Tag Archives: Roger Ebert

Anonymous on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital February 7, 2012

Posted on by under Coming to Blu-Ray & DVD

“…a splendid experience…!”
 – Roger Ebert / CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
 
“Bursts with energy, wit and drama.”
– Marshall Fine / HUFFINGTONPOST.COM
 
From Roland Emmerich Comes the Acclaimed Tale of
Political Intrigue, Illicit Romance and Shakespearean Conspiracy
Starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson

ANONYMOUS


 
The truth is the greatest tragedy of all.
 
Intrigue Takes Center Stage February 7, 2012, on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital
 – Special Features Include Deleted Scenes, Who Is The Real William Shakespeare? and More! –

 
Culver City, CA (1/3/2012) – From Roland Emmerich, director of the global smash hit 2012, comes the acclaimed thriller ANONYMOUS, taking center stage on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital February 7, 2012, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. For centuries, great minds have questioned the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Now, movie fans can uncover the secret with one intriguing possible answer in this highly entertaining new film also filled with political intrigue & illicit romance starring Rhys Ifans (upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, Notting Hill),  Academy Award® winner Vanessa Redgrave (Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Julia, 1977), Joely Richardson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, TV’s “The Tudors”), David Thewlis (Harry Potter series, War Horse) and Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, TV’s “Camelot). Hailed by critics as “a splendid experience” (Roger Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times) and an “exhilarating and visually lavish thrill ride” (Michael Simms, Filmink), ANONYMOUS arrives on Blu-ray and DVD packed with exciting bonus features that take viewers behind the curtain of this provocative film, including commentary with director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff and the making-of featurette “Who Is The Real William Shakespeare?”. Exclusively available on the Blu-ray version are the additional behind-the-scenes featurettes “More Than Special Effects” and “Speak The Speech”.
 
ANONYMOUS will be priced to own at $35.99 SRP (BD) and $30.99 (DVD).


 
Synopsis
Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, ANONYMOUS speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds… who was the author of the plays credited to William Shakespeare? ANONYMOUS poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles hungry for the power were exposed in the most unlikely of places: the London stage.
 
ANONYMOUS was written by John Orloff (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, A Mighty Heart). It was produced by Roland Emmerich, Larry Franco (2012, Batman Begins) and Robert Leger (Trade). Executive producers are Volker Engel (2012), Marc Weigert (2012) and John Orloff.  ANONYMOUS was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures. It has a run time of approximately 130 minutes and has been rated PG-13 for some violence and sexual content.
 
Blu-ray and DVD Bonus Material
•         Commentary with Director Roland Emmerich and Writer John Orloff
•         Deleted Scenes
•         Who Is The Real William Shakespeare?
 
Blu-ray Exclusive Bonus Material
•         Extended Scenes
•         More Than Special Effects
•         Speak The Speech…
•         Anonymous PS3 Wallpaper/Theme

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KILLER ELITE – On Blu-ray & DVD January 10, 2012

Posted on by under Coming to Blu-Ray & DVD

 

 

 

 

A PULSE-POUNDING, PUNCH- THROWING, ACTION-PACKED

THRILL RIDE

STARRING JASON STATHAM, ACADEMY AWARD

®

-NOMINEE CLIVE OWEN AND

ACADEMY AWARD 

®

WINNER ROBERT DE NIRO

 

KILLER ELITE

“Diabolically Clever! Impressive! – Roger Ebert

Available on Blu-ray

™ Combo Pack with UltraViolet™

 

DVD and Digital Download January 10, 2012

From Universal Studios Home Entertainment

KILLER ELITE TRAILER IN HD

Universal City, November 9, 2011 – Based on a shocking true story, Killer Elite is a gritty battle between guns-for-hire that has
been hailed as “one of the best action thrillers of the year!” by Richard Roeper, ReelzChannel. Pitting two of the world’s most elite
operatives against the cunning leader of a secret military society, Killer Elite stars Jason Statham (The Transporter, Death Race),
Academy Award® winner Robert De Niro (The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull) and Academy Award®-nominee Clive Owen (Children
of Men, Closer). Directed by Academy Award®-nominee Gary McKendry (Everything in this Country Must), Killer Elite is available
on Blu-ray™Combo Pack with UltraViolet™, DVD, On Demand and Digital Download January 10, 2012 from Universal Studios Home
Entertainment and Open Road Films.


Featuring unstoppable action and a tremendous cast – including Dominic Purcell (“Prison Break,” Straw Dogs), Yvonne Strahovski
(“Chuck”), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (“Lost,” “Oz”), Aden Young (Sniper, “The Starter Wife”) and Ben Mendelsohn (Trespass,
Knowing) – Killer Elite is “a classic action thriller that will keep you guessing till the last scene.” (Patrick Carone, MAXIM).
With the Killer Elite Blu-ray™ Combo Pack, consumers will get an all-new UltraViolet™ copy of the film. UltraViolet™ is the
revolutionary new way for consumers to collect movies and TV shows, put them in the cloud and stream instantly to computers,
tablets and smart phones and soon, consumers can download to devices of their choice too. The Killer Elite Blu-ray™ Combo
Pack also includes a Digital Copy of the film which is compatible with iTunes®, iPad®, iPhone®, iPod™ touch, Android or other
retail partners. So now, consumers can truly enjoy their movies and TV shows anytime, anywhere, on the platform of their choice!

Synopsis: Jason Statham (The Italian Job), Academy Award® nominee Clive Owen (Inside Man) and Academy Award® winner Robert De Niro (Raging Bull) star in Killer Elite, “one of the best action thrillers of the year!” (Richard Roeper) When two of the world’s most elite operatives — Danny, a retired contract killer (Statham), and Hunter, his longtime mentor (De Niro) — go up against the cunning leader of a secret military society (Owen), their hunt takes them around the globe from Australia to Paris, London, and the Middle East. As the stakes rise along with the body count, Danny and Hunter are soon plunged into an action-packed game of cat-and-mouse where no one is what they seem. Based on a shocking true story, it’s an explosive, no-mercy thrill ride where the predator ultimately becomes the prey.

BLU-RAY TM AND DVD BONUS FEATURES:
• DELETED/EXTENDED SCENES
BLU-RAYTM EXCLUSIVE BONUS FEATURES: Unleash the power of your HDTV with perfect hi-def picture and perfect hi-def
sound.
• UltraViolet™: The revolutionary new way for consumers to collect movies and TV shows, put them in the cloud and stream
instantly to computers, tablets and smart phones, currently available in the United States only.
• BD-LIVE™: Access the BD-Live™ Center through your Internet-connected player to watch the latest trailers and more!
• pocket BLU™ app: The groundbreaking pocket BLU™ app uses iPad®, iPhone®, iPod® touch, Android™, PC and Mac®
to work seamlessly with a network-connected Blu-ray™ player. Plus iPad® and Android™ tablet owners can enjoy a new,
enhanced edition of pocket BLU™ made especially to take advantage of the tablets’ larger screen and high resolution display.
Consumers will be able to browse through a library of Blu-ray™ content and watch entertaining extras on-the-go in a way that’s
bigger and better than ever before. pocket BLU™ offers advanced features such as:
1
o ADVANCED REMOTE CONTROL: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray™ player. Users can
navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live™ functions with ease.
o VIDEO TIMELINE: Users can easily bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the
film.
o MOBILE-TO-GO: Users can unlock a selection of bonus content with their Blu-ray™ discs to save to their device
or to stream from anywhere there is a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy content on the go, anytime,
anywhere.
o BROWSE TITLES: Users will have access to a complete list of pocket BLU™-enabled titles available and coming
to Blu-ray™ Hi-Def. They can view free previews and see what additional content is available to unlock on their
device.
o KEYBOARD: Entering data is fast and easy with your device’s intuitive keyboard.
CAST AND FILMMAKERS:
Cast: Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro, Yvonne Strahovski, Dominic Purcell, Aden Young, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje,
Ben Mendelsohn
Directed By: Gary McKendry
Written By: Matt Sherring (screenplay)
Based on the Book by: Ranulph Fiennes
Producers: Michael Boughen, Steve Chasman, Sigurjon Sighvatsson, Tony Winley
Executive Producers: Peter D. Graves, Christopher Mapp, Matthew Street, David Whealy
Co-Executive Producer: Bill Johnson
Production Designer: Michelle McGahey
Director of Photography: Simon Duggan
Edited By: John Gilbert
Original Music By: Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek
TECHNICAL INFORMATION BLU-RAY™:
Street Date: January 10, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Selection Number: 61121303
Layers: BD-50
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 2.40:1
Rating: R for strong violence, language, and some sexuality/nudity
Languages:/Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Sound: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0
Run Time: 1 Hour 57 Minutes
TECHNICAL INFORMATION DVD:
Street Date: January 10, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Selection Number: 61121302
Layers: Dual Layer
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40:1
Rating: R for strong violence, language, and some sexuality/nudity
Languages/Subtitles: English SDH/Spanish Subtitles
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Run Time: 1 Hour 57 Minutes


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Ebert’s memoir warm hearted, but what about the movies?

Posted on by under News
Roger Ebert, Peter O'Toole, Jason Patrik at 20...

Image via Wikipedia

 

Ebert’s memoir warm hearted, but what about the movies? 

 

 

By Brent Lang

Sun Oct 9, 2011 6:29pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – It’s shocking, but movies are of secondary concern in “Life Itself,” film critic Roger Ebert‘s new memoir.

Yes, the book features anecdotes from years spent churning out reviews of classics such as “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Boyz ‘N The Hood” and boasts amusing remembrances of film greats like the hard-drinking Lee Marvin and a “damned if I care” Robert Mitchum.

But readers hoping for an in-the-trenches account from Ebert’s decades as one of the nation’s taste-makers will be disappointed.

Instead, America’s most famous film critic offers an over-stocked tour through his early life as the only child of an electrician, his struggles with alcoholism, his love affair and eventual marriage to his wife, Chaz, and his battle with cancer — a fight that robbed him of the ability to speak, eat and drink, while leaving him, in his own words, looking like “the Phantom of the Opera.”

There are also odes to the Chicago-based fast food chain Steak ‘N Shake, loving accounts of travel to foreign cities such as London and Venice, riffs on secular humanism, and a chronicle of lost virginity involving a prostitute in South Africa. Even boyhood dog Blackie gets a chapter.

At the end of it, you’ll know more about Ebert than you do your closest friends, and that’s not always a good thing.

Though the prose is crisp and the stories, like Ebert’s best reviews, glide effortlessly without ever calling attention to the writing, it’s hard to shake the feeling that some of what’s recounted could have benefited from the red pen and that the most interesting bits were left on the cutting-room floor.

“Life Itself” is generous, witty, and warm-hearted, but it’s also a bit rudderless.

Ebert’s unflinching account of his struggles with alcoholism is admirable, as is his dignity in coping with the surgeries that mangled his face and robbed him of his voice, but the book takes off when he describes his career critiquing movies.

The emotional high point is not when he finally gives up the bottle or accepts his medical condition, but in his loving tribute to Gene Siskel, his co-anchor on a weekly review series “Siskel & Ebert: At The Movies.”

The tall, relatively slender, and private Siskel, who died of a brain tumor in 1999, was the physical and temperamental opposite of the squat, portly, and effusive Ebert. Yet the two shared an improbable on-screen chemistry that worked off-screen, too.

Part of the fun of their pairing were the times when the two parted ways on a movie and would engage in full-throated debates about a film’s merits. That combativeness, Ebert writes, almost inspired a sitcom about two rival critics joined in a love/hate relationship, but both CBS and Disney ultimately took a pass on the pitch.

“Maybe the problem was that no one else could possibly understand how meaningless was the hate, how deep was the love,” Ebert writes.

Love forms the spine of Ebert’s memoir — love for his emotionally crippling mother, love for his former bar-mates and fellow newspaper hounds and love for Chaz, the woman who has been a guardian angel, fiercely protective of his business interests and his medical care.

It also appears, in an all-too-brief account of what films excite Ebert, in which he recounts what makes a memorable film.

He doesn’t have a precise formula, mixing in everything from the joyful physical movement that defines “Singing in the Rain” to the great dialogue that bubbles up during the first 30 minutes of “White Men Can’t Jump,” but it seems to boil down to “you know it when you see it.”

“When you go to the movies every day, it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes instead of educating them,” Ebert writes. “Then you see something absolutely miraculous, and on your way out you look distracted, as if you had just experienced some kind of a vision.”

Too true. More on that next time, please.

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