theoutsideman

by Peter Hall Feb 3rd 2010 // 8:32PM

Filed under: Thrillers, Fandom

Your have a zizz has been off lately, hasn't it? You can't quite place your finger on it, but you haven't been getting your full eight and what few hours you do get are plagued by tossing and turning that leaves you feeling identical to you've barely slept at all. Recognize it, you've been rattled by the brainwork that
Wild Things 4
would be the next victim of the

Deteriorate Conscientious 4

Improve your internet experience by watching high-quality streaming movies on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local film store and paying the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through watching movies online sites, you can watch your favorite movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. watch movie Serious Moonlight .

Enhance your internet experience by watching hd streaming films on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and wasting the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video webservices, you can watch your favorite movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Watch movies online for free

Thirteen years after the events that led to his detention, incarcerated doctor Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is still managing to management his experiments into re-animating the beige, and has found a way to garner the soul of a subject at the point of their death. With the help of sympathetic detention doctor Howard (Jason Barry), West delves fresh into his experiments, testing on those inmates lamentable enough to succumb to ill health. When saucy news-hound Laura (Elsa Pataky) uncovers the story after investigating the prison and its brutal warden (Simon Andreu), the two doctors are forced down a path that has horrific results.

Improve your internet experience by watching high-digital streaming movies on your personal computer and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and wasting the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video services, you can watch your best movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Free movie download

Taking a decline of an idea and nurturing it into a fable back moral phoneyness, “Bearcub” substantiates rife Spanish helmer Miguel Albaladejo’s rep for well-observed, hieroglyph-based dramas with an outlandish batty and a telling emotional undertow. A heartwarming take on a girlish boy’s impact on the emotional effervescence of a gay houseboy, pic features no big names, but dependable director and pic’s unprecedented combination of well-defined sex and unsensational treatment of off-limits subject-matter could lead to some European theatrical exposure, with screenings at gay-themed fests a certainty.

The in-your-face opening scene looks like “Deep Throat” meets National Geographic, as two “bears” (Spanish slang for bearded, tubby gay men) have ponderous sex. They’re interrupted by pleasure-seeking Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia Perez), a bear himself and a dentist, whose scatter-brained sister, Violeta (Elvira Lindo), has asked him to look after her 9-year-old son, Bernardo (David Castillo), for 15 days while she’s in India.

When Pedro’s buddy Javi (Mario Arias) visits after the boy has moved in, Pedro rebukes him as he starts to roll a joint. Already, Pedro’s attitudes are starting to change. Lola (Diana Cerezo), the daughter of apartment building superintendent Gloria (Josele Roman), is brought in as a baby sitter. Flight attendant Manuel (Arno Chevrier), an old lover of Pedro’s looking to settle down with him, comes to visit, but Pedro tells him he’s not ready for a relationship.

Nemesis turns up in the shape of Bernardo’s paternal grandmother, the severely moralistic Dona Teresa (Empar Ferrer). She hasn’t seen Bernardo for years and is desperate to have him back, but Bernardo is now happy with Pedro and doesn’t want to leave.

Further troubles arrive with the news that Violeta has been imprisoned in India for drug-trafficking. Pedro duly sets to work turning his house into a home for the boy. But when Pedro heads into a local park in search of sex, he’s followed and photographed by a detective sent by Dona Teresa.

Like Almodovar before him, Albaladejo likes to take wildly dissimilar characters and throw them together to see what happens. The relationship between Pedro and Bernardo is nicely modulated, with each recognizing in the other the emotional damage they share. Skillful scripting always keeps things just the right side of sentimental.

In one short scene, Bernardo is in bed with Pedro and they have their arms around one another. Typically of pic’s matter-of-fact style, this contains no hint of scandal. Their mutual affection is also neatly encapsulated in one touching, silent scene where Pedro cuts Bernardo’s hair short. Both thesps are up to the task, though Garcia Perez’s capacity for emotional range sometimes looks limited in the role of Pedro.

The script’s compassion extends to all the characters, even Dona Teresa, who could easily have come across as an evil stepmother. However, Lola and Gloria are underdeveloped, providing little more than comic relief.

The portrayal of the world of Madrid’s “bears” — a world in which shot-putters and ’70s Greek singer Nana Mouskouri are sex symbols — is affectionate and perceptive, with only a few lapses. Visually, sex scenes are low-lit and natural, and Alfonso Sanz’s unfussy lensing finds urban poetry in the shadowy rooms and saunas of gay Madrid. Lucio Gody’s piano-based score is also typical of the film’s generally low-frills style.

Pic features some French dialogue.

'Hostage'

Willis back in action in 'Hostage'

Friday, Step 11, 2005

By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As "Moonlighting" was slowly flickering out, Bruce Willis was faced with a critical professional decision. He could compete with Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise for romantic comedy roles, or go

mano a mano

against Ah-nold and the other rough-and-tumble action-film heroes.

'Hostage'

Rating:

R in favour of harsh graphic violence, language and some hallucinogenic ingest.

Starring:

Bruce Willis.

Director:

Florent Emilio Siri

Willis wisely chose both. An actor with two gears, he successfully built a two-tier film speed. In low gear, he plays the basic dramatic direct in intelligent films like "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "The Sixth Sentiment." Jack it into overdrive in the "Die Hard" action movies and Willis becomes the muscle-bound grimace king, spewing blood, breaking bones and raking in a fortune at the surround office.

Willis does two things well and he does them both in director Florent Emilio Siri's "Hostage." Following the lead provided by TV writer Robert Crais' original novel, Willis starts in low as a former high-stakes hostage negotiator who recovers from a bloody professional failure by taking an easy job as chief of a tiny, peaceful suburban police department. When a petty car theft escalates into a hostage situation, Willis remains the calm, steady dramatic leading man.

The story double-clutches into high gear, however, when a team of sophisticated criminals attempts to bypass the police siege to retrieve incriminating computer files. When they kidnap the chief's family and promise to kill them if he can't get the data file, Willis transmogrifies into the live action figure of his shoot-'em-up hits. His character becomes a caricature; his thoughtful demeanor explodes into fits of passion. You can almost hear the cash register ringing in the box office.

Just about everyone eventually becomes the "hostage" of the film's title: the family bound by the confused car thieves, the thieves under siege, the chief's wife and daughter, the guy with the computer files — even the traumatized police chief who's forced to risk the lives of one family to save his own.

Siri's only previous English-language credit is as director of a video game. Nevertheless, he patiently ratchets up the tension, keeps the characters believable and avoids telegraphing the frequent plot twists.

"Six Feet Under's" Ben Foster has a terrific role as a psychopathic wildcard that neither the cops nor the criminals expect. But Willis, in his predictably over-the-top action mode, ultimately steals the screen. The bloody "Hostage" works as long as you don't think too much about it.

Foremost published on March 11, 2005 at 12:00 am

John Hayes can be reached at

jhayes@post-gazette.com

or 412-263-1991.

The Somme valley, 1916: while a major offensive is being planned against the Germans, a reduced British thrust holds the front line, impartial 400 yds from the enemy. They’re the everyday opposite involved bundle: middle class policewoman (Rhind-Tutt), plagued by self-doubt; career soldier Sgt Winter (Craig); and the homespun volunteers - some of them blustery braggarts, some gently sensitive, some cynical, type Daventry (D’Arcy), about the top brass’s handling of the war, and others, akin to boyish Billy (Nicholls), plainly strong-willed to do their most skilfully for sovereign and country. What few suspect and none know is that in two days’ time they’ll be taking part in the most cataclysmic dispute in the history of the British army. In some respects, novelist and screenwriter Boyd’s directing coming out doesn’t have a group going for it. Senior, it covers much the unvaried hallowed deposit as Great Fight dramas wish Journey’s End and Paths of Magnificence; secondly, with its modest budget and Boyd’s slightly stolid closer to the visualisation of his story, we’re never competent to disregard it’s set from one end to the other of in a studio trench. That said, the claustrophobia contributes to an effective build-up of tension, and the film is in fact entirely engrossing, partly fitting to the clarity, wit and assurance of Boyd’s writing, partly to an excellent cast. Not archetypal, then, but in its own old-fashioned, unpretentious started, powerful and affecting.

By KYLE SMITH

Last Updated:

5:00 AM, August 10, 2007

Posted:

5:00 AM, August 10, 2007

MOVIE REVIEW

2 Days in Paris

JULIE Delpy - that Gauloise blonde - and Adam Goldberg - furious, tattooed and furry - make a surprisingly entertaining couple in Delpy's debut as writer-director, "2 Days in Paris."

As the pair, who live in New York, visit her hometown, the movie starts off with some Ugly American shtick about Jack (Goldberg), who nearly faints at the sight of rabbit stew. Things get more interesting. Like most Americans in Paris, he despises nothing so much as other Americans in Paris, but his lefty politics starts to seem Reaganish compared to France's: Delpy's dad turns out to be a casual vandal who drags a key across parked cars, and when Jack goes to a burger joint, a fast-food radical approaches him with arson glinting in his vegan pacifist eyes.

Delpy could have done much more with this idea, or with the shockingly casual anti-Semitism Jack faces. Americans making films about Paris miss this stuff because few can conduct a French conversation higher than the drinks-ordering level, and the average French person would rather change the subject.

Delpy is having some mischievous fun with her homeland. Her lady-and-the-tramp act with Goldberg, meanwhile, starts to morph into tramp-and-the tramp: He starts to suspect she's slept with every guy from Montparnasse to Montmartre. Worse, he can't manage ordering a Pepsi. "I hate Paris!" says he, and you have to laugh even if you don't agree.

The movie is just a situation salad, at least until the end, when things start to pull together a bit. The last scene artfully poses a problem of love arithmetic worthy of Elvis Costello: Would you stick with someone who annoys you 60 percent of the time?

2 DAYS IN PARIS

** 1/2

French diss.

Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (sexual content, nudity, profanity). At the Angelika and the Lincoln Plaza.

Today in Pictures
New York's most appropriate bachelors

Celebs at Sundance

Fashion Face-far-off: SAG vs. Golden Globe

'Monster' fash

SAG Awards red-carpet arrivals

Click on Each Photo

Most
Ordinary

1. Lost crown
2. Pratt's reality check
3. Video ‘bags’ suspect in star realtor slay
4. No class
5. Still in lust

1. Anderson gets a hot property
2. Come clean, Mr. Holder
3. Apple unveils tablet computer called iPad
4. Taliban for sale?
5. John Edwards and wife have legally separated: report

1. Day In Photos: Jan. 26, 2010
2. Celebrity Photos: Jan. 27, 2010
3. Celebrity Photos: Jan. 26, 2010
4. Jilted Lover Billboards
5. Celebs at Sundance

There are multiple DIRECTV packages with a view sports movies & pleasure.

Shop DVDs & Blu-Shaft at Barnes & Noble - Free Shipping on $25 Orders.
Can't find what you're looking for? Go searching:

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc.

nypost.com
,
nypostonline.com
, and
newyorkpost.com
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.

Copyright 2009 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy

|

Terms of Use

The Film:

Filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Insomnia) stormed onto
the movie scene with his second feature film, Memento. With
a convoluted story and an equally convoluted style, Nolan’s film has become
a modern cult classic, a film that can be watched over and over and continually
impresses. When Sony announced that they would be releasing this
film on Blu-Ray, I became excited and was really interested to see how
good this film could look. Well, after screening it, I’m not as excited.
Once again digital noise and compression artifacts mar an otherwise decent
presentation.

Leonard suffers from a very rare brain disorder that is the result of
an accident; his mind is unable to convert short term memory into
long term memory. The upshot is that he forgets everything after
about 15 minutes. Four times an hour he suddenly has no memory of
what happened since his accident.

This condition started some years ago when his house was robbed and
his wife killed. Walking in on the murder, he’s hit in the head and
knocked to the ground. The last thing he can remember is laying helplessly
on the floor and watching his wife’s life slip away. Leonard has
a strong thirst for revenge, and vows to find his wife’s killer.
But will killing the person who killed his wife and caused his condition
mean anything when he won’t remember it?

Leonard (Guy Pearce) has learned to overcome his problems as best as
he can. He takes Poloroid pictures of people and places and labels
them with noted. The really important things that he can’t afford
to forget or loose he are tattooed onto his body. Every morning he
reads his tattoos and notes and working for short gaps at a time (before
he forgets everything again) he works towards finding the man who ruined
his life.

The plot is engrossing and raises some interesting questions about the
nature of people, but the thing that makes this movie brilliant is the
way it was constructed. Starting at the end of the movie, the story
is told backwards in small chunks of time. This odd editing style
recreates for the viewers what Leonard goes through. He has no idea
who is talking to him or how he came to be where he is, and neither do
the people watching the film. Grounded with an interesting story
though, this film doesn’t rely on gimmicky editing tricks for it’s appeal.

This was an excellent film that really worked well on several levels.
Not only does it keep viewers on their toes trying to figure out what has
happened just before, but the movie is open to interpretation and will
undoubtedly start many discussions. One of the more interesting
aspects of the film is that the meaning of scenes and statements also changes,
sometimes drastically, as story progresses. Like the Akira Kurosawa
classic Rashomon, as the movie unfolds it turns out that things aren’t
as they seem and when seen in the light of day, some people who seem to
have good motivations are actually evil.

The film paints a depressing picture of human nature. Everyone
that Lenny meets uses him once they find out about his condition.
From the clerk at the hotel he’s staying at who charges him his daily rent
a couple of times a day, to the people who are helping him track down the
killer, everyone uses him for his own ends, ultimately Leonard ends up
using himself.

The DVD:

Note: The only Blu-Streak DVD athlete
on the buy at the opportunity of this review is the Samsung BD-P1000. Apparently
an error crept into the design, and a noise reduction algorithm on one
of the chips was turned on which creates a softer conceive of. As yet there
is no locate for this, or even an official announcement from Samsung.

Video:

The good news on the video front is that the 2.35 widescreen image looks
pretty good, better than the limited edition standard definition release
of this film. I did some direct comparisons between the two editions,
and while the difference wasn’t stunning, it was apparent. The Blu-ray
disc is apparently made from the same master as the LE. The level
of detail is a bit stronger on this HD disc, with fine background items
being more defined and having sharper edges.

There are some scenes that are really strong too, with a lot of dimensionality
and a real HD feel to them. Unfortunately the entire film isn’t like
that. Other scenes are rather flat and don’t look too different from
the SD release of the film. The colors are accurate, fleshtones especially
look good through most of the movie. There are a few area where the
colors look more lifeless and drab, but I think that was the filmmaker’s
intention.

The big problem for this disc, as it has been for other Blu–Ray releases,
is digital noise. The film was made with a fair amount of grain,
especially in the black and white scenes, but the digital noise that this
disc has makes the image look much more grainy than it should. Large
areas of a single color are effected the most, but even relatively small
patches of black have more noise than they should. There are some
other digital defects too, some minor blocking in a couple of scenes, that
I was disappointed to see. I can’t be sure if it is the disc and
the MPEG 2 encoding or something with the Samsung player (the only Blu-Ray
deck currently on the market) but whatever the cause these defects mar
the presentation.

Audio:

As with the other Blu-Ray discs that Sony has released so far, this
one comes with an uncompressed PCM 5.1 soundtrack as well as a DD 5.1 track.
I viewed this with the PCM audio and technically it sounded good.
The reproduction was accurate and the dialog was easy to hear. The
tonal quality was good, and there was a lot of detail in the soundtrack
with light sounds being reproduced distinctly and clearly.

The biggest problem I had with was that the mix was very anemic.
The audio for just about the entire film is centered on the screen.
There isn’t much use of stereo panning much less the rear channels.
Yes, once in a while a sound will come out from the rears to startle the
viewer, but aside from this and some low level music, the back speakers
are pretty much forgotten.

Download full mp3 songs, download free wallpapers, express your mind and much more. Listen to The Pussycat Dolls online.

Extras:

The two-disc LE version of this film had a good number of extra features
and it is a bit disappointing to see only a few ported over to this Blu-Ray
release. I guess we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth though,
this could be a Lions Gate release and have no extras at all.

This disc includes a commentary with director Christopher Nolan which is pretty
dry. This is the same commentary that was on the LE, and Nolan spends
a lot of the time describing the action on the screen and relating how
certain shots were filmed. There are some long gaps in the narrative
that make the track slow down even more. While it isn’t my favorite
commentary, I’d rather have it on the disc that have it omitted.

The other bonus item is a 25-minute Anatomy of a Scene that features
interviews with the writer/director, editor, composer, and actor Joe Pantoliano.
This was a nice show that originally aired on the Sundance channel, and
I was happy to see its inclusion.

Final Thoughts:

Memento is a favorite film of mine and I was quite happy to see
it make the leap to HD. An excellent film that will really appeal
to people who enjoy piecing a movie together to figure out what it’s saying,
it stands up well to repeated viewing. While this Blu-ray disc does
look better than the SD limited edition set that I compared it with, it
wasn’t perfect. The amount of digital noise was greater than it should
be and not all of the scenes had that visual depth that the best HD programing
has. I was also disappointed, once again, that only a few of the
bonus features have been ported over. If Sony wants viewers to fork
over a grand for a new Blu-Ray player and then spend $30 upgrading our
collections, the least they can do is let early adopters sell off their
old SD discs. Since there are so many features on the LE that are
missing from this disc, I won’t be getting rid of my SD version any time
soon. The bottom line is that this disc looks better than the previous
release, and contains an excellent movie. For those reasons I’m giving
this disc a Highly Recommended rating (my first for a Blu-Ray disc.)

Lady in the Lake institutes a novel method of letting the cat out of the bag the story, in which the camera itself is the protagonist, playing the lead role from the subjective viewpoint of headliner Robert Montgomery. Idea comes of excellently, transferring what otherwise would have been a fair whodunit into socko screen price.

Montgomery starts telling the story in retrospect from a desk in his office, but when the picture dissolves into the action, the camera becomes Montgomery, presenting everything as it would have been seen through the star’s eyes. Only time Montgomery is seen thereafter is when he’s looking into a mirror or back at his desk for more bridging of the script.

Enhance your internet experience by watching hd streaming films on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and paying the fees charged for returning a movie late. Through streaming video services, you can watch your best movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Free movie download

Camera thus gets bashed by the villains, hits back in turn, smokes cigarettes, makes love and, in one of the most suspenseful sequences, drives a car in a hair-raising race that ends in a crash. Paul C. Vogel does a capital job with the lensing throughout, moving the camera to simulate the action of Montgomery’s eyes as he walks up a flight of stairs, etc. Because it would be impossible under the circumstances to cut from Montgomery to another actor to whom he’s talking, the rest of the cast was forced to learn much longer takes than usual.

Steve Fisher has wrapped up the Chandler novel into a tightly-knit and rapidly-paced screenplay. Montgomery plays private detective Philip Marlowe, who’s dealt into a couple of murders when he tries to sell a story based on his experiences to a horror story mag. Audrey Totter, as the gal responsible for it all, is fine in both her tough-girl lines and as the love interest.