Waking Life
from 20th Century Fox
Waking Life is a film that never settles down. Or maybe it never wakes up. Regardless, Richard Linklater's animated meditation seems to strike a perfect balance between the plotless meanderings of Slacker and the unquenchable knowledge-seeking of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Any way you look at it, this is a weird, original movie.
As he attempts to figure out what separates dreams from reality, the protagonist (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) hears an earful from everyone he stumbles upon. Ramblings range from the scholarly (Linklater's former college professor Robert C. Solomon gives a monologue) to the banal (of which there are plenty). Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Adam Goldberg all get animated cameos, basically playing themselves. The dream-centered dialogues eventually grow mind-numbing, but that's OK; the animation steals the show. Each frame of the movie, which was first shot with live actors, was painted over, and the process renders a distorted and trippy collage of sights and sounds. Linklater's film is ultimately quite poignant, but, as with any good journey, you'll need to sit through some fairly tedious moments before reaching the destination. --Jason Verlinde
A man in a dream state begins to question whether waking or dreaming is the true reality; while on his journey in the dream he meets many interesting characters who talk with him about the meaning of life, perception and human existance.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 15-APR-2003
Media Type: DVD
I Am A Sex Addict
by Caveh Zahedi
from Ifc
Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 03/20/2007 Run time: 99 minutes
Director Caveh Zahedi's I Am A Sex Addict may be Zahedi's most autobiographical film to date. Previously, when Tripping With Caveh featured Zahedi and musician Will Oldham wandering through meadows high on mushrooms, some viewers wondered what the point was. Now, mining deeper topics, "Caveh" relays his history of sex addiction before taking wedding vows with his third wife to-be. Beginning the tale in Paris, 1984, Zahedi narrates the story of Anna, his first true love, Caroline, his second love played by actress Rebecca Lord, and the destruction of both relationships due to his insatiable desire for prostitutes. Speaking directly towards the camera or acting out dramatized scenes, Zahedi explains his psychological needs to masturbate, receive oral sex, and gawk at women. When his girlfriends repeatedly dump him, he hits rock bottom and begins attending Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings. Zahedi's first-person experimentalism sometimes seems pretentious, as he explains, for example, how he came to cast a famous porn star, though it is clear that Zahedi's message is sincere. The unsavory topic explored in I Am A Sex Addict is not for everyone, though some viewers may take solace in the film's brute honesty. --Trinie Dalton
Naked Jane
by Linda Kandel
from Pathfinder Home Ent.
The story of an aspiring novelist (Renee Stahl) forced to earn a living typing college students' term papers and torn between the various men in her life.System Requirements:Running Time: 111 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MISCELLANEOUS/SPECIAL INTEREST Rating: NR UPC: 825307909791 Manufacturer No: PH90979
Treasure Island
from Image Entertainment
The title of Scott King's Treasure Island doesn't refer to Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate adventure but the San Francisco military base that was home to code breakers and cryptographers in World War II. The 1999 Sundance Jury Prize-winning film begins with the look and rich black and white texture of 1940s cinema, right down to the phony newsreel and mock spy serial that precedes the film proper, but soon spins off into a bizarre, shadowy psychosexual drama. King was initially inspired by the nonfiction book The Man Who Never Was, the account of an ingenious decoy planted by British intelligence to mislead the Germans about the upcoming invasion of Sicily (which was the basis of a 1956 film with Clifton Webb), but in the film he's interested less in the espionage than the hidden private lives and repressed emotions of the film's cryptographer heroes. As they construct an elaborate back story for a corpse the military plans to dump in Japanese waters with phony invasion documents, their fears, frustrations, and obsessions rise to the surface. While it's not completely successful, King's audacious approach and unsettling scenes offer a genuinely offbeat and at times surreal look at the sexually repressed 1940s. It's a frank view of human sexuality with nudity, homoerotic content, and often off-putting sexual activity.
The handsome DVD by All Day Entertainment is cleverly packaged in a hardcover booklet in a slipcase. The supplements include two separate commentary tracks by King (one on the making of and one on the meaning of the film), short documentary featurettes on the making of the film and its Sundance premiere, a complete set of storyboards (with immediate access to the scene), and deleted and extended scenes with introductions by the director. --Sean Axmaker
The closing days of WWII. Treasure Island is a secret naval institution in San Francisco where intelligence experts censor all mail--seeking out hidden messages coded into birthday cards and love letters. Two such cryptographers, Frank and Sam, concoct a plan to outfit a dead body with falsified letters, to be dumped into the ocean as a wartime decoy--his letters containing coded misinformation to mislead the enemy. This much, at least, is true. But in "Treasure Island," communication is a zero-sum game: for every truth revealed, some other knowledge is taken away. The more one knows, the less one understands. All Day Entertainment is proud to present this critically-lauded, audacious motion picture in this deluxe special edition DVD, prepared by filmmaker Scott King himself. 1999 Winner of the Sundance Jury prize!
A Sign From God
by Greg Watkins
from World Artists
Money Buys Happiness
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