ENTERTAINMENT
January 5, 2013 | By Noel Murray
Compliance Magnolia, $26.98; Blu-ray, $29.98 Available on VOD beginning Jan. 8 Craig Zobel's film dramatizes that bizarre news story from a few years back about a restaurant manager who forced an employee to strip on the orders of a man impersonating a policeman. Dreama Walker plays the luckless cashier, who by the end of the night is coerced into doing naked jumping jacks in a stockroom (and worse) because her boss (played by the remarkable Ann Dowd) tells her that a cop has accused her of stealing.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 27, 2012 | By Dawn C. Chmielewski
The raunchy adult comedy “Ted” beat a pair of action films in pre-holiday sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs, with humor trumping the final installment of director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises,” and newcomer “The Bourne Legacy” as well as the animated “Ice Age: Continental Drift.” But “Ted” barely cracked the top 10 when it came to DVD and Blu-ray rentals. The winner in that category was “Men In Black 3.” Below are the 10 most sold and rented movie discs during the week ended Dec. 15 (sales)
ENTERTAINMENT
December 24, 2012
For a movie that is considered one of the worst ever made, 1964's "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" has had quite a wonderful life. Kino Lorber has put the musical holiday film on Blu-ray for the holidays. An 8-year-old Pia Zadora is one of the stars of this stuffed turkey about a group of Martians that decide to kidnap Santa because their children have become obsessed with St. Nick. Ineptly directed by Nicholas Webster with poor production values and wooden performances, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" is a blissful camp feast.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 10, 2012 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
With home entertainment systems featuring screens as big as the Ritz, it's a good time to look at some recent DVD and Blu-ray releases of celebrated epics from the recent past. At the top of everyone's list of intelligent epics is David Lean's Oscar best picture-winning "Lawrence of Arabia," newly released in a handsome 50th anniversary box that includes a new 4K restoration of the film as one of its trio of Blu-ray discs. There's also an 88-page hardcover book and an actual 70mm film frame, but the movie itself is the reason to take this home.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 10, 2012 | By Ben Fritz
After eight years of legal battle with the entertainment industry, Kaleidescape has found a friend in Hollywood. Starting Tuesday, the manufacturer of high-end media servers will sell movies and television shows from Warner Bros., a first-of-its-kind deal for the company. Previously, the Kaleidescape system has only let users watch movies that they copy off a DVD or Blu-ray disc. That function landed the Sunnyvale, Calif., company in trouble when the DVD Copy Control Assn., a consortium of studios and electronics companies that manages the anti-piracy technology on movie discs, sued Kaleidescape in 2004.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 1, 2012 | By Noel Murray
Beasts of the Southern Wild 20th Century Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99 Available on VOD beginning Dec. 4 Part gritty social realism and part fevered post-apocalyptic fantasy, Benh Zeitlin's film is undoubtedly something extraordinary. The grade-school-aged Quvenzhané Wallis stars as Hushpuppy, a girl who lives with her oft-absent father in a water-bound region of Louisiana populated by a mix of people who work the land and teach their kids about the coming floods and the giant, hairy boar-type creatures who will arrive in their wake.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 26, 2012 | By Ben Fritz
The animated feature "Brave" debuted at the top of the DVD sales chart, but couldn't knock "The Amazing Spider-Man" from the top of the rental chart. Pixar's "Brave" was the top selling DVD and Blu-ray disc in the U.S. during the week ended Nov. 18, according to research firm Rentrak, but the No. 4 rented movie. In its second week on shelves, the "Spider-Man" reboot fell to No. 2 on the sales chart. Other high-profile new releases were the Oliver Stone-directed drama "Savages," which debuted at No. 3 on the sales chart, and Ben Stiller-Vince Vaughn comedy "The Watch," which launched at No. 4. Neither was immediately available to rent from Redbox or Netflix and thus did not make Rentrak's rental chart.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 24, 2012 | By Noel Murray
Luck: The Complete First Season HBO, $59.99; Blu-ray, $79.98 The HBO horse-racing drama "Luck" was canceled after several animals died during the course of the production - which is unfortunate because of the loss of the horses and the loss of the show. A rich, rewarding story of the gamblers, gangsters and horse lovers who gather around a Los Angeles racetrack, "Luck" features a cast top-lined by Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, dialogue overseen by creator David Milch, rivaling his best work as the steward of "Deadwood"; and a gorgeous, cinematic look established by Michael Mann, who directed the first episode.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 17, 2012 | By Noel Murray
The Expendables 2 Lionsgate, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99 Available on VOD beginning Nov. 20 Doubling down on what worked just fine two years ago, this sequel brings back Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and adds Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme to the roster of action veterans paying homage to the big, dumb guns-and-bombs flicks of the 1980s. The plot this time has the team of mercenaries losing one of their own and exacting revenge, but "plot" isn't really the point of either of the "Expendables" movies; the idea is to show buff, beloved old stars, swapping quips and bullets while running in slow-motion ahead of explosions.