The new DVD releases include Brand Upon the Brain!, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer and Smart People. In addition, we'll take a sneak peek at next week's movies on video/DVD.
August 12, 2008 - New DVD Releases:
Brand Upon the Brain! DVD
Length: 95 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Directed and co-written by Guy Maddin, this strange film was shot in 8mm black-and-white as a silent. It has sometimes been shown theatrically with live orchestra and narrator, but the DVD has recorded sound and narration by Isabella Rossellini. The story is about a man who travels to an island to repaint his childhood home, a lighthouse that served as an orphanage. But he gets caught up in memories of his sister, his overbearing mom and his mad scientist dad. He also recalls a teenage brother-and-sister detective team investigating wounds on the backs of the orphans' heads.
- 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.
How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer DVD
Length: 128
minutes
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and some language
This leisurely paced, low-keyed indie is about the love lives of three generations of Mexican-American women during a hot summer in a sleepy Arizona border town. There's the teenager Blanca (America Ferrera), a virgin who's curious about sex and drawn to the new guy in town. Then there's Blanca's divorced mom Lolita (Elizabeth Peña), who gets involved with autoeroticism and two very different men, one of them married. Finally, there's Lolita's widowed mother Doña Genoveva (Lucy Gallardo), who falls for her gardener while he's teaching her to drive.
- 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.
Tagline: "Sometimes the smartest people have the most to learn."
Length: 95 minutesMPAA Rating: R for language, brief teen drug and alcohol use, and for some sexuality
Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church star in this indie seriocomedy about a dysfunctional family. Widower Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid) is a curmudgeonly English professor at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Living with him is his Young Republican daughter Vanessa (Page). Also, Lawrence's slacker adoptive brother Chuck (Church) moves in with them. But things change when Lawrence gets into a romantic relationship with an ER physician (Parker). Meanwhile, Vanessa develops an odd friendship with Chuck. Selected DVD Special Features:
- 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