Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Cremaster 3 (Audio CD) Music by Jonathan Bepler

Eden Lake

  • EDEN LAKE (DVD MOVIE)
Like a bad dream turned worst nightmare, Eden Lake is a "relentlessly tense and immaculately paced" (Twitch Film) horror-thriller about modern youth gone wild. When a young couple goes to a remote wooded lake for a romantic getaway, their quiet weekend is shattered by an aggressive group of local kids. Rowdiness quickly turns to rage as the teens terrorize the couple in unimaginable ways, and a weekend outing becomes a bloody battle for survival. Eden Lake is "fierce, thought-provoking ... and genuinely shocking" (Time Out London).British director James Watkins’s directorial debut is an overtly moralistic thriller centering around a couple who are trapped and taunted lakeside by a gang of teenage bullies, led by a boy named Brett (Jack O’Connell). Warning signs to stay out of this camping area abound, in the spirit of myriad camping-trip-gone-awry tales, like the cla! ssic Friday the 13th. The challenge, here, is to subvert those warning signs in order to harness some minor sympathy for the alleged victims to be. However, Steve (Michael Fassbender) and Jenny (Kelly Reilly) are too wrapped up in puppy love to turn around, even when their GPS signal advises them to do so. As a gang of wayward kids pick fights with Steve and Kelly, the couple attempts escape... at first. But Steve’s desire for revenge impels him to search for the delinquents’ parents, which becomes the couple’s downfall. A good portion of Eden Lake is devoted to the chase, during which Steve and Kelly look increasingly swampy under caked on layers of blood and mud. These scenes are well done, fast-paced, and here, enacting fear, Kelly Reilly is at her best. But as the film progresses, one sees so many connections between the teens’ violence and the abhorrent behavior of their parents, that Eden Lake leaves no character interpretation up to the v! iewer. Yes, bad parents usually make bad teens. But a deeper i! nvestiga tion into Brett’s inner mind, or his ability to follow through with torture and the sadistic control he exhibits over his gang, would result in less obvious, and possibly more interesting explanations for criminal action. Though many Dimension Extreme films are cutting edge in the horror genre (see Inside), Eden Lake is not one of them. --Trinie Dalton

Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway: I'm Telling You for the Last Time

  • DVD Details: Actors: Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Barryte, Grace Bustos, George Carlin, Alan King
  • Directors: Marty Callner
  • Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC. Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: HBO Home Video
  • DVD Release Date: September 28, 1999; Run Time: 75 minutes
Jerry Seinfeld is a working stand-up comic again. COMEDIAN is a candidly revealing, intimately observed, and often very funny look at what it takes to be a comedian. On-stage, Jerry delivers his hilarious brand of observational humor. Off-stage, he struggles with difficult material, confronts self-doubt, revels in small successes, and accepts help and support from friends and colleagues, including Colin Quinn, Ray Romano, Chris Rock, Garry Shandling, Jay Leno, and Bill Cosby. COMEDIAN also discovers the sharp wit of rising young comic Orny A! dams -- outspoken, insecure, and fanatical about becoming the "next big thing." What emerge are two fascinating journeys by two contrasting personalities who have some surprising parallels.If you see Comedian expecting a concert film with Jerry Seinfeld, you'll be disappointed. But if you're looking for an incisive--almost surgical--examination of the psyche of a stand-up comedian, this is your movie. Comedian zigzags back and forth between the hugely successful Seinfeld, who's trying to get back to his stand-up roots by developing an entirely new act, and an unknown comic named Orny Adams, whose naked craving for success is almost painful to behold. Adams lays bare his ego to an embarrassing degree; Seinfeld is more subtle but just as revealing about the fears and anxieties that drive him to go back on stage. By following these two through comedy clubs, festivals, and spots on David Letterman's talk show, the documentary cunningly explores how jokes are put t! ogether, the in-the-trenches camaraderie (tinged with competit! ion) of stand-ups, and the sheer existential terror of trying to make people laugh. --Bret FetzerStudio: Uni Dist Corp (music) Release Date: 04/27/2010 Run time: 90 minutesReaders who have both the ambition and the desire to get started on a career in comedy will find advice, information, and direction in this unusual new book. The authors--both successful standup comics--discuss the different forms of comedy and help readers determine which style of humor matches their personalities. An early chapter analyzes things that make people laugh, such as surprise, incongruity, embarrassment, and absurdity. Chapters that follow explain the fundamentals of comic writing and comic performance, and then go on to focus on comedy's different forms: standup performance, variety acts, musical comedy, sketch writing, sitcom writing, and print humor, which includes everything from cartoon art to comedy nonfiction books. A final chapter looks at comedy's business side--contacts, agents, ven! ues, and the challenges of making a living at comedy. More than 300 illustrations.DVD Features:
Biographies
Interactive Menus
Interviews
Other:Audience Q&A
When Seinfeld wrapped up its ninth and final season in the spring of 1998, the popular show's namesake and cocreator decided to offer a symbolic gesture to his fans. Taped for HBO in August 1998, on the final date of Jerry Seinfeld's tour appearances at New York City's Broadhurst Theater, I'm Telling You for the Last Time presents the standup comedian's so-called "final" standup, or at least his final tour with the standup material that made him famous. The video opens with a great prologue in which Seinfeld's old material is literally laid to rest, with many of Seinfeld's comedy colleagues in attendance at the "funeral." (Jay Leno is there, but David Letterman is conspicuously absent, and while it's a bit self-congratulatory to show Seinfeld's fellow comed! ians fighting like vultures over his abandoned jokes, it's wor! th it ju st to see Garry Shandling pilfering from the catering table like a homeless intruder.)

Whether he's talking about airline flights, cab drivers, or memories of Halloween and an ill-fitting Superman costume, Seinfeld's observational humor is as timeless and sharp as the day he first performed it. Even the most familiar routines (such as the one about pharmacists with a superiority complex) are like old friends who still haven't overstayed their welcome. Seinfeld's delivery is polished to a shine--he's a consummate professional--and an impromptu Q&A with his appreciative audience demonstrates that he's equally adept with a fast and witty comeback. This performance certainly wouldn't be the last we'd see of Jerry Seinfeld, but from the perspective of phenomenal fame and fortune, it's a fitting farewell to the classic "bits" that took him to the top. --Jeff Shannon

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