Susan Granger’s DVD/Video Update for Friday, July 24:
Inspired by world-renowned mentalist, the Amazing Kreskin, “The Great Buck Howard” is the poignant, gently satiric story of a naïve, wannabe writer (Colin Hanks) who becomes road manager for an aging, eccentric stage entertainer (John Malkovich) who is struggling to resurrect his fading career.
Aimed at children age eight and over, “Coraline” is the first feature-length, animated fantasy to be conceived and photographed in stereoscopic 3-D. It’s about lonely, 11 year-old Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) whose family has moved from Michigan to Oregon. While her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman) are preoccupied, she discovers a secret passageway that leads to an enticing, alternate version of her life in which her parents’ activities revolve around her. But it all turns scary and sinister when her Other Mother insists that Coraline have shiny buttons sewn over her eyes.
In “Sherman’s Way,” an uptight, pampered Ivy-Leaguer (Michael Shulman) defies his controlling mother (Donna Murphy) and heads for California, where he’s befriended by a former alpine skier (James LeGros) and a chef-turned-auto mechanic (Enrico Colantoni).
From Smithsonian Networks, there’s “Sky View,” a high-flying documentary that soars over Ireland, Britain, Italy and France, exploring castles, historic landmarks and mystical sites and ruins; “The Big Blue,” centered in a unique spot off southern Australia, where the Blue Whales frolic; “Wanted: Anaconda,” searching for one of the world’s largest snakes in the jungles of Guyana: and “Pandas in the Wild,” an intimate portrait of Giant Pandas in China’s mist-shrouded Quinling Mountains.
PICKS OF THE WEEK: Intense and ultra-violent, “Watchmen” isn’t your ordinary superhero movie. It’s Zack Snyder’s eerie adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel about psychopathic crime fighters investigating the death of one of their own. Set in 1985 in an alternative America, where Richard Nixon still occupies the White House, it begins with the murder of The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Smith) and follows Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley) Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) as they investigate his demise.