Friday Night Lights: The Fourth Season
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Box set; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
Such convenient coincidences might sink a lesser film, but The Departed is so electrifying that you barely notice the plot-holes. And while Nicholson's profane swagger is too much "Jack" and not enough "Costello," he's still a joy to watch, especially in a film that's additionally energized by memorable (and frequently hilarious) supporting roles for Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and a host of other big-name performers. The Departed also makes clever and plot-dependent use of cell-phones, to the extent that it couldn't exist without them. Powered by Scorsese's trademark use of well-chosen soundtrack songs (from vintage rock to Puccini's operas! ), The Departed may not be perfect, but it's one helluv! a ride f or moviegoers, proving popular enough to become the biggest box-office hit of Scorsese's commercially rocky career. --Jeff Shannon
What elevates She's All That above the realm of standard teen fare is its mixture of good-natured fairy-tale romance and surprisingly clear-eyed view of high school social strata. The lines of class are demarcated as clearly as if in a Jane Austen novel, but the satire is equally deflating and affectionate. Sure, high school could be bad sometimes, but it was lots of fun too; this is a! movie good-natured enough to take time out for an extended hi! p-hop da nce number at the prom. Director Robert Iscove (who also helmed the Brandy-starring TV adaptation of Cinderella) has also assembled a great young cast, including a scene-stealing Anna Paquin as Zach's no-nonsense sister, Kieran Culkin as Laney's geeky brother, and a stupidly goofy Matthew Lillard as a Real World cast member whose arrival shakes things up a little too much. And amidst all the comedy and prom drama, you'd be hard-pressed to find two teen stars as talented, attractive, and appealing as Prinze and Cook. Prinze is an approachable and sensitive jock, though it's Cook who's the true star, investing Laney with confidence, humor, and heart. Like Zach, you'll be hard-pressed not to fall in love with her. By the story's end, both Cook and the film will have charmed the socks off of you. --Mark EnglehartThis conflicted teen comedy can't decide what it wants to be. Is Drive Me Crazy a mainstream piffle about a popular girl who turns he! r grungy next-door neighbor into a dream date? Or is it a sneaky critique of high school conformity? Melissa Joan Hart (TV's Sabrina, the Teenage Witch) is angling to get asked to an upcoming dance by a basketball star, but when her plans go awry, she turns to a childhood friend (Adrian Grenier from The Adventures of Sebastian Cole) in the hopes of avoiding total humiliation. Grenier wants to win back his recently lost girlfriend, so he agrees to Hart's total makeover plan to induce jealousy. Naturally, the scam turns into something sparky. Teen flicks always make things too glossy and upscale, but Drive Me Crazy somehow fumbles its design and ends up looking false and square. The movie initially presents Grenier's transformation as unqualified good, with no sense that anything he was doing before--political protests, alternative music, rebellious pranks--had any value. But as the plot unfolds, a few barbed twists undercut the good cheer, sneakily comm! enting on school spirit and popularity. These themes wrestle u! ncomfort ably with the movie's production values, resulting in a curiously provocative jumble. This confusion is probably why the movie was only a modest success in theaters, but it's actually what makes Drive Me Crazy worth looking at now. --Bret FetzerWHATEVER IT TAKES - DVD MovieWhatever It Takes initially seems little more than another comedy with impossibly attractive teenagers trying to get into each other's pants. Ryan (Shane West) is a bit of a geek with eyes for the school sex bomb, Ashley (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), which induces cringing in his neighbor and best friend, Maggie (Marla Sokoloff), a cute intellectual girl. But popular jock Chris (James Franco) has his eye on Maggie, and he offers to help Ryan win Ashley if Ryan will help Chris woo Maggie. So begins a two-headed variation on Cyrano de Bergerac; Ryan composes soulful e-mails for Chris, and Chris advises Ryan to treat Ashley like dirt, which seems to be the only way to get her attention.
At! first, neither finds it easy to change their ways; Chris comes on too strong, and Ryan is too nervous to be a jerk. But as they start to succeed, Ryan begins to see Maggie in a new light and wonders if he's pursuing the right girl. Which could all be very standard and shallow, but as the story unfolds the movie examines staying true to yourself and finding self-worth in surprisingly trenchant and unpreachy ways. Which is not to say that Whatever It Takes is high-minded--everyone's excessively good-looking and prone to wearing tight or revealing clothing, and there's a subplot about a kid who aspires to achieve school immortality through a topnotch prank. But the movie offers more than you might expect, which sets it apart from many of the recent swarm of teen flicks. --Bret Fetzer10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU - DVD MovieIt's, like, Shakespeare, man! This good-natured and likeable update of The Taming of the Shrew takes the basics of Shakespeare's farce ab! out a surly wench and the man who tries to win her and transfe! rs it to modern-day Padua High School. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a sullen, forbidding riot grrrl who has a blistering word for everyone; her sunny younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is poised for high school stardom. The problem: overprotective and paranoid Papa Stratford (a dryly funny Larry Miller) won't let Bianca date until boy-hating Kat does, which is to say never. When Bianca's pining suitor Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets wind of this, he hires the mysterious, brooding Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to loosen Kat up. Of course, what starts out as a paying gig turns to true love as Patrick discovers that underneath her brittle exterior, Kat is a regular babe. The script, by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, is sitcom-funny with peppy one-liners and lots of smart teenspeak; however, its cleverness and imagination doesn't really extend beyond its characters' Renaissance names and occasional snippets of real Shakespearean dialogue. What makes the movie energeti! c and winning is the formula that helped make She's All That such a big hit: two high-wattage stars who look great and can really act. Ledger is a hunk of promise with a quick grin and charming Aussie accent, and Stiles mines Kat's bitterness and anger to depths usually unknown in teen films; her recitation of her English class sonnet (from which the film takes its title) is funny, heartbreaking, and hopelessly romantic. The imperious Allison Janney (Primary Colors) nearly steals the film as a no-nonsense guidance counselor secretly writing a trashy romance novel. --Mark Englehart
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Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:
"Gorgeously crafted stories."â"Nancy Pearl, NPR
"Hauntingly beautiful."â"Booklist
"Unpredictable and poetic work."â"The Plain Dealer
In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.
Maureen! F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.
In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not! sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.
Table of Contents
The Naturalist
Special Economics
Useless Things
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large
The Kingdom of the Blind
Going to France
Honeymoon
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces
After the Apocalypse
Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:
"Gorgeously crafted stories."â"Nancy Pearl, NPR
"Hauntingly beautiful."â"Booklist
"Unpredictable and poetic work."â"The Plain Dealer
âPoignant and sometimes heartwrenching.ââ"Publishers Weekly
Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor'! s choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternat! e realit y games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.The apocalypse was yesterday. These stories are today.
In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.
Table of Contents
The Naturalist
Special Economics
Useless Things
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large
The Kingdom of the Blind
Going to France
Honeymoon
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces
After the Apocalypse
Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:
"Gorgeously crafted stories."â"Nancy Pearl, NPR
"Hauntingly beaut! iful."â"Booklist
"Unpredictable and poetic work."â"The Plain Dealer
âPoignant and sometimes heartwrenching.ââ"Publishers Weekly
Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others."3 Years After" is a story about a Special Forces team put together to help our nation in a most fragile time. The post 9/11 world has forced the United States government to develop new ways to fight and counter terrorism. During the initial testing of the latest technological breakthrough, Time Travel, a catastrophic failure occurs. This strands the ! test team three years into the future. They are greeted by a n! ew world which has been decimated by war and infested by zombies.
Will the team and humanity survive?
Do they figure out what happened in time?
This is the new version that has been edited."3 Years After" is a story about a Special Forces team put together to help our nation in a most fragile time. The post 9/11 world has forced the United States government to develop new ways to fight and counter terrorism. During the initial testing of the latest technological breakthrough, Time Travel, a catastrophic failure occurs. This strands the test team three years into the future. They are greeted by a new world which has been decimated by war and infested by zombies.
Will the team and humanity survive?
Do they figure out what happened in time?
This is the new version that has been edited.In volume one of his epic post-apocalyptic adventure saga, master storyteller John Phillip Backus brings this not-so-distant vision of the future to l! ife with intriguing characters, gifted narrative, believable settings and mythic heroes and villains. Driven by a riveting storyline brilliantly illustrated by Asheville, NC artist, Chad Schoenauer, the author weaves his linguistic magic until the reader is utterly immersed in this brave new world and dare not fail to turn the next page for fear of missing out. On his own in the Wyoming wilderness, fourteen years after the End War and its aftermath nearly wiped out the human race, self-exiled survivor, Hunter Macintosh, is suddenly faced with more than he bargained for-three sisters and a child crossing the uncharted wilds alone. Suspicious at first, Hunter soon discovers they've traveled more than three hundred miles to find him, at the request of their father, Adam Planchet-Hunter's former commander and comrade-in-arms-whose besieged Colorado community is at risk of being overrun by lawless hordes! Honor-bound by a pledge made many years earlier, Hunter agrees to return with Elise Planchet to help turn the tide before all is lost. Set against the majestic backdrop of the North American Rockies, Hunter - After The Fall is an engrossing tale of adventure, betrayal and hope, where the true character of an individual is thoroughly tested and the outcome uncertain at best. Join Hunter and Elise as they battle bands of outlaws, enraged grizzlies, numbing blizzards, armed militias and their own stubborn hearts in an epic tale of good-versus-evil in a potential future all too easy to conceive!
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