| New Video and DVD Releases | |
| Part 1: This Week's New Releases on Video/DVD |
by Ivana Redwine
There are some interesting video/DVD releases for February 11, 2003, including "8 Women," "Brown Sugar," "The Fast Runner," "Full Frontal," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Possession," and "Swept Away." There are additional releases of interest, such as "Angel - Season One," Jean Cocteau's classic 1947 masterpiece "Beauty and the Beast," and "Wasabi." In addition, we'll take a sneak peek at next week's movies on video/DVD.
February 11, 2003 - Video and DVD Releases
"8 Women" (2002)
Length: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content
Catherine Deneuve is one of several famous actresses in this entertaining French-language film, which is rather like an Agatha Christie mystery with half a dozen musical numbers thrown in. A family gathers at the isolated house of Gaby (Deneuve) and her husband Marcel. Family members include Gaby's mother (Danielle Darrieux), her daughters (Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier), her sister (Isabelle Huppert), her sister-in-law (Fanny Ardant), and two servants (Emmanuelle Béart and Firmine Richard). Marcel turns up dead, apparently knifed in the back while in bed. A snowstorm makes the roads impassable, trapping everyone in the house, and the phone lines are cut. The murder mystery then drives the story, but this is mainly a device to showcase the talented and charismatic French actresses.
Selected DVD Special Features:
-
Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
Tagline: "The Rhythm The Love The Beat ... and you don't stop."
Length: 109 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and language
This is a romantic comedy about African-American professionals in the world of hip-hop music. Dre (Taye Diggs), a music producer, and Sidney (Sanaa Lathan), a magazine editor, have been friends since childhood. Dre and Sidney have long shared a love of hip-hop, but their relationship has never been a romantic one. Then Dre marries the attractive Reese (Nicole Ari Parker), and Sidney becomes seriously involved with a professional basketball player (Boris Kodjoe). Soon both Dre and Sidney are beset by serious doubts about the direction of their lives, and they begin to think they have taken wrong turns because of their failure to realize they have always been meant for each other. Mos Def plays the role of a performer backed by Dre, and Queen Latifah portrays Sidney's friend.
Selected Special DVD Features:- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
"The Fast Runner" (2001)
Length: 172 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for some sexuality/nudity and violence
This Inuktitut-language film awed critics and art house audiences during its theatrical release. The actors are Inuit, a people sometimes referred to as Eskimos. The movie is set in the Canadian Arctic sometime in the past before modern transportation and communication impacted the nomadic, tribal society there. The story is about a small Inuit community that has been cursed by a shaman, resulting in a cycle of conflict over a span of years. A problem arises when Atanarjuat desires a woman named Atuat, who has been promised to Oki, the son of the leader of the community. Atanarjuat gets Atuat by defeating Oki in ritual combat, but eventually there's a murder, and Atanarjuat must run for his life. One of the best things about the film is its close observation of daily life in the community.
- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
"Full Frontal" (2002)
Tagline: "Everybody needs a release."
Length: 101 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexual content
Despite the fact that Julia Roberts plays a major role, this is a low-budget, non-mainstream film that has baffled most viewers. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, this experimental movie chronicles a long day in the lives of several loosely linked people. Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood portray Hollywood actors who are making a movie. David Hyde Pierce plays a writer who is in an unhappy marriage with a human resources executive played by Catherine Keener. Keener's character's sister Linda (Mary McCormack) is a masseuse, one of whose clients is a Hollywood producer named Gus (David Duchovny). Most of the characters are supposed to attend Gus's birthday party. Also, Linda is preparing to go meet the producer (Enrico Colantoni) of a stage play about Hitler (Nicky Katt).
Selected Special DVD Features:- Closed-Captioned
- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (2002)
Tagline: "Love is here to stay... so is her family."
Length: 96 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG for sensuality and language
This romantic comedy was a surprise runaway hit in its theatrical release. Nia Vardalos, the movie's leading lady, originally developed the story as a one-woman play based loosely on her own family background. Vardalos plays Toula Portokalos, an unmarried, thirtyish, rather plain-looking Chicago woman who is surrounded by her overpowering Greek family. She first works in the restaurant run by her parents (Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan). Then she goes to work at a travel agency, and she also meets a man named Ian Miller (John Corbett), who is not Greek. Since her parents strongly disapprove, Toula and Ian start up their romantic relationship on the sly. But soon they're head over heels in love, and as they move towards marriage, Toula must reconcile her love for her family with her love for Ian.
Selected DVD Special Features:
• Full-Screen and Widescreen Anamorphic Formats
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
"Possession" (2002)
Tagline: "The past will connect them. The passion will possess them."
Length: 102 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexuality and some thematic elements
Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart star in this romantic drama. Eckhart plays Roland Mitchell, a scholar researching the 19th-century British poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam). Paltrow portrays Maud Bailey, an expert on another Victorian-era poet, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Mitchell contacts Bailey about some of Ash's love letters, which he believes were written to LaMotte. If Mitchell's conjecture turns out to be correct, it will be important to scholars for two reasons: (1) Ash was believed to have been faithful to his wife; and (2) LaMotte was believed to have been in a lesbian relationship with a woman named Blanche Glover (Lena Headey). As Mitchell and Bailey conduct their research, they start to fall for each other, and the romance between Ash and LaMotte is shown in flashbacks.
Selected DVD Special Features:
-
Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
"Swept Away" (2002)
Length: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality/nudity
Starring Madonna and directed by her husband Guy Ritchie, this film is a remake of a 1974 Italian-language movie. Madonna plays Amber, the pampered wife of a wealthy man. Amber and her husband join others on a yacht trip from Greece to Italy, during which she bitchily heaps abuse on a scruffy crew member named Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini). At sea, she orders Giuseppe to take her out in a dinghy, and things go badly awry. Amber and Giuseppe end up stranded on an uninhabited island, where she is completely dependent on his survival skills. This puts Giuseppe in control, and he forces Amber to serve him and slaps her around a little. Presumably the filmmakers intended for the audience to believe that Amber is transformed and that she and Giuseppe fall in love.
Selected DVD Special Features:
-
Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check for availability on VHS.
Next Page - Additional Video/DVD Releases of Interest This Week
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