Friday, September 30, 2011

Brick

  • Condition: New
  • Format: DVD
  • AC-3; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
The hit suspense thriller based on the best-selling novel by Nora Roberts stars Emilie de Ravin (TV's Lost) as Lieutenant Phoebe MacNamara, an expert hostage negotiator juggling a high-pressure career while caring for both her young daughter and her mother (Cybill Shepherd, TV's The L Word). When Phoebe meets handsome bar owner Duncan Swift (Ivan Sergei, TV's Jack & Jill), no amount of negotiation will allow her to resist his charms. Phoebe is assaulted by an unknown assailant, and later receives a series of mysterious threats. Suddenly Phoebe's the target of a psychopathic killer out to destroy her personally and professionally.Brendan Frye is a loner, someone who knows all the angles but has chosen to stay on the outside. When the girl he loves turns up dead, he is determined! to find the "who" and "why" and plunges into the dark and dangerous social strata of rich girl Laura, intimidating Tug, drug-addled Dode, seductive Kara, and the ominous Pin. But who can he really trust? These are the ingredients of Brick, a gritty and provocative thriller that critics describe as "a clever, twist-filled whodunit!" (Claudia Puig, USA Today) High school collides with hard-boiled film noir in the twisty, cunning Brick. When he gets a mysterious message from his ex-girlfriend, a high school loner named Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mysterious Skin) starts to dig into a crisscrossed web of drugs and duplicity, eventually getting entwined in the criminal doings of a teenage crime lord known as the Pin (Lukas Haas), his thuggish henchman Tugger (Noah Fleiss, Joe the King), and a mysterious girl named Laura (Nora Zehetner, Fifty Pills). Brick has not only the seductive, labyrinthine plot of a crime thriller by Dashiell Hammett ! (The Maltese Falcon) or Raymond Chandler (Farewell, ! My Lovel y) but also a dense high-school version of hard-boiled lingo that's both comic and poetic. The movie unfolds with headlong momentum as Brendan manipulates, fights, and staggers his way through layers of high-school society. Gordon-Levitt is excellent; between this and the equally compelling Mysterious Skin, he's left his 3rd Rock from the Sun days behind. Also featuring Meagan Good (Waist Deep) and Richard Roundtree (Shaft). --Bret Fetzer


200 Pounds Beauty (Standard Edition) DVD

  • 1 disc package (region 0 NTSC)
  • Chinese and Korean Audio
  • English and Chinese Subtitles
Crowd-pleasing romantic comedy 200 Pounds Beauty has certainly been one of the surprise box office hits of the year. Pulling in over five million admissions, it has become one of the top ten grossing films of all time and the highest grossing romantic comedy ever. Directed by Kim Yong Hwa, the lighthearted and bitingly funny film revolves around a topic all too familiar in South Korea: plastic surgery. 200 Pounds Beauty made an overnight star out of lead Kim Ah Jung (When Romance Meets Destiny). The actress charmed both male and female moviergoers alike with her sassy, yet vulnerable performance as a young woman who becomes a singer after undergoing full body plastic surgery. Ju Jin Mo (Musa) stars as her producer and the handsome object of her affections. Bolstered by the popularity of the f! ilm, the soundtrack has also become a huge hit, particularly Kim Ah Jung's catchy rendition of Maria (Track 3). The most attention may have fallen on Maria, but the soundtrack contains plenty of other great songs and popular artists. Kim Ah Jung herself also sings Beautiful Girl, which comes as a solo version (Track 1) and a second version (Track 9) with And and Alex Chu of Clazziquai. Alex offers the solo track Dance with My Daddy (Track 5) as well. In keeping with the movie's theme, the soundtrack features popular rock band Loveholic's "Superstar" (Track 4) and female singer Youme's "Star" (Track 2). Other artists on the soundtrack include Kim Hyung Joong, Venny, and U.Hanna is a lip sync vocalist for Amy, the famous Korean pop singer. Even though she is always ignored because of her appearance, she has been a bright and lighthearted girl until Amy humiliates her in front of Sang-jun, her secret love. At last she makes a decision of a lifetime to have plastic surgery all over her body. Her unrequited love gets any return?