Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Friday, Dec. 18th
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has launched DVD2Blu.com, a site that allows consumers to upgrade DVD movies they already own to Blu-Ray Disc. The process is simple: select the title you want to exchange, mail in your standard DVD with pre-paid postage and receive copies of the same film on Blu-ray Disc for a nominal price. For a complete list of available titles, visit DVD2Blu.com.
Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is an alternate-reality fantasy/fable about a band of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of Aldo “the Apache” Raine (Brad Pitt) who wreak their own savage Nazi retribution during World War II.
The title “Taking Woodstock” is misleading. The fabled music festival is simply the historical background for Ang Lee’s low-key, fragmented, occasionally amusing story about how a semi-closeted gay painter (Demetri Martin), who spends weekends with his parents in the Catskills, brokers a deal with the promoters of Woodstock ventures.
Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Bandaras form a secretive love triangle in “The Other Man,” a skewed, often confusing psychological thriller revolving around the many forms of betrayal. And Jeremy Piven stars as a motor-mouth car salesman in a clunker called “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard,” a wannabe comedy which squanders his comedic talent.
Slipping in before next week’s highly anticipated theatrical release starring Robert Downey Jr., “The Sherlock Holmes Collection” contains the only five existing episodes of the BBC’s celebrated 1960s series, featuring Peter Cushing as the legendary detective with Nigel Stock as Dr. Watson. There’s a duo of death-defying magic in “Criss Angel: Mindfreak: Collector’s Edition Megaset” and this past A&E season’s “The 5 Lives of Criss Angel: Mindfreak.” And “Gotta Dance” is an inspiring, crowd-pleasing documentary about the first-ever, senior hip-hop dance team, the New Jersey NETSationals.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Re-live the raunchy bachelor party gone wrong with “The Hangover: Extended Cut.” It’s a laugh-out-loud comedy about three groomsmen (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifiankis) and their attempts to re-trace their steps to find the groom (Justin Bartha) who went missing from Caesar’s Palace in Vegas.