The Little Mermaid (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)
by Ron Clements
from Walt Disney Home Entertainment
From the moment that Prince Eric's ship emerged from the fog in the opening credits it was apparent that Disney had somehow, suddenly recaptured that "magic" that had been dormant for thirty years. In the tale of a headstrong young mermaid who yearns to "spend a day, warm on the sand," Ariel trades her voice to Ursula, the Sea Witch (classically voiced by Pat Carroll), for a pair of legs. Ariel can only succeed if she receives true love's kiss in a few day's time and she needs all the help she can from a singing crab named Sebastian, a loudmouth seagull, and a flounder. The lyrics and music by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are top form: witty and relevant, and they advance the story (go on, hum a few bars of "Under the Sea"). Mermaid put animation back on the studio's "to do" list and was responsible for ushering Beauty and the Beast to theaters. A modern Disney classic. --Keith Simanton
Mermaids are supposed to stay under the sea but Ariel a headstrong teenager longs to be part of the magical world on land. When she falls in love with a human prince Ariel strikes a bargain with the diabolical Sea Witch to win the prince's love. THE LITTLE MERMAID is a beautiful splash of art and music that revived the classic Disney tradition.System Requirements:Running Time 83 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: G UPC: 786936284065 Manufacturer No: 04023400
The Patriot (Special Edition)
by Roland Emmerich
from Sony Pictures
When the British arrive at his South Carolina home, French and Indian War hero Benjamin Martin takes up arms again to protect his family after swearing off violence and fighting.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 6-MAR-2007
Media Type: DVD
Aimed directly at a mainstream audience, The Patriot qualifies as respectable entertainment, but anyone expecting a definitive drama about the American Revolution should look elsewhere. Rising above the blatant crowd pleasing of Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla, director Roland Emmerich crafts a marvelous re-creation of South Carolina in the late 1770s (aided immeasurably by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel), and Robert Rodat's screenplay offers the same balance of epic scale and emotional urgency that elevated his earlier script for Saving Private Ryan. Unfortunately, Emmerich embraces clichés and hackneyed melodrama that a more gifted director would have avoided. Instead of attempting a truly great film about the most pivotal years of American history, Emmerich settles for a standard revenge plot with the Revolutionary War as an incidental backdrop.
On those terms, the film is engrossing and sufficiently intelligent, especially when militia leader Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) cagily negotiates with British General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson) in one of the most rewarding scenes. For the most part, the story concerns Martin's anguished quest for revenge against ruthless redcoat Colonel Tavington (played with snide relish by Jason Isaacs), and the rise to manhood of Martin's eldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), whose battlefield honor exceeds even that of his brutally volatile father. At its best, The Patriot conveys the horror of war among innocent civilians, and the epic battle scenes, while by no means masterful, are graphically intense and impressive. And although Ledger's love interest (Lisa Brenner) is too bland to register much emotion, the focus on family (which frequently relegates the war to background history) provides a suitable vehicle for Gibson, who matches his achievement in Braveheart with an effectively brooding performance. --Jeff Shannon
The Little Mermaid II - Return to the Sea
by Brian Smith (XV)
from Walt Disney Video
Ariel and her husband, Prince Eric, have a little problem with their daughter, Melody, in the sequel to Disney's landmark The Little Mermaid. Melody is threatened by Morgana, the evil sister of the sea witch Ursula (both voiced by Pat Carroll). Before you can say "Briar Rose," Melody's parents decide to keep their daughter's roots a secret, forbidding her to learn about the ocean while Morgana is around. Now the budding teenager secretly frolics in the sea with Ariel's old friends, Sebastian and Scuttle. When she learns the truth from Morgana, Melody becomes an unknowing pawn in her scheme--and Mom has to take to the sea again to help.
As with Disney's other made-for-video sequels, The Little Mermaid II looks and sounds wonderful (and reunites much of the same vocal talent). Four- to nine-year-olds who grew up with the original will certainly enjoy seeing the friends again. A new set of artists has come up with four catchy tunes and some fun new characters, including Tip and Dash, a pensive penguin and his blubbery walrus friend. Yet, where Beauty and the Beast had a deliberate Christmas-themed sequel, and Pocahontas told the tale of her historical trip to England, the plot here is very forced. It is pretty much a rehash of the first film with different characters. Tip and Dash are a reincarnation of Timon and Pumbaa, and Morgana is exactly like her sister, except thinner. Besides the stellar music, this unneeded sequel also misses another important aspect of the original--heart. --Doug Thomas
Sally Hemings: An American Scandal
by Charles Haid
from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 3-JAN-2006
Media Type: DVD
The Last Unicorn
by Jules Bass
from Lions Gate
A story line that truly deserves the A-list treatment, The Last Unicorn is memorable for its attempts to stay faithful to its origins, the Peter Beagle novel of the same name. The animation is vintage Rankin/Bass, and that's too bad; but there's an undeniable strength in this tale and telling. A unicorn (Mia Farrow)--she believes herself the last--searches for any others of her kind, while avoiding the malevolent Red Bull, the agent believed to have destroyed the rest of the herd. Along the way, she is mistaken, ignored, attacked, and obsessed about, finally finding help from a magician named Schmendrick (Alan Arkin) and a knight named Prince Lir (Jeff Bridges). A haunting film that pays homage to mythology and the people who love it. --Keith Simanton
The last unicorn discovers that she can save her brothers and sisters only if she challenges the Red Bull, and travels to the castle of the evil Lord Haggard to do so.
Genre: Children's Video
Rating: G
Release Date: 8-JAN-2008
Media Type: DVD
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
by Robert Altman
from Warner Bros. Pictures
Iconoclastic director Robert Altman (Nashville, M.A.S.H.), deconstructs and demythologizes Hollywood's typically romantic vision of the Old West in this haunting, breathtaking masterpiece. A stranger, McCabe (Warren Beatty's best performance), the film's nonheroic protagonist, rides into a dead northwest mountain town (to the mournful sounds of Leonard Cohen), possessing ambitious entrepreneurial dreams of expansion. As the town grows, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie's finest role, as well), a tough madam, arrives and convinces McCabe to join her in a partnership. Neither are typical Western archetypes: McCabe's an insecure braggart, bumbling lover, and horrible businessman, while Mrs. Miller, hardly a whore with a heart of gold, favors her opium pipe to her partner's romantic advances. Altman, meanwhile, buries these central characters within the town's complex, richly detailed tapestry of characters, preferring to eavesdrop on their overlapping conversations and study the bleak, harsh conditions of their lifestyles. At its core, the film addresses the sacrifices of individualism needed in order to build a community, an American concept that the independent Altman views with skeptical irony. The inevitable final shoot-out underscores the theme. Because McCabe refuses to sell the town he built to a corporation, hired bounty hunters are sent. Instead of a showdown at high noon, the finale--one of Altman's most beautiful set pieces--takes place in the snow, guerilla warfare style. As McCabe runs and hides for his life, the town he created preoccupies itself with saving a burning church instead of their creator, while Mrs. Miller, stoned and grinning, detaches herself from either concern. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond captures the town's brutal textures in luminous Cinemascope. --Dave McCoy
One of Robert Altman's most provocative films turns the Wild West on it's ear. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are a small-time gambler and a madam who go into business together. Year: 1971Running Time: 121 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: R UPC: 085391105527
Where the Buffalo Roam
by Art Linson
from Universal Studios
Bill Murray is in his early-career, shambling glory as Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist with a fondness for Wild Turkey and firearms. While Murray does not do as exact an impersonation of Thompson as Johnny Depp (in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), he does capture Thompson's dazed, anarchic nature. Unfortunately, the movie around him is just anarchic: a series of episodes (true or invented) from Dr. Thompson's career, circa 1968-72. The haphazard structure is probably meant to suggest the spirit of the counterculture or something, but it's just flabby storytelling. Thanks to Murray's blissful delivery, there are scenes that have a stoned giddiness to them: Thompson and his attorney (Peter Boyle) terrifying an unsuspecting hitchhiker, or Thompson alone in a men's room with Richard Nixon. Neil Young contributes some music, and Murray warbles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" while drunkenly piloting a plane. --Robert Horton
M*A*S*H (Widescreen Edition)
by Robert Altman
from 20th Century Fox
It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing M*A*S*H in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the '60s. Director Robert Altman had labored for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece Nashville). Altman's style of cruel humor, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fueled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. --Robert Horton
One of the world's most acclaimed comedies, MASH focuses on three Korean War Army surgeons brilliantly brought to life by Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould. Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, they adopt a hilarious, lunatic lifes
The Cat Returns
by Hiroyuki Morita
from Walt Disney Home Entertainment
The Cat Returns (2002) brings back Muta, the cranky fat cat, and Baron von Gikkingen, the elegant statue, from the feature Whisper of the Heart (1995). On her way home from school, Haru, a confused 17-year-old, prevents an elegant gray cat from being hit by a truck. She's inadvertently saved the life of Lune, Prince of the Cat Kingdom, and his royal father decides to thank her. He fills her locker with gift-wrapped mice and decides she should come to his kingdom and marry Lune. Haru seeks help from the Cat Bureau, and eventually returns to relatively normal life, with the assistance of Muta and the Baron.
The Cat Returns recalls Whisper of the Heart and Takashi Nakamura's Catnapped, but it offers neither the wistful charm of the former nor the bold visual imagination of the latter. Hayao Miyazaki has been seeking young directors for Studio Ghibli for several years. After preparing the script and storyboards for Whisper, he turned the film over to Yoshifumi Kondo, who died tragically shortly after the film's release. The Cat Returns was directed by Hiroyuki Morita, who shows promise, but lacks Kondo's elegant sensibility. The DVD extras include a fulsome making-of documentary, Morita's voluminous storyboards, and mini-interviews with the vocal cast that includes Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Peter Boyle, and Elliott Gould. (Rated G: minor scary imagery and cartoon violence) --Charles Solomon
From the creators of the Academy Award(R) winning SPIRITED AWAY (Best Animated Feature Film, 2002) comes the visually stunning THE CAT RETURNS, a spectacular animated journey to a world of magic and adventure. Haru, a schoolgirl bored by her ordinary routine, saves the life of an unusual cat, and suddenly her world is transformed beyond anything she ever imagined. The Cat King rewards her good deed with a flurry of presents, including a very shocking proposal of marriage to his son! Haru embarks on an unexpected journey to the Kingdom of Cats where her eyes are opened to a whole other world and her destiny is uncertain. To change her fate, she'll need to learn to believe in herself and appreciate her everyday life. Featuring the sensational voice talents of Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Tim Curry, and Elliot Gould, THE CAT RETURNS is a magical animated adventure that will delight and inspire everyone.
Batman Forever
by Joel Schumacher
from Warner Home Video
When Tim Burton and Michael Keaton announced that they'd had enough of the Batman franchise, director Joel Schumacher stepped in (with Burton as coproducer) to make this action-packed extravaganza starring Val Kilmer as the caped crusader. Batman is up against two of Gotham City's most colorful criminals, the Riddler (a role tailor-made for funnyman Jim Carrey) and the diabolical Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), who join forces to conquer Gotham's population with a brain-draining device. Nicole Kidman plays the seductive psychologist who wants to know what makes Batman tick. Boasting a redesigned Batmobile and plenty of new Bat hardware, Batman Forever also introduces Robin the Boy Wonder (Chris O'Donnell) whose close alliance with Batman led more than a few critics to ponder the series' homoerotic subtext. No matter how you interpret it, Schumacher's take on the Batman legacy is simultaneously amusing, lavishly epic, and prone to chronic sensory overload. --Jeff Shannon
The Caped Crusader returns to do battle with Two-Face and the Riddler. Also introduces Robin who becomes his partner, while Kidman is Batman/Bruce Wayne's love interest.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: KILMER/JONES/CARREY/O'DONNELL/
Title: BATMAN FOREVER
Street Release Date: 11/14/2006
Genre: ACTION / ADVENTURE
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