- NINJA ASSASSIN BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)
I Want My MTV. Think Small. Just Do It. Got Milk? Where do these phrases come from? ART & COPY introduces the cultural visionaries who revolutionized advertising during the industry s golden age in the 1960s by creating slogans to live by and ads we all remember. You may have never heard of them, but pop pioneers Lee Clow, Hal Riney, George Lois, Mary Wells, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, Phyllis K. Robinson, Dan Wieden, and David Kennedy have changed the way we eat, work, shop, and communicate often in ways we don t even realize. From the introduction of the Volkswagen to America to the triumph of Apple Computers, ART & COPY explores the most successful and influential advertising campaigns of the 20th century, and the creative minds that launched them.George Clooney (
The Perfect Storm) and John Turturro (
Cars 2)embark on the adventure of a! lifetime in this hilarious, offbeat road picture. And now, for the first time, this quirky gem shines more brightly than ever in Blu-ray High Definition! Fed up with crushing rocks on a prison farm in Mississippi, the dapper, silver-tongued Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney) busts loose...except he's still shackled to two misfits from his chain gang: bad-tempered Pete (Turturro), and sweet, dimwitted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). With nothing to lose and buried loot to regain, the three embark on a riotous odyssey filled with chases, close calls, near misses and betrayal. Experience every unpredictable moment as it plays out in the crystal-clear sound and breathtaking picture quality of Blu-ray. Populated with strange characters, including a blind prophet, sexy sirens, and a one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman),
O Brother, Where Art Thou? will leave you laughing at every outrageous and surprising twist and turnOnly Joel and Ethan Coen, the fraternal director and produc! er team behind art-house hits such as
The Big Lebowski ! and
F argo and masters of quirky and ultra-stylish genre subversion, would dare nick the plot line of Homer's Odyssey for a comic picaresque saga about three cons on the run in 1930s Mississippi. Our wandering hero in this case is one Ulysses Everett McGill, a slick-tongued wise guy with a thing about hair pomade (George Clooney, blithely sending up his own dapper image) who talks his chain-gang buddies (Coen-movie regular John Turturro and newcomer Tim Blake Nelson) into lighting out after some buried loot he claims to know of. En route they come up against a prophetic blind man on a railroad truck, a burly, one-eyed baddie (the ever-magnificent John Goodman), a trio of sexy singing ladies, a blues guitarist who's sold his soul to the devil, a brace of crooked politicos on the stump, a manic-depressive bank robber, and--well, you get the idea. Into this, their most relaxed film yet, the Coens have tossed a beguiling ragbag of inconsequential situations, a wealth of looping, l! eft-field dialogue, and a whole stash of gags both verbal and visual. O Brother (the title's lifted from Preston Sturges's classic 1941 comedy
Sullivan's Travels) is furthermore graced with glowing, burnished photography from Roger Deakins and a masterly soundtrack from T-Bone Burnett that pays loving homage to American '30s folk styles--blues, gospel, bluegrass, jazz, and more. And just to prove that the brothers haven't lost their knack for bad-taste humor, we get a Ku Klux Klan rally choreographed like a cross between a Nuremberg rally and a Busby Berkeley musical. --
Philip KempRyan Gosling stars as a Hollywood stunt driver for movies by day and moonlights as a wheelman for criminals by night. Though a loner by nature, “Driver†can’t help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband. After a heist goes wrong, Driver finds himself driving d! efense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of dead! ly serio us criminals (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman). Soon he realizes the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash and is forced to shift gears and go on the offense. Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn makes an electrifying return to Hollywood filmmaking with this 1980s-style noir, right down to the synth score and neon-pink credits (he released his American debut,
Fear X, in 2003). Ryan Gosling puts his implacable quality to good use as an L.A. stunt driver whose world crumbles when he falls for the wrong woman (Carey Mulligan). Irene is hardly a femme fatale, but her incarcerated husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is another story. When her car breaks down, Driver recommends the auto shop where he works with Shannon (
Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston). The two start spending time together, but then Standard returns from prison. Driver keeps his distance until he discovers that Standard owes protection money. If he doesn't pay up, Irene and their son will suffer, so Drive! r offers to handle the wheel during a heist, a job with which he has more than a little experience, as the riveting opening sequence proves. While they plan their score with Blanche (
Mad Men's Christina Hendricks), Shannon makes a deal with a couple of gangsters (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman), but when the plans collide: all hell breaks loose. In adapting James Sallis's novel, Refn builds to a bittersweet denouement, though the bursts of bloodshed will test even the hardiest of viewers. At its best, though,
Drive is every bit as gripping as Reagan-era crime dramas like
To Live and Die in L.A. and
Thief.
--Kathleen C. FennessyONG BAK 3 picks up where ONG BAK 2 concluded. Tien is captured and almost beaten to death before he is saved and brought back to the Kana Khone villagers. There, he is taught meditation and how to deal with his Karma, but very soon his arch rival returns challenging Tien for a final duel.If it moves, smash it! The fil! mmakers behind The Matrix and V for Vendetta bring new blood (! lots of it!) to martial arts movies in Ninja Assassin. Korean pop star Rain (Speed Racer) stars as heroic, deadly Raizo. Trained from childhood in the way of the Ozunu Clan ninja, he is stalked by fellow warriors for breaking free of them and their iron-willed dojo patriarch (martial arts legend Sho Kosugi)... and is on the run with a Europol agent (Naomie Harris) who has proof the clan sells assassination services to governments. The action is start-to-finish â€" fast, fierce, filled with weaponry (chains, swords, staffs, shuriken) and awesome athleticism. Fear not the weapon, but the hand that wields it.The entertaining, adrenaline-packed
Ninja Assassin wastes no time cutting quite literally to the guts and gore of the mysterious world of ninja warriors--the blood flows as freely as champagne on New Year's Eve. Only 3-D might have made it even better. Taken from the streets as a child, the orphan Raizo (Korean pop artist Rain, in his first leading role) is molded into a dea! dly assassin through methods that might make even the strong of stomach wince. The story flows from present-day Berlin to Raizo's brutal training by the Ozunu, one of the mythical Nine Clans that perform political assassinations around the world. Refusal to follow an order by the clan leader forces Raizo into a life on the run. When Mika (Naomie Harris), a Europol researcher, gets too close to the truth, Raizo risks detection by his former clan-mates to protect her, and to exact his revenge. Fans of ninja films will rejoice in the classic story, while action aficionados will find plenty of heart-pounding thrills in every fight scene. Admittedly, the plot, especially Europol's interest in the mythical clans, exists merely to move the story from one fight scene to the next. But who cares when the action shots--especially the literal firefight at the end--are so exciting.
--Jill Corddry
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