entertainment's remastered and uncut DVD.

Christopher Pearson plays a 19th century gentleman who sees a young lad walking in the middle of nowhere, clearly with no means of support. The squire brings young Frank home, takes a liking to him, and is about to put him a proper boarding school and turn him into a gentleman, when the need arises to cane him. The resultant body exposure reveals that Frank is actually Frances (Jennifer Inch). This changes everything, and it doesn't take long until they are intimate. Needless to say, this puts a strain on Pearson's relationship with his city girlfriend (Sophie Favier). He finally convinces his girlfriend to take charge of educating Frances and turning her into a lady. Meanwhile, he hears the girl's complete story, including the punishment she received in a whorehouse because she was not willing to prostitute herself.

If this is your kind of material, you will not be disappointed. This film captures the spirit of Victorian era pornography and presents lovely women completely naked and being naughty, including a famous game show host. It even adds spanking, caning and whipping for fetish fans, all in an immaculate and unexpurgated transfer.

Plot Summary

Tagline: The infamous erotic saga an ashamed star tried to stop!
Plot Synopsis: Charlie, a young aristocrat in turn of the century England, meets a boy named Frank on the road to Portsmouth. What Charlie doesn't realize is that Frank is actually Frances, who's donned a disguise to escape working at a brothel. Charlie takes Frank/Frances into his home, and when he discovers her true identity, the two become lovers. He sends her to London to be trained by his mistress in the art of sex, but she learns much more about her identity as a woman. Before the opening credits, explicitly on-screen it reads: "Based on the famous Victorian erotic novel by an anonymous writer".

Product Details

Actors: Christopher Pearson, Jennifer Inch, Sophie Favier, Alain Dumaurier, Emmanuel Karsen
Directors: Gérard Kikoïne
Format: Color, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region All (Australia) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Full Screen)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: MA 15+
Studio: Playboy Cinema
DVD Release Date: October 31, 2006
Run Time: 84 minutes

Aurelio Grimaldi - La Donna Lupo aka The Man-Eater (1999)

Editorial Reviews

The film opens with a woman performing a sexually-oriented stage act. The highlight of this act involves spirited sexual congress with a large stuffed panda which will, at the very least, need to be cleaned and disinfected thoroughly before it can be returned to its owner. I can't claim to have seen every film with stuffed-panda fuckin', but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably THE scene to watch if you are into this particular sexual practice. In fact, I'll go the extra mile and say that I have never seen a better scene with a woman having sex with any kind of stuffed bear, and that includes teddy bears, although to tell the truth I haven't seen many Australian porn films, so I may be missing out on some excellent stuffed koala scenes. I have disqualified those in advance because koalas are not really bears, nor even closely related to bears.

The film is not called The Panda Fucker, however, but The Man Eater. You can therefore assume that it eventually gets to the point, or at least closer to a point of some kind, and starts to focus on various non-panda activities. A literal translation of the title would actually be closer to "the she-wolf," but the film is marketed to English-speaking channels as The Man Eater because that title has a double meaning in the context of one the star's favorite sexual practices. The star, Loredana Cannata, sets aside her panda long enough to perform a highly beloved form of man-eating on camera in the course of this film, thus earning La Donna Lupo a spot on Wikipedia's list of mainstream movies with unsimulated sex. In addition to this particular activity, Ms. Cannata also pleasures herself on camera by demonstrating her command of Houdini's famous "disappearing finger act," the secret to which I am not allowed to reveal as part of my long-standing agreement to abide by the magician's code, in return for which the magicians agree not to turn me into a newt or make my web site disappear. A small price to pay, if you ask me. Suffice it to say that Ms. Cannata spends the entire film engaging in various activities that are normally performed in public only when there are parties at Charlie Sheen's house. Astoundingly, at least by the more puritanical standards of America, the infinitely open-minded Italian public has subsequently accepted the same Ms. Cannata as a mainstream TV star in her native land.

In between the sex scenes, this is a mainstream and somewhat arty erotic thriller about a mysterious woman with an unquenchable appetite for anonymous sex. A young man picks up a beautiful woman for a one-night stand. He falls for her after a wild night of skinny dipping and hanky-panky, but she is gone in the morning, and the name and phone number she gave him turn out to be false. The young man is so smitten with his dream girl that he tracks her down, only to find out that her entire life consists of nights just like the one she spent with him - except with other men, using other false identities. In general, it is a slow and arty film with no apparent point and a "wha ...?" ending, and is only of interest to those who would like to see Cannata fellate a young man or insert a finger into herself.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: This is the story about a Sicilian woman that try to have avidly as many sexual adventures as possible. She uses different identity and personality but she couldn't stop collecting adventures. One day she meet Valerio a young student that falls in love with her.

Product Details

Actors: Loredana Cannata, Arturo Paglia, Pascal Persiano, Francesco Di Leva, Gianluca Cuomo
Directors: Aurelio Grimaldi
Format: Color, Dolby, Full Screen, PAL
Language: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region 0 (Italy) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Full Screen)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Aranciafilm
DVD Release Date: August 26, 1999
Run Time: 80 minutes

Ashutosh Gowariker - Jodhaa Akbar (3-Disc Special Edition)(2008)

Editorial Reviews

Today marks the premiere of Jodhaa Akbar here and the reasons for wanting to watch this film are simple - the pairing of Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, director Ashutosh Gowariker, and musician A.R. Rahman. It's simply an irresistible combination, one that everyone in the cinema hall would attest to, given the full house, and the full house in the next screening.

Jodhaa Akbar is set in the 16th century, which tells of an arranged marriage for strategic alliance purposes that blossomed into true love between a Mughal emperor, Jalaluddin Mohammad (Hrithik Roshan) and a Rajput princess Jodha (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). In fact, as how most historical epics would go, such as the likes of Alexander or peer Bollywood film Asoka (starring Shah Rukh Khan), while efforts are placed into extensive research to try and stay as authentic as possible, there still are various interpretations to characters, some of whom will be taken to task (like Oliver Stone's vision of Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great) by audiences. The contention here is the story behind Jodha, and the various names she goes by with different retellings, and that is put up front even before the opening credits start to roll.

Director Gowariker's pedigree with his successful epics like Lagaan and Swades puts him in good stead as he tackles this love story on multiple fronts. In fact, as he puts it, it's a story about the meeting of two cultures and two religions, so basically, what's in a name? Sometimes I wonder about similarities with the formation of big countries as we know it today, with China undergoing multiple civil styled wars in bids by conquerors to unite it, and with India, it seems that it's no different. We get to see the multitudes of ethnic groups, each with their unique practices which we were given glimpses on, thanks to the superb art direction and wonderful, authentic sets recreated.

Jalaluddin Mohammad hails from the Mughals, and is a Muslim, who from young is told by various quarters what to do, and how to lead his life as Emperor of Hindustan. He gains a reputation on the battlefield, which could parallel those in Hollywood in terms of sheer scale and grandeur, even utilizing hordes of marauding elephants and settled into some icky territory when elephants rampage and stomp on soldiers. Blood aside, we see Jalaluddin slowly become a man of his own, and in a bid to forge a strategic alliance, he's offered the hand of Jodha Bai. However, this arranged marriage was doomed a failure from all quarters, because of the difference in religion (she's a Hindu) and culture. Furthermore, the reluctant Jodha makes it all the more difficult by asking for 2 conditions, that she be allowed to practice her religion, and to build a shrine in their bridal home. He agrees.

And in today's context, I would say this act of proposition and acceptance would also raise some eyebrows sky high. But herein likes the key message that gets drummed through the movie - why can't we love despite our differences? Why can't we enjoy the diversity that each religion or culture bring, instead of baying for blood and inciting hatred? Jodhaa Akbar has its message of (religious) tolerance worn very prominently on its sleeve. It's quite radical and forward thinking in Jalaluddin's character, and we feel for the couple as they go journey from strangers to soul mates overcoming the various challenges posed from the outside, and between themselves as they try hard to break the thick ice.

But it's not all lovey-dovey in turmoil times like theirs, where politicking takes place from the macro with the constant threat of war and the running of a country, to the micro where internal jealousies and the defending of personal turf rear their ugly head, which kind of reminisce the many petty backstabbings found behind closed royalty doors, with Jalaluddin's nanny Maham Anga (Ila Arun) proving to be the attempted spoiler and go between in the marriage. And to leaders out there, there's a scene which while it's something that's not new, is always apt to remind them not to sit on their ivory towers, but to walk the ground and hear the grumbling first hand, as nothing beats ground level intelligence.

In most parts, Jodhaa Akbar had reminded me of Cecil B DeMille's historical productions, with its beautiful sets, costumes, great acting, and intense battle sequences. There are a couple of nice action set pieces ranging from full scale war with the clashing of two opposing sides (the elephants were a great bonus, trust me), to a duel which turns out to be a courtship ritual, something not new since both Hrithik and Aishwarya challenged each other before (though on the basketball court), with the latter quite well versed in swordplay given her earlier role in The Last Legion, and one featuring what I thought took a leaf out of the battle between Hector and Achilles in Troy.

Of course, no Bollywood movie will be without music and dance, and here, it's done quite tastefully as you don't expect sudden outbursts into song. The music by A.R. Rahman is top notch as usual, and dances here happen naturally as part of the narrative flow, with the first song coming out only just before the hour mark. Needless to say I found myself tapping my feet to almost all of them. There are a numerous plus points in this blockbuster, and if I'm telling you I'm getting the DVD when it's released, I'm already giving this a vote of confidence that it's a contender to make it to my top 10 movies of the year. Highly recommended! Oh, and you'll have to watch this yourself to find out if Hrithik and Ash did sizzle after their locking of lips in Dhoom2!

P.S. Running 213 minutes, I was thankful that the intermission was granted by the cinema operators for you to stretch your legs, and release the load in your bladder.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
Jodhaa Akbar is the story of the greatest Mughal emperor that ruled Hindustan (now India), Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, and the fiery young Rajput princess, Jodhaa. Set in the sixteenth century, this epic romance begins as a marriage of alliance between two cultures and religions, for political gain, with the Hindu King Bharmal of Amer giving his daughter's hand to a Muslim Emperor, Akbar. When Akbar accepts the marriage proposal, little does he know that in his efforts to strengthen his relations with the Rajputs, he would in turn be embarking on a new journey - the journey of true love. From the battlefield where the young Jalaluddin was crowned, through the conquests that won him the title of Akbar the Great ('Akbar' in Arabic means great), to winning the love of the beautiful Jodhaa, Jodhaa Akbar traces the impressive graph of the mighty emperor and his romance with the defiant princess.

Product Details

Actors: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Sonu Sood, Poonam Sinha, Suhasini Mulay
Directors: Ashutosh Gowariker
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Hindi (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English
Disc Origin: Region All (INDIA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 3 (3 x DVD9)
Rating UNRATED
Studio: UTV Motion Pictures
DVD Release Date: August 22, 2008
Run Time: 213 minutes

Ram Gopal Verma - Sarkar Raj (2-Disc Special Edition) (2008)

Editorial Reviews

"To kill is a crime, but to kill at the right time is politics."

Sarkar Raj is the sequel to the 2005 movie Sarkar by Ram Gopal Varma, which is said to be the Indian equivalent of The Godfather starring megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the titular role where a gangster gets elected to political power. You don't really need to watch Sarkar in order to enjoy Sarkar Raj, as characters get introduced fairly quickly, and their motivations spelt out clearly on the surface. Necessary links to the original were presented in flashbacks, while the story here takes off with new challenges that present themselves to the characters whom you can get chummy with in a jiffy.

There were a few things I was amazed with regarding the movie. For starters, to a relative Bollywood newbie like myself, this movie will debunk all notions that Indian movies have to come default with song and dance. There is absolutely no forced musical sequences in the movie, perhaps only the the Govindar theme song which gets repeated play. Next, the richness of colours I am used to when watching movies from the Indian continent gets replaced by a very strained palette, with quite a gritty look that aligns itself with its subject matter. And the shaky camera technique invades the industry too, though there was adequate contrast provided in its camera styles to reflect the innate characteristics of the leads - for a seasoned gangster who has mellowed and found calm, the camera is measured and still to reflect the old ginger's state of mind, whereas when following his heir apparent, it's shaky-cam for the most parts to accentuate his cock-sure impatient nature beneath a facade of confidence.

Going by the loud chuckles of a predominantly Indian audience I was with, there were certainly some nuances that went unappreciated by myself because my lack of knowledge was likely to have not allowed me into some of those jokes, though there were times I could identify with the story's slight mocking of the state of Indian politics, and with the lack of clear direction amongst the chief villains as well, which played for stifled laughs.

Sarkar Raj opens with Aishwarya Rai's Anita Rajan, the daughter of an industrialist in England who wishes to build a power plant in Subhash Nagare's (Amitabh Bachchan) controlled state. Celebrating his birthday, Subhash takes opportunity to signal that his son Shankar Nagare (played by real life son Abhishek Bachchan) has arrived on the big political arena, and is likely to take a more active role in decision making. This shows when he quietly backs and puts faith in his son's pursuit in having the power plant located in their territory, despite having to displace 40,000 people in the short term. Like all politicians with good intent, they're looking toward the long term goals of providing basic electrical infrastructure to their people, but as with all things, there are bound to be opposition to decisions by the incumbent.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as in slightly more than 2 hours, we're bombarded with political battles made with strategic moves akin to a game of chess, only that the players involved are more than two across a wooden board. There are outright opponents in your face, but the deadlier ones are always those who remain in the shadows, and are difficult to pin down. Gentlemanly campaigning does not suffice, as tricks from the illegitimate book of tactics get drawn out, to consequences that will spiral everyone down the road of violence begetting more violence.

While Amitabh clearly is the head of the household here, just when you thought he had taken a backseat in his role in the sequel, he jumps right back into the driving seat with a vengeance, and it's always interesting to witness the charismatic actor in action. Son Abhishek holds his own against his father's imposing figure, and the both of them as on-screen father-son brings about a sense of realism and naturalness to their characters' relationship, as the son whom the father can trust, and as the father whom the son could rely on for support. Rounding up the Bollywood royalty here is the first post marriage pairing of Abhishek and wife Aishwarya Rai, though Rai's character happens to be somewhat sidelined to a few appearances with plenty of tear duct activation, and doesn't really forward the plot much. But should there be another sequel, then Rai's character is already primed for a meatier role then.

Sarkar Raj has enough story elements to keep you engaged throughout as the characters make all attempts to outplay, outwit and outlast one another. Basic greed of man and being unappreciated (then growing feet too big for their shoes) usually are reasons enough for one to turn against another, but the reminder that goes out is to never rub another man's rhubarb, especially when it belongs to someone with political clout, powerful base support, and well, is a top gangster with no qualms of exacting punishment without remorse.

It makes me want to hunt down the DVD for the first installment already, to see how the Nagares got to consolidate their power, and how certain outcomes mentioned here were played out earlier. Definitely a recommended crime and political thriller!

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
Maharashtra's most powerful and influential family consists of Subhash Nagre; his wife, Pushpa; two sons: Vishnu and Shankar; and Shankar's wife, Avantika. The family face inner conflict when Vishnu departs, never to return. Then, when U.K.-based Anita Rajan approaches them for assistance for opening a power plant in Thakurwadi, Subhash initially opposes it as it could displace the local residents. He subsequently relents after Shankar persuades him. The duo travel to meet with Rao Saab, who welcomes them, but cautions them that they may face opposition from Sanjay Somji. Shankar starts to make presentations, and Sanjay virulently opposes them, leading to riots in the region. The Nagres then find their lives shattered when a pregnant Avantika is killed in a bomb explosion and Subhash suffers a stroke. Will these catastrophes compel them to move away from public life?

Product Details

Actors: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Ravi Kale, Govind Namdeo
Directors: Ram Gopal Varma
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Hindi (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles: English, Tamil, Telugu
Disc Origin: Region All (INDIA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 2 (1 x DVD9 + 1 x DVD5)
Rating UNRATED
Studio: Adlabs
DVD Release Date: October 23, 2009
Run Time: 120 minutes

Sujoy Ghosh - Aladin (2-Disc Limited Edition) (2009)

Editorial Reviews

The tale of Aladdin (renamed Aladin here) has been adapted quite a few times for the big screen, the most memorable being the 1992 animated feature by Disney which featured the vocal talents of Robin Williams as the genie. Sujoy Ghosh tries to place some of the basic concepts of the tale within a contemporary setting & while the movie is full of technical wizardry it fails to create a “magical” cinematic experience.

The tale is set in the fictional town of Khwaish somewhere in northern India. Aladin (Ritesh Deshmukh) is an orphan whose name has proven to be a bane in his life. His parents who believed the tale of the magical lamp to be true named him after the hero in the tale thinking he was destined for great adventure. Little did they know that poor Aladin would spend most of his academic life being bullied into rubbing lamps by the town bully Kasim (Saahil Khan) & his cohorts (I can understand childhood games but why does the habit continue till they are in college doesn’t make sense). On his birthday Aladin is gifted a lamp from the ‘Ancients Things Shop’ (it’s the actual name of the shop in the movie!!! but could have been an inside-joke too) & when he rubs it an actual genie who goes by the moniker of Genius (Amitabh Bachchan) pops out. Aladin is granted three wishes & he utilizes them for wooing the object of his affection, Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez). While Genius is trying to get Aladin to finish his three wishes so he can be free of his contract, trouble arrives in the form of a renegade genie called the Ring Master (Sanjay Dutt) & his troupe of not-so-merry men & women. The Ring Master has an old score to settle with Genius & Aladin, plus he has some dark magic mumbo-jumbo to take care of in connection with a passing comet which will be seen clearly from the town of Khwaish.

The Bachchan family seems to have taken quite a liking to the fantasy genre lately, Abhishek in Drona last year & father Amitabh in Aladin now. While I can’t call either effort successful, both have their small share of positives but the biggest handicap in both has been the inefficient writing. Aladin starts off well & an early scene of the Ring Master & his goons is well done but once the story shifts to Aladin & his three wishes it’s an exercise in testing your patience & ability to stay awake. A lot of unnecessary time is spent behind Aladin deciding how best to spend his three wishes, which doesn’t really matter in the end either since he spends them foolishly anyways & the process adds nothing to the overall story.

The three wishes & the power they give the person who commands the genie could have made for a compelling retelling of the fairy-tale with themes of greed, power & sacrifice, all which was part of the original tale. In hands of less intelligent writers it is merely used as a gimmick to stretch the running length to cram more lame songs, juvenile humor & sub-par effects. The tale of enmity between the two genies & the Ring-Master’s devious plan hold promise in the setup, but sorely lacks a back-story & a conclusion which holds an iota of logic.

The movie sets up scenes whose emotional façade would have worked if the characters had been better developed. For example the part in which we learn the truth behind the death of Aladin’s parents is handled so amateurishly that not only don’t you feel sad but you’ll most likely be left scratching your head from all the confusion. Other scenes like the ones which show Genius’s genesis into a normal human when he refuses to carry out the Ring Master’s wish lack any sort of coherence.

The special effects are remarkable in most parts for a Hindi movie while they do look tacky in a few others, more so in the sequences when Genius is trying to show off his powers & when he saves Aladin from the Ring Master’s goons before losing his powers. It is this part in which the use of visual effects feel gimmicky simply because it looks like scenes were written around what effects could be incorporated into the film rather than the other way around.

The art direction & set design is effective in a manner that it gives the film an old world charm without looking fake. Even though the city of Khwaish looks much inspired from the city of Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings series, it has been created effectively & the cinematography captures the scale convincingly. The cinematography is another asset to the film in the outdoor shots since the movie consists of a large number of composite shots which thankfully gel well with the real stuff. However the interiors are shot with the same staple blandness seen in most Hindi films.

Too many songs ruin the pacing of the film & aren’t catchy either other than the ‘You May Be’ number, which is easy on the ears. The background score of the film however complements the proceedings on screen nicely. The humor throughout is of the pre-pubescent kind & I doubt would be appreciated well by anyone other than kids.

Ritesh Deshmukh moulds his adequate portrayal of the titular character something along the lines of Peter Parker from the Spider-Man movies, though his habitual mannerisms of contorted sad faces arise from time to time. Amitabh Bachchan’s performance lacks conviction & his outfits & wig make him look like a haggard old hyena, though he isn’t bad, he more or less sleepwalks through the role. Sanjay Dutt does the same “mamu” routine he’s been doing for years together & if he wanted to ham it up gloriously he should have taken inspiration from Kay Kay Menon’s similar over-the-top but enjoyable turn in Drona. Jacqueline Fernandez has an alluring smile & acquits herself well in the cute girl role plus she also gets to kick some ass in the inane climax. Saahil Khan is around only to flex his arms & Ratna Pathak Shah is wasted in an inconsequential role.

As fantasy movies go, Aladin is a weak entry into the genre & there are almost no good Hindi fantasy movies to speak of. Its main undoing is the poor quality of writing & the haphazard narrative. However it does have a few technical positives by Hindi movie standards, namely the art direction, the overall even special effects & some effective camera work. It’s not something I’d recommend watching on the big screen (though special effects would look better) but maybe a watch at home might not hurt……too much.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis:
Aladin Chatterjee (Riteish Deshmukh) lives in the city of Khwaish, an orphan who has been bullied since childhood by Kasim and his gang. But his life changes when Jasmine (Jacquiline Fernandes) gives him a magic lamp - because it lets loose the genie Genius (Amitabh Bachchan). Desperate to grant him 3 wishes and seek the end of his contract with the Magic Lamp, the rock-star Genius makes Aladin's life difficult until the real threat looms on the horizon : the ex-genie Ringmaster (Sanjay Dutt). Why does Ringmaster want to kill Aladin? What is the dark secret about Aladin's past that Genius is carrying? And what is Aladin's destiny? Find out more in this swashbuckling fantasy adventure film from Eros Entertainment and Boundscript Motion Pictures.

Product Details

Actors: Amitabh Bachchan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Sanjay Dutt, Jaqueline Fernandes, Ratna Pathak
Directors: Sujoy Ghosh
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Hindi (Dolby Digital 5.1), Hindi (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles: English
Disc Origin: Region All (INDIA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 2 (1 x DVD9 + 1 x DVD5)
Rating UNRATED
Studio: Eros International
DVD Release Date: October 23, 2009
Run Time: 130 minutes

J.J. Abrams - Star Trek (2-Disc Special Edition) (2009)

Editorial Reviews

“Star Trek” as a concept has voyaged far beyond science fiction and into the safe waters of space opera, but that doesn’t amaze me. The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action. Like so many franchises, it’s more concerned with repeating a successful formula than going boldly where no “Star Trek” has gone before.

The 2009 “Star Trek” film goes back eagerly to where “Star Trek” began, using time travel to explain a cast of mostly the same characters, only at a younger point in their lives, sailing the Starship Enterprise. As a story idea, this is sort of brilliant and saves on invention, because young Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and the rest channel their later selves. The child is father to the man, or the Vulcan, and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. This is fun. And when Leonard Nimoy himself returns as the aged Spock, encountering another Spock (Zachary Quinto) as a young man, I was kind of delighted, although as is customary in many sci-fi films, nobody is as astonished as they should be. Holy moly! Time travel exists, and this may be me! It’s more like a little ambiguous dialogue is exchanged, and they’re off to battle the evil Romulan Capt. Nero (Eric Bana).

Time travel as we all know, is impossible in the sense it happens here, but many things are possible in this film. Anyone with the slightest notion of what a black hole is, or how it behaves, will find the black holes in “Star Trek” hilarious. The logic is also a little puzzling when Scotty can beam people into another ship in outer space, but they have to physically parachute to land on a platform in the air from which the Romulans are drilling a hole to the Earth’s core. After they land there, they fight with two Romulan guards, using ... fists and swords? The platform is suspended from Arthur C. Clark’s “space elevator,” but instead of fullerenes, the cable is made of metallic chunks the size of refrigerators.

But stop me before I get started. I mention these details only to demonstrate that the movie raises its yo-yo finger to the science, while embracing the fiction. Apart from details from the youths of the characters and the Spock reunion, it consists mostly of encounters between the Enterprise and the incomparably larger and much better armed Romulan spaceship from the future. It’s encouraging to learn that not even explosions and fires can quickly damage a starship. Also that lifeboats can save the crew, despite the vast distance from home base.

That would be because of warp speed, which for present purposes consists of looking through an unnecessary window at bright lights zapping past. This method of transportation prevents any sense of wonder at the immensity of outer space and is a convenience not only for the starship but also for the screenwriters, who can push a button and zap to the next scene. The concept of using warp speed to escape the clutches of a black hole seems like a recycling of the ancient dilemma of the rock and the hard place.

But there are affecting character moments. Young Spock is deliberately taunted in hopes he will, as a Vulcan, betray emotion. Because Zachary Quinto plays him as a bit of a self-righteous prig, it’s satisfying to see him lose it. Does poor young Spock realize he faces a lifetime of people trying to get a rise out of him? Nimoy, as the elderly Spock, must have benefited, because he is the most human character in the film.

Chris Pine, as James Tiberius Kirk, appears first as a hot-rodding rebel who has found a Corvette in the 23rd century and drives it into the Grand Canyon. A few years after he’s put on suspension by the Academy and smuggled on board the Enterprise by Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), he becomes the ship’s captain. There are times when the command deck looks like Bring Your Child to School Day, with the kid sitting in daddy’s chair.

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) seems to have traveled through time to the pre-feminist 1960s, where she found her miniskirt and go-go boots. She seems wise and gentle and unsuited to her costume. Scotty (Simon Pegg) seems to have begun life as a character in a Scots sitcom. Eric Bana’s Nero destroys whole planets on the basis of faulty intelligence, but the character is played straight and is effective.

The special effects are slam-bam. Spatial relationships between spaceships are unclear because the Romulan ship and the Enterprise have such widely unmatched scales. Battles consist primarily of jump-suited crew members running down corridors in advance of smoke, sparks and flames. Lots of verbal commands seem implausibly slow. Consider, at light warp speeds, how imprecise it would be to say “At my command ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...” Between “2” and “1,” you could jump a million galaxies.

I thought about these things during “Star Trek” because I could not help myself. I understand the Star Trek science has never been intended as plausible. I understand this is not science fiction but an Ark movie using a starship. I understand that the character types are as familiar as your favorite slippers. But the franchise has become much of a muchness. The new movie essentially intends to reboot the franchise with younger characters and carry on as before. The movie deals with narrative housekeeping. Perhaps the next one will engage these characters in a more challenging and devious story, one more about testing their personalities than re-establishing them. In the meantime, you want space opera, you got it.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: On the day of James Kirk's birth, his father dies on his ship in a last stand against a mysterious alien vessel. He was looking for Ambassador Spock, who is a child on Vulcan at that time, disdained by his neighbors for his half-human nature. Twenty years later, Kirk has grown into a young troublemaker inspired by Capt. Christopher Pike to fulfill his potential in Starfleet even as he annoys his instructors like young Lt. Spock. Suddenly, there is an emergency at Vulcan and the newly commissioned USS Enterprise is crewed with promising cadets like Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Pavel Chekov and even Kirk himself thanks to Leonard McCoy's medical trickery. Together, this crew will have an adventure in the final frontier where the old legend is altered forever even as the new version of it is just beginning.

Product Details

Actors: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood
Directors: J.J. Abrams
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby Digital, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: PG-13
Studio: Paramount Pictures
DVD Release Date: November 17, 2009
Run Time: 126 minutes

Oren Peli - Paranormal Activity (Widescreen) (2007)

Editorial Reviews

"Paranormal Activity" is an ingenious little horror film, so well made it's truly scary, that arrives claiming it's the real thing. Without any form of conventional opening or closing credits, it begins by thanking "the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston" and closes with one of those "current whereabouts unknown" title cards and a screen of copyright notices. This was apparently a film made without a director, a writer, a producer, grips, makeup, sound, catering or a honey wagon.

All of the footage is presented as if it had been discovered after the fact. The story device is that Micah shot it himself. There isn't a single shot that violates that presumption, although a few seem technically impossible without other hands on the camera. Those are hard to notice.

Katie is a graduate student of English. Micah is a day trader. They've been together three years, and have now moved into a house in San Diego that doesn't seem much lived in. It's well enough furnished, but everything looks new and there's no clutter. Micah greets Katie out front one day by filming her on his new video camera, which she observes looks bigger than his other one.

They've been bothered by indications of some sort of paranormal activity in an upstairs bedroom. Micah's bright idea is to film in the house, leaving the camera running as a silent sentinel while they sleep. Like any man with a new toy, he becomes obsessed with this notion -- the whole point, for him, isn't Katie's fear but his film. After one big scare, she asks him incredulously, did you actually go back to pick up your camera?

One benefit of the story device is that for long periods of time the camera is ostensibly left on with no one running it. It's on a tripod at the end of their bed while they sleep, and we see events while their eyes are closed. Some of these events and very minor, and I won't describe any of them. The fact that they happen at all is the whole point. That they seem to happen by themselves, witnessed by a static camera, makes them eerie, especially since there are some shots that seem impossible without special effects, and there's no visible evidence of f/x, looking as closely as we can.

He is frequently off camera. She is on cam for almost every shot, and of Katie Featherston's performance it's enough to say it is flawless for the purposes of this film. We're not talking Meryl Streep here, we're talking about a young woman who looks and talks absolutely like she might be an ordinary college student who has just moved in with her boyfriend. There's not a second of "acting."

Micah behaves, shall I say, just like a man. You know, the kind who will never stop and ask directions. Katie has been bothered by some sort of paranormal presence since she was a child, and now she's seriously disturbed, and Micah's response isn't sympathy but a determination to get it all down on film.

They do call in a "psychic expert" (Mark Fredrichs) but he's no help. He specializes in ghosts, he explains, and he knows by walking in the door that what's haunting them isn't a ghost but some sort of demonic presence. He recommends a demonologist, but alas this man is "away for a few days." That's the plot's most unrealistic detail. Having spent some time in my credulous days hanging about the Bodhi Tree bookstore in L.A., I would suggest that California is a state with more practicing demonologists than published poets.

I learn from IMDb that "Paranormal Activity" does indeed have a writer-director, Oren Peli, and other technical credits. But like "The Blair Witch Project," with which it's routinely compared, it goes to great lengths to seem like a film found after the event. It works. It illustrates one of my favorite points, that silence and waiting can be more entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk f/x. For extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won't be bored.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: Katie and her boyfriend Micah have been living together for three years and out of the blue, they are haunted by an entity while they are sleeping. Katie discloses to Micah that she has been haunted since she was eight year-old. The skeptical Micah buys a camera to videotape the paranormal activity in their home during the night. Katie calls Fredrichs, to help them, but he explains that he is specialist in ghosts. However he feels the presence of a fiend and advises the couple to call a friend of his.

Product Details

Actors: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong, Ashley Palmer
Directors: Oren Peli
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: R
Studio: Paramount Pictures
DVD Release Date: December 29, 2009
Run Time: 86 minutes

Frank Darabont - Stephen Kings The Green Mile (Widecreen) (1999)

Editorial Reviews

"We think of this place like an intensive care ward of a hospital." So says Paul Edgecomb, who is in charge of Death Row in a Louisiana penitentiary during the Depression. Paul (Tom Hanks) is a nice man, probably nicer than your average Louisiana Death Row guard, and his staff is competent and humane--all except for the loathsome Percy, whose aunt is married to the governor, and who could have any state job he wants, but likes it here because "he wants to see one cook up close." One day a new prisoner arrives. He is a gigantic black man, framed by the low-angle camera to loom over the guards and duck under doorways. This is John Coffey ("like the drink, only not spelled the same"), and he has been convicted of molesting and killing two little white girls. From the start it is clear he is not what he seems. He is afraid of the dark, for one thing. He is straightforward in shaking Paul's hand--not like a man with anything to be ashamed of.

This is not a good summer for Paul. He is suffering from a painful infection and suffering, too, because Percy (Doug Hutchison) is like an infection in the ward: "The man is mean, careless and stupid--that's a bad combination in a place like this." Paul sees his duty as regulating a calm and decent atmosphere in which men prepare to die.

"The Green Mile" (so-called because this Death Row has a green floor) is based on a novel by Stephen King, and has been written and directed by Frank Darabont. It is Darabont's first film since the great "Shawshank Redemption" in 1994. That, too, was based on a King prison story, but this one is very different. It involves the supernatural, for one thing--in a spiritual, not creepy, way.

Both movies center on relationships between a white man and a black man. In "Shawshank" the black man was the witness to a white man's dogged determination, and here the black man's function is to absorb the pain of whites--to redeem and forgive them. By the end, when he is asked to forgive them for sending him to the electric chair, the story has so well prepared us that the key scenes play like drama, not metaphor, and that is not an easy thing to achieve.

The movie is told in flashback as the memories of Paul as an old man, now in a retirement home. "The math doesn't quite work out," he admits at one point, and we find out why. The story is in no haste to get to the sensational and supernatural; it takes at least an hour simply to create the relationships in the prison, where Paul's lieutenant (David Morse) is rock-solid and dependable, where the warden (James Cromwell) is good and fair, and where the prisoners include a balmy coot named Delacroix (Michael Jeter) and a taunting monster named Wharton (Sam Rockwell).

Looming over all is the presence of John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a man whose own lawyer says he seems to have "dropped out of the sky." Coffey cannot read or write, seems simpleminded, causes no trouble and exudes goodness. The reason Paul consults the lawyer is because he comes to doubt this prisoner could have killed the little girls. Yet Coffey was found with their broken bodies in his huge arms. And in Louisiana in the 1930s, a black man with such evidence against him is not likely to be acquitted by a jury. (We might indeed question whether a Louisiana Death Row in the 1930s would be so fair and hospitable to a convicted child molester, but the story carries its own conviction, and we go along with it.) There are several sequences of powerful emotion in the film. Some of them involve the grisly details of the death chamber, and the process by which the state makes sure that a condemned man will actually die (Harry Dean Stanton has an amusing cameo as a stand-in at a dress rehearsal with the electric chair). One execution is particularly gruesome and seen in some detail; the R rating is earned here, despite the film's generally benevolent tone. Other moments of great impact involve a tame mouse which Delacroix adopts, a violent struggle with Wharton (and his obscene attempts at rabble-rousing), and subplots involving the wives of Paul (Bonnie Hunt) and the warden (Patricia Clarkson).

But the center of the movie is the relationship between Paul and his huge prisoner Coffey. Without describing the supernatural mechanism that is involved, I can explain in Coffey's own words what he does with the suffering he encounters: "I just took it back, is all." How he does that and what the results are, all set up the film's ending--in which we are reminded of another execution some 2,000 years ago.

I have started to suspect that when we talk about "good acting" in the movies, we are really discussing two other things: good casting and the creation of characters we react to strongly. Much of a performance is created in the filmmaking itself, in photography and editing and the emotional cues of music. But an actor must have the technical and emotional mastery to embody a character and evoke him persuasively, and the film must give him a character worth portraying. Tom Hanks is our movie Everyman, and his Paul is able to win our sympathy with his level eyes and calm, decent voice. We get a real sense of his efficient staff, of the vile natures of Percy and Wharton, and of the goodness of Coffey--who is embodied by Duncan in a performance that is both acting and being.

The movie is a shade over three hours long. I appreciated the extra time, which allows us to feel the passage of prison months and years. Stephen King, sometimes dismissed as merely a best-seller, has in his best novels some of the power of Dickens, who created worlds that enveloped us and populated them with colorful, peculiar, sharply seen characters. King in his strongest work is a storyteller likely to survive as Dickens has, despite the sniffs of the litcrit establishment.

By taking the extra time, Darabont has made King's "The Green Mile" into a story which develops and unfolds, which has detail and space. The movie would have been much diminished at two hours--it would have been a series of episodes without context. As Darabont directs it, it tells a story with beginning, middle, end, vivid characters, humor, outrage and emotional release. Dickensian.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: Paul Edgecomb is a slightly cynical veteran prison guard on Death row in the 1930's. His faith, and sanity, deteriorated by watching men live and die, Edgecomb is about to have a complete turn around in attitude. Enter John Coffey, He's eight feet tall. He has hands the size of waffle irons. He's been accused of the murder of two children... and he's afraid to sleep in a cell without a night-light. And Edgecomb, as well as the other prison guards - Brutus, a sympathetic guard, and Percy, a stuck up, perverse, and violent person, are in for a strange experience that involves intelligent mice, brutal executions, and the revelation about Coffey's innocence and his true identity.

Product Details

Actors: Tom Hanks, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Clarke Duncan, James Cromwell
Directors: Frank Darabont
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-Captioned, Color, Dolby Digital, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English, French
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: R
Studio: Warner Bros.
DVD Release Date: May 15, 2007
Run Time: 188 minutes

Steven Spielberg - Schindlers List (Widescreen Version) (1993)

Editorial Reviews

Oskar Schindler would have been an easier man to understand if he'd been a conventional hero, fighting for his beliefs. The fact that he was flawed - a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, driven by greed and a lust for high living - makes his life an enigma.

Here is a man who saw his chance at the beginning of World War II and moved to Nazi-occupied Poland to open a factory and employ Jews at starvation wages. His goal was to become a millionaire. By the end of the war, he had risked his life and spent his fortune to save those Jews and had defrauded the Nazis for months with a munitions factory that never produced a single usable shell.

Why did he change? What happened to turn him from a victimizer into a humanitarian? It is to the great credit of Steven Spielberg that his film "Schindler's List" does not even attempt to answer that question. Any possible answer would be too simple, an insult to the mystery of Schindler's life. The Holocaust was a vast evil engine set whirling by racism and madness. Schindler outsmarted it, in his own little corner of the war, but he seems to have had no plan, to have improvised out of impulses that remained unclear even to himself. In this movie, the best he has ever made, Spielberg treats the fact of the Holocaust and the miracle of Schindler's feat without the easy formulas of fiction.

The movie is 184 minutes long, and like all great movies, it seems too short. It begins with Schindler (Liam Neeson), a tall, strong man with an intimidating physical presence. He dresses expensively and frequents nightclubs, buying caviar and champagne for Nazi officers and their girls, and he likes to get his picture taken with the top brass. He wears a Nazi party emblem proudly in his buttonhole. He has impeccable black market contacts, and he's able to find nylons, cigarettes, brandy: He is the right man to know. The authorities are happy to help him open a factory to build enameled cooking utensils that army kitchens can use. He is happy to hire Jews because their wages are lower, and Schindler will get richer that way.

Schindler's genius is in bribing, scheming, conning. He knows nothing about running a factory and finds Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a Jewish accountant, to handle that side of things. Stern moves through the streets of Krakow, hiring Jews for Schindler.

Because the factory is a protected war industry, a job there may guarantee longer life.

The relationship between Schindler and Stern is developed by Spielberg with enormous subtlety. At the beginning of the war, Schindler wants only to make money, and at the end he wants only to save "his" Jews. We know that Stern understands this. But there is no moment when Schindler and Stern bluntly state what is happening, perhaps because to say certain things aloud could result in death.

This subtlety is Spielberg's strength all through the film. His screenplay, by Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Keneally, isn't based on contrived melodrama. Instead, Spielberg relies on a series of incidents, seen clearly and without artificial manipulation, and by witnessing those incidents we understand what little can be known about Schindler and his scheme.

We also see the Holocaust in a vivid and terrible way. Spielberg gives us a Nazi prison camp commandant named Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) who is a study in the stupidity of evil. From the veran da of his "villa," overlooking the prison yard, he shoots Jews for target practice. (Schindler is able to talk him out of this custom with an appeal to his vanity so obvious it is almost an insult.) Goeth is one of those weak hypocrites who upholds an ideal but makes himself an exception to it; he preaches the death of the Jews, and then chooses a pretty one named Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz) to be his maid and falls in love with her. He does not find it monstrous that her people are being exterminated, and she is spared on his affectionate whim. He sees his personal needs as more important than right or wrong, life or death. Studying him, we realize that Nazism depended on people able to think like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Shooting in black and white on many of the actual locations of the events in the story (including Schindler's original factory and even the gates of Auschwitz), Spielberg shows Schindler dealing with the madness of the Nazi system. He bribes, he wheedles, he bluffs, he escapes discovery by the skin of his teeth. In the movie's most audacious sequence, when a trainload of his employees is mistakenly routed to Auschwitz, he walks into the death camp himself and brazenly talks the authorities out of their victims, snatching them from death and putting them back on the train to his factory.

What is most amazing about this film is how completely Spielberg serves his story. The movie is brilliantly acted, written, directed and seen. Individual scenes are masterpieces of art direction, cinematography, special effects, crowd control. Yet Spielberg, the stylist whose films often have gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember, disappears into his work. Neeson, Kingsley and the other actors are devoid of acting flourishes. There is a single-mindedness to the enterprise that is awesome.

At the end of the film, there is a sequence of overwhelming emotional impact, involving the actual people who were saved by Schindler. We learn that "Schindler's Jews" and their de scendants today number about 6,000 and that the Jewish population of Poland is 4,000. The obvious lesson would seem to be that Schindler did more than a whole nation to spare its Jews. That would be too simple. The film's message is that one man did something, while in the face of the Holocaust others were paralyzed. Perhaps it took a Schindler, enigmatic and reckless, without a plan, heedless of risk, a con man, to do what he did. No rational man with a sensible plan would have gotten as far.

The French author Flaubert once wrote that he disliked Uncle Tom's Cabin because the author was constantly preaching against slavery. "Does one have to make observations about slavery?" he asked. "Depict it; that's enough." And then he added, "An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere." That would describe Spielberg, the author of this film. He depicts the evil of the Holocaust, and he tells an incredible story of how it was robbed of some of its intended victims. He does so without the tricks of his trade, the directorial and dramatic contrivances that would inspire the usual melodramatic payoffs. Spielberg is not visible in this film. But his restraint and passion are present in every shot.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: "Schindler's List" is the based-on-truth story of Nazi Czech business man Oskar Schindler, who uses Jewish labor to start a factory in occupied Poland. As World War II progresses, and the fate of the Jews becomes more and more clear, Schindler's motivations switch from profit to human sympathy and he is able to save over 1100 Jews from death in the gas chambers.

Product Details

Actors: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall
Directors: Steven Spielberg
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Black & White, Dolby Digital, DTS, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Color, Anamorphic), 1.85:1 (B&W, Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
Rating: R
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Release Date: March 9, 2004
Run Time: 196 minutes

Paul Verhoeven - Robocop: The Criterion Collection (1987)

Editorial Reviews

There is a moment early in "RoboCop" when a robot runs amok. It has been programmed to warn a criminal to drop his gun, and then to shoot him if he does not comply. The robot, an ugly and ungainly machine, is wheeled into a board meeting of the company that hopes to make millions by retailing it. A junior executive is chosen to pull a gun on the machine. The warning is issued. The exec drops his gun. The robot repeats the warning, counts to five, and shoots the guy dead.

This is a very funny scene. (Whether it was even funnier before the MPAA Code and Ratings Administration requested trims in it is, I suppose, a moot point.) It is funny in the same way that the assembly line in Chaplin's "Modern Times" is funny - because there is something hilarious about logic applied to a situation where it is not relevant.

Because the scene surprises us in a movie that seemed to be developing into a serious thriller, it puts us off guard. We're no longer quite sure where "RoboCop" is going, and that's one of the movie's best qualities.

The film takes place at an unspecified time in the future in Detroit, a city where gang terror rules. There has been a series of brutal cop killings. A big corporation wants to market the robot cops to stamp out crime, but the demonstrator model obviously is not up to the job.

A junior scientist thinks he knows a better way to make a policeman, by combining robotics with a human brain. And he gets his chance when a hero cop (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty. Well, not quite killed. Something remains, and around that human core the first "Robocop" is constructed - a half-man, half-machine that operates with perfect logic except for the shreds of human spontaneity and intuition that may be lurking somewhere in the background of its memory.

Nancy Allen co-stars in the movie as a woman cop who was Weller's partner before he was shot. She recognizes something familiar about the robocop, and eventually realizes what it is: Inside that suit of steel, it's her old partner, Weller. It actually shouldn't have taken her long to figure that out, since Weller's original nose, mouth, chin and jaw are visible. His inventor apparently agrees with Batman and Robin that if you can't see the eyes of someone you know, you'll never recognize them.

The broad outline of the plot develops along more or less standard thriller lines. But this is not a standard thriller. The director is Paul Verhoeven, the gifted Dutch filmmaker whose earlier credits include "Soldier of Orange" and "The Fourth Man." His movies are not easily categorized. There is comedy in this movie, even slapstick comedy. There is romance. There is a certain amount of philosophy, centering on the question, What is a man? And there is pointed social satire, too, as the robocop takes on some of the attributes and some of the popular following of a Bernhard Goetz.

Oddly enough, a lot of the robocop's personality is expressed by his voice, which is a mechanical monotone. Machines and robots have spoken like this for years in the movies, and now life is beginning to copy them; I was in the Atlanta airport a few weeks ago, boarding the shuttle train to the terminal, and the train started talking just like robocop, in an uninflected monotone. ("Your-attention-please-the-doors-are-about-to-close.")

I laughed. No one else did. Since the recorded message obviously could have been recorded in a normal human voice, the purpose of the robotic audio style was clear: to make the commands seem to emanate from a pre-programmed authority that could not be appealed to. In "RoboCop," Verhoeven and Weller get a lot of mileage out of the conflict between that utterly assured voice and the increasingly confused being behind it.

Considering that he spends much of the movie hidden behind one kind of makeup device or another, Weller does an impressive job of creating sympathy for his character. He is more "human," indeed, when he is a robocop than earlier in the movie, when he's an ordinary human being. His plight is appealing, and Nancy Allen is effective as the determined partner who wants to find out what really happened to him.

Most thriller and special-effects movies come right off the assembly line. You can call out every development in advance, and usually be right. "RoboCop" is a thriller with a difference.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: After Omni Consumer Products (OCP) announced that it bought out the Detroit police department, the department decides to go on strike. Alex Murphy, gets transferred from Metro South to the West. He and his partner, Anne Lewis, track down a group of criminals led by Clarence Boddicker. Unfortunately, Murphy was killed by Clarence's gang. Bob Morton, one of OCP's employees, transforms Murphy's corpse into Robocop, to compete with another employee Dick Jones' ED-209. Robocop's tests are successful. Unfortunately, Robocop rediscovers his memories (when he was Alex Murphy), and now knows he has to find and arrest Clarence Boddicker. He realizes that Clarence is working for Bob Morton's competition Dick Jones. Now, Robocop must stop both Clarence and Dick Jones.

Product Details

Actors: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith
Directors: Paul Verhoeven
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby Digital, Criterion, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.1 Surround)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Criterion
DVD Release Date: October 6, 1998
Run Time: 103 minutes

Alfred Hitchcock - Psycho (2-Disc Legacy Series) (1960)

Editorial Reviews

"It wasn't a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance...they were aroused by pure film."

So Alfred Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut about "Psycho," adding that it "belongs to filmmakers, to you and me." Hitchcock deliberately wanted "Psycho" to look like a cheap exploitation film. He shot it not with his usual expensive feature crew (which had just finished "North by Northwest") but with the crew he used for his television show. He filmed in black and white. Long passages contained no dialogue. His budget, $800,000, was cheap even by 1960 standards; the Bates Motel and mansion were built on the back lot at Universal. In its visceral feel, "Psycho" has more in common with noir quickies like "Detour" than with elegant Hitchcock thrillers like "Rear Window" or "Vertigo."

Yet no other Hitchcock film had a greater impact. "I was directing the viewers," the director told Truffaut in their book-length interview. "You might say I was playing them, like an organ." It was the most shocking film its original audience members had ever seen. "Do not reveal the surprises!" the ads shouted, and no moviegoer could have anticipated the surprises Hitchcock had in store--the murder of Marion (Janet Leigh), the apparent heroine, only a third of the way into the film, and the secret of Norman's mother. "Psycho" was promoted like a William Castle exploitation thriller. "It is required that you see 'Psycho' from the very beginning!" Hitchcock decreed, explaining, "the late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she had disappeared from the screen action."

These surprises are now widely known, and yet "Psycho" continues to work as a frightening, insinuating thriller. That's largely because of Hitchcock's artistry in two areas that are not as obvious: The setup of the Marion Crane story, and the relationship between Marion and Norman (Anthony Perkins). Both of these elements work because Hitchcock devotes his full attention and skill to treating them as if they will be developed for the entire picture.

The setup involves a theme that Hitchcock used again and again: The guilt of the ordinary person trapped in a criminal situation. Marion Crane does steal $40,000, but still she fits the Hitchcock mold of an innocent to crime. We see her first during an afternoon in a shabby hotel room with her divorced lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin). He cannot marry her because of his alimony payments; they must meet in secret. When the money appears, it's attached to a slimy real estate customer (Frank Albertson) who insinuates that for money like that, Marion might be for sale. So Marion's motive is love, and her victim is a creep.

This is a completely adequate setup for a two-hour Hitchcock plot. It never for a moment feels like material manufactured to mislead us. And as Marion flees Phoenix on her way to Sam's home town of Fairvale, Calif., we get another favorite Hitchcock trademark, paranoia about the police. A highway patrolman (Mort Mills) wakes her from a roadside nap, questions her, and can almost see the envelope with the stolen money. She trades in her car for one with different plates, but at the dealership she's startled to see the same patrolman parked across the street, leaning against his squad car, arms folded, staring at her. Every first-time viewer believes this setup establishes a story line the movie will follow to the end.

Frightened, tired, perhaps already regretting her theft, Marion drives closer to Fairvale but is slowed by a violent rainstorm. She pulls into the Bates Motel, and begins her short, fateful association with Norman Bates. And here again Hitchcock's care with the scenes and dialog persuades us that Norman and Marion will be players for the rest of the film.

He does that during their long conversation in Norman's "parlor," where savage stuffed birds seem poised to swoop down and capture them as prey. Marion has overheard the voice of Norman's mother speaking sharply with him, and she gently suggests that Norman need not stay here in this dead end, a failing motel on a road that has been bypassed by the new interstate. She cares about Norman. She is also moved to rethink her own actions. And he is touched. So touched, he feels threatened by his feelings. And that is why he must kill her.

When Norman spies on Marion, Hitchcock said, most audience members read it as Peeping Tom behavior. Truffaut observed that the film's opening, with Marion in a bra and panties, underlines the later voyeurism. We have no idea murder is in store.

Seeing the shower scene today, several things stand out. Unlike modern horror films, "Psycho" never shows the knife striking flesh. There are no wounds. There is blood, but not gallons of it. Hitchcock shot in black and white because he felt the audience could not stand so much blood in color (the 1998 Gus Van Sant remake specifically repudiates that theory). The slashing chords of Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack substitute for more grisly sound effects. The closing shots are not graphic but symbolic, as blood and water spin down the drain, and the camera cuts to a closeup, the same size, of Marion's unmoving eyeball. This remains the most effective slashing in movie history, suggesting that situation and artistry are more important than graphic details.

Perkins does an uncanny job of establishing the complex character of Norman, in a performance that has become a landmark. Perkins shows us there is something fundamentally wrong with Norman, and yet he has a young man's likability, jamming his hands into his jeans pockets, skipping onto the porch, grinning. Only when the conversation grows personal does he stammer and evade. At first he evokes our sympathy as well as Marion's.

The death of the heroine is followed by Norman's meticulous mopping-up of the death scene. Hitchcock is insidiously substituting protagonists. Marion is dead, but now (not consciously but in a deeper place) we identify with Norman--not because we could stab someone, but because, if we did, we would be consumed by fear and guilt, as he is. The sequence ends with the masterful shot of Bates pushing Marion's car (containing her body and the cash) into a swamp. The car sinks, then pauses. Norman watches intently. The car finally disappears under the surface.

Analyzing our feelings, we realize we wanted that car to sink, as much as Norman did. Before Sam Loomis reappears, teamed up with Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) to search for her, "Psycho" already has a new protagonist: Norman Bates. This is one of the most audacious substitutions in Hitchcock's long practice of leading and manipulating us. The rest of the film is effective melodrama, and there are two effective shocks. The private eye Arbogast (Martin Balsam) is murdered, in a shot that uses back-projection to seem to follow him down the stairs. And the secret of Norman's mother is revealed.

For thoughtful viewers, however, an equal surprise is still waiting. That is the mystery of why Hitchcock marred the ending of a masterpiece with a sequence that is grotesquely out of place. After the murders have been solved, there is an inexplicable scene during which a long-winded psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman's psychopathic behavior. This is an anticlimax taken almost to the point of parody.

If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock's film, I would include only the doctor's first explanation of Norman's dual personality: "Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time." Then I would cut out everything else the psychiatrist says, and cut to the shots of Norman wrapped in the blanket while his mother's voice speaks ("It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..."). Those edits, I submit, would have made "Psycho" very nearly perfect. I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather; Truffaut tactfully avoids it in his famous interview.

What makes "Psycho" immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: Marion Crane is a Phoenix, Arizona working girl fed up with having to sneak away during lunch breaks to meet her lover, Sam Loomis, who cannot get married because most of his money goes towards alimony. One Friday, Marion's employer asks her to take $40,000 in cash to a local bank for deposit. Desperate to make a change in her life, she impulsively leaves town with the money, determined to start a new life with Sam in California. As night falls and a torrential rain obscures the road ahead of her, Marion turns off the main highway. Exhausted from the long drive and the stress of her criminal act, she decides to spend the night at the desolate Bates Motel. The motel is run by Norman Bates, a peculiar young man dominated by his invalid mother. After Norman fixes her a light dinner, Marion goes back to her room for a shower....

Product Details

Actors: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire
Directors: Alfred Hitchcock
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Dolby Digital, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (B&W, Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 2 (2 x DVD9)
Rating: R
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Release Date: October 7, 2008
Run Time: 109 minutes

Charles Band - Parasite (3D Version) (1982)

Editorial Reviews

Set in the nightmare World of a post atomic fallout America (of 1992 no less!) where things like gasoline, fresh food and even coffee ('fraid so) are a rarity and undesirables are put to work in labour camps set up in the cities, the film opens with a Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini) driving through a squalid, dust-bowl town. He was working on a project to create a parasitic bio weapon for the Government and its sinister partner in nasty deeds, The Merchants.

Hit by his conscience about what the parasite would be used for (never made clear but probably to munch on the superfluous members of society), Dean trashed the experiment but was accidentally infected. Now, with the only other remaining parasite in a metal flask, he tries to find a way to destroy the slithering beastie that has taken up residence in his stomach before it reaches puberty and explodes out of him. To make things worse, if it reproduces (although don't ask me how, and anyway parasite porn is not a pleasant thought) it will shower thousands of parasite laying spores into the atmosphere!

The Doc sets up his equipment in a run down hotel owned by an old actress, with five tons of outrageously unsubtle make up on her face, named Maggie (Vivian Blaine), but it turns out he chose a bad town to settle in as it's under constant childish attacks by a gang of cliché 80's, angst filled, ancient looking 'teens' led by Ricus (Luca Bercovici) and his typically moronic sidekick Zeke (Tom Villard), all of whom used to be in the 'suburbs' work camps. The gang likes to cause trouble for the local Bar 'n' Grill owner named Collins (Al Fann) and for a young women named Patricia (a young Demi Moore in a film she probably leaves out of her CV) who owns a very rare lemon grove. Seems everyone wants to get their hands on her juicy fruit.

Into this madness comes one of the merchants who is after Paul Dean to retrieve the parasite. He's a very nasty piece of work named Wolf (James Davidson) and we know he's a bad guy because he arrives in a black car, wearing a black suit and the ever-sinister… black gloves! Before you know it Wolf is slicing bits of the locals with his trusty wrist laser as he tries to get to Paul. Meanwhile the gang are causing big problems for everyone, things go from bad to worse for Dean, Collins serves up soup, Patricia squeezes her lemons and Maggie applies a bit more rouge to her cheeks. And the parasite has its own plans…

This text book example of low budget, 80's American trash film making comes to us from the mind of schlock master Charles Band who would become famous for his 'Empire Pictures' company.

Shot in that failed format to inject life into cheesy movies, 3D, "Parasite" is chock full of scenes where various objects (and the wonderfully trashy parasite itself) are thrust into the camera. Such 3D delights (created by Chris Condon) include; the end of a metal pipe, that has been rammed through a man who made the mistake of pissing off Wolf, dripping blood (a similar scene happened in that Chuck Conners trash classic "Tourist Trap"), lots people thrown into the audiences laps in crappy fights (needlessly filmed in slow motion) and dreadful superimposed laser beams. Sadly what may have been fun in the cinema (especially the parasite sequences) are of course rendered simply annoying on flat old VHS.

The effects go from the vastly entertaining (a delightfully messy and grotesque face exploding sequence as the parasite goes a burrowing), to very good (an effective, finger flexing lasered-off hand) to downright awful (the appalling laser weapon fights), and gives the film that unique low budget feel that is actually quite appealing. The parasite itself, partly created by Stan Winston, is very hit and miss. It looks suitably nasty and messy, as it drips sticky gloop into the face of the viewer, but its movements (especially its fang filled mouth)are very shoddy.

The characters are cardboard (despite having three writers who worked on the script) with only the evil Wolf being memorable as he goes from charming to lethally sadistic in the blink of an eye. It's a very enjoyable turn by Davidson. Moore is charming enough (and does show she has talent) but her role is pretty much redundant. Blaine tries to flesh out her role with a sense of sadness about what she has become, as she tries to hold onto her looks with her shocking make up, but her screen time is so short it's a lost cause. And Glaudini, although playing Dean commendably straight, comes across as rather bland.

Band's direction is rather slow and only the gore and the parasite scenes keep the finger away from the fast forward button. But Band always came across as more of a businessman making movies (with a suitably quirky approach to his work I have to admit) than a full on film director.

So it's a film with many interesting pieces, that somehow never seems to take form into a satisfying whole. Worth a look though.

Plot Summary

Tagline: Demi More in her first starring role!
Plot Synopsis: Set in the year 1992, ten years after a limited nuclear war as destroyed most of the USA, scientist Paul Dean has developed a new form of leach-like parasite which can grow to large portions every time it eats. Then, evil government agents storm his lab and he's forced to flee deep in the nearby desert and persued by a "merchant" (government agent) intent on reclaiming the last two parasites Paul has. The first is in a silver container, the other is in Paul's abdomen. Paul seeks shelter in a small desert town populated by scavengers which threaten his work, while one local girl, Patrica Wells, forms an alliance with Paul to help him find a way to kill the parasite within him without killing himself, as well as find a way to kill the other one which gets loose and will soon multiply into many thousands unless killed soon.

Product Details

Actors: Robert Glaudini, Demi Moore, Luca Bercovici, James Davidson, Al Fann
Directors: Charles Band
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: English
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD5)
Rating: R
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Release Date: August 6, 2002
Run Time: 84 minutes

Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom - Shutter (2004)

Editorial Reviews

I find myself in the tricky position of wanting to discuss the Thai ghost story SHUTTER (2004) but in a revelatory way that will ruin its effect for anyone reading this. Let me just say that I enjoyed the movie, found it suitably creepy and even provocative, and that if you're interested in a fresh approach to the material I suggest you stop reading now. You have been warned.

Banjong Pisanthanakun (here we go again) and Parkpoom Wongpoom's SHUTTER (2004) is at heart warmed over old school spookum but is played so cunningly and persuasively by such a team of velvety charmers that I didn't mind buying something I'd already spent money on many times before. Suffice it to say, if you've seen GHOST STORY (1981) or the Korean NIGHTMARE (GAWI, 2000), you won't find anything new here, story-wise. A group of school friends in Bangkok, on the cusp of graduating from university, marriage and adulthood, find their forward momentum halted by the spectral presence of a strange girl from their past, whose fate is wrapped up in a terrible secret they had hoped would stay that way.

The great thing about SHUTTER is that it goes another way early on, misdirecting your judgmental eye from this cliched setup. After taking part in an alcohol-fueled wedding banquet, professional photographer Jun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) run down a woman crossing a dimly-lit stretch of city street. Dazed and fearful for their futures, the pair flees the scene of the accident but both spend the next few sleepless days checking the papers for stories about the accident and even driving by the same spot to find out if the woman has died. Curiously, there is no mention of her in the news and a street cop tells them no injuries were sustained in the mishap beyond damage to a billboard. It begins to seem to Tun and Jane as if they might have imagined the whole thing... until nightmarish images begin to appear on the negatives of photographs Tun has taken during the university's commencement exercises.

The thing that SHUTTER gets right is the obsession with tiny details that would haunt a professional shutterbug even before the frame gets freaky. With photography as a leitmotif, the film reveals itself in time to be a sly mediation on naive perceptions of permanence and on the cherry picking of experience for the manufacture of pleasant memories. In this way, the film owes as much to, say, BLOW-UP (1966) as it does to RING (1996) or any of its immitators concerned with vengeance from beyond the grave. The detective work that occupies the film's second act - normally the tedious, expository nadir of any shocker - is its most satisfying, returning the protagonists to the point of origin and the realization that the Truth isn't something you discover but something you admit.

But beyond all that heavy stuff, SHUTTER is just creepy and fun. I appreciate how you don't even realize it's a hit list horror movie until late in the game, when we're informed via a minor character that two members of the gang have committed suicide (a plot point capped with a flashback visual whose distant perspective makes the act all the more disturbing). That narrative tack may be inelegant, it may even be bad cinema, but I love having my perspective spun around like that, to find myself facing a new direction. SHUTTER also culminates in one of the more interesting conclusing visuals in ghost movie (and even horror movie) history, one I won't reveal here but which upholds George Eliot's wisdom that our deeds travel with us from afar and what we've been makes us what we are.

Plot Summary

Plot Synopsis: In Bangkok, after celebrating a drinking party with his closest friends, the photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) have a car accident on the road, with Jane hitting a girl. Tun does not allow her to help the girl and they ran away leaving the girl lying on the road. When Tun reveals his latest pictures, he finds some mysterious shadows, while the couple is systematically haunted by the ghost of the girl. Tun investigates and finds that the victim was his former shy and weird girlfriend Natre (Achita Sikamana), who studied with him in the college. Later Jane discloses deep and hidden secrets about the relationship of Natre, Tun and his friends.

Product Details

Actors: Ananda Everingham, Natthaweeranuch Thongmee, Achita Sikamana, Unnop Chanpaibool, Titikarn Tongprasearth
Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun, Parkpoom Wongpoom
Format: Anamorphic, Closed Captioned, Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Thai (Dolby Digital 5.1), Thai (DTS 5.1)
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Tartan Video
DVD Release Date: March 27, 2007
Run Time: 95 minutes

Country Cuzzins / Midnight Plowboy (Double Feature) (1970-1971)

Disc Contents

Country Cuzzins (1970)

Stars: Rene Bond, John Tull, Debbie Osborne, Pamella Princess, Jack Richesin
Directors: Bethel Buckalew
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Color)
Rating: UNRATED
Genres: Adult, Exploitation
Theatrical Release Date: June 8, 1974 (Japan)
Running Time: 90 minutes
Synopsis:
A young woman living in L.A. goes back to her family's homestead way up in the mountains for a family reunion. At first put off by her relatives' hillbilly ways, she soon decides to let her hair down and join in the fun. Before she leaves she invites them all to stop by her place in Los Angeles if they're ever in the area. They soon are, and they do.

Midnite Plowboy (1971)

Stars: John Tull, Nan Cee, Jack Richesin, Terri Johnson, Debbie Osborne
Directors: Bethel Buckalew
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Color)
Rating: UNRATED
Genres: Adult, Exploitation
Theatrical Release Date: December 13, 1971
Running Time: 70 minutes
Synopsis:
Junior comes from the country to Hollywood where he soon ends up living in a house full of prostitutes. As payment for his rent, Junior is assigned the task of driving the girls around in a van that doubles as a place to have sex.

Product Details

Actors: Rene Bond, John Tull, Debbie Osborne, Nan Cee, Jack Richesin, Terri Johnson
Directors: Bethel Buckalew
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Release Date: July 23, 2002
Run Time: 160 minutes

Alley Tramp / Over 18...and Ready! (Double Feature) (1968-1969)

Disc Contents

The Alley Tramp (1968)

Stars: Julia Ames, Jean Lamee, Lisa Bourdon, Marie Delmonde, Steve White
Directors: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Black & White)
Rating: UNRATED
Genres: Adult, Exploitation
Theatrical Release Date: November 10, 1968
Running Time: 69 minutes
Synopsis:
Sixteen year old Marie stumbles upon her parents making love, which awakens her latent sexuality. She begins a torrid affair with her third cousin Philip. Her parents cluelessly pursue their own illicit affairs while their daughter delves deeper into her own sexual experimentation. When the school principal makes the Barkers aware that their daughter is cutting classes, they purchase a partial clue and try to help their daughter.

Over 18... and Ready! (1969)

Stars: Mary McRea, Larry Martinelli, Margo Stevens, Michelle LeGrande, Gary M. Fox
Directors: Lloyd Allen
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Black & White)
Rating: UNRATED
Genres: Adult, Exploitation
Theatrical Release Date: August, 1969
Running Time: 66 minutes
Synopsis:
Lyn is not only OVER 18...AND READY, but so anxious to become a Holltwood star that she tries to swap her job as secretary to skinflick producer Barney Merrit for a shot as the star of his next nudie. But it's Barney's lesbian wife, Billie, who thinks Lyn would be great for the film - and her bed. Pretty soon, Lyn is getting whipped and mauled in front of the cameras while caught in the middle of the Merrits' sexual peccadillos in this slimy little skinflick that we hope isn't too autobiographical....

Product Details

Actors: Julia Ames, Jean Lamee, Lisa Bourdon, Mary McRea, Larry Martinelli, Margo Stevens
Directors: Herschell Gordon Lewis, Lloyd Allen
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)
Subtitles: -
Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
Region: All
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Release Date: March 10, 2006
Run Time: 136 minutes