HeSaid SheSaid Movie Reviews

Play it again, Sam

 

The ultimate Valentine's Day gift for the movie buff on your list? The Casablanca Ultimate Collector's Edition, of course!

This remastered box set comes with extras galore, like a photo book, a passport holder, a movie poster and more.

HeSaid SheSaid DVD Debut for the week of Dec. 16, 2008

Here’s a roundup of the movies coming out on DVD for the week of Dec. 16, 2008. (We reviewed Burn After Reading when it was at the theatre, if you want to know what He and She Said about it.)

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Mamma Mia! sets new British high

Mamma Mia! has become the highest grossing film of all time in the UK, smashing the record set by Titanic. The Abba-themed Meryl Streep movie has taken more than £69m (€74.6m) at the box office after a 23-week run in British cinemas.

The news right after the film picked up two Golden Globe nominations, including Streep's nod for Best Actress. David Kosse, president of Universal Pictures International, admits it is "phenomenal" to break the record set by Titanic. 

The movie releases on DVD in the U.S. this week - so go see what all the British fuss is about!

 

"Dark Knight" Fans Want Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie in Next Batman Movie

To get ready for the upcoming DVD release of Dark Knight on Dec. 9, Blockbuster surveyed customers on what characters and actors they wanted to see in the next Batman release. And according to the Blockbuster survey, movie fans are hoping to see Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie play starring roles. The villains that fans would most like to see Batman take on are The Riddler and The Joker's therapist-turned-girlfriend Harley Quinn.

Other top picks from movie lovers for the next Batman film's villains were Cat Woman, The Penguin and tough guy Bane. Favorite actors to play roles like these included Natalie Portman, Edward Norton and Keira Knightley.

Complete surveyr results are available here. (And, personally, I want Ed Norton in the next Batman flick.)

HeSaid SheSaid DVD Debut - New Releases on December 2, 2008

Here are our See It and Skip It picks for the week of Dec. 2, 2008.

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HeSaid SheSaid DVD Debut (November 18, 2008)

We bring you our notable DVD releases for November 18, 2008.

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Netflix and TiVo to Partner on Movies

Netflix will place its Watch Instantly streaming-movie service on TiVo’s HD-compatible set-top boxes. Netflix and TiVo said they would begin testing the service today and expected to make it available to all owners of TiVo set-top boxes in December. There will be no extra charge for TiVo subscribers who also have one of Netflix’s subscription plans.

[ via Brad Stone, New York Times ]

Fill your skull with Indiana Jones trivia on the new DVD

The two-disc Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DVD due out tomorrow has a lot of extra features, including hours of interviews with the creators, the stars, and the people behind the sets, the cameras, the special effects, and the costumes. And as Sharon Hoffman of McClatchy Newspapers points out - lots of trivia.

Like it's really "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Plastic Skull." With a light bulb inside. And the skull is hooked up to a dimmer switch so it emits the requisite intensity of other-worldliness.

And don't call it an alien, because director Steven Spielberg really didn't want to do another alien movie after E.T. and Close Encounters. Producer/writer George Lucas got him to sign on by calling the creatures "inter-dimensional beings."

Sharon watched the entirety of the DVD extras so you didn't have to. Here are some of the more interesting behind-the-scenes facts she gathered:

• Shia LaBeouf learned sword-fighting from a coach but had to teach himself to handle a switchblade like a proper '50s greaser. "It became like my Tetris," he says. "It became the most interesting thing to do on the set."
• Cate Blanchett helped come up with her look for villainess Agent Spalko by poring through 1950s yearbooks. She liked the "short fringe" - that's British for "bangs."
• Remember the scene when Harrison Ford and LaBeouf are riding the motorcycle through the college library? It's really a Yale University dining hall, with the floor covered and protected. And remember how they slide under the library tables and come to rest at the feet of a student, who asks Dr. Jones a homework question? That's Chet Hanks, Tom's son.
• The hum of swarming ants is a mix of three sounds: corn feed poured from a bucket, egg shells getting crushed and human voices sped up and/or played backward.
• That's a real snake - a 13-foot, 50-pound python - that LaBeouf tosses to Ford in the quicksand. Ford says he doesn't mind snakes. LaBeouf? "I'm a dog person."
• Spielberg wanted the Area 51 warehouse stocked with supernatural artifacts, including the golden Ark of the Covenant from the first movie. A big stick that comes crashing out of a crate is supposed to be Moses' staff, which the crew copied from Charlton Heston's The Ten Commandments.

Justice restored

On Sept. 30, Paramount Home Entertainment is issuing Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” saga. The film was given the attention of digital restoration experts under the supervision of film preservationist Robert A. Harris and will be offered in high-definition Blu-ray and standard DVD editions.

Most of the work went into the first (1972) and second (1974) films in the trilogy, according to Dave Kehr in The New York Times. (Before and after shots are available on Kehr's blog.) The later third installment (1990) did not need as much effort, as it was shot on a newer generation of film stock.

The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration combines pieces of film recovered from several sources, scanned at high resolution and then retouched frame by frame to remove dirt and scratches. The color was brought back to its original values by comparing it with original release prints and by extensive consultation with Gordon Willis, who shot all three films, and Allen Daviau, a cinematographer who is also a historian of photographic technology.

Poor Old Max

A shot that does not call for tracks
Is agony for poor old Max,
Who, separated from his dolly
Is wrapped in deepest melancholy.
Once, when they took away his crane,
I thought he'd never smile again.
~ Written about Max Ophuls by James Mason,
   who starred in two Ophuls films

The Criterion Collection released three Max Ophuls films this week: La Ronde, Le Plaisir, and The Earrings of Madame De. All of the films were made in the early 50s after Ophuls' emigration to France.

All three are literary adaptations: La Ronde from an Austrian stage play and Le Plaisir and The Earrings from French fiction. All three feature Danielle Darrieux, Ophuls' muse.

All of his works feature distinctive smooth camera movements, complex crane and dolly sweeps, and tracking shots, which influenced the young Stanley Kubrick at the beginning of his filmmaking career.

The three DVDs are packaged separately with introductions from directors such as Haynes and Paul Thomas Anderson, insert booklets full of scholarly essays, and an interview with the director's son, documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls. (And, if you're a fan or just a student of filmmaking, don't miss the Cinemascope restoration of his first color film, Lola Montes, touring the country in October.)