Friday, November 4, 2011

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (Widescreen Edition)

  • All Movie Guide - As the foundation of the Mayan civilization begins to crumble, one man's previously idyllic existence is forever changed when he is chosen as a sacrifice needed to appease the gods in director Mel Gibson's mythic, end-times adventure. The Mayan kingdom is at the absolute height of opulence and power, but leaders are convinced that unless more temples are constructed and m
From Mel Gibson, director of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST and the Academy Award®-winning BRAVEHEART (Best Director, Best Picture, 1995) comes the thrilling historical epic APOCALYPTO. This intense, nonstop action-adventure transports you to an ancient South American civilization, for an experience unlike anything you’ve ever known. In the twilight of the mysterious Mayan culture, young Jaguar Paw is captured and taken to the great Mayan city where he faces a harrowing end. Driven by the power of his love ! for his wife and son, he makes an adrenaline-soaked, heart-racing escape to rescue them and ultimately save his way of life. Filled with unrelenting action and stunning cinematography, APOCALYPTO is an enthralling and unforgettable film experience.'Forget any off-screen impressions you may have of Mel Gibson, and experience Apocalypto as the mad, bloody runaway train that it is. The story is set in the pre-Columbian Maya population: one village is brutally overrun, its residents either slaughtered or abducted, by a ruling tribe that needs slaves and human sacrifices. We focus on the capable warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), although Gibson skillfully sketches a whole population of characters--many of whom don't survive the early reels. Most of the film is set in the dense jungle, but the middle section, in a grand Mayan city, is a dazzling triumph of design, costuming, and sheer decadent terror. The movie itself is a triumph of brutality, as Gibson lets loose hi! s well-established fascination with bodily mortification in a ! litany o f assaults including impalement, evisceration, snakebite, and bee stings. It's a dark, disgusted vision, but Gibson doesn't forget to apply some very canny moviemaking instincts to the violence--including the creation of a tremendous pair of villains (strikingly played by Raoul Trujillo and Rodolfo Palacias). The film is in a Maya dialect, subtitled in English, and shot on digital video (which occasionally betrays itself in some blurry quick pans). Amidst all the mayhem, nothing in the film is more devastating than a final wordless exchange of looks between captured villager Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) and his wife's mother (Maria Isabel Diaz), a superb change in tone from their early relationship. Yes, this is an obsessive, crazed movie, but Gibson knows what he's doing. --Robert Horton

Beyond Apocalypto

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More films directed by Mel Gibson

Apocalypto soundtrack by James Horner

Stills from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (click for larger image)








How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

  • In the summer heat of a small Arizona border town, sparks start to fly for three Garcia girls. America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) plays 17-year-old Blanca, who discovers romance, love, and lust for the first time with the new bad boy in town. Her divorced mother Lolita (Elizabeth Pe a, Rush Hour), seems to have hit a dry spell until the husband of one of her customers pays a visit. Meanwhile, Blanca s g
As sweltering summer and romantic drought stretches over a sun-bleached Arizona border town, the Garcia Girls lovingly explore the terrain of longing, desire, and self-realization among three generations of women in a Mexican American family.

Exquisite Silver Seed Bead Sequined Leaf Evening Handbag, Clasp Purse Clutch w/Hidden Handle

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An all-star cast of the greatest actresses of our time - including Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave, Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Natasha Richardson and Glenn Close - come together in this passionate and heartwarming story. As Ann (Redgrave) reflects on one beautiful and life-changing weekend with the one true love of her life, her daughters (Collette and Richardson) come to their own understanding about the power of the past and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters, family, and the loves of their lives. A star-studded cast brings richness and texture to Evening, a lyrical tale of regret, unrequited love, and hope, written by novelists Susan Minot (Rapture) and Michael Cunningham (The Hours), based on Minot's book. Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) lies ill, deliriously remembering when she came to the summer home of her best friend Lila to be Lila's maid of honor (her younger self is played by Claire Danes). But the young Ann is soon caught between the hungry need of Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) and the magnetic outsider Harris (Patrick Wilson). Meanwhile, the elderly Ann is watched by her two daughters, Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson), who wrestle with unresolved feelings towards their mother, their choices in life, and each other. Evening starts off feeling a bit stiff and literary, but gradually finds its rhythm. While the emotional peaks and precious images feel inflated and hollow, the little ephemeral moments--the heartbreaks, yearnings, disappointments, and comforts, the flash of a! smile or the widening of an eye--glimmer with warmth and hone! sty. It' s rare that such restraint can be so compelling and so rewarding; Evening is well worth watching for the accumulating emotional power of these small moments. Also featuring Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. --Bret Fetzer

Beyond Evening


Evening the novel by Susan Minot

Vanessa Redgrave Essential DVDs

More DVDs with Claire Danes

Stills from Evening (click for large! r image)

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With two novels a! nd one s hort story collection published to overwhelming critical acclaim ("Monkeys takes your breath away," said Anne Tyler; "heartbreaking, exhilarating," raved the New York Times Book Review), Susan Minot has emerged as one of the most gifted writers in America, praised for her ability to strike at powerful emotional truths in language that is sensual and commanding, mesmerizing in its vitality and intelligence. Now, with Evening, she gives us her most ambitious novel, a work of surpassing beauty. During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, at the wedding of her best friend, Ann Grant fell in love. She was twenty-five. Forty years later--after three marriages and five children--Ann Lord finds herself in the dim claustrophobia of illness, careening between lucidity and delirium and only vaguely conscious of the friends and family parading by her bedside, when the memory of that weekend returns to her with the clarity and intensity of a fever-dream. Evening u! nfolds in the rushlight of that memory, as Ann relives those three vivid days on the New England coast, with motorboats buzzing and bands playing in the night, and the devastating tragedy that followed a spectacular wedding. Here, in the surge of hope and possibility that coursed through her at twenty-five--in a singular time of complete surrender--Ann discovers the highest point of her life. Superbly written and miraculously uplifting, Evening is a stirring exploration of time and memory, of love's transcendence and of its failure to transcend--a rich testament to the depths of grief and passion, and a stunning achievement.As Ann Lord lies on her deathbed, her daughter delivers a balsam pillow from the attic. At first the ailing woman is confused, but suddenly the scent reminds her of the "wild tumult" she experienced 40 years earlier:
Something stole into her as she walked in the dark, a dream she'd had long ago. The air was so black she was un! able to see her arms, it was a warm summer night. Above her sh! e could make out the dark line of the tops of spruce trees and a sky lit with stars. She felt the warm tar through the soles of her shoes. The boy beside her took her hand.
In the porous world between conscious and unconscious the protagonist of Evening revisits the great passions of her life, along with its considerable disappointments. The boy in the dark remains the fixed point--not so much because he is the most important man in her life, but because of the untapped possibilities he represents. Meanwhile, friends and relations come to sit by Ann Lord's side as she veers between clarity and feverish recollection.

In her third novel, Susan Minot takes some new risks--her narrative spanning seven decades of memory and her style ranging from Stegneresque particularity to the exquisite abstraction Virginia Woolf perfected in To the Lighthouse. Equal parts memory and desire, fiction and poetry, Evening is a seductive story m! ade more so by the measured pace of details emerging, one by one, like stars. --Cristina Del SestoAn all-star cast of the greatest actresses of our time - including Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave, Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Natasha Richardson and Glenn Close - come together in this passionate and heartwarming story. As Ann (Redgrave) reflects on one beautiful and life-changing weekend with the one true love of her life, her daughters (Collette and Richardson) come to their own understanding about the power of the past and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters, family, and the loves of their lives. A star-studded cast brings richness and texture to Evening, a lyrical tale of regret, unrequited love, and hope, written by novelists Susan Minot (Rapture) and Michael Cunningham (The Hours), based on Minot's book. Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) lies ill, deliriously remembering when she came to the su! mmer home of her best friend Lila to be Lila's maid of honor (! her youn ger self is played by Claire Danes). But the young Ann is soon caught between the hungry need of Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) and the magnetic outsider Harris (Patrick Wilson). Meanwhile, the elderly Ann is watched by her two daughters, Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson), who wrestle with unresolved feelings towards their mother, their choices in life, and each other. Evening starts off feeling a bit stiff and literary, but gradually finds its rhythm. While the emotional peaks and precious images feel inflated and hollow, the little ephemeral moments--the heartbreaks, yearnings, disappointments, and comforts, the flash of a smile or the widening of an eye--glimmer with warmth and honesty. It's rare that such restraint can be so compelling and so rewarding; Evening is well worth watching for the accumulating emotional power of these small moments. Also featuring Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. --Bret Fetzer

Beyond Evening


Evening the novel by Susan Minot

Vanessa Redgrave Essential DVDs

More DVDs with Claire Danes

Stills from Evening (click for larger image)






If you need a simple yet stunning evening bag to accompany you to your next glamor event, then this beaded clutch bag is right for you. There is an extravagant silver seed beaded design with small sequins while small leaf designs with rhinestones in the sterling silver clasp. A h! idden semicircular hard silver handle makes this purse easy to carry by hand and on the arm. Or simply attach the long silver chain to the interior clasps and carry over the shoulder. An open interior pocket for credit card or makeup.

*Due to monitor variations colors may appear slightly different.*


Grace Is Gone

  • Though 2007 saw a flood of Iraq-related films, GRACE IS GONE takes a different approach from many of the others. Unlike REDACTED and LIONS FOR LAMBS, this directorial debut from screenwriter James C. Strouse (LONESOME JIM) doesn't focus on the conflict itself. Instead, the drama looks at how the death of a female soldier affects her family at home. John Cusack (1408) is Stanley Phillips, a hus
In one of his most acclaimed performances, John Cusack makes an astonishing transformation as Stanley Philips, a sad, disconnected man unable to tell his young daughters their mother, a soldier, has died in Iraq. Instead, he takes the girls on a road trip, where their innocent charm helps him rediscover a healing joy he thought he'd lost forever.Unlike previous Iraq War films, the poignant directorial debut from writer James C. Strouse (Lonesome Jim) uses the conflict as starting point rather th! an subject. Early in the proceedings, Stanley (John Cusack) finds out his wife has been killed in the line of duty. The bespectacled disciplinarian decides not to tell his daughters right away. In his younger days, Stanley tried to serve his country, but poor eyesight dashed that dream, and now he's a superstore manager. The sort of middle-American conservative rarely seen at the art house, Stanley believes in his president. That doesn't alleviate his pain. Putting on a brave face, he asks his oblivious girls for their greatest wish. Eight-year-old Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk) exclaims, "Enchanted Gardens!" With that, they hop in their SUV and drive from Minnesota to the Florida theme park. Twelve-year-old Heidi (Shélan O'Keefe) knows something is wrong--her dad isn't the spontaneous type--but she doesn't know what it is. En route, they visit Stanley's brother, John (Alessandro Nivola), who offers some insight into their bottled-up father. By the end of the trip, Stanley figur! es out how to break the news, in the process becoming a real p! arent. A fter winning the Audience Award at Sundance, Clint Eastwood, Cusack's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil director, gave the soundtrack a jazz-oriented overhaul. In tone, it's almost too refined for the blue-collar world Strouse depicts, but never distracting. More importantly, Grace Is Gone features Cusack’s finest performance to date. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

De-lovely : The Cole Porter Story : Widescreen Special Edition

  • Widescreen
"The most unusual and enchanting musical in years" (Roger Ebert), this cinematic ode to legendary composer Cole Porter is at once buoyantly fun and "heartbreakingly beautiful" (Liz Smith). OscarÂ(r) winner* Kevin Kline (The Ice Storm) is "perfection" (Rolling Stone) as the elegant and deeply complex Porter in a film that offers "knockout performances" (Gene Shalit) from Natalie Cole, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, Alanis Morissette and Robbie Williams, and "melancholy, wit and style to burn" (The Philadelphia Inquirer)! From Paris to Venice to Broadway to Hollywood, the lives of Cole (Kline) and Linda (Ashley Judd) Porter were never less thanglamorous and wildly unconventional. Though Cole's thirst for life strained their marriage, Linda never stopped being his muse, inspiring some of the greatest songs of the twentieth century.*1988: Supporting Actor, A Fish Called Wa! ndaIt's astonishing that one man could have written so many memorable songs, but musical gems keep popping up in De-Lovely, about the life and loves of Cole Porter. Played by Kevin Kline (In & Out, A Fish Called Wanda), an elderly Porter is summoned by a mysterious director (Jonathan Pryce, Brazil) to view his own story, which unfolds as a series of theatrical tableaux. The movie is open (if a bit chaste) about Porter's homosexuality, but argues that the love of his life was still his devoted platonic relationship with Linda Lee (Ashley Judd, Ruby in Paradise, Kiss the Girls). Unfortunately, the narrative suffers from the fate of many biographies; by trying to cram in a person's entire life, it ends up a collection of snapshots without depth or context. The parade of celebrity singers (Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow) were apparently chosen for their jarringly modern vocal mannerisms. --Bret FetzerStudio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Da! te: 04/05/2011 Rating: Pg13dvd

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