Thursday, March 31, 2011

New this week (3/29/11):

Framed
When the National Gallery is flooded, the stuffy curator is forced to flee to the mountains of Wales, along with the paintings. He gets more than he bargained for when he meets the townspeople.

How Do You Know
A professional softball player discovers she is in the middle of a love triangle after she falls for two different men and wonders when it comes to love, how do you know?

Megamind
Over the years, Megamind, has tried to conquer Metro City in every imaginable way. Each attempt is a colossal failure thanks to the caped superhero known as 'Metro Man, ' until the day Megamind actually defeats him in the throes of one of his botched evil plans. Suddenly, the fate of Metro City is threatened when a new villain arrives and chaos runs rampant leaving everyone to wonder if the world's biggest 'mind' can actually be the one to save the day?

Set It Off (1996)
Four poor black women try to get some payback from the social system which has abused them by a staging a series of bank robberies.

Trigun:
the Complete Series

Vash the Stampede is a wanted man with a habit of turning entire towns into rubble. The price on his head is a fortune, and his path of destruction reaches across the arid wastelands of a desert planet. Unfortunately, most encounters with the spiky-haired gunslinger don't end well for the bounty hunters who catch up with him, someone almost always gets hurt, and it's never Vash.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

New this week (3/23/11):

All Good Things
A love story and a murder mystery set against the backdrop of a New York real estate dynasty in the 1980s. The story was inspired by the story of Robert Durst, scion of the wealthy Durst family. Durst was suspected, but never tried, of murdering his wife who disappeared in 1982 and was never found.

Black Swan
A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City ballet. An insecure ballet dancer wins the lead in Swan Lake but slowly loses her grip on sanity when a seductive newcomer is out to steal her role.

Fair Game
A suspense-filled glimpse into the dark corridors of political power, a riveting action-thriller based on the autobiography of real-life undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose career was destroyed and marriage strained to its limits when her covert identity was exposed.

Love Finds a Home
When Belinda's pregnant friend Annie comes to stay and Annie's meddlesome mother-in-law gives Belinda unwanted advice about her medical practice, Belinda looks to a higher power for strength, wisdom, and diplomacy. The final chapter in the Love comes softly series.

Made in Dagenham
In 1968, the female workers at the Ford Dagenham car plant, walked out in protest against sexual discrimination. Their actions played a major role in the battle for equal pay, both nationally and internationally.

Tourist
During an impromptu trip to Europe to mend a broken heart, Frank unexpectedly finds himself in a flirtatious encounter with Elise, an extraordinary woman who deliberately crosses his path. Against the breathtaking backdrop of Paris and Venice, their whirlwind romance quickly evolves as they find themselves unwittingly thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

French Riviera (914.49 FRE)
Cote d'Azur features beautiful beaches, amazing landscapes, immense cultural relics and luxury which has made it a symbol of the high life, being the millionaire's holiday resort for more than 100 years. Menton is famous for its Lemon Festival, and it also has the best climate. The tiny duchy of Monaco is hallmarked by Monte Carlo casinos and the Formula-1 Grand Prix, while the Saint Jean peninsula has the highest rate of aristocrats and celebrities per square meter.

The Greek Islands (914.95 GRE)
Tour the jewels of the Greek Islands including Corfu, Crete, Rodos, Kos, Patmos, Santorini, Ios, Myconos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, and Tinos.

Michoacan Mexico (917.237 COM)
Michoacan has great colonial cities, ancient crafts and spectacular natural events. In Sierra Chincua 40 million butterflies sleep on top of each other in the winter to save energy. In spring they wake up and mate. All males die after mating. Females travel 3000 miles back to Canada to drop their eggs and also die. This alone is worth a visit! Morelia is a UNESCO World Heritage site with 1000 historic buildings. At Villa Montana' spa compulsive travelers can de-stress with a special chocolate bath.

Friday, March 18, 2011

New This Week (3/16/11):

The Fighter
Micky Ward is a struggling boxer long overshadowed by his older brother and trainer, Dicky, a local legend battling his own demons. Their explosive relationship threatens to take them both down. However, the bond of blood may be their only chance to redeem their pasts, and, at last, give their hard-luck town what it's been waiting for: pride.

Hereafter
George is a blue-collar American with a special connection to the afterlife dating from his childhood. French journalist Marie has a near-death experience that shakes her reality. When London schoolboy Marcus loses the person closest to him, he desperately needs answers. Each seeking the truth, their lives intersect; forever changed by what they believe might, or must, exist in the hereafter.

Welcome to the Rileys
Doug and Louise have been married for many years, but their marriage began to grow cold after their teenage daughter was killed in a car accident. When Doug goes to New Orleans to attend a convention, he meets Mallory, a teenage stripper/prostitute who is on a path to self-destruction. Doug decides to help her whether she appreciates it or not. This act will help to heal his marriage.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Cameron is the new kid in school who becomes smitten with the beautiful Bianca. But Bianca's overprotective and domineering father forbids Bianca to date unless her older sister Kat, a surly and hostile senior, does. In a bid to get Kat a boyfriend, Cameron sets up a plan to have the school stud, Joey Donnar, bribe Patrick Verona, an outcast senior with a rumor-filled past, to take Kat out on dates so he can go to the school's homecoming dance with Bianca. However, neither Patrick nor Kat expect their relationship to lead to something so much more.

New last week (3/9/11):

Dalziel & Pascoe. Season three
The crime-busting odd couple of British law enforcement are back to solve more gripping murder mysteries. This series is as action-packed as ever, although two investigations affect the pair a bit too personally. Pascoe's wife, Ellie, puts her life and her marriage at risk when she gets perilously involved in a murder inquiry. Meanwhile, Dalziel becomes involved in a psychological game with a dangerous killer.

Four Lions
This is a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud comedy that takes aim at the war on terror. Follow five clueless buffoons as they plan to strike a blow on their own turf, showing that while terrorism is supposed to be about ideology, it can also be about idiots.

Inside Job
Provided is an analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research, and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia.

Morning Glory
For Becky, running a TV show in New York City was the big break she dreamed of, until star co-anchors Mike and Colleen declare an all-out, on-air war. Making the show work with its cast of eccentric characters and outrageous story angles will take a major miracle, but Becky is ready to rise and outshine.

The Next Three days
Life seems perfect for John Brennan until his wife, Lara, is arrested for a murder she says she didn't commit. Three years into her sentence, John is struggling to hold his family together, raising their son and teaching at college while he pursues every means available to prove her innocence. With the rejection of their final appeal, Lara becomes suicidal and John decides there is only one possible, bearable solution: to break his wife out of prison.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

New This Week (3-3-11)

127 Hours
This is a powerfully uplifting true story of one man's struggle to survive against mountainous odds. Aron Ralston has a passion for all things outdoors. But when a falling boulder traps him in a remote Utah canyon, a thrill-seeker's adventure becomes the challenge of a lifetime. Over the next five days, Ralston embarks on a remarkable personal journey in which he relies on the memories of family and friends as well as his own courage and ingenuity to turn adversity into triumph!

Buried
Paul Conroy is not ready to die. But when he wakes up six feet underground with no idea of who put him there or why, life for the truck driver and family man instantly becomes a hellish struggle for survival. Buried with only a cell phone and a lighter, his contact with the outside world and ability to piece together clues that could help him discover his location are maddeningly limited. Paul has only ninety minutes to be rescued before his worst nightmare comes true.

Burlesque
Ali is a small-town girl with a big voice who escapes hardship to follow her dreams to LA. After stumbling upon The Burlesque Lounge, a majestic but ailing theater that is home to an inspired musical revue, Ali lands a job as a cocktail waitress from Tess, the club's proprietor and headliner. After Ali finally makes her way from the bar to the stage, things take a dramatic turn when her larger than life voice causes a charismatic entrepreneur to make an enticing proposal.

Faster
A veteran cop and an egocentric hit man, are on the trail of an ex-con who is determined to avenge the death of his brother that occurred during a bank robbery years ago.

Love and Other Drugs
Free-spirited Maggie meets her match in a charming Viagra salesman named Jamie. Maggie and Jamie leap into a no-strings-attached affair, but no matter how hard they try to keep things 'casual,' they can't help falling under the influence of the ultimate drug: love!

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (French)
The first of two parts charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine, the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as French Public Enemy No. 1 and the Man of a Thousand Faces. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes, Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings, and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France's notorious anti-gang unit.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
After Alfie leaves his wife, Helena, to pursue his lost youth with a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine, Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller. Meanwhile, daughter Sally develops a crush on her handsome boss, Greg, while her husband, Roy, becomes moonstruck over Dia, a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window. These four will find out how easy it is for their illusions to make fools of them.

Friday, March 4, 2011

What I've been watching:

A Certain Justice
P.D. James’ D.I. Adam Dalgliesh is on the case of a very successful and much hated female barrister found murdered in her office. There is no shortage of suspects in this intriguing case which is complicated by the barristers’ success in getting murderers off “not guilty.”

Downton Abbey
The Grantham family is in trouble. When their heir is lost and presumed dead in the sinking of the Titanic they must find a suitable match for their older daughter while introducing the new heir, a lowly solicitor, to his future estate. This is an upstairs/downstairs kind of drama which leaves you eager for more. Thankfully, the next season is now in production.

The Guilty
An attractive young woman goes to work for a prominent lawyer who, after an evening of celebration and inebriation, accompanies her to her apartment and rapes her. Being a very powerful man, he thinks of this affair as a drunken indiscretion; she thinks its rape. Meanwhile, a young man just released from prison sets out to find his biological father and ends up making a deal with horrific results. This is the beginning of the British psychological drama The Guilty starring Michael Kitchen who is fabulous as the supercilious lawyer. The two stories intertwine and intersect bringing the characters’ lives together effectively, producing a highly suspenseful and provocative film. Originally aired on television in the 1990s, The Guilty is exciting, intense and entertaining.

Heat of the Sun : Private Lives; Hide in Plain Sight; Sport of Kings
This is a great series! It takes place in Kenya when it was a British colony. Trevor Eve is fantastic as the police superintendent who was sent to Kenya as punishment for being a rogue Scotland Yard detective. Here he has to solve cases in the native and the British communities while dealing with his obnoxious boss.

Kinky Boots
When a young man inherits his fathers’ bankrupt shoe factory he discovers that the one thing he hates more than the shoe factory is laying people off (or making them redundant—this is British after all). Through a comedy of errors he decides that the way to keep the factory going is to find a niche market that’s not being served: boots for drag queens! This was a funny, sweet and very enjoyable film.

Machete
A corrupt politician (De Niro), rednecks, and just general bad guys are working with a major Mexican drug lord (Steven Seagal) to build an electric fence along the border of Texas which the drug lord will control. Fighting against these villains is Machete, a seemingly indestructible, mythical man who destroys anyone blocking his path. You need a strong stomach and a sense of humor for this film—it is blood-splattering, limb flying fun!

Man in a Suitcase
McGill is an intelligence agent wrongfully accused of treason and dismissed by the Americans, now working as an investigator for hire. As played by Richard Bradford, he is a very appealing persona: cynical but honest. His job takes him around Europe allowing for many international settings. The episodes vary from spy thrillers to straight detective jobs; some of the episodes giving mention to the Cold War. There is lots of action—McGill gets as good as he gives. The style is very 1960’s: the apartments, cars, clothes, hairstyles making it particularly fun to watch. The series debuted in 1968 in England but it has a timeless appeal and is wonderfully entertaining and a lot of fun to watch.

Salt
I’m not a big Angelina Jolie fan but I have to admit that this was a very exciting movie. I don’t know how probable the plot is—Salt was orphaned as a child and raised by the Russians to be a mole within the CIA. Director Noyce, in the interview in the special features, claims that it is very possible. All I know is that it was entertaining, exciting and you could pick out some Albany landmarks along 787.

Soul Kitchen
A young Greek man in Hamburg owns a restaurant which is basically a fast food joint. He loves it though because it’s his but the health inspectors and tax inspectors are both after him plus an unscrupulous real estate agent who wants to tear down the place. Through a comedy of errors he pays off the inspectors, loses the restaurant but then re-buys it, loses one girlfriend and gains another. This was a charming, enjoyable film.