Epps, Omar

House, M.D. - Season Three

The cantankerous and brilliant Dr. House (Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie) is back for a third season of the hit drama House, which picks up with his being shot at the end of season two and ends with his staff dramatically refusing to put up with his oddball (and borderline abusive) demands. Each of the 24 episodes, which aired on FOX from 2006 to 2007, is included in this 5-disc set. Fans of the drama will be happy to hear that the formula remains the same: Each show begins with a medical dilemma that's so severe and life-threatening that only Dr. House can diagnose and fix the problem, even if it goes against conventional medical rules. His put-upon boss Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) is back, as are his young charges Foreman (Omar Epps), Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), and Chase (Jesse Spencer). Oncologist Wilson (Tony winner Robert Sean Leonard), who is House's best friend by default, also returns to support (and infuriate) the cranky doctor. Speaking of cranky, House's difficult nature proves to bite him in the rear. In a six-episode arc, the Vicodin-popping House meets his match after he antagonizes the wrong patient, police officer Michael Twitter (David Morse, who played a compassionate physician on St. Elsewhere). Hell hath no fury like a patient poked and prodded like a guinea pig, and Twitter makes it his business to make House's life miserable. But since the show is called House, viewers are safe in assuming that House will not be rotting his life away in a jail cell. After all, the excitement of the show is driven by his unorthodox treatment of patients. As Cuddy succinctly points out, "You just keep on going until you come up with something so insane it's usually right." Look for a slew of excellent guest stars (rocker Dave Matthews, Charles S. Dutton, Piper Perabo, John Larroquette) to help stir things up. The episodes are as compelling as ever, focusing on a morbidly obese patient in denial, an autistic child, and a comatose man that House insists on "waking" up. The bonus materials include Morrison and Edelstein doing scenes in Valley Girl-speak and a featurette on Laurie's all-star charity group called Band from TV (Laurie plays piano). --Jae-Ha Kim

Two-time Golden Globe Winner and Primetime Emmy Award nominee Hugh Laurie is back making "House" calls in all 24 engaging episodes of this hit medical series! Dr. Gregory House (Laurie) still has the most unapologetically prickly bedside manner ever but his genius for solving medical mysteries other practitioners can't has earned him the respect of his team. In this provocative and compelling season House's unpredictable cases - from killer germs to killer secrets - strain his already tenuous relationship with his co-workers and put his own health at risk. Take the doctor's orders: make House: Season Three a habit!System Requirements:Running Time: 219 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 025195008136 Manufacturer No: 61100973

Love and Basketball (New Line Platinum Series)

Gina Prince-Bythewood, a former college athlete, puts a spin on this one-on-one tale of Love and Basketball. Sanaa Lathan (The Best Man) is the fiercely driven, hot-tempered Monica, a tomboy who gives her all for basketball. Omar Epps (The Mod Squad) is Quincy, an NBA player's son who has pro dreams of his own. Next-door neighbors since first grade, they start as rivals (she flabbergasts the boy by outplaying him in a game of driveway pickup) and age into best friends and lovers. The romantic complications follow a familiar game plan, but the film throws a fascinating spotlight onto the contrast between men's and women's basketball. While Quincy plays college ball on huge courts to cheering, sold-out crowds, we see Monica's sweat, tears, and sheer physical dedication in front of tiny audiences in small gyms and second-rate auditoriums.

The story is pointedly set in the late 1980s, years before the establishment of the WNBA, so Monica's prospects for pro ball lie exclusively in Europe, while Quincy steps into the pros at home. It's a pleasure to see a character as passionate and fully developed as Monica, and Lathan gives a fiery portrayal (she had never played ball before the film, but you'd never tell from her performance). Prince-Bythewood favors her struggle over Quincy's and opens our eyes to her unique challenges with a sharp, savvy contrast. Alfre Woodard costars as Monica's harping mom (always trying to get her to be more ladylike) and Dennis Haysbert is Quincy's philandering father. Hoops fan Spike Lee produced. --Sean Axmaker

From the playground to the pro leagues, Monica and Qunicy taught each other how to play the game. Now, their commitment to the sport will force them to make a choice between each other and the game...between family and team...between "Love & Basketball." DVD Features: Two Original Documentaries, Deleted Scenes, Blooper Reel, Three Feature Length Commentaries, Music Video, DVD-ROM Content Including Screenplay And Original Theatrical Web Site, 127 Minutes

Juice

Spike Lee's longtime cinematographer, Ernest R. Dickerson, made his directorial debut with this violent story about four Harlem teens whose lives are changed when a store robbery goes wrong. The film has been likened to an urban The Wild Bunch, but it is far too artificial for that. With Dickerson's eye, Juice understandably looks great, but at the end of the day it is only a slightly better version of the heavily clichéd crime movies that have artificially dominated perceptions of black cinema in the U.S. in the '90s. Rap fans might enjoy seeing some familiar stars on board, including Queen Latifah and Tupac Shakur. --Tom Keogh

Dracula 2000

As a director, Wes Craven has been able to infuse his horror movies with humor and some smart, often genuinely creepy, thrills, even on his lowest-budgeted films. As a producer of horror movies, well, his record has been spotty at best. Craven tapped his longtime editor Patrick Lussier to direct Dracula 2000, and the movie ends up with all the good and bad of "a Wes Craven production." A modern-day update of the Dracula legend, the script has some genuinely good ideas. Christopher Plummer (The Insider) takes a relatively juicy role as Van Helsing, owner of an antiques shop specializing in ancient weapons. He takes exception to how his namesake was portrayed in Bram Stoker's classic novel, which he's more than happy to tell his assistant (Jonny Lee Miller, "Sick Boy" from Trainspotting) without telling him the whole story. When Omar Epps leads a band of high-tech criminals to break into Van Helsing's high security vault (thinking that with so much security there's got to be something extremely valuable in there), what they end up stealing is the body of Dracula, who of course awakens from his slumber. When the story shifts to New Orleans, where Van Helsing's estranged daughter is working for the local Virgin Megastore (here metaphor is replaced by product placement), Dracula is drawn to her. The undead start to multiply, and the vampire hunt resumes. Another excellent idea deals with a new origin to Dracula, flashing back to biblical times to explain his aversion to silver and crosses. But there is a downside. Under the inept direction of Lussier the movie is never scary, inspiring instead an occasional feeling of pity for the actors. Overall, this a vampire movie for the mind, not the heart. --Andy Spletzer

The master of modern horror, Wes Craven, presents a riveting adaptation of the chilling classic featuring Jennifer Esposito (SUMMER OF SAM), Omar Epps (IN TOO DEEP), Jonny Lee Miller (TRAINSPOTTING), Vitamin C (GET OVER IT), and Jeri Ryan (STAR TREK: VOYAGER). When a team of techno-savvy thieves breaks into a high-security vault, they don't discover priceless artwork ... they find a crypt that hasn't been opened for 100 years! Suddenly, the ancient terror of Dracula is unleashed in the chaotic 21st century. Free to follow his pursuits of seduction and power, Dracula's first destination is America and the exotic city of New Orleans, a place where he feels right at home. Not far behind, however, is a young vampire hunter (Miller) from London, determined to save a young woman (Justine Waddell) with whom Dracula shares his dark legacy!

Big Trouble

The frantic pacing of Big Trouble is surely intentional, but the movie leaves you wanting more of... something. Not more characters--it's got plenty of those--but more room for them to breathe in a top-heavy plot that recalls Get Shorty (also directed by Barry Sonnenfeld) without reaching those heights of ingenuity. Based on the bestseller by syndicated Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, this Miami-based mayhem bears the distinct imprint of Barry's humor, in which absurdities pile up like rush-hour traffic, involving a former journalist (Tim Allen) connected by circumstance to a wealthy schemer (Stanley Tucci), his bored wife (Rene Russo), Russian mobsters, mismatched cops (Janeane Garofalo, Patrick Warburton), power-crazed FBI agents (Heavy D, Omar Epps), a Frito-loving drifter (Jason Lee), cretinous criminals (Tom Sizemore, Johnny Knoxville), and a gigantic toad that shoots hallucinogenic saliva. Culminating in an airport bomb smuggling (prompting the film's delayed release after the tragedy of September 11, 2001), Big Trouble needs the brilliant cohesion of Dr. Strangelove; what it gets is Sonnenfeld's knack for sustained chaos, and a few decent belly laughs. --Jeff Shannon

The laughs come fast and furious as Tim Allen (JOE SOMEBODY, GALAXY QUEST) and Rene Russo (SHOWTIME, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR) star in a film from Barry Sonnenfeld, director of GET SHORTY and MEN IN BLACK. Based on humorist Dave Barry's best-selling first novel, BIG TROUBLE follows the comedic chaos created when a mysterious suitcase that threatens the security of Miami changes the lives of a divorced dad, an unhappy housewife, 2 hit men, a pair of street thugs, 2 love-struck teens, 2 FBI men, and a psychedelic toad. There is something for everyone no matter who is looking for BIG TROUBLE -- and in the end, all-star comedy conquers all.

Major League 2

Those diehard Cleveland Indians that went from worst to first in the hit original now cope with fame and its perks as the hangdog team tries to hit hustle and joke its way back to the top. Charlie Sheen Tom Berenger and Corbin Bernsen star.Running Time: 106 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 085391688228

Higher Learning

This ambitious 1995 film by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) doesn't quite succeed at painting the illuminating, collective portrait of college life in the '90s that the director seeks. But Singleton does do a fine job of defining some conflicting impulses for young people on the cusp of adulthood, particularly the desire to broaden horizons on the one hand and circle the wagons with like-minded allies on the other. Students in the film's Columbus University divide themselves along lines of race, sexual preferences, ideology, and, most dangerously, levels of paranoia. Among the fine cast is Michael Rapaport, who portrays a loner drawn to a local community of neo-Nazis. His resultant problems with the school's African-Americans takes over the story at the expense of other, parallel dramas, but Singleton's insights into race hatred on campus--a microcosm of the surrounding culture--is not to be dismissed. --Tom Keogh

The Wood (Back in the Day Edition)

Lots of guys have second thoughts about marriage. Three hours before his wedding Roland (Taye Diggs) is having third fourth and fifth thoughts. Good thing he's got best buddies Slim (Richard T. Jones) and Mike (Omar Epps) around to help sort those feelings out and to remember their coming-of-age days in "The Wood" (Inglewood California). From the big dance to first love the rites of passage that are part of everyone s growing up are winningly chronicled in this unforgettable tale of laughs and friendship that's set to the most memorable musical grooves of the '80s.DVD Features: Commentary: Commentary by Director Rick Famuyiwa Actors Taye Diggs and Richard T. Jones Other: Making the Wood Trailers: Theatrical Trailer Other: TV Spots Other: Photo GallerySystem Requirements:Running Time: 106 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 097361223445 Manufacturer No: 122344

In Too Deep

Undercover cop Jeffrey Cole is doing "God's" work, and he is losing his religion. God is Dwayne Gittens, whose neighborhood benevolence masks his thriving Cincinnati (a refreshing change of scenery) drug trade. Cole, a rookie fresh out of the Academy is "ready for the big score" and is charged by his mentor to "bring God and his angels down for good." But the higher Cole rises in Gittens's organization, the deeper he gets. Omar Epps redeems himself after The Mod Squad with a gripping and empathetic performance as the increasingly conflicted Cole. After scoring as the comic relief in Deep Blue Sea, LL Cool J gets down to business as Gittens, the master of his domain who rules with an iron hand (and, in one particularly nasty sequence, a pool cue), but is also capable of compassion and charity. As Cole's concerned superior, Stanley Tucci avoids the bluster usually associated with this stock character. Pam Grier, whose career should have gotten a Viagralike pop from Jackie Brown, makes the most out of her thankless role as a fellow officer who finds herself in a climactic standoff with Cole. In Too Deep briefly loses its focus after Cole is pulled from the case. He takes photography classes and becomes involved with a model (Nia Long). But fans of TV's late, lamented Wiseguy, the unjustly neglected Deep Cover, and Donnie Brasco will find Cole'a anguished odyssey compelling. --Donald Liebenson

Hip-hop legend LL Cool J (DEEP BLUE SEA, HALLOWEEN: H2O) is teamed with hot stars Omar Epps (THE WOOD, SCREAM 2) and Nia Long (BOILER ROOM, BIG MOMMA's HOUSE) in a gritty crime drama about a dedicated young cop who goes deep undercover to take down a ruthless gangster! Officer Jeff Cole (Epps) is given a dangerous mission: infiltrate the syndicate of "God" (LL Cool J), the charismatic and deadly crime lord who rules the city's streets! But as Cole sinks deeper and deeper into God's crew, he begins to get in over his head ... until the line that separates his true identity from his street persona begins to disappear! Also featuring Stanley Tucci (SHALL WE DANCE? THE TERMINAL) and Pam Grier (JACKIE BROWN), this action-packed story unfolds with a power you'll find intensely entertaining!

Scream 2 (Dimension Collector's Series)

To repeat the phenomenal success of their collaboration on 1996's hit thriller Scream, horror maven Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson did a fair amount of recycling (same movie, slightly different situations), but this sequel comes surprisingly close to matching its popular predecessor. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, and Liev Schreiber reprise their roles from Scream, and this time they're caught in a new cycle of murders near a college campus, just as the slasher movie Stab (based on the events from Scream) is about to make its local premiere. That's the setup for another frantic guessing game involving a number of possible suspects, and the mystery is fatally complicated by the reappearance of the eerily masked killer from the first film. Who's under the mask? Craven and Williamson set up a roller-coaster series of wild plot twists and deadly encounters, and the snappy dialogue once again caters to those in the know about fright flicks, sequels, and all the movie rules that do (and sometimes don't) apply to the escalating body count. Featuring several scenes that will have you biting your nails and gripping your seat, this movie's an exception to the rule--a sequel that beats the odds to satisfy its target audience. Everyone else--you've been warned! --Jeff Shannon

Here's the incredible follow-up to the smash hit phenomenon SCREAM! Away at college, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell -- SCREAM, WILD THINGS) thought she'd finally put the shocking murders that shattered her life behind her ... until a copycat killer begins acting out a real-life sequel! Now, as history eerily repeats itself, ambitious reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox -- SCREAM, SCREAM 3), deputy Dewey (David Arquette -- SCREAM, SCREAM 3), and other SCREAM survivors find themselves trapped in a terrifyingly clever plotline where no one is safe -- or beyond suspicion! Director Wes Craven (SCREAM) and hit-making writer Kevin Williamson (SCREAM, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER) team up once again and deliver the big screen's hippest, coolest, edgiest thrill-ride ever!