The new DVD releases include The Great Debaters, Mad Money and Untraceable. In addition, we'll take a sneak peek at next week's movies on video/DVD.
May 13, 2008 - New DVD Releases:
The Great Debaters DVD
Length: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for depiction of strong thematic material including violence and disturbing images, and for language and brief sexuality
Denzel Washington stars in and directed this drama based on a 1930s true story. Forest Whitaker is also in the film. Washington plays the main character, Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at small, all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Tolson believes that one way for him and his students to combat the racism they endure is to excel at debating. He handpicks a four-person team and coaches it through a series of debates, culminating in a 1935 competition against Harvard. (One of the Wiley debaters, James Farmer Jr., went on to become a leader in the civil-rights movement.)
- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check with your video store/online rental service for availability in other formats, including streaming video/digital download.
Mad Money DVD
Length: 104 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual material and language, and brief drug references
Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes star in this heist comedy directed by Callie Khouri. Bridget (Keaton) and her husband (Ted Danson) live in an affluent Kansas City suburb, but he loses his job, and they run up huge debt. She takes a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where she sees carts of worn-out currency on its way to be shredded. Bridget hatches a plan where she and two lowly coworkers (Latifah and Holmes) will steal some of the cash scheduled for destruction. But the security system is difficult to defeat, and things spiral out of control.
- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check with your video store/online rental service for availability in other formats, including streaming video/digital download.
Untraceable DVD
Length: 100 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for grisly violence and torture, and some language
Diane Lane stars as an FBI agent in this thriller involving a diabolical Web site called killwithme.com. Jennifer Marsh (Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) are agents with the FBI's cybercrime unit in Portland, Oregon, where they work with a local police detective (Billy Burke) on a difficult case: a psychopath is killing people as Internet users watch via live streamed video. The killer sets up elaborate sadistic torture devices, and the more hits the Web site gets, the faster the victims die. The murderer uses a clever scheme to conceal where the video is coming from.
- Widescreen
Formats Available: The above information on special features refers to the DVD. Check with your video store/online rental service for availability in other formats, including streaming video/digital download.
Next Page - Additional Video/DVD Releases of Interest This Week