courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment This week’s Cognitive Dissonance Double Feature begins with THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, a twisty and postmodern horror movie from writer/producer Joss Whedon and his posse. New this week to DVD and Blu-ray, the film has been available via select video-on-demand for a while following its theatrical run this summer. […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inArt
Raleigh’s SPARKcon arts fest opens up
SPARKcon Sept. 13-16 Downtown Raleigh Raleigh designer Aly Khalifa realized that he had reached a landmark of sorts earlier this year. He was on the other side of the globe, and people wanted to know about SPARKcon, the unique street festival he helped found in 2006. “I was on a fellowship this year, traveling through […]
Posted inCulture
DVD+Digital: Titanic, 9/11 and the mad riot of home video
courtesy of Paramount Pictures The weird array of home video releases in any given week is stunning. Those few mainstream titles that cycle through Redbox and Blockbuster are just the tip of the iceberg. Every Tuesday brings a flood of material on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download — foreign films, classic reissues, independent movies, TV […]
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The Words: Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons in a phony literary puzzler
courtesy of CBS Films THE WORDS** starsOpens Friday In 1922, Ernest Hemingway’s wife Hadley was traveling from Paris to Switzerland by train when she made a rather historic mistake. Getting up briefly to buy a bottle of water, she left behind a suitcase containing virtually all of her husband’s fiction writing up to that point. […]
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DVD+Digital: In defense of the Jason Statham movie
courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment Professional tough guy Jason Statham’s new film SAFE — new to DVD, Blu-ray and digital this week — is not a very good movie. But it’s not a bad one either, and it illustrates nicely the many reasons that Statham is the best action movie star working today. In Safe, […]
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Dialogue, density and Robert Pattinson in Cronenberg’s tedious Cosmopolis
courtesy of eOne Films COSMOPOLIS* starOpens Friday It must have seemed like solid math at the time: Cerebral director David Cronenberg (+) postmodernist writer Don DeLillo (x) ascendent movie star Robert Pattinson (=) edgy art film with box office potential. Sometimes, the numbers just don’t add up. Cronenberg’s tedious and talky Cosmopolis, adapted from DeLillo’s […]
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DVD+Digital: H.P. Lovecraft, Lovely Molly and Halloween in August
courtesy of Image Entertainment When The Blair Witch Project was released in 1999, it broke all sorts of molds. The creepy faux-documentary, about three student filmmakers who get lost in the woods, was the first to leverage the “found footage” idea into a full-length, mainstream horror movie. The film also employed new digital age promotion […]
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DVD+Digital: Anniversary reissues, Hollywood lore and Good Will Hunting
courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment Believe it or not, it’s been 15 years since Good Will Hunting came out of nowhere to turn Matt Damon and Ben Affleck into Oscar winners and ginormous movie stars. The story behind the 1997 film has since become filmmaking legend; the kind of thing aspiring actors tell to one […]
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DVD+Digital: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory and the agonizing story of the West Memphis Three
The disturbing saga of the West Memphis Three has been playing out for nearly 20 years now. In 1993, three teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley — were tried and convicted for the horrific murder of three young boys. The teens were accused of performing a Satanic ritual […]
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The Bourne Legacy takes the texture and fun out of a great spy franchise
courtesy of Universal Pictures THE BOURNE LEGACY** starsOpens Friday When The Bourne Identity hit theaters in 2002, it jostled loose in me old fanboy quirks I hadn’t experienced since Star Wars and Indiana Jones. It’s a little embarrassing, but I would sometimes pretend to be an amnesiac superspy in airports and shopping malls—scanning the crowds, […]
