Tag: movies-music

In Red Planet, the only thing thicker than the Martian atmosphere (which is breathable, by the way) is the layer of clichés that nearly smothers a formulaic beat-the-clock plot. Science fiction fans are sure to be forgiving, however, because the film is reasonably intelligent, boasts a few dazzling sequences, and presents fascinating technology in the year 2057.

Phish phanatics will probably debate the merits of Live in Brooklyn ad infinitum, but while this June 17, 2004 show from what was apparently the quartet's final tour is neither their best nor their worst, it's certainly representative: two long sets (a total of more than three hours, on two discs), some exuberant, uplifting highs, some stretches that are less than spectacular, and lots of jamming. Guitarist Trey Anastasio and his mates are good players with decades of experience together, and when they get into the groove in the course of their many lengthy improvisations, the results can be inspiring (cf. "Moma Dance > Free" and "Maze").

George Bailey has so many problems he is thinking about ending it all

It's a Wonderful Life Now perhaps the most beloved American film, It's a Wonderful Life was largely forgotten for years, due to a copyright quirk. Only in the late 1970s did it find its audience through repeated TV showings. Frank Capra's masterwork deserves its status as a feel-good communal event, but it is also one of the most fascinating films in the American cinema, a multilayered work of Dickensian density. George Bailey (played superbly by James Stewart) grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls, dreaming dreams of adventure and travel, but circumstances conspire to keep him enslaved to his home turf.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) The original 1947 version of this Valentine Davies story follows the misadventures of Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) as he gets a job playing Santa Claus at Macy's department store in New York City. Natalie Wood is the little girl who tells him she doesn't believe in Santa, and Maureen O'Hara and John Payne are the couple who help Kris through a trial in which he must prove he's the jolly fellow from the North Pole. A sweet movie and perennial Christmas favorite, this is one of those movies that gets under your skin and must be revisited every so often.

On November 2nd, 1996, Phish performed at Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, FL; the only outdoor shed show of the Fall Tour. A long-time fan favorite, the show features special guests including Karl Perazzo (from Santana) on percussion throughout and Butch Trucks (from The Allman Brothers Band), playing drums during the encore. Along with a few palm trees, the DVD showcases the birth of the band's more rhythmic, textured group improv style and conveys their and the crowd's excitement at the breakthrough.The audio for the DVD is fully mixed and mastered for 5.1 surround.

Their story is in danger of being lost to history. The men who came home from the Vietnam War represent a second silent generation. These are the men who won every battle in a lost war. Using the same experiential approach to storytelling as WWII in HD, HISTORY gives these veterans a voice. Through a collection of color Vietnam footage never seen by the public from private collections, museums, the US government, veteran's and news organizations as well as sources from Vietnam, they tell their stories and relive their struggles, courage and fears.

Ranked at No. 30 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time greatest American films, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a genuine masterpiece that was, ironically, a box-office failure when released in 1948. At that time audiences didn't accept Humphrey Bogart in a role that was intentionally unappealing, but time has proven this to be one of Bogart's very best performances. It's a grand adventure and a superior character study built around the timeless themes of greed and moral corruption.

Rain Man is the kind of touching drama that Oscars are made for--and, sure enough, the film took Academy honors for best picture, director, screenplay, and actor (Dustin Hoffman) in 1988. Hoffman plays Raymond, an autistic savant whose late father has left him $3 million in a trust. This gets the attention of his materialistic younger brother, a hot-shot LA car dealer named Charlie (Tom Cruise) who wasn't even aware of Raymond's existence until he read his estranged father's will. Charlie picks up Raymond and takes him on a cross-country journey that becomes a voyage of discovery for Charlie, and, perhaps, for Raymond, too.

The undead are among us and livelier than ever when Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a talented group of young-bloods star in Interview with the Vampire, the spellbinding screen adaptation of Anne Rice's best seller that's "one the best films of the year" (Caryn James, The New York Times). Award-winning box-office favorite Cruise stylishly plays the supremely evil and charismatic vampire Lestat. Pitt is Louis, lured by Lestat into the immortality of the damned, then tormented by an unalterable fact of vampire life: to survive, he must kill. Stephen Rea, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and newcomer Kirsten Dunst also star.

Over the top Ridiculous Yes, indeed. But Horrible Bosses is actually a truly hilarious movie that wings along on the strength of its leading actors and their amazing chemistry--and on its great high-concept premise. Three friends, Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale (Charlie Day), commiserate about their three respective Horrible Bosses. And yes, each is the worst kind of HR nightmare. Nick's boss is Dave (Kevin Spacey, terrific), a control-freak megalomaniac. Kurt's is Bobby (an almost unrecognizable Colin Farrell), a skeevy cokehead. And Dale's is Julia (Jennifer Aniston, having so much fun it's contagious), a sexual harasser who never misses an opportunity to prey (or swear).

The Casio CTK4000 Premium Software Package comes bundled with everything you need to get started. Included you will receive a pair of closed-cup headphones, X-style keyboard stand, power supply, and eMedia’s piano and keyboard starter instructional software.The Casio CTK4000 61 key portable keyboard is crammed with great sounds and music-making features, so it's great for beginning players, advanced players, and everyone in between! 570 sounds, 180 rhythms, and 152 songs/lessons keep the Casio CTK-4000 interesting, while a new sampling function makes it more fun to play with now more than ever.

The brilliant British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen dips into his stable of pre-existing characters and comes up with a big-screen vehicle for Brüno, a gay Austrian fashionista. Brüno is blond, fame-hungry, and prone to wearing unexpected combinations of lederhosen and hot pants. But it's his runway disaster with an all-Velcro suit that gets him barred from the Milan fashion scene and leads to the cancellation of his TV show. ("For the second time in a century, Austria had turned on its most famous man," he complains.)

essential video Richard Donner's 1978 epic about the Man of Steel showed how a film about a superhero could be a moving and romantic experience even for people who long ago gave up comic books. Beginning on the icy planet Krypton, the story follows the baby Kal-El, whose rocket ship lands in Smallville, Kansas. He is found there by a childless couple and raised as the shy Clark Kent (the young Kent is played by Jeff East). The film is perhaps most touching in these sequences, with expanses of wheat fields blowing in the wind and with a young man who can't figure out what part in destiny his great powers are meant to play.

Robotech (1985) was always an anomaly: an anime series that no Japanese viewer would recognize in its final form. Carl Macek and the crew at Harmony Gold edited together three similar-looking series from Tatsunoko Studios: Super Dimension Fortress: Macross, Genesis Climber Mospeada, and Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross to create a sprawling 85-episode space opera with a completely new story. Robotech helped to create an audience for anime in America, and the toys, role-playing games, novelizations, and frequent reissues have kept it alive in the hearts of its fans for almost three decades.

The complete Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends series on DVD, including Season 5 on DVD for the first time.   It s the whole shebang, featuring 91 trips in the WABAC time machine, 38 attempts to catch Snidely Whiplash, 91 tales fractured and 50 bits of wisdom from Mr. Know-it-All.

Old-school stop-motion animation and fast-paced satire are the hallmarks of this eclectic show created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich. Action figures find new life as players in frenetic sketch-comedy vignettes that skewer TV, movies, music and celebrity. It's television especially formulated for the Attention Deficit Disorder generation.DVD Features:Deleted ScenesGag ReelOther

"Well, all the jokes can't be good, you have to expect that once in awhile," Groucho Marx apologized to the camera in Animal Crackers. Though some of the gags in Robot Chicken's third season lay an egg, creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich have nothing to apologize for, except maybe the moment in the "Half-Assed Christmas Special," in which Charlie Brown asks Snoopy, "Have you seen Linus He was supposed to walk me to chemo."

The Legendary Epic Reborn.Samurai 7 is set in a futuristic world that has just seen the end of a massive war, many villages are being terrorized by Nobuseri bandits. The Nobuseri are no normal bandits. They were once men, but during the war they modifed themselves with machines to become living weapons and now apprear as more machine than man. A group of villagers decide to hire samurai to protect their village. These men of valor are as skilled as they are unique.DVD Extra Features: Staff Commentary- Director/Actor Commentary Promotional Video Textless Opening and Closing Songs Trailers Stills from Samurai 7 (Click for larger image)

has Robot Chicken, Volume 1 DVD for $16, with free shipping on $25. Features commentary by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage and more.

In the big-screen version of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's popular young adult novel, two high-school seniors fall in love over the course of one eventful evening. A straight bass player in a queercore band, Nick (Juno's Michael Cera) has just been dumped by the two-timing Tris (Alexis Dziena). He's committed to making more self-pitying mix CDs until his bandmates convince him to help track down a top-secret rock concert. Meanwhile, Norah (Charlie Bartlett's Kat Dennings) and her hard-partying pal, Caroline (Ari Graynor), set off on the same journey.

By the time he reached his mid-20s, Glenn Gould had changed the way the world listened to the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the time of his fatal stroke in 1982, two days after he turned 50, this daring and visionary artist had successfully challenged many of the most cherished conventions of classical music. Now, for the first time, the dozens of film and television programs Gould made with the Canadian Broad casting Corporation from 1954 to 1977 are collected in their entirety in Glenn Gould on Television The Complete CBC Broadcasts.

It's no wonder that NCIS is such a wildly popular series. The show takes an irresistible and mysterious setting--the behind-the-scenes world of military criminal investigation--and sets engaging crime procedurals within it, with a dream cast. Mark Harmon, never better, is Special Agent Gibbs, a flinty ex-marine who brooks no nonsense but who also inspires deep devotion from his team. Assisting him are his sometime sidekick Agent DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), lab specialist Abby (the perky-goth Pauley Perrette), computer whiz Agent McGee (Sean Murray), cool-as-ice Ziva (Cote de Pablo), and criminal pathologist Dr. Mallard, a.k.a. Ducky (David McCallum).

The third season of Metalocalypse, the animated comedy-music series about the world's most popular death metal band, proves the old axiom that bigger is better by doubling the running time of each episode while retaining its signature blend of gonzo humor and rock culture parody. Expanding the show's length might have caused Metalocalypse's juggling act, which tackles music biz clichés, gross-out gags, conspiracy plot lines, and absurdist scenarios (often in the same episode), to fall flat, but instead, the third season allows for more involved and outlandish stories, as well as more insight into the characters.

Stills from Napolean Dynamite (Click for larger image)