Friday, November 25, 2011

Flash of Genius

  • Condition: New
  • Format: DVD
  • AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
Based on the true story of college professor and part-time inventor Robert Kearns’ (Greg Kinnear) long battle with the U.S. automobile industry, Flash of Genius tells the tale of one man whose fight to receive recognition for his ingenuity at any price. This determined engineer refused to be silenced, and he took on the corporate titans in a battle that nobody thought he could win. When Bob invents a device that would eventually be used by every car in the world, the Kearns think they have struck gold. But their aspirations are dashed after the auto giants who embraced Bob’s creation unceremoniously shunned the man who invented it. While refusing to compromise his dignity, this everyday David will try the unthinkable: to bring Goliath to his knees.In the early-1990s, Greg Kinne! ar was just another amiable talk show host. After As Good As It Gets, however, Kinnear confirmed he could act. If Flash of Genius isn't as harrowing as the Bob Crane biopic Auto-Focus, Kinnear digs just as deep to play a man possessed, in this case taking on Bob Kearns, a Detroit physics professor who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Supported by his wife (Lauren Graham) and best friend (Dermot Mulroney, making the most of an underwritten part), Kearns aims to align himself with a Motor City auto maker to manufacture his device. Ford expresses interest, so Kearns secures a warehouse, but it all falls apart when they abruptly pull the plug. Then he finds out that they've added automatic wipers to their latest line. Though he patented his invention, the company denies they're using his blueprint, so Kearns takes them to court, a process that drags on for three decades. Meanwhile, his support system starts to collapse as Kearns loses inter! est in everything except the credit he feels he deserves. If t! he film succumbs to some of the pitfalls of the genre, i.e. the win-lose-win structure, producer-turned-director Marc Abraham never paint Kearns as too much of a hero. Through the inventor's brilliance, the world's streets are safer, but his tenacity also drove away some of those he held most dear. Hence, Flash of Genius serves as an inspirational story, a cautionary tale, and the perfect opportunity for Kinnear to make a potentially off-putting character sympathetic. --Kathleen C. Fennessy


Stills from Flash of Genius (Click for larger image)


 
 




City of Men

  • As Seen on the SUNDANCE CHANNEL From the team behind the Academy Award®-nominated feature CITY OF GOD, including directors Fernando Meirelles (THE CONSTANT GARDNER) and K tia Lund comes the hit Brazilian television series CITY OF MEN, a comedy/drama about two teenage boys growing up in a dangerous Rio de Janeiro slum starring Darlan Cunha and Douglas Silva, featured in the motion picture tha
Paulo Morelli's film is a pacy, bloody thriller that pays warm tribute to a diverse cross-section of American directors including Quentin Tarantino and Michael Bay. Bullets zing across the screen, heavy artillery is deployed at all times, and Morelli makes great use of the twisty favela streets during some frantic chase sequence. Silva and Cunha, who both had roles in CITY OF GOD, carry the picture with impressive ease, and while CITY OF MEN isn't an official sequel to Meirelles's lauded picture, it does! serve as a neat continuation of that film's unshakable portrayal of the violence that has beset so many young lives in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.Action-packed and fueled by Brazilian funk, City of Men returns the makers of City of God to the scene of their first success. In this case, the search for family supersedes the search for identity--not that there isn't a correlation between the two. Though produced by Fernando Meirelles, Paulo Morelli's feature isn't a sequel, but a follow-up to the four-season series of the same name. While Meirelles's movie takes place in Rio de Janeiro's past, Morelli's transpires in the present (not counting flashbacks from the show). Days away from turning 18, boyhood friends Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha, a.k.a. Wallace (Darlan Cunha), grew up without fathers. Ace has a wife and child; Wallace has a steady girl. The duo gets along with the gang that rules their labyrinthine hillside neighborhood or favela, bu! t hoodlum life holds little appeal. Ace struggles to raise his! young s on--his security guard father was murdered during a robbery--while Wallace tries to track down the dad he never knew. With Ace's assistance, Wallace solves the mystery of his genealogy, but at great cost to their friendship (and lives). Despite the South American pedigree, City of Men suggests the South Central of Boyz N the Hood more than City of God. It's not that Morelli's kinetic film looks like John Singleton's more classically composed enterprise, but that it deals with similar inner-city concerns. That said, Silva and Cunha are every bit as charismatic as Ice Cube and Cuba Gooding Jr.--if not more so. --Kathleen C. FennessyAs Seen on the SUNDANCE CHANNEL

From the team behind the Academy Award®-nominated feature CITY OF GOD, including directors Fernando Meirelles (THE CONSTANT GARDNER) and Kátia Lund comes the hit Brazilian television series CITY OF MEN, a comedy/drama about two teenage boys growing up in a dangerous Rio de Janeiro slu! m starring Darlan Cunha and Douglas Silva, featured in the motion picture that inspired this series.

The CITY is a shantytown located in one of the many mountains of Rio de Janeiro. The MEN are two 13-year-old kids, Laranjinha and Acerola. This series brilliantly mixes humor and reality to explore life in the "favelas" and in particular the indomitable spirit of two best friends growing up in one of most volatile communities in the world.Brazilian TV series City of Men is a dazzling, propulsive, and fiery exploration of life in a chaotic Rio de Janeiro slum, seen through the eyes of Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha). These two boys prove to be amazingly charming tour guides to a world by turns terrifying and exhilarating. Using the jam-packed storytelling that made the movie City of God such a revelation, the first episode alone is a marvel, merging the history of Napoleon with a cutting analysis of drug lords and class structure ! in the poverty-ridden neighborhood. The other three episodes o! f the fi rst series carry on this riveting approach, mingling social observation with rich, compelling characters. From the second series on, the show becomes less overtly political and more about Acerola and Laranjinha's passage from youth to adulthood (embracing, with humor and pathos, the adolescent boys' obsession with sex)--though every episode has some sly or startling observation about race, wealth, and gender. Each series is filmed a year after the previous one, so the boys literally grow before our eyes; it's impossible to watch and not feel deeply involved as Acerola woos a girl named Cristiane and ends up a way-too-young father, or as an innocent prank escalates into a life-and-death struggle. Some episodes teeter on the brink of silliness--one of the last ones has the boys engaging in absurd cross-dressing--but the briskness of the writing and the charisma of Silva and Cunha carry the show through. Add to this the dynamic musical score of Brazilian pop and samba, and you ! have essential viewing. World music has already found popularity in the U.S.; welcome to a masterpiece of world television. --Bret Fetzer

Desolation Angels #3 (The Big Empty)

Capote / In Cold Blood

  • Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Thai
  • Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Unknown Format)
  • Commentary by director Bennett Miller and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Commentary by director Bennett Miller and cinematographer Adam Kimmel
  • Unanswered Prayers - a documentary on Truman Capote
  • 2 behind the scenes documentaries
In November, 1959, the shocking murder of a smalltown Kansas family captures the imagination of Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), famed author of Breakfast at Tiffany's. With his childhood friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), writer of the soon-to-be published To Kill a Mockingbird, Capote sets out to investigate, winning over the locals despite his flamboyant appearance and style. When he forms a bond with the killers and their execution date nears, the writin! g of "In Cold Blood," a book that will change the course of American literature, takes a drastic toll on Capote, changing him in ways he never imagined. Stellar performances from Hoffman and Keener, as well as Academy Award® winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation) are why critics are calling Capote a "must-see movie."Bolstered by an Oscar®-caliber performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role, Capote ranked highly among the best films of 2005. Written by actor/screenwriter Dan Futterman and based on selected chapters from the biography by Gerald Clarke, this mercilessly perceptive drama shows how Truman Capote brought about his own self-destruction in the course of writing In Cold Blood, the "nonfiction novel" that was immediately acclaimed as a literary milestone. After learning of brutal killings in rural Holcomb, Kansas, in November 1959, Capote gained the confidence of captured killers Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.) and Dick Hickock ! (Mark Pellegrino) in an effort to tell their story, but he ult! imately sacrificed his soul in the process of writing his greatest book. Hoffman transcends mere mimicry to create an utterly authentic, psychologically tormented portrait of an insincere artist who was not above lying and manipulation to get what he needed. Bennett Miller's intimate direction focuses on the consequences of Capote's literary ambition, tempered by an equally fine performance by Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, Capote's friend and the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who served as Capote's quiet voice of conscience. Spanning the seven-year period between the Kansas murders and the publication of In Cold Blood in 1966, Capote reveals the many faces of a writer who grew too close to his subjects, losing his moral compass as they were fitted with a hangman's noose. --Jeff ShannonOn November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from th! eir faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged from the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansa.

In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people. It has already been hailed as a masterpiece.In Cold Blood was a groundbreaking work when released in 1966. With it, author Truman Capote contributed to a style of writing in which the reporter gets so far inside the subject, becomes so familiar, that he projects events and conversations as if he were really there. The style has probably never been accomplished better than in this book. Capote combined painstaking research with a narrative feel to produce one of the most spellbinding stories ever put on the page. Two two-tim! e losers living in a lonely house in western Kansas are out t! o make t he heist of their life, but when things don't go as planned, the robbery turns ugly. From there, the book is a real-life look into murder, prison, and the criminal mind.Capote Famed author Truman Capote befriends two murderers while researching his celebrated book "In Cold Blood" - and finds himself changed to the core. In Cold Blood The powerful true story of a callous murder from the minds of the criminals who performed it. Based on Truman Capote's best-selling novel.A landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the the short story. This first-ever compendium features a never-before-published 1950 story, “The Bargain,” as well as an introduction by Reynolds Price. Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of ! Capote’s oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate. Reading them reminds us of the miraculous gifts of a beloved American original.When a horrific murder rocks the peaceful community of Holcomb, Kansas, legendary writer Truman Capote is inspired to record the shocking true story in his novel IN COLD BLOOD. Capote--accompanied by fellow wordsmith Nell Harper Lee (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD)--travels to the Midwest in search of answers, and ends up becoming emotionally involved with one of the killers as they await trial.

The Best Laid Plans: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780345491190
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what go! od an honest M.P. who doesn’t care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are hilarious â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn’t car! e about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are! hilario us â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.


From the Trade Paperback edition.Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner!

This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good â€" a terrific Canadian political satire.

Here’s the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election â€" but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock â€" an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers â€" to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on.

Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn’t care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results a! re hilarious â€" and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.


From the Trade Paperback edition.From Lynn Schnurnberger, bestselling co-author of Mine Are Spectacular! and The Botox Diaries, comes a novel of big secrets, family ties, and a reminder that sometimes The Best Laid Plans can lead to delightful surprises.

Tru Newman is one of the Upper East Side “M&Ms”â€"the wealthy stay-at-home moms who are into personal Maintenance and Mothering. Having been raised by a beauty queen mother who constantly picked on her, Tru loves looking after her investment banker husband, Peter, and their twin teen daughters. But her perfect world spins off its axis the night Tru throws a charity benefit and discovers that Peter’s been out of work for three months. Even worse, the family’s been living on a house of cardsâ€"specifically, Visa and Amexâ€"that’s about t! o collapse.

Suze Orman tells Tru to “Get a job!” B! ut doing what? When Tru’s best friend, Sienna Post, loses her position as an anchor on the local nightly news, the two hatch a profitable if illegal plan: They’ll open an escort service with “working girls” all over the age of forty. Modeling themselves on Carla Bruni (“after she married the president of France, not before, when she was dating Mick Jagger”), their smart, sexy, seasoned escorts become a big hit with a roster of thirty-year-old clients.

If only Tru’s legit life could fall so easily into place: Her husband’s new job has him working side by side with a flirtatious neighbor, her fourteen-year-old twins are competing over a two-timing, Clearasil-using Casanova, and after suffering a heart attack in her bodybuilding class, Tru’s hypercritical mother moves in with her. Not to mention that the gossip columns get wind that Tru and Sienna’s “temp agency” isn’t on the up-and-upâ€"and the DA is on their case. 

But for the savvy and spir! ited Tru, these new obstacles bring unexpected benefitsâ€"from Geisha facials, to massage toys that are “better than chocolate,” to the realization that at midlife, she’s more comfortable than ever before in her own skin and more grateful for all that she has. By turns touching and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a must-read for every woman who knows it’s never too late to make a fresh start.

Heartbreaker

Emperor Penguin Chicks Boxed Christmas Cards, 12 Cards

  • Inside greeting: Season's Greetings
  • 12 full color 4.75 x 6.75 inch christmas cards with 13 envelopes
  • A portion of the proceeds from these holiday cards supports the Sierra Club
  • Printed on recycled paper with soy based inks
A teacher at an all-boys prep school makes a rebellious student his main focus.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 21-JUN-2005
Media Type: DVDComparisons to Dead Poets Society are inevitable, but The Emperor's Club achieves a rich identity all its own. In the honorable tradition of great teacher dramas like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Kevin Kline is well cast as Mr. Hundert, longtime teacher of classics and assistant headmaster of St. Benedict's Academy for Boys. There he encounters a defiant student and senator's son (Emile Hirsch) who desperately needs--but ultimately rejects--H! undert's lessons on leadership, integrity, and the shaping of character. Adapted from Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," the film is conventional to a fault, its flashback structure unfolding in Hollywood shorthand. But its noble sentiments remain potently intact, allowing Kline a performance of great emotional nuance while imparting lessons of universal value. "This is a story with no surprises," as Hundert says, but The Emperor's Club may surprise you with its admirable portrait of a life well lived. --Jeff ShannonBased upon Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," this movie stars Oscar®-winner Kevin Kline as William Hundert, a passionate and disciplined classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world altered when a new student challenges his principles, resulting in a life lesson that will still haunt him 25 years later. Directed by Michael Hoffman, the film stars Kevin Kline, Steven Culp, Embeth Davidtz, Patrick Dempsey, Joel Gr! etsch, Edward Herrmann, Emile Hirsch, Rob Morrow, and Harris Y! ulin. In the Newmarket Shooting Script® format, this book includes the complete screenplay, movie stills, production notes, and cast and crew credits. 25 b/w photos.Barbie and Kira are in the beautiful Japanese city of Kyoto, making a movie about the ancient tea ceremony. But when mysterious messages appear, Barbie must piece together the clues and mend an old family feud. The best part, for Barbie, about solving a mystery is getting the chance to help others!!This is the most talked about fiction debut in years: a large, suspense-laden thriller that is also a novel of brilliantly astute social observation focusing on two fascinating worlds: that of the New York-Washington black upper middle class, and the complex world of an Ivy League law school. Judge Oliver Garland has just died in suspicious circumstances. Conservative and famously controversial, Garland has made many enemies. Many years ago, he'd earned a judge's highest prize: a Supreme Court nomination. But in a scene of bi! tter humiliation in front of a televised audience and before the eyes of his family, he had to withdraw his nomination. It was a national scandal, and a private agony, one from which he never recovered. Now, years later, the judge's death raises even more questions than his life did and seems to be leading to a second, even more terrible scandal. Could he have been murdered? He has left a strange message for his son Talcott, a professor at an elite Ivy League law school - entrusting him with 'the arrangements' - a mysterious puzzle that only Tal can unlock, and only by unearthing the ambiguities of his father's turbulent past. When another man is found dead, and then another, Talcott must risk life, marriage and reputation, following the clues his father left him. Intricate, superbly written, often scathingly funny, "The Emperor of Ocean Park" is a triumphant work of fiction, a brilliantly crafted tapestry of ambition, family secrets, murder, and justice gone terribly wron! g.A complex, smart mystery filled with intrigue, drama, and mo! re than a little danger awaits in Stephen L. Carter's engaging debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park. After the funeral of his powerful father (a federal judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court became a public scandal), Talcott Garland, an African American law professor at an Ivy League university, is left to unravel the meaning of a cryptic note and carry out "the arrangements" his father left behind. Armed with fortitude and familial devotion--though paranoid of his wife's fidelity--Talcott soon finds himself in an investigation that entangles him with a number of questionable Washington, D.C., denizens, including attorneys and government officials, law professors, the FBI, shady underworld figures, chess masters, and friends and family. All the while Talcott tries not to hurt his attorney wife's chance for a judicial nomination--and their fragile marriage--but the closer he comes to unraveling his father's dark secrets, the more dangerous things be! come.

Clocking in at over 650 pages, the novel could easily have been streamlined; many of Talcott's thoughts are unnecessarily repeated. But Carter's storytelling skills are adept: tension builds, surprises are genuine, clues are not handed out freely. The prose, while somewhat meandering, can be crisp and insightful, as demonstrated in Carter's description of the misguided paths of young attorneys who sacrifice

all on the altar of career... at last arriving... at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realizing that they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the rest of their wretched lives.
--Michael Ferch Comparisons to Dead Poets Society are inevitable, but The Emperor's Club achieves a rich identity all its own. In the honorable trad! ition of great teacher dramas like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, ! Kevin Kl ine is well cast as Mr. Hundert, longtime teacher of classics and assistant headmaster of St. Benedict's Academy for Boys. There he encounters a defiant student and senator's son (Emile Hirsch) who desperately needs--but ultimately rejects--Hundert's lessons on leadership, integrity, and the shaping of character. Adapted from Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," the film is conventional to a fault, its flashback structure unfolding in Hollywood shorthand. But its noble sentiments remain potently intact, allowing Kline a performance of great emotional nuance while imparting lessons of universal value. "This is a story with no surprises," as Hundert says, but The Emperor's Club may surprise you with its admirable portrait of a life well lived. --Jeff ShannonA teacher at an all-boys prep school makes a rebellious student his main focus.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 21-JUN-2005
Media Type: DVD! Comparisons to Dead Poets Society are inevitable, but The Emperor's Club achieves a rich identity all its own. In the honorable tradition of great teacher dramas like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Kevin Kline is well cast as Mr. Hundert, longtime teacher of classics and assistant headmaster of St. Benedict's Academy for Boys. There he encounters a defiant student and senator's son (Emile Hirsch) who desperately needs--but ultimately rejects--Hundert's lessons on leadership, integrity, and the shaping of character. Adapted from Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," the film is conventional to a fault, its flashback structure unfolding in Hollywood shorthand. But its noble sentiments remain potently intact, allowing Kline a performance of great emotional nuance while imparting lessons of universal value. "This is a story with no surprises," as Hundert says, but The Emperor's Club may surprise you with its admirable portrait of a life well lived. -! -Jeff ShannonPhotograph by Daisy Gilardini. A portion of t! he proce eds from the sale of this product supports the Sierra Club. Inside message is Season's Greetings. Includes 12 cards and 13 envelopes.
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