February 3rd, 2009 Blu-ray Releases
This is not the week of blockbuster releases for the Blu-ray format. However, there are a lot of solid cult following type of releases that are always a good bet. The two I am going to recommend are Office Space and Jeff Durnham. If you haven’t had the chance to check out Jeff’s comedy/ventro act, you are missing out and will get a great laugh out of it.
I will be queuing up Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Clerks 2 (and 1). With my cue as long as it is, I will be lucky to see this before the next optical media format comes out.
Next week looks to be a dud, so go ahead and splurge on a couple of extra movies this week. The links provided lead to Amazon. You can support MissingRemote.com by clicking through to Amazon and purchasing the movie.
Blu-ray Releases – February 3rd, 2008
Ever spend eight hours in a "Productivity Bin"? Ever had worries about
layoffs? Ever had the urge to demolish a temperamental printer or fax
machine? Ever had to endure a smarmy, condescending boss? Then Office Space
should hit pretty close to home for you. Peter (Ron Livingston) spends
the day doing stupefyingly dull computer work in a cubicle. He goes
home to an apartment sparsely furnished by IKEA and Target, then starts
for a maddening commute to work again in the morning. His coworkers in
the cube farm are an annoying lot, his boss is a snide, patronizing
jerk, and his days are consumed with tedium.
Writer-director Kevin Smith returns to the scene of his cult comedy
classic Clerks to pick up his nothing-is-sacred style of humor…and
push it right over the edge! Ten years after the original, slacker
heroes Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) have become
"funployees" at Mooby’s fast food. In addition to offending customers
and debating anything and everything, their responsibilities now
include ragging on their uber-nerd co-worker (Trevor Fehrman) and
teasing their sexy manager (Rosario Dawson).
In 1957, A young boy named Jason Voorhees drowned. In 1958, two camp
counselors were murdered. In 1962, fires and bad water thwarted the
reopening of Camp Crystal Lake. Now in 1979, Crystal Lake was finally
reopened by Steve Christy with the help of a few new counselors.
Ignoring the warnings from a local wacko, the murders start once again
while a mysterious stalker prowls the area.
Jeff Dunham – Arguing With Myself
Arguing With Myself, a recorded live performance of
ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, portrays a comedian whose revival of an
old-fashioned art has made ventriloquism more relevant to modern
societal concerns. Starring his six main characters, from Bubba Jay, a
Nascar-obsessed hick, to Peanut, a flamboyant gay monkey, Dunham’s
puppets have dirty but relatively inoffensive senses of humor that mock
the American Dream. One can easily see why Jay Leno champions Dunham,
as his skits contain a similar sly sarcasm disguised as wholesome
teasing aimed at men indebted to their ugly wives, for example, or
people who live their lives working in cubicles.
Fans of writer/director Kevin Smith (auteur of Dogma and Chasing Amy) should run to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno–the adored filmmaker has clearly made this with his hardcore following in mind. Zack (Seth Rogen, Knocked Up) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks, Slither) are longtime friends and housemates who, after their power and water get shut off, turn to pornography to pay their bills.
Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and
the Sundance stamp of approval, and you’ve got yourself a crossover
indie hit. That formula worked for Little Miss Sunshine, a
frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an
Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered
remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to
pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet
daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty
pageant.
As deadpan comedies go, Napoleon Dynamite stands in a class all
its own. Played by John Heder, the title character is (in the words of
critic Roger Ebert) "the kind of nerd other nerds avoid," a
mouth-breathing dweeb with a mangy nest of orange hair, and ungainly
features that suggest a perpetual state of half-conscious depression.
He lives in Preston, Idaho (former home of 24-year-old director Jared
Hess) with his thrill-seeking grandma and 32-year-old brother, and his
days at high school consist mostly of being abused or ignored by
indifferent classmates.
Nick & Norah’s Infinte Playlist
In the big-screen version of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s popular
young adult novel, two high-school seniors fall in love over the course
of one eventful evening. A straight bass player in a queercore band,
Nick (Juno‘s Michael Cera) has just been dumped by the
two-timing Tris (Alexis Dziena). He’s committed to making more
self-pitying mix CDs until his bandmates convince him to help track
down a top-secret rock concert.
Set in New York City’s gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells
the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their
rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive
for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty,
illness and the AIDS epidemic. RENT is Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical, one of the longest running shows on Broadway.
Headed by an all-star cast of women, The Secret Life of Bees is the heartwarming and well-told story of a young girl who finds love and acceptance from a trio of independent sisters. The Secret Life of Bees
is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd and
centers around the plight of 14-year-old Lily (Dakota Fanning).
Assuming the burden for her mother’s premature death, she has a
precarious relationship with her abusive father T. Ray (Paul Bettany).
Sooner or later, the new breed of coming-of-age comedy (good ones like Superbad, not-so-good ones like College) had to inspire a parody of itself, and that self-conscious knock-off is the sporadically funny Sex Drive.
A road movie about a virginal nice guy, Ian (John Zuckerman), who
drives cross-country in his brother’s car to score with a girl he met
online, Sex Drive sounds like just another teen farce. But it
isn’t, exactly: with stops in a rockin’ Amish community, in the redneck
house of a bathroom fetishist, and in Ian’s own family home (where a
well-meaning new stepmother is continually exposed to Ian’s unsavory
private life), the film has an original life of its own.
Two men reaching middle age with not much to show but disappointment,
embark on a week long road trip through California’s wine country, just
as one is about to take a trip down the aisle.
Disney’s irresistible talking puppies are back in an all-new movie that
takes them where no Buddy has gone before the moon! With the help of
some stellar new friends, this out-of-this-world adventure is one small
step for dog, one giant leap for dogkind. Moving at warp speed, dodging
asteroids and more, the Buddies and their two new friends, Spudnick and
Gravity, must summon their courage and ingenuity to launch plans for a
moon landing and a rocketing trip back home. Will they have the right
stuff?
The Cure play their albums "Pornography," "Disintegration," and
"Bloodflowers" live during two shows at the Tempodrome in Berlin.
Chance, a simple gardener, has never left the estate until his employer
dies. His simple TV-informed utterances are mistaken for profundity.