Charlie's Angels [Blu-ray]

• Condition: New
• Format: Blu-ray
• AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; Subtitled; Widescreen

This five-disc compilation features the entire First Season with the original Angels Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith and all their adventures from one of the most classic shows in television history.

Once upon a time, Jill, Sabrina and Kelly were police officers whose skills were being wasted in menial duties such as answering phones and filing. A mysterious millionaire named Charles Townsend took them away from all that by opening his own private investigation agency and hiring these gorgeous ladies as his operatives with John Bosley acting as their assistant and liaison. America's guiltiest pleasure of 1976--the inaugural season of Charlie's Angels--has returned in all its jiggly, jolly glory in this tidy boxed set. It's hard to describe just how captivated the nation's! media and viewing public were with cheesemeister Aaron Spelling's ABC-TV hit, but for awhile Charlie's Angels was wildly popular appointment television at its most self-consciously banal. The first season's three (and best-remembered) belles--lioness Farrah Fawcett (then Farrah Fawcett-Majors), pin-up babe Jaclyn Smith, and Thinking Man's beauty Kate Jackson--were something like primetime Spice Girls, gracing countless magazine covers and bestselling posters. The idea (even if a fan of the show didn't happen to be a straight male) was that one was compelled to choose a favorite angel as a kind of ink-blot window onto one's subconscious life.

While the 2000 Angels feature film (starring Cameron Diaz, etc.) kept faith with the original show's self-mockingly sloppy storytelling, there's nothing like seeing the old episodes for a lesson in narrative hubris. Basically, the three leading characters were bored policewomen wooed away to a private firm owned and ! operated by the unseen sybarite, Charlie (voiced--over speaker! phone--b y an uncredited John Forsythe). After a long set-up each week, the girls' investigations typically saw them going undercover: as fashion models--no great stretch--in "Night of the Strangler"; nurses in "Terror on Ward One"; roller-derby stars in "Angels on Wheels"; and vulnerable convicts (of course) in "Angels In Chains." The exploitation factor is not as bad as it might have been. The cast was so glamorous, their chemistry so perfect, Charlie's Angels never became a mere meat market. Despite such nods to modernity as Fawcett's no-bra look, the episodes were old-fashioned in their heroine-in-peril appeal, yet there was a difference: The Angels looked out for themselves and each other. --Tom KeoghAdventure has never been more beautiful than Charlie's Angels! Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu star as the captivating crime-fighting trio who are masters of disguise, espionage and martial arts. When a devious mastermind embroils them in a plot to destroy in! dividual privacy, the Angels are on the spot with their brains, brawn and high-tech toys. Aided by their loyal sidekick Bosley (Bill Murray), the girls are about to bring down the bad guys when a terrible secret is revealed that makes the Angels a target of assassination. Now, it's a matter of life or death as the stunningly smart detectives use their state-of-the-art skills to kick evil's butt in this sexy, high-octane comedy!For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programmer (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daff! y Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, corn! ball pop corn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --Doug ThomasMillionaire Charles Townsend starts up his own private investigation firm! and hires three female police officers as his investigators.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 4-JUL-2006
Media Type: DVDThey're back, they're beautiful, and they mean business--but in a sweet way. Charlie's Angels: The Complete Third Season finds Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), sister of departed Angel Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett), well ensconced in the Charles Townsend Investigation agency. Jill, however, isn't entirely absent from the scene: Fawcett turns up in at least three episodes, not quite ready to shake her old job despite the lure of car racing and a handsome beau (Stephen Collins). But enough about her: the current incarnation of Charlie's team kicks off the season with a two-part mystery set in Las Vegas. Dean Martin plays a maverick casino owner who believes he's being "gaslighted," i.e., made the target of psychological harassment by an unknown enemy. Trouble is, some of his employees and friends are getting! hurt and even killed by this same assailant. The girls, inclu! ding bra iny Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) and streetwise Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), plus mirthful supervisor Bosley (David Doyle), go undercover to root out a plot to ruin Martin's character. (Sure, Dino romances one of them: Sabrina.)

The rest of the season follows the usual Charlie's Angels formula of relying on the cast's appealing personalities and substantive, anti-bimbo characters, while also getting them (well, not Jackson so much) in various states of undress as quickly as possible. An accent on stories requiring the wearing of leotards and showgirl costumes certainly helps the cause, but there are plenty of non-exploitational episodes as well. Among the best programs is "Angel Come Home," in which Jill arrives at Charlie's by surprise after receiving a phony emergency cable in Europe from someone claiming to be Kris. Eager to investigate, Jill soon hooks up with an old friend (Horst Buchholz) developing a new car engine targeted by enemies. "Angels in Springti! me" capitalizes on a creepy suggestion of lesbian incarcerators running an expensive spa for women. "Haunted Angels" is a spooky tale of a young man's demanding spirit being channeled, from beyond the grave, through a terrified woman. It could be real or it could be a scam; only the Angels can find out. "Counterfeit Angels" finds a trio of bank robbers claiming to be Kris, Kelly, and Sabrina; the girls fight for their innocence. Finally, a great episode from its era (1979), "Disco Angels," gets the ladies exactly where they belong: on a dance floor. --Tom KeoghAnother season of the hit classic series comes to DVD! This season, the Angels go on the Love Boat to investigate a major art theft, go back to college to stop a white slavery ring, and find more than just fingerprints when Charlie's yacht is stolen. Jill gets help from the Angels after her date with a crown prince is interrupted by sniper fire, and Kelly meets a man who may be her long-lost father.Three beauti! ful private detectives who work for a suave playboy boss are c! alled in to rescue soon-to-be billionaire software mogul Eric Knox, when he is kidnapped from his office at Knox Technologies. While rough-and-tumble Alex, wild-child Dylan, and nerdy Natalie use an impressive array of high-tech gadgetry and martial arts moves to retrieve Knox from the clutches of rival Roger Corwin and his goons, they unwittingly become embroiled in a battle to protect the world from a wide-scale invasion of privacy that threatens to occur when good technology falls into the hands of bad people.For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programme! r (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daffy Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, cornball popcorn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over! the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --D! oug Thom as

Kenneth Cole Women's Blurred Animal Spot Pleated Top, Light Camel Combo, Large

• Asymmetric pleat detail
• Long sleeve

There is an indescribable freedom that comes from physically deceiving the world.

If you are a fan of Halloween then you know the euphoria of pretending to be Frankenstein or a prostitute or Spiderman or Wonder Woman or a tiger or Dorothy or any old somebody or something that you are not.

To be free of social constraints, to melt the world as you know it for an evening, to be tantalized by uniqueness, causes tens of millions of people to be filled with glee on the last day of October. Some people spend a week's pay and a year's plotting to come up with the perfect costume that will blow their friends' minds away.

For some reason, people experience untold amounts of elation when they get to pretend to be somebody who they are not.

Multiply that by 50,000 and you would come close to the level of euphoria you'd reach ! if you got to actually parade around in the skin of somebody else for a few days. Just imagine if, all of a sudden, with the mere injection of a needle, you became Asian or a midget or a man. A quick sting in the ribs and you're blonde or pretty or have an Afro. Just imagine becoming any of these combinations and infinitely more. Since you are no longer actually you, you are immediately freed up to talk to whomever you want to talk to without fear of them judging you. All of a sudden, you can take revenge on enemies, commit crimes and be lascivious without fear of repercussions. All of a sudden, you are free.

Imagine how much fun it would be to be anybody or anything you wanted to be!

And with absolutely no constraints, no restrictions, no limitations, no boundaries, no gravity!

Wouldn't that be great?!

The novel blurred explores this scenario and makes the following analogy:

Drop a frog into a pot of water and he'll swim! about contentedly. Fatten him up with a few flies and he'll ! be the h appiest frog in the world. He will swim around blissfully, unaware that a fire has been built beneath his pot, only that it has become warmer, until he is finally cooked alive.

blurred turns this figurative frog into Sam Senior who swims naively in a social milieu that has had a fire applied to it for generations. Brilliant in his use of the innernet (an internet connection in the brain), Sam can navigate dozens of websites simultaneously. A NetJeopardy champion on a full ride at a prestigious university, Sam's future looks bright. Perpetually checking social sites while surfing the net, even as he converses with people nearby, Sam doesn't initially realize that he is being held in the ubiquitous sway of a constant communication that paradoxically leads to a lack of real communication, a lack of deep communication.

However, Sam takes a class where he learns about a (possibly) mythological drug, DNA, which instantly alters a person's physical identi! ty and is used primarily for either recreational sex, crime, or revenge. His professor teaches his class by having students read about "drops" he has taken where he engages in the above activities. Slowly, Sam begins to realize that the pot he is swimming in is getting too hot.

Mirrored by a future that suffers from a general dearth of love, Sam's loneliness is palpable. For, although the future is excessively promiscuous, love and sex are not always interchangeable. A hopeless romantic, Sam wants to wait for just the right woman before engaging in intercourse. Of course, with most people taking several sex partners a month, everyone mocks him as prude.

As the world begins to blur together, like water in a boiling pot, Sam quests after love. Buffeted about by reality, he finally finds the arms of a fascinating woman. Simpatico, they both realize that there is nothing in a transitory world but one another and the hope that their love can carry them thr! ough the darkness that is postmodernity.Blurred animal spot pl! eated to p

Beerfest (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

• After a humiliating false start in Germany's super-secret underground beer competition, America's unlikely team vows to risk life, limb and liver to dominate the ultimate chug-a-lug championship. The laughs are on the haus!Running Time: 116 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR Age: 085391102076 UPC: 085391102076 Manufacturer No: 110207

Broken Lizard is back?and this time the crazy comedy troupe that brought you Super Troopers is taking you on a trip so outrageously fun?it?s murder. Welcome to Coconut Pete?s Pleasure Island, a tropical, tequila-soaked vacation resort where high-spirited fun soon takes a deadly turn?leaving the island?s hilariously inept staff to battle a machete-wielding maniac as they fight to survive another day in paradise. Filled with sidesplitting humor, scary slasher scenes, and plenty of bikini-clad babes, Broken Lizard?s Club Dread is a comedy to die fo! r!Looking for plenty of sex, violence, and lowbrow comedy? If you are, you could do a lot worse (or is it a lot better?) than to visit Club Dread, a boldly wretched excuse for broad comedy perpetrated by the Broken Lizard troupe--the same guys who brought their potty-mouthed brand of lunacy to bear on 2002's Super Troopers. That alone should serve as ample warning or invitation, depending on your tolerance for way-too-casual sketch comedy, stitched together with an emphasis on big, gross laughs and enough female frontal nudity to give Girls Gone Wild a run for its money. It all takes place on Coconut Pete's Pleasure Island, where Pete (Bill Paxton, slumming it with infectious abandon) holds court while scantily clad vacationers play crazy games (life-size Pac-Man, anyone?) and provide easy prey for a slasher on the loose. Ah, but there's the rub: Is this schizoid movie a comedy or a horror flick? It's both... and neither... and the bloodletting is surpr! isingly extreme amidst all the poop and fart jokes. Of course,! that wo n't stop Club Dread from finding its audience. We know you're out there…and you know who you are. --Jeff ShannonBroken Lizard is back…and this time the crazy comedy troupe that brought you Super Troopers is taking you on a trip so outrageously fun…it’s murder. Welcome to Coconut Pete’s Pleasure Island, a tropical, tequila-soaked vacation resort where high-spiritedLooking for plenty of sex, violence, and lowbrow comedy? If you are, you could do a lot worse (or is it a lot better?) than to visit Club Dread, a boldly wretched excuse for broad comedy perpetrated by the Broken Lizard troupe--the same guys who brought their potty-mouthed brand of lunacy to bear on 2002's Super Troopers. That alone should serve as ample warning or invitation, depending on your tolerance for way-too-casual sketch comedy, stitched together with an emphasis on big, gross laughs and enough female frontal nudity to give Girls Gone Wild a run for its money. It! all takes place on Coconut Pete's Pleasure Island, where Pete (Bill Paxton, slumming it with infectious abandon) holds court while scantily clad vacationers play crazy games (life-size Pac-Man, anyone?) and provide easy prey for a slasher on the loose. Ah, but there's the rub: Is this schizoid movie a comedy or a horror flick? It's both... and neither... and the bloodletting is surprisingly extreme amidst all the poop and fart jokes. Of course, that won't stop Club Dread from finding its audience. We know you're out there…and you know who you are. --Jeff ShannonSlammin’ Cleon Salmon, the former Heavyweight Champion of the world, is a mean, crazy, and sometimes infantile bull of a man, who happens to owe $20,000 to the head of the Japanese Yakuza and needs to come up with the money tonight. So he challenges the waiters in the restaurant that he owns, The Slammin’ Salmon, a high end, boxing themed seafood eatery in Miami, to sell more food than they’ve ! ever sold in their lives, with the top waiter earning $10,000,! the los er getting a broken rib sandwich. As the hours pass, the action becomes more chaotic as Cleon shows up to supervise the contest and changes the rules on a minute to minute basis.The Broken Lizard gang is back with The Slammin' Salmon, a rowdy comedy that spends a night in a restaurant of the same name. Boxer Cleon Salmon (Michael Clarke Duncan, 1999 Academy Award nominee for The Green Mile) owns the swanky eatery and needs to raise fast cash to settle a gambling debt. He challenges his hapless crew to a contest to see who can up-sell the most in order to reach his goal of $20,000 before closing time. Director Kevin Heffernan sets a rapid-fire pace loaded with pratfalls, spit takes, food fights, and bathroom humor. The Slammin' Salmon brings together the usual Broken Lizard (Club Dread, Supertroopers, and Beerfest) regulars: Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Steve Lemme, Jay Chandrasekhar, and Heffernan (as the jittery manager)! . Cobie Smulders and April Bowlby round out the cast as frenzied waiters who'll do anything to avoid a "broken-rib sandwich" from the intimidating Salmon. Saturday Night Live's Will Forte plays a table-hogging, water-sipping lone diner who leaves a surprise tip. Vivica A. Fox and Morgan Fairchild make awkward cameos. The one-liners and sight gags can wear thin after an hour, but die-hard Broken Lizard film fans know what they're in for when they watch a Heffernan romp, and The Slammin' Salmon won't disappoint. --Francine Ruley

Stills from The Slammin' Salmon (Click for larger image)

?Prepare to laugh your ass off? (FILM THREAT)! From the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, who brought you the outrageously funny, rambunctiously sexy Super Troopers and Club Dread, here is the original gut-buster that started it all. The premise is simple: Felix Bean, average college Joe, has the hots for campus beauty Suzanne, only to discover her boyfriend is a muscle-bound brute on the rugby team. His pain is everyone?s gain in this riotous laugh fest that you?ll want to see aga! in and again.This good-natured college comedy launched the film careers of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, who have since enjoyed a cult following with their subsequent features (Super Troopers and Club Dread) and even made inroads to Hollywood (director Jay Chandrasekhar helmed the big-screen Dukes of Hazzard movie). Here the five Lizards play a quintet of clueless college guys pursuing women with varying degrees of success; the humor is broad without tipping too heavily into gross territory, and several moments are laugh-out-loud funny, especially the group's riffs on independent theater, and a missing phone number digit. Made for an astronomically small amount (and funded largely with credit cards), Puddle Cruiser was promoted largely through a screening tour of colleges, which is covered in the disc's accompanying featurette, "Rodeo Clowns." All five Broken Lizard members are also featured on some very amusing commentary tracks. --Paul Ga! itaAfter a humiliating false start in Germany's super-secr! et under ground beer competition, America's unlikely team vows to risk life, limb and liver to dominate the ultimate chug-a-lug championship. The laughs are on the haus!

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Other

While it didn't quite spark a trend in chug-a-lug brew comedies, Beerfest is the kind of zany time-killer that's a lot funnier if you're within reach of a six-pack and Doritos. In other words, this is yet another low-brow laff-a-thon from the Broken Lizard gang (Super Troopers) that's likely to draw a bigger audience on DVD than it did in theaters, especially since there's a lot of duds (and flat suds) to sit through while waiting for the next big beer-belly-laugh. It's the kind of movie that thinks masturbating frogs are funny (OK, you decide), while serving up a gang of guzzling Americans (the aforementioned Broken Lizard troupe, who also write this stuff with dir! ector Jay Chandrasekhar) who compete in an epic beer-drinking contest against the nefarious German challenger Baron Wolfgang Von Wolfhausen (played by German actor Jurgen Prochnow, whose starring role in Das Boot inspires one of this movie's better jokes). When it's not trying to top itself in terms of sheer stupidity and juvenile humor, Beerfest satisfies its target audience (basically, frat-rats and party animals) with some gratuitously bare-breasted babes, rampant consumption of alcohol, and the welcomed appearance of Cloris Leachman, who sort-of reprises her "Frau Blucher" persona from Young Frankenstein. So basically what you've got here is a dim-witted but energetic comedy called Beerfest that delivers exactly what you'd expect from a movie with that title. Who says truth in advertising is dead? --Jeff Shannon

Blood & Chocolate

• Languages - English, French
• Subtitles - English, French, Spanish.
• Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1
• Dolby Digital 5.1

As a young girl living in the remote mountains of Colorado, Vivian (Bruckner) watched helplessly as her family was murdered by a pack of angry men for the secret they carried in their blood. Vivian survived the attack by running into the woods and changing into a wolf. Ten years later, Vivian is living a relatively safe and normal life in Bucharest, Romania. Vivian spends her days working in a chocolate shop and nights trawling the city’s underground clubs, fending off the reckless antics of her cousin Rafe, and his gang of delinquents he refers to as "The Five."

Vivian’s life begins to unravel when she has a chance encounter with Aiden (Dancy), an artist researching Bucharest’ ancient art and relics for his next graphic novel. Aiden pursue! s Vivian until she relents and begins to see him, but she can’t bring herself to tell him the truth - and lives in fear of showing him who she really is. Even though Vivian has sworn never to kill, she is as much an animal as she is human, and her love for Aiden threatens to cast him to the very wolves who saved her life and who are waiting for their chance to hunt him as prey.

Stills from Blood & Chocolate (click for larger image)

Beyond Blood & Chocolate at Amazon.com

Gothic Horror on DVDs

More from Olivier Martinez

DVDs of "Things That Go Bump"

When graphic novelist Aiden (Hugh Dancy) travels to Bucharest to research the loup garou legend, he nearly gets devoured in the latest female werewolf film, Blood and Chocolate. In the tradition of Werewolf Woman and Ginger Snaps, Blood and Chocolate stars Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner), a girl who's forced to face her lupine tendencies in order to discover how capable of loving Aiden she really is. Based on a book by Annette Curtis Clause, the film chronicles the lives of the remaining loup garou who are an extended Romanian family waiting for their pack leader, Gabriel, to select his new mate. His desire for Vivian means trouble when her wish to be with Aiden results in her revea! ling too much about the clan's secretive lifestyle. In this fi! lm, were wolves look fully human until their eyes glow with colored contact lenses while they fly through the air to then land as full-fledged wolves. Gone are the days, apparently, of films showing the transformation in all its hairy, explosive detail. A lack of scenes describing the werewolf metamorphosis make this film more a love story than a monster tale, though two forest gatherings in which the loup garou hunt human sacrifices offer some grizzly satisfaction. Unlike the aforementioned femme werewolf films, Blood and Chocolate features a girl fighting her urge to kill in a bid to unite humans with her brethren, making this movie the most peaceful in its genre. With a tame wolf as protagonist, the potential nightmare is really just a pleasant dream to unite the two disparate worlds. The question is: Do we want that to happen? --Trinie Dalton

The Visitor

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Anamorphic; Color; Dolby; DVD; HiFi Sound; NTSC; Surround Sound; THX; Widescreen

Frozen River is a dramatic feature film which takes place in the days before Christmas near a little-known border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York State and Quebec. Here, the lure of fast money from smuggling presents a daily challenge to single moms who would otherwise be earning minimum wage. Two women- one white, one Mohawk, both single mothers faced with desperate circumstances- are drawn into the world of border smuggling across the frozen water of the St. Lawrence River. Melissa Leo (21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, television's Homicide: Life on the Street) plays Ray, Misty Upham (Edge of America, DreamKeeper, Skins) plays Lila, and Oscar nominee Michael O'Keefe (The Great Santini, Caddyshack, Ironweed) plays the New York State Trooper who ultimately brings the two to justice.When her husband runs off with the payment for their new home, Ray (Melissa Leo, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) turns to crime to keep herself and her two sons afloat. A chance encounter with Lila (Misty Upham, Edge of America), an equally desperate young Mohawk woman, leads Ray to smuggling illegal immigrants by driving across the frozen Hudson River onto tribal land. But with every trip, things go wrong in small and not-so-small ways, until Ray finds herself pushed into a more desperate corner than ever before. Leo delivers a gritty, restrained, but richly compelling performance; her raw face, beautiful but worn down by life, radiates a weary defiance. Frozen River has scenes as tense as any Hollywood thriller, but so grounded in the fully developed characters of these two women that the taut suspe! nse grips the full spectrum of your emotions. This is an impre! ssive de but by writer/director Courtney Hunt, featuring excellent supporting performances by Charlie McDermott (The Ten) as Ray's unhappy oldest son and Michael O'Keefe (The Great Santini) as a suspicious state trooper. --Bret Fetzer

Stills from Frozen River (click for larger image)

Frozen River is a dramatic feature film which takes place in the days before Christmas near a little-known border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York State and Quebec. Here, the lure of fast money from smuggling presents a daily challenge to single moms who would otherwise be earning minimum wage. Two women- one white, one Mohawk, both single mothers faced with desperate circumstances- are drawn into the world of border smuggling across the frozen water of the St. Lawrence River. Melissa Leo (21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, television's Homicide: Life on the Street) plays Ray, Misty Upham (Edge of America! , DreamKeeper, Skins) plays Lila, and Oscar ! nominee Michael O'Keefe (The Great Santini, Caddyshack, Ironweed) plays the New York State Trooper who ultimately brings the two to justice.When her husband runs off with the payment for their new home, Ray (Melissa Leo, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) turns to crime to keep herself and her two sons afloat. A chance encounter with Lila (Misty Upham, Edge of America), an equally desperate young Mohawk woman, leads Ray to smuggling illegal immigrants by driving across the frozen Hudson River onto tribal land. But with every trip, things go wrong in small and not-so-small ways, until Ray finds herself pushed into a more desperate corner than ever before. Leo delivers a gritty, restrained, but richly compelling performance; her raw face, beautiful but worn down by life, radiates a weary defiance. Frozen River has scenes as tense as any Hollywood thriller, but so grounded in the fully developed characters of these two women t! hat the taut suspense grips the full spectrum of your emotions. This is an impressive debut by writer/director Courtney Hunt, featuring excellent supporting performances by Charlie McDermott (The Ten) as Ray's unhappy oldest son and Michael O'Keefe (The Great Santini) as a suspicious state trooper. --Bret Fetzer

Stills from Frozen River (click for larger image)

!

Hailed as "one of the year's most intriguing dramas" (Claudia Puig, USA TODAY), The Visitor stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) in a perfect performance (Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) as Walter, a disaffected college professor who has been drifting aimlessly through his life. When, in a chance encounter on a trip into New York, Walter discovers a couple has taken up residence in his apartment in the city, he develops an unexpected and profound connection to them that will change his life forever. As challenges arise for his tenants, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friends, and rediscovers a passion he thought he had lost long ago. Th! e year's first genuine must-see film" (Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST) about rediscovering life's rhythms in the most unexpected places A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek’s drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewe! d if subdued interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustic! e in imm igration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek’s plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come. --Tom Keogh

Stills from The Visitor (click for larger image)

Beyond The Visitor

On Blu-ray

Soundtrac! k CD

Also directed by Tom McCarthy

Feel the Noise : Widescreen Edition

• Widescreen

From producer Jennifer Lopez comes a danceable, dynamic story about the unifying power of the music within us all. When life in the South Bronx gets too hot for rapper Rob (Omarion Grandberry, You Got Served), he flees to Puerto Rico and a father he never knew. After half-brother Javi introduces Rob to the seductive rhythms of Reggaeton, the two find that their music, and cultures, have more in common than they ever imagined. But to bring their musical hybrid to the world, can they survive the grudges and gunplay that await them back in New York City? To find out, grab the disc, watch the film and Feel the Noise.Feel the Noise fits in with other dance-heavy films such as Stomp the Yard, Step Up, and You Got Served. The young hero in this film (which comes courtesy of Jennifer Lopez's Nuyorican Productions) serves up former B2K heartthrob Om! arion Grandberry as Rob, a fledgling rapper who gets into trouble in New York. Fearing for her son's life, his mother ships him off to Puerto Rico to live with his father Roberto(Giancarlo Esposito) and half brother Javi (Victor Rasuk). Rob and Roberto have a strained relationship, but the two half-brothers quickly bond over their love of music. With the help of a girl Rob is sweet on, the two find themselves on the brink of a bonafide music career--that may bring Rob back to Harlem. Set against a backbeat of reggaeton music (which combines elements of reggae, hip-hop, and salsa), the film has its work cut out. The genre is little known to much of the film's demographics (teenagers), and Grandberry is likeable, but he's not a convincing leading man. His role requires simmering sexuality; he provides adorableness, but the moviegoer is never convinced that he is anything but a nice boy. Zulay Henao is lovely as Rob's sexy and sweet girlfriend, but the two actors don't share m! uch chemistry. Lopez makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo near ! the end of the movie, which has one misstep too many to be anything more than a guilty pleasure. --Jae-Ha KimFrom producer Jennifer Lopez comes a danceable, dynamic story about the unifying power of the music within us all. When life in the South Bronx gets too hot for rapper Rob (Omarion Grandberry, You Got Served), he flees to Puerto Rico and a father he never knew. After half-brother Javi introduces Rob to the seductive rhythms of Reggaeton, the two find that their music, and cultures, have more in common than they ever imagined. But to bring their musical hybrid to the world, can they survive the grudges and gunplay that await them back in New York City? To find out, grab the disc, watch the film and Feel the Noise.Feel the Noise fits in with other dance-heavy films such as Stomp the Yard, Step Up, and You Got Served. The young hero in this film (which comes courtesy of Jennifer Lopez's Nuyorican Productions) serves up former B2K ! heartthrob Omarion Grandberry as Rob, a fledgling rapper who gets into trouble in New York. Fearing for her son's life, his mother ships him off to Puerto Rico to live with his father Roberto(Giancarlo Esposito) and half brother Javi (Victor Rasuk). Rob and Roberto have a strained relationship, but the two half-brothers quickly bond over their love of music. With the help of a girl Rob is sweet on, the two find themselves on the brink of a bonafide music career--that may bring Rob back to Harlem. Set against a backbeat of reggaeton music (which combines elements of reggae, hip-hop, and salsa), the film has its work cut out. The genre is little known to much of the film's demographics (teenagers), and Grandberry is likeable, but he's not a convincing leading man. His role requires simmering sexuality; he provides adorableness, but the moviegoer is never convinced that he is anything but a nice boy. Zulay Henao is lovely as Rob's sexy and sweet girlfriend, but the two actors ! don't share much chemistry. Lopez makes a blink-and-you-miss-i! t cameo near the end of the movie, which has one misstep too many to be anything more than a guilty pleasure. --Jae-Ha KimMusic From The Motion Picture "Feel The Noise" by Feel The Noise (Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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Bordertown 4 pc Boxed Set

• BORDERTOWN (DVD MOVIE)

A powerful story of life on the border between the United States and Mexico, Bordertown is based on the hundreds of women working in American-owned factories who have been brutally raped and murdered in Juarez, a city gripped by fear. The attacks have been covered up by the local authorities, and still continue today.

When editor of the Chicago Sentinel George Morgan (Sheen) sends ambitious reporter, Lauren Adrian (Lopez), to Juarez, Mexico to investigate the murders, what she finds is the story of a lifetime. Eva, a young woman who was raped and left for dead in the desert, is the only woman to survive an attack. Unable to go to the police for help, she turns to a local newspaper run by Diaz Alfonso (Banderas), former friend and colleague of Lauren s. Hiding Eva is incredibly dangerous, but Lauren knows that publishing her story is the only way to expose the tr! uth behind the murders. She is determined to find Eva s attackers but soon finds herself immersed in a dangerous web of corruption that extends to both sides of the border.Featuring 28 Episodes. In 1880, Pemmican lay at the western edge of the Great Plains. Nearly a decade later, surveyors of the 49th parallel reached the community of 180 to find it straddling the new Canada-U.S. border. Pemmican became Bordertown. It wasn't until the mud had settled that Bordertown's awkward, if not unique, character came to light. Law and order were dealt with on one side by Clive Bennett, a Mountie, and on the other by U.S. Marshal Jack Craddock. Whiskey traders, buffalo hunters, gold prospectors, silver miners, drifters and drunks kept the lawmen busy. Still, clashes were inevitable; they shared an office divided only by a black line--the 49th parallel. Acute rivalry in the pursuit of justice was further complicated by their pursuit of the same woman. Marie Dumont was a widowed Parisian! , a sensitive lady of considerable breeding and the town's doc! tor.

Matthew Barney: No Restraint

• From 1995 to 2002, avant-garde artist Matthew Barney wrote, directed, and starred in the Cremaster Cycle, five offbeat films featuring unusual situations and bizarre characters. Since 1987, he has also been working on the Drawing Restraint series, in which he uses physical weights and barriers to make the creation of his art more difficult--and more rewarding in the end. In 2005 he released DRAWIN

Documentary ) World renowned artist and filmmaker, Matthew Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, DRAWING RESTRAINT 9. This documentary journeys with Barney and his collaborator Björk, as the visual artist creates a "narrative sculpture" telling a fantastical love story of two characters.