DVD Geek: The Magnificent Ambersons

Exactly 15 years after DVDs were introduced to the home video market place, Warner Home Video has finally released the last significantly important, classic motion picture in the format, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and like the opinions of the townspeople on the fates of the characters at the end of the film, no one cares.

The Weekend Report, April 15, 2012

I Got Plenty of Nyucking: Was it a fair fight? Katniss vs. Moe, Larry and Curly. Regardless, “The Hunger Games” made it a hat trick as box office champ with an estimated $21.3 million while the contemporized “The Three Stooges” bowed to $17.2 million.

Friday Estimates: April 13, 2012

The Hunger Games leads again, this time with 3 stooges nipping at their heels. Joss Whedon’s long delayed Cabin In The Woods release arrives in a soft third place for a horror film Friday. And Guy Pearce is locked out of the money with a thriller that didn’t have the marketing budget to compete.

Review: The Cabin in the Woods (Spoiler-Free)

In spite of my admiration for the idea of the film, my one quibble with The Cabin in the Woods is that while it is a great concept, the characters do tend to feel like constructs designed to fit within that cleverness, as opposed to starting with compelling characters and letting the story build around them, but when you have an idea as good as this one, what’re you gonna do?

The DVD Wrapup: Iron Lady, Conquest, Sleeping Beauty, Streetcar, Dark Shadows … More

In the mid-’60s, the demographics of daytime TV were significantly different than those associated with prime-time sitcoms. Fewer women worked in full-time jobs and they tended to control buying patterns at the supermarket. Romance in the afternoon was blooming and it didn’t include fangs and capes. Even so, Dan Curtis’ brainstorm would enjoy a six-year run, thanks, in large part, to support from teenagers who rushed home from school – or, so we’re told – to enjoy the kinky storylines and handsome undead characters. “Dark Shadows” was as different from “The Guiding Light” and “The Days of Our Lives” as “American Bandstand” was to “Lawrence Welk.”

Wilmington on DVDs. Casablanca

You think Michael Curtiz is a hack? It‘s only because he made so many movies. But his list of hundreds includes two or three dozen genuine classics. And the other several hundred aren’t bad either. In fact, director-movie-lover Rainer Werner Fassbinder ranked Curtiz at the top of his list, next to Luchino Visconti and Douglas Sirk.

Wilmington on DVDs. Chinatown.

It‘s a picture that seems close to perfect of its kind and one of the ‘70s films I love best. Gorgeous and terrifying and sometimes funny as hell, Chinatown tells a romantic/tragic/murder mystery tale of official crimes and personal corruption raging around the real-life L. A. Water scandal, with private sin and public swindles steadily stripped bare by J. J. Gittes (one of Jack Nicholson‘s signature roles), a cynical, natty, smart-ass Hammetesque shamus, with a nose for corruption and a hot-trigger temper

The Gronvall Files: BETWEEN TERENCE DAVIES AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

For a world-class filmmaker, Terence Davies keeps a fairly low profile; you’re not likely, for instance, to catch him chatting on late-night TV (in part because the director-screenwriter dislikes travel and hardly ever watches television). He has channeled his energies into his work, from ruminative autobiographical features like “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes,” about Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, to his masterly adaptation of the Edith Wharton classic “The House of Mirth” (starring Gillian Anderson in one of her best movie roles), followed by the acclaimed documentary “Of Time and the City,” about his native Liverpool.

Wilmington on DVDs. The Iron Lady

Meryl Streep, the American movie star who plays/ impersonates/ inhabits/ incarnates Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” is not only one of the greatest movie actresses of the 20th and 21st centuries, an artist of confounding competence, flawless mimicry and consistent brilliance, but a smart student of life and humanity who who can vanish into her parts totally. And here, she’s giving what is certainly one of her most impressive performances.

Wilmington on Movies: American Reunion

Just the reintroduction of Jim‘s pop and The Stiffmeister alone is enough to raise a litle indecent notalgia in this movie. Or bonhomie, maybe. Not enough to make it a good movie, but at least enough to avoid it being an irredeemably bad one.

The Weekend Report: April 8, 2012

The appetite for The Hunger Games continued with the hearty survivalists adding an estimated $33.7 million to take the weekend box office crown and push its cache to more than $300 million domestically.

The frame’s newcomers (so to speak) trailed in second and third positions. The belated Pie story American Reunion bowed to $21.4 million while the reconstituted Titanic buoyed to $17.4 million with the addition of 3D lifeboats.

Wilmington on DVDs. A Trip to the Moon; Melies, First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)

Méliès’ great little show was first released in the black-and-white prints most of us know, but also in an original hand-tinted color version that was missing for nearly a century. But that second version, discovered in a Spanish film library in 1995, has now been definitively restored in colors as radiant and luscious as ice cream melting in a silver tureen.

Friday Estimates: April 6, 2012

The Hunger Games is slowing down in its third weekend… to only 25% better than anything else in the market. An odd way to spend Good Friday or Erev Passover would be raunching it up with American Reunion, what we suspect will be the first reunion, though perhaps the last with frontal nudity involving the original cast. And Titanic 3D is cruising, though the real box office story there will be written internationally.

Wilmington on DVDs. We Bought a Zoo, No Man of Her Own

If only “We Bought a Zoo” could do for zoos what “Sideways” did for wine, we’d all be in clover and up to our knees in humane enclosures. Although I’m a big fan of zoos myself (especially San Diego’s and the giraffe and bear enclosures at the Lincoln Park Zoo) and though this is a likable movie, full of likable people, and likable animals and though star Matt Damon is a very paragon of likeability, the movie just vanishes out of your mind (or mine at least) after you leave.

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. War Horse.

The script of “War Horse,” a heart-crusher, is rife with coincidence, pulsing with melodrama. Violence and tragedy are often close to overwhelming it. But it’s also a good story, an often gripping one.

The DVD Wrapup: War Horse, Zoo, Miss Bala, Chinatown, Tyrannosaur…

Gerardo Naranjo’s “Miss Bala” describes how weird things can get when the trajectories of a violent drug gang and contestants in a beauty pageant cross paths in Tijuana, one of the world’s most dangerous cities. “Miss Bala” is an extremely violent movie, as befits the times in Mexico’s drug war, but Lino’s determination to give Laura her shot at stardom borders on the hilarious. By the time she gets to the interview stage, Laura can barely remember her name. Naranjo uses Tijuana as well as Steven Soderbergh did in “Traffic” and the cruelty of the perpetrators of the violence is palpable throughout the movie.

DVD Geek: My Week With Marilyn

First, you have to see “The Prince and the Showgirl.” It is a film that will continually make you smile. Its story is cute and its cast is legendary. Then you watch “My Week with Marilyn” … The 2011 film is not about dishing dirt on the production. It is, rather, and in some ways very much like “The Prince and the Showgirl,” about the ephemeral nature of love.

The Weekend Report: April 1, 2012

The Hunger Games added an estimated $60.4 million to its larder to lead weekend box office sales. Already among the top 100 all-time domestic grossers after 10 days in theaters, it should have no problem winding up in the top 20 prior to segueing into ancillary riches.

The session’s incoming national releases followed with the tunic challenged Wrath of the Titans opening to $33.4 million and the dryly comic Snow White spin Mirror Mirror behind at $18.6 million. Telegu movie 3 opened well in the niches with a $120,000 tally from 28 screens.

Among exclusive entries it was no contest as Bully strong armed $110,000 at five sites. Also impressive was Chinese import Love in the Buff with an $87,900 box office from eight playdates.