Forgive me if my mind is somewhere else today. It is difficult to select new releases to recommend when I have recently received word that Bruce Campbell, The Chin himself, will be coming to the Twin Cities for the opening of My Name is Bruce. Which means I will get to meet him. This, along with meeting the Coen Brothers a few weeks ago, really makes me so much cooler then any of you. In my mind.

Anyways, it is slim pickings once again for DVD releases on Tuesday. I’m tempted to pick The Happening, which I actually did enjoy, but decided I’d pick a film I wanted to see but only had a split-second release in theaters. That movie being Boy A.

For theatrical releases it seems as if somewhere close to two dozen films are being released this weekend. While Flash of Genius, Appaloosa, Religulous and A Girl Cut in Two all look interesting enough for me to watch at some point, this week I am recommending a movie that I have already seen, enjoyed quite a bit and am quite confident most people will not like at all because nothing really happens in it. This movie is better known as Blindness.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

Easy week for recommendations, as there is a plainly obvious one for both new theatrical releases and DVD releases, despite both actually offering up some decent content after several weeks of crapitude.

My DVD pick for next Tuesday is The Rape of Europa, a documentary on World War II that is quite unlike any other documentary on World War II. It focuses on the priceless artworks and artifacts that the Nazi’s stole during the course of WWII and how the Allied powers attempted to reclaim them. It also offers an interesting perspective on how the Allied forces attempted to fight battles in cities that were literally priceless works of art themselves. It is a fascinating documentary, and well worth watching even for those who hate “war films”.

My recommendation for theatrical releases today is also an easy pick, the Coen brothers newest comedic offering, Burn After Reading. I had the pleasure of seeing a screening of it last week and I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. It is a fairly dark comedy, and word of warning it has several moments of graphic violence, and it fits in perfectly well with the Coen’s other comedy films. It’s not quite The Big Lebowski, but it isn’t far off either.

As always trailers are after the break!

(more…)

Seeing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at the top of the list for Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008 fascinates me. The 2006 book deserves all of the praise and attention it’s received since publication. Even Oprah Winfrey got it right for once when she ordered her minions to read The Road for her book club.

The Road tells the story of a father and son as they wander through an ash covered, post-apocalyptic America. McCarthy’s 2005 book No Country for Old Men – known better as a Coen brothers movie than a McCarthy novel – reads in hindsight like an appetizer for The Road. In the former book, McCarthy slowly dissects the American Dream and reveals the unpleasant possibility that it’s coming to an end, whereas in the latter book, he destroys America and shows us the possibility of what comes next. And what does come next? Well, a lot of despair, darkness and pain. Make no mistake about it, The Road is bleak; which is just fine for McCarthy, a writer who is notorious for never quite giving readers what they expect and want. For instance, outside of a “long shear of light and then a series of low concussions”, it is not clear in the book what caused the devastation. But really, it isn’t important what really happened – this is a journey story, one of survival.

More importantly, The Road is part of an interesting 21st century trend towards end of the world stories. (more…)