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For his second film as a director, Denzel Washington takes on
the true story of the champion debate team of all-black Wiley College in Texas,
which, in 1935, became the first black team to compete against white colleges
(or, in the words of the film, the first Negro team to debate Anglo-Saxons).
Washington stars as coach Melvin B. Tolson with his usual command and the
righteous spark of committed social activism (he's a labor organizer in his
off-hours), and Forest Whitaker is the college preacher, a scholar who is leery
of Tolson's extracurricular activities but just as committed to social justice.
It's an inspirational tale of triumph over adversity that plays the debate
competition like an underdog sports movie, complete with the cheering crowds
celebrating each win, and the plotting of their road to victory. But outside the
debate halls awaits the Jim Crow South of segregation and aggressive racism,
where a drive to a debate lands the team in the midst of a lynching, and
Washington brings that reality into harrowing focus. Nate Parker, Jurnee
Smollett, Denzel Whitaker (no relation to Forest) and Jermaine Williams play the
college teammates, and Gina Ravera, John Heard and Kimberly Elise
co-star.
The disc features three deleted scenes and the 23-minute
featurette "The Great Debaters: An Historical Perspective," featuring interviews
conducted by Washington with the real Wiley debaters and teachers. The "2-Disc
Collector's Edition" offers seven additional featurettes, including "Learning
the Art: Our Young Actors Go to Debate Camp," a 22-minute look at the actors
training with Dr. Thomas Freeman in the art of spontaneous debate. The rest are
fairly conventional: "The Great Debaters: A Heritage of Music" (with W.G.
"Snuffy" Walden) and "Scoring The Great Debaters With James Newton Howard and
Peter Golub" survey the film's approach to music, and there are short surveys of
the costume and production design. Less informative is the cast profile "A New
Generation of Actors" and the skimpy "Forest Whitaker on Becoming James Farmer
Sr.," but the inclusion of two poems by Tolson is a nice touch. Also comes with
a nice booklet with brief notes on the production.
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| Untraceable |
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Diane Lane is an FBI cyber-crimes agent who stumbles across a
cyber-genius who tortures his victims to death on streaming video. The twist in
Gregory Hoblit's grim and decidedly unpleasant thriller is that the killer makes
his viewers complicit in his killings: The mechanisms of torture and death are
activated by the number of hits his Web site gets. It's a hollow gesture of
contempt for society in a film itself that serves up torture in gruesome detail
for the audience. "Untraceable" brings the sadistic horror subgenre of torture
porn into the mainstream with classy production values, name actors and a tone
of seriousness that pretends to abhor the very spectacle it's packaging. Billy
Burke, Colin Hanks and Joseph Cross co-star. The DVD features commentary by
director Hoblit with producer Hawk Koch and production designer Paul Eads, who
focus their discussion on production and technical details, and four featurettes
that further explore the origins of the story and development of the script, the
casting, the production design and look of the film, and the makeup effects on
the torture victims.
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| Mad Money |
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Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes team up to rob
millions of dollars in worn-out currency, marked for destruction in a Federal
Reserve shredder, in the caper comedy directed by Callie Khouri. "'Mad Money'
derives most of its meager pleasures from its central heist sequence -- which,
though lacking in Brian De Palma-esque visual bravado, is tightly edited and
cleverly worked out," writes Variety critic Justin Chang. "But even as it aims
for a loose, light-fingered touch, Khouri's direction is lukewarm at best" and
"lacks the requisite wit and amoral energy to capitalize on its get-rich-quick
premise." Ted Danson, Stephen Root and Christopher McDonald co-star. The DVD
features commentary by Khouri and the featurette "Makin' Money: Behind the
Scenes of Mad Money," and Anchor Bay has packaged it in a paperboard case
similar to the old "snapper" design, only without the plastic tabs.
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| Youth Without Youth |
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Francis Ford Coppola's first film in 10 years, about a dying
professor (Tim Roth) in 1938 Hungary given new life, is a strange and entrancing
vision that evokes "Faust," the fountain of youth, "The Picture of Dorian Gray,"
tales of reincarnation, and even "Frankenstein." Coppola returns to simple,
practical techniques to create the fantastic imagery of his storybook
reimagining of World War II Europe and a journey through past lives, only
discreetly resorting to digital touches, and there is a joy in his often
rapturous imagery and vibrant filmmaking. There just isn't a lot of intellectual
or philosophical heft to his historical fantasia. It's as if he's rediscovered
the cinema rapture of his youth and found he has nothing left to say. Alexandra
Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz and André Hennicke co-star. Features commentary by
director Coppola and three featurettes: "The Making of Youth Without Youth,"
"The Music for Youth Without Youth" and "Youth Without Youth: The Makeup."
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| Honey & Clover |
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Five college-age students in art school fumble through life
lessons in Masahiro Takada's gently meandering adaptation of Chika Umino's manga
romance. Sho Sakurai centers the film as "the least arty art student at the
school," a genial young man who becomes the hub of a loose-knit fellowship of
friends and artists (including Yu Aoi of "Hula Girls" as the object of his
affections). I confess that I enjoy this distinctly Japanese genre of young love
and teenage/young adult life. This, a particularly restrained example of the
genre, is low key almost to a fault, yet it's sweetly charming in its embrace of
gentle conflicts and easy rhythms. And it neatly steers clear of the contrived
complications of American stories of emotional and sexual minefields. The DVD
features the short "Hanamoto Study Group" discussion with the young cast members
on the set. Like the film, it is in Japanese with English subtitles. Also
includes Japanese trailers and notes (in English) on the cast and crew.
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In addition to his regular contributions to MSN Movies, Sean Axmaker is a
film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for MSN
Entertainment. He is also a contributing writer for GreenCine.com, Turner
Classic Movies Online and Asian Cult Cinema, among other publications.
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On the RocksWith 'Iron Man' and 'Hancock' featuring
heavy-drinking protagonists, we reflect on the most memorable drunks in movie
history UnclassicsThough they may be listed among the
greatest films of all time, these 10 movies deserve to be
downgraded Surveying Coen CountryAs 'No Country for Old
Men' arrives on DVD, we celebrate two of America's most original filmmaking
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