****new release list no.179

THIS FRIDAY, AUGUST 15th: come see AIR GUITAR NATION at our backyard screening room. This move is one of the funniest and most brilliant documentaries you will ever see. Each time C-Diddy performs you will ask yourself, can it really be this awesome? Yes, it can. Doors open at 8:45, film starts at 9:00pm.

Hey checkit! One of our customers blogged about us: Read her excellent well-informed anti-consumption blog here.

Can you believe it is mid-August already? 2008? Not only is the year whipping by, but somehow even the summer is coming to a close. Camps are in their last several weeks, summer programs have reached their finals, school is starting at every level, hell, even baseball is winding down. Yes, it is mid-august and that can really only mean one thing:

THE WIRE: THE COMPLETE 5^th SEASON is here! Yes, let the rush begin. The final season of the most popular show of all time is in circulation and that means the frenzied run on this show will make its final savage attack. We are locked and loaded, so come on in. Sadly, I will miss this first week, as the Shelves are on vacation in Seattle (on the plane as I type).

Lots of other movies out this week, starting with the somewhat erroneously named SMART PEOPLE starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church and it-girl of the moment Ellen Page. Also some new stand-up comedy (BRIAN REGAN, and VINCE VAUGHN’S WILD WEST), as well as a beautiful looking Italian comedy (THE ORANGE THIEF) and a pair from acclaimed Russian director Larisa Shepitko. There is also some indie comedy (ELECTRIC APRICOT: QUEST FOR FESTEROO and THE TROUBADOURS).

We have a little batch of family movies led by a domestic doggy film (FRANK) and a foreign ubiquitous alien film (CJ7), and a smattering of other kids stuff like MULAN, MULAN 2, PLAY WITH ME SESAME and NI HAO KAI-LAN: SUPER SPECIAL DAYS.

There is a much anticipated doc about a surf gang in Australia (THE BRA BOYS) as well as some other great looking docs (BRUCE NAUMAN: MAKE ME THINK, POISONED BY POLONIUM: THE LITVINENKO FILE (about an assassinated Russian spy), THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES and MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI). There is also more television (PRISON BREAK: 3^rd SEASON, 30 DAYS: 2^nd SEASON, and SOUTH PARK: 11^th SEASON). Also don’t miss the freak cult fave FORBIDDEN ZONE made by little Danny Elfman’s brother Richard. Whoop whoop.

Also, on the Blu-ray front, 14 more titles coming in on Tuesday. I think that makes about 45 titles we carry on Blu-ray, including about 15 2008 releases and the rest older favorites. Are you renting these? If you are, and you wish I had something that I don’t, please let me know. I try to get at least a couple new titles each week, but it is always nice to fulfill the wish of one of you.

Love and kisses,

Ken

............//MOVIE OF THE WEEK//............

THE WIRE: THE COMPLETE 5^th SEASON.
Television/Crime/Actuality.
* You know what? I’ve never seen this show! So technically, I am not qualified to write about it. Instead of some hogwash that I have pilfered from the internet, I thought I would just give you my impressions from talking to literally hundreds of people about the THE WIRE. It’s the most rented show ever at Four Star Video. Seriously, there are days when one out of every ten dvd’s we rent is a WIRE disc. The show is very gritty and very realistic and slow with enormous set-ups that sometimes take quite a long time to play out. The show itself is about the fabric of society. It is about life in the city of Baltimore, but in a sense, it could be about life in any cold and hard city. Each season has focused on different elements of Baltimore itself, the schools, the longshoreman, crime, politics. There are many characters, some of whom are terrible; all of whom are three-dimensional with complicated motivations and internal struggles. The show is addictive, amazingly addictive. It’s probably time for you to take a deep breath and jump on in.

............//NEW TITLES//............

THE BOY’S AND GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING DOWN.
Comedy..
Cricket Leigh/Kat Turner
Directed by Paul Sapiano.
* 20-nothings, snorting coke and screwing each other in the most goofy manner possible.

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN.
Drama/FantasyHorror/Criterion.
Guy Maddin.
Directed by Guy Maddin.
* Very trippy Canadian flick made by the same Guy who made THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (another quite trippy film). This one is about a man who revisits an island where his parents used to run an orphanage, and his father used to experiment on the children.

BRIAN REGAN: STANDING UP.
Comedy/Stand-Up.
Brian Regan.
Directed by Troy Miller.
* From your peeps at Comedy Central.

CJ7.
Comedy/Sci-Fi/Family/Foreign (Cantonese).
Stephen Chow/Xu Jiau/Kitty Zhang.
Directed by Stephen Chow.
* Aha! A little toy that a poor man finds in a junkyard, is really an alien creature with strange and mysterious powers that helps the man’s family learn important life lessons. Why doesn’t this ever happen to me?

ELECTRIC APRICOT: QUEST FOR FESTEROO.
Comedy/Farce.
Dian Bachar/Mike Gordon/Seth Green.
Directed by Les Claypool (of Primus).
* A SPINAL TAPish spoof of rock bands written and directed by a pretty awesome bass player who is also pretty goofy. Released by National Lampoon. Critics says this is pretty freaking funny.

FELON.
Action/Drama.
Val Kilmer/Stephen Dorff/Sam Shepherd.
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh.
* Dude kills a guy who is trying to rob his house and ends up in jail dealing with all that entails.

FRANK.
Family.
John Gries/Cynthia Watros.
Directed by Douglas Cheney.
* Heartwarming tale of a stray dog who brings a family back together.

LARISA SHEPITKO COLLECTION.
Drama/Criterion/Foreign (Russian).
Directed by Larisa Shepitko.
* Two from Shepitko, a Russian filmmaker. Featuring 1966’s WINGS, a portrayal of a fighter pilot aging restlessly and 1977’s ASCENT a frightening tale of two starving WWII soldiers heading to a farmhouse to find food while also trying to avoid the Nazi’s.

THE LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE.
Comedy/Horror/Vampire.
Directed by P.J. Pesce.
* Twenty years later, a sequel to the very enjoyable 1987 treat, THE LOST BOYS.

THE ORANGE THIEF.
Comedy/Foreign (Italian).
Andrea Calabrese.
Directed by Vinnie Angle and Boogie Dean and Arthur Wilinkski.
* A madcap Italian comedy about poor country fruit thieves.

THE SEARCH FOR JOHN GISSING.
Comedy/Drama.
Alan Rickman /Mike Binder/Janeane Garofalo.
Directed by Mike Binder.
* Cult comedy about corporate hijinks.

THE SECRET.
Horror/Suspense.
David Duchovny (Why won’t you love me?)/Olivia Thirlby/Lili Taylor.
Directed by Vincent Perez.
* In this remake of a Japanese movie, a dead mother’s spirit comes back to inhabit her 16- year-old daughter’s hot little body causing bad juju between her and her father. Yikes.

SMART PEOPLE.
Comedy/Drama.
Dennis Quaid/Sarah Jessica Parker/Thomas Haden Church/Ellen Page.
Directed by Noam Murro.
* From the Producers of SIDEWAYS comes this biting comedy about a professor (QUAID) who is so wrapped up in himself that he can’t see the wood for the trees. Circumstances open his eyes to his life around him. With Thomas Haden Church as his adopted brother and Ellen Page (JUNO) playing another witty teenager.

TROUBADOURS.
Drama/Comedy.
Tom Galasi/Patrick Zielinski.
Directed by Tom Galasi and Adam Galaski and Tom Snyder.
* Award-winning super low-budge film that found distribution (!) about an out-of-work drummer heading back from the big city (after breaking up with his girlfriend) to the mid-west where his quest is to find himself.

VINCE VAUGHN’S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW
Comedy.
* Vince and pals do stand up across the country.

............//DOCUMENTARY//............

BRA BOYS.
Documentary.
Narrated by Russell Crowe.
Directed by Sunny Abberton.
* About a notorious surf gang called the Bra Boys, kinda sounds like an Australian version of DOG TOWN AND Z-BOYS.

BRUCE NAUMAN: MAKE ME THINK.
Documentary
Directed by Heinz Peter Schwerfel.
* From Amazon: “Visit the challenging world of Bruce Nauman, a multi-faceted artist who believes that the importance of a work of art is in the process of making it. With this philosophy at the core of his work, he became a major player in the conceptual art movements of the 20th century. Using a diversity of media, including sculpture, video, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman has used his art to examine the major questions of life, mapping the human experience from birth to death. As in his 1983 neon sculpture consisting of the words Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain, his work focuses on the essential elements of the human experience. MAKE ME THINK features 60 works of art from Nauman s career, including his early film projections and video installations Clown Torture and Anthro/Socio. It also chronicles the development of a piece titled Violent Incident, which Nauman calls a video sculpture.” Sounds pretty wild.

MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI.
Documentary/Sports.
* PBS special on Ali and his formative years in Miami transforming him from Cassius Clay into superstar Muhammad Ali.

POISONED BY POLONIUM: THE LITVINENKO FILE
Documentary/Foreign (Russian/English).
Alexander Litvinenko.
Directed by Andrei Nekrasov.
* The story of the former Russian spy Litvinenko who was forced into exile and eventually killed by being poisoned in 2006 with this gnarly radioactive substance.

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
Documentary.
Directed by Adam Curtis.
* The complete three part doc about the use of fear for political gain. I have only seen part one, but it was fascinating and frightening.

............//TELEVISION//............

PRISON BREAK: SEASON 3.
Television/Crime.
Dominic Purcell/Wentworth Miller.
* Season three of the popular show about a wrongly imprisoned guy and his brothers attempts to break him out. One of the characters is named T-Bag. I think that’s funny.

SOUTH PARK: COMPLETE 11^th SEASON.
Television/Animation/Demented Humor.
Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
* More craziness in the town of South Park from those total kooks.

30 DAYS: 2^nd SEASON.
Television/Realityish.
Morgan Spurlock.
* This show is weird.

THE WIRE: THE COMPLETE 5^th SEASON.
* See Release of the Week.

............//FAMILY//............

MULAN: SPECIAL EDITION.
Family.

MULAN 2: SPECIAL EDITION.
Family.

NI HAO KAI-LAN: SUPER SPECIAL DAYS.
Family.

PLAY WITH ME SESAME: FURRY FUN & HEALTHY TOO.
Family.

............//NEW ADDITIONS//............

FORBIDDEN ZONE.
Zany/Cult/Comedy/Animation/Fantasy/Musical.
Herve Villachaize.
Directed by Richard Elfman (Danny’s brother).
* When a customer recently pointed out that we did not have this film, it was immediately purchased. This crazy journey into the 6^th dimension is one that should not be missed by any true cineophile.

............//BLU-RAY NEW ADDITIONS//............

APOCALYPTO.

BAD SANTA.

CARS.

CASANOVA.

DINOSAUR.

GANGS OF NEW YORK.

HELLBOY.

HIDALGO.

KING ARTHUR (DIRECTOR’S CUT).

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL.

RATATOUILLE.

UNBREAKABLE.

............//REPLACEMENT PURCHASES//............

ENTOURAGE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON.
* Replacement copies..

VERONICA MARS: COMPLETE 2^nd and 3^rd SEASONS.
* Replacement copies.

****