Release Dates Sep 01 2008 @ 01:00 pm
DVD Releases for September 2nd, 2008
Recently it has come to my attention that there are two types of people: those who would listen to an hour long podcast and those who wouldn’t. Personally, I’m in the “hour long” group. Podcasts have essentially replaced the radio for me (while I’m driving), and I typically won’t listen to one with any regularity unless it is at least 20 minutes long. Listening to a 10 minute podcast is like having to change the radio every 10 minutes – a major pain in the aorta. However, I know there are those who won’t listen to a podcast if it’s longer than 10 minutes. They like quick, bite sized chunks. So, spontaneous poll in the comments section: which one are you?
Fist of Legend
I’m going with a pick this week that none of you will likely care for, but I don’t care because it puts the “Awe” in “Awesome.” Also, it puts the “some” in there. So basically it puts everything in “Awesome.” This is, bar none, the best martial arts movie I have ever seen. Before you cinephiles who flirt with fanboyism get all hot and bothered, however, let me also tell you that it lacks anything resembling an intelligent storyline. This movie is about the fighting and only about the fighting, and it is supposedly the film that put the Wachowskis onto Yuen Woo Ping as the fight choreographer they had to have for The Matrix. Jet Li stars and he kicks the living tar out of everything. The final fight is like 30 minutes of pure kung-fu mayhem.
Recommended if there is a single atom in your body that appreciates martial arts flicks. I love this film.
Married Life
Star-studded cast (Chris Cooper, Rachel Adams, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson) gets marital woes and one husband decides to do his wife a favor and put her out to pasture. Craig Kennedy mostly had good things to say about it, and I can dig me some melodramatic tension when characters make really poor decisions (ala A Simple Plan). That this looks like a rental the wife can get behind (which, I’m sad to say, Fist of Legend is not) makes it #2 on this week’s list.
Recommended if you thought Married With Children always lacked a certain…class.
The Promotion
This looks like Office Space meets Step Brothers, and while half of that equation is awesome, the other half is decidedly not. Toss in a bunch of nasty critical pans and you have a film that I would watch if I accidentally stumbled into it, but would never seek out. As in, if I was bored to tears and actively contemplating cleaning the baseboards and this film dropped out of the heavens and into my lap, I would watch it. That this film is third on the list doesn’t say much about this week.
Recommended if you liked Office Space or have Dilbert cartoons papering the walls of your cubicle.
Hit the jump for the rest of the crop.
Then She Found Me
Helen Hunt’s directorial debut? Bette Midler stars? This feels a bit like a LIfetime special, minus the murderous husband, but what do I know? Apparently it’s about a woman who was adopted discovering her birth mother late in life, and pregnancies. Really isn’t breaking out of that Lifetime straightjacket the marketing department put it in, is it?
Recommended if you liked A Clockwork Orange….. Ha ha, made you blink.
Water Lillies
A French film about two young girls coming of age amidst the rough-and-tumble world of synchronized swimming. The poster makes this one look like an exploitative Lolita remake minus the creepy old guy, but I keep reading that it is not exploitative or graphic at all. I also keep reading very good things about it, but my internal maleness naturally resists.
Recommended if you liked Thirteen, but wished it had been more French.
Ballet Shoes
So the Potter kids aren’t doing so hot in their non-Potter careers, are they? Rupert Grint was in that throwaway independent British flick, and here Emma Watson is wearing ballet shoes or something (that’s just a wild guess). I guess Radcliffe is earning raves in Equus, but anything involving 1) male genitalia and 2) horses automatically disqualifies it in my book. Here’s to hoping that one of them can land a successful role that doesn’t involve doing naughty things to four legged animals.
Recommended if……my brain is mush and I can no longer think straight. I’m going to bed.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 2:10 pm 1. G said …
Yeah, so Fist of Legend is just awesome. Just straight up awesome.
Married Life, not so much. It’s not bad, but it had a lot of potential and ends up not doing much with a great cast and a great premise.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 2:55 pm 2. Haiku Girl said …
I think I will skip the rental store this week and sit myself in front of TCM. Currently Playing : Anatomy of a Murder (Jimmy Stewart…drool)
Podcast question.
I prefer podcasts between 30min and an hour long. Over an hour is just too long. I listen to podcasts while commuting, and anything over an hour I won’t listen to. The podcast I am involved with “After the Credits” tries to land between 20 to 45 minutes in length.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 3:58 pm 3. Phillip Johnston said …
Then She Found Me is kind of sort of decent. Saw it earlier this year and laughed a few times, although I wasn’t raving about it afterward.
Podcasts: I prefer the 1 hr format as long as the material is consistent and solid. I could listen to Ricky Gervais mock Karl Pilkington until I die, but I’m sometimes tempted to skip through a story during This American Life.
Just my $.02.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 4:27 pm 4. Joseph said …
30-60 minutes is nice for a podcast.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 6:11 pm 5. Evan Derrick said …
Ah G, you are a man after mt own heart. Good to hear some more Fist of Legend love.
And Karl Pilkington is awesome. Part of the fun is trying to figure out if he’s for real or not.
on Sep 01 2008 @ 11:08 pm 6. Craig Kennedy said …
I freely admit that love of Rachel McAdams and Patricia Clarkson may have put me over the top with Married Life. It’s a trifle, but I think a decent evening’s rental.
Water Lilies was more interesting than I thought it would be, though again I’m biased because I have a thing for all things French.
I heard both good and bad things about The Promotion when it played (inster whatever the hell film festival it was…sundance? SXSW? I dunno) but no one I trust has raved about it. Anyone here see it?
on Sep 02 2008 @ 8:14 am 7. Evan Derrick said …
Rachel McAdams and Evan Rachel Wood always get to you, don’t they Craig?
The Promotion just looks like Apatow leftovers to me. It is a bit surprising how fast it crashed and burned. I would think Reilly would be a little bit of a bigger draw these days, enough to carry a modest indie like this.
on Sep 02 2008 @ 8:45 am 8. G said …
If Reilly were a draw, Walk Hard would have been a hit. I listed him in my 2007 losers because he should be a star now, but the American people have spoken loud and clear: they don’t care.
on Sep 02 2008 @ 9:15 am 9. Evan Derrick said …
Well, they don’t care about him as a leading comedic talent. He was doing just fine in brilliant supporting roles. Hopefully he goes back to work with P.T. Anderson rather than starring in Taladegga 2 (ugh, knock on wood).
on Sep 02 2008 @ 11:36 am 10. Luke Harrington said …
“Internal” maleness? That sounds like a serious medical problem…
on Sep 02 2008 @ 11:39 am 11. Evan Derrick said …
For realz…
on Sep 02 2008 @ 1:00 pm 12. Mike Phelps said …
30-45 minutes is a good podcast length.
on Sep 02 2008 @ 2:22 pm 13. Fox said …
Emma Watson is England’s Blake Lively. (Requisite Gossip Girl reference for Evan…).
Remember when Evan Rachel Woods was kinda cute? Now she kinda resembles a Tranny. Manson ruined her life.
p.s. 90210 version 2.0 starts tonight. Hey everybody, LET’S LIVE BLOG IT!!!
on Sep 02 2008 @ 2:51 pm 14. Evan Derrick said …
Well, Fox, you certainly know how to push my buttons…
on Sep 02 2008 @ 5:00 pm 15. Daniel said …
Guess I slept through this week somehow. I’m 0/6 on seeing these! The one I regret missing the most is Water Lilies.