****new release list no.194

Ah, yes, it is Thanksgiving week – a complicated holiday in some ways, and yet so easy to simplify. I am thankful for my place in the world, and I am psyched to eat some yummy food with my peeps.

And what is HANCOCK thankful for? Another shot of whiskey, perhaps? As Will Smith plays him, he is a drunken, clumsy mess who also happens to be a superhero. Hated by the public and super rude to everyone who criticizes him; he is a total disaster. Can a PR firm save his image and will that be enough to keep him on the wagon?

Will it be a COLBERT CHRISTMAS in your household? Stephen tackles the holidays as only he can.

Harmony Korine (GUMMO, KIDS) has made a new film called MISTER LONELY about the strange and beautiful world of celebrity impersonators. Michael Jackson meets Marilyn Monroe in Paris and travels with her to Scotland to a commune full of other impersonators. If you have ever seen Korine’s films, you know they are strange journeys in the seedy undergrowth of the human psyche where truth lies in hibernation. As he himself once put it, he loves to tell jokes, but doesn’t give a damn about the punch line.

Eddie Murphy’s new one MEET DAVE is here, as is the feature length 24 film called 24: REDEMPTION.

There is also a big batch of foreign films (BIRTHDAY, JUST SEX AND NOTHING ELSE, THE UNDERNEATH, LIFE THE WAY IT IS, A PERFECT DAY) and some great other stuff.

I will be selling DVD’s in front of the store on Wednesday and probably Friday for $6 each or 2 for $10. I have about 400 to sell, so if you are looking for a big bunch of stocking stuffers, come on down. I will have another DVD sale the week before Christmas.

Hey, we got blogged about in a new Bernal-focused blog - check it out here: Bernal Beat.

Love and Kisses,
Ken

............//NEW RELEASES//............

BEAUTIFUL OHIO.
Comedy/Drama.
William Hurt/Rita Wilson/Julianne Marguilies.
Directed by Chad Lowe.
* Tale of a family in 1970’s era Ohio struggling to accept themselves and each other.

BIRTHDAY.
Drama/Foreign (Polish).
Piotr Lysak/Andrzej Lapicki/Jolanta Grusznic.
Directed by Ewa Petelska.
* The life of a young Pole during war and political unrest as seen through his birthdays in 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1944.

BOTTLE ROCKET.
Comedy/Quirky/Criterion.
Muriel Box/Luke Wilson/Owen Wilson/Other Wilsons.
Directed by Wes Anderson.
* The brilliant debut of the Wes Anderson team finally comes to Criterion. The film focuses on a group of friends trying to pull off a simple robbery, and the problems that arise.

CHUNGKING EXPRESS.
Comedy/Criterion/Foreign ().
Brigitte Lin/Takeshi Kaneshiro/Tony Leung.
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai.
* A beautiful and lush portrait of Hong Kong in the 1990’s, the film follows a couple of cops dealing with the loss of their girlfriends.

FRED CLAUSE.
Comedy.
Vince Vaughn/Paul Giamatti/Miranda Richardson/Kevin Spacey/Rachel Weisz/Elizabeth Banks.
Directed by David Dobkin.
* Nick (Giamatti)’s older bitter brother Fred (Vaughn) is a broke loser looking for a handout. Santa offers him that handout on the condition he come to the North Pole and work off the debt.

HANCOCK. ****ALSO IN BLU-RAY****
Comedy/Action.
Will Smith/Jason Bateman/Charlize Theron.
Directed by Peter Berg.
* A washed-up drunk superhero (Smith) who everyone hates because of the damage he causes every time he tries to save something gets a make-over from a PR firm whose president (Bateman) he has saved. Coincidentally, the PR guys wife (Theron) appears to possibly have a history with Hancock. The tone of this film is like a cross between TROPIC THUNDER and I AM LEGEND. It’s funny, and it’s not, and by the end, things get pretty serious.

JUST SEX & NOTHING ELSE.
Comedy/Foreign (Hungarian).
Kata Dobo/Judit Schell.
Directed by Krisztina Goda.
* Romantic comedy about love and getting older and settling down.

LIFE THE WAY IT IS.
Drama/Foreign (French).
Maria Luiza Garcia.
Directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau.
* Very intense tale of women working in a chemical factory in Florence dealing with sexual harassment, a dangerous work environment and violence lurking shallowly below the surface.

MEET DAVE.
Comedy/Sci-Fi.
Eddie Murphy/Eddie Murphy/Eddie Murphy.
Directed by Brian Robbins.
* He’s an alien, no he’s an alien spaceship, but we all know that Eddie Murphy’s different. Either way, the ship stalls when it becomes hot for an earth woman.

MISTER LONELY.
Indie/Foreign (English/French).
Diego Luna/Samantha Morton/Werner Herzog.
Directed by Harmony Korine.
* From the writer of KIDS and the writer/director of GUMMO comes this new fairytale about a young man working as a Michael Jackson lookalike, who meets a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and goes with her to a lookalike commune where he meets Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple, among others.

MISTY.
Family.
David Ladd/Arthur O’Connell/Pam Smith.
Directed by James Clark.
* Have you been to Assateague? It is this little island where wild horses still rule the habitat. I went there as a small child and my favorite stuffy, Cubbie, fell onto the muddy ground and became ruined. I was inconsolable. My parents bought me a “new” Cubbie, but I wasn’t fooled. Cubbie was gone, and that was my first experience with death. I think this movie has something to do with Assateague.

PERFECT DAY.
Drama/Foreign (Arabic).
Ziad Saad/Julia Kassar.
Directed by Joanna Hajithomas and Khalil Joreige.
* Malek (Saad) is obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and dealing with a sleep disorder and a mother who is still dealing with the disappearance of her husband 15 years earlier. This 2005 film takes us on a journey through Beirut and the struggles of modern-life there.

SPACE CHIMPS.
Family/Animation.
Andy Samberg/Cheryl Hines.
Directed by Kirk Micco.
* It ain’t Pixar, but it’s entertainment…My kids loved it.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD.
Suspense/Criterion.
Richard Burton/Claire Bloom/Oskar Werner.
Directed by Martin Ritt.
* Wonderfully acted spy film adapted from the John le Carre novel. Richard Burton earned a nomination for the Best Actor Academy award for his performance as Alec Leamas, an increasingly disillusioned British spy working in and around East Berlin.

THE TOWN THAT BANNED CHRISTMAS.
Family/Comedy.
Matt McCoy/Jane Sibbett.
Directed by John Dowling Jr, and Karl Fink.

24: REDEMPTION.
Television Film.
Kiefer Sutherland/Eric Lively/John Voight.
Directed by John Cassar.
* Jack (Sutherland) deals with feature length period of what has amounted to be a very bad day.

UNDERNEATH: SENSUAL OBSESSION.
Thriller/Foreign (Dutch).
Magdelena Boczarska/Jaroslaw Boberek.
Directed by Marek Gajczak.
* A writer and his girlfriend go to the home of a potential employer who once vied for the same girlfriend. Tensions mount, as the writer finds himself lusting after the employers new girlfriend.

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

A COLBERT CHRISTMAS: THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL.
Television/Satire.
Stephen Colbert/Elvis Costello.
* Colbert gives us Christmas, as only he can.

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

HEROD’S LOST TOMB: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
Documentary.
Directed by Eleanor Grant.
* It’s lost; please help us find it.

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

MIRRORMASK.
* Much loved fantasy film about a battle between opposing kingdoms.

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

ZARDOZ.
Fantasy/Sci-Fi.
Sean Connery/Charlotte Rampling.
Directed by John Boorman.
* Freaky sci-fi 70’s film that a customer has been adamant that I must see. I haven’t seen it, but I bought it on DVD!

............// REPLACEMENT DISCS//............

IDIOCRACY.

LILO & STITCH.

POCAHONTAS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION.

****

****new release list no.193

Happy wintertime to you! I already have that “curl up with some hot apple cider” feeling inside. Except for Friday, when I had that “I am so lucky to live somewhere where it is amazingly warm sometimes in the middle of winter” feeling. Yeah.

Better keep the earth clean and beware of the messages we give our computers according to the somewhat dark moralistic tale that is WALL E. The animation is pretty spectacular, and this is coming from someone who used to hate computer animation. WALL E is a cleanup robot left on an unpopulated earth thousands of years after we abandoned the place to the toxic garbage we left behind. He is a quirky little fellow, with an amazing home full of trippy stuff, kinda reminded me of Maude in HAROLD AND MAUDE a little bit. His lonely existence is rocked when Eve, a little reconnaissance robot, shows up. She mesmerizes him with her lovely blue eyes, and he becomes so attached that he follows her into space so as not to be alone anymore.

In TROPIC THUNDER, we get a somewhat hilarious insider Hollywood take on the business as seen through a tragically run film set on location in some dangerous Southeast Asian country where the local heroin trade is run by a blood-thirsty 12-year old. Add Robert Downey, Jr, as an Oscar-Award winning Australian actor playing an African American soldier and Tom Cruise as a bald, curse-spewing film executive and you have a mind-bending adventure into filmmaking. Don’t try this at home! These are professionals.

Also of interest this week will be SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2! Me, I can’t wait for 3, when they all go thrifting together. Moving on.

We have a large stack of documentaries this week, a bunch of them music related (WORKING CLASS ROCK STAR, STARS AND THEIR ELECTRIC GUITARS, NEW YORK CITY BALLET, THE LAST KLEZMER, PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC: THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION LIVE IN 1976) as well as a couple of film powerhouse releases, such as from Werner Herzog ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD and Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (NO END IN SIGHT, WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR, TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE) brings his new one out, the much awaited GONZO: LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON.

There’s more, there’s more. Scroll on down.

Love and Kisses,
Ken

P.S. Skip this part if you don’t wanna hear any pontificating…

Recently, I heard that Noe Valley Video, a video store on 24th street that had long been an institution in Noe has closed their doors. Wow, how many does that make? I never feel that bad when a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video goes down, but when a family-owned independent video store closes its doors it scares me! Then I heard that Streetlight Records was closing its Noe Valley store as well. Wow, that place has been there for 30 years!

All this got me thinking about the concept of local economy as compared to the global village, which got me thinking about my own spending habits. As I have mentioned in this space before, I enjoy purchasing stuff on the internet. It’s fun, and it’s easy. And it’s really simple not to consider the consequences. However, when I think about Bernal Heights, and I hear myself tell people about it who don’t live here, I always hear myself use terms like “village” and “neighborly” and I find myself speaking about Cortland Avenue and how people smile at each other as they stroll down the street, and how so many people know each other’s names, and how unusual that sometimes seems to me.

So, as this holiday season rolls into our lives, and as we are confronted with our individual financial challenges, let’s spend locally. Let’s support our neighbors. Let’s keep our businesses in operation. Let’s keep our community strong. If yer still with me thanks for reading…

............//NEW RELEASES//............

ARIZONA SKY.
Drama/Romance/LGBT.
Eric Dean/Jayme McCabe.
Directed by Jeff London.
* Two men, twenty years removed from an unmanageable high school crush, find out that it is never too late to find love.

BACHELORMAN.
Comedy/Romance.
David Deluise/Missy Pyle.
Directed by John Putch.
* A serial bachelor scammer dude finds his powers to charm are diminished when he briefly finds real love.

BUTCH JAMIE.
Comedy/LGBT.
Michelle Ehlen.
Directed by Michelle Ehlen.
* Jamie is an out of work actress struggling to get a job. When she decides to audition as herself, she accidently scores a job as a man. This leads to many TOOTSIE-like complications that send her life into a tailspin.

THE CLIQUE.
Comedy.
Elizabeth McLaughlin/Ellen Marlow.
Directed by Michael Lembeck.
* Mean girls probably not named Heathers bring it on while Massie (McLaughlin) struggles to stay pretty in pink.

THE DEVIL’S CURSE.
Horror.
Colin Salmon/MyAnna Buring.
Directed by Alex Wakeford.
* A group of theology students attempt to prove believe enough to go to hell.

FANFAN LA TULIPE.
Action/Adventure/Criterion/Foreign (French).
Gerard Philipe.
Directed by Christiane-Jacque.
* 1952 comedy about a young handsome French peasant tricked into joining the army to chase after accolades and royal love.

GAMERS DORKNESS RISING.
Action/Adventure/Family/Comedy.
Nathan Rice/Brian Lewis.
Directed by Matt Vancil.
* Kind of a goofy slapsticky take on the whole gaming reality.

GARDEN PARTY.
Drama.
Vinessa Shaw/Willa Holland.
Directed by Jason Freeland.
* Teenagers being teenagers in one bad situation after another.

PARK.
Indie/Comedy/Drama.
Dagney Kerr/Vincent Riverside.
Directed by Kurt Voelker.
* Produced by a Bernal Heights neighbor’s sister, this film follows a dozen offbeat characters as they spend a day in the life in a park in Los Angeles. From nudism to infidelity to suicide, many topics are covered here.

PRICELESS.
Comedy/Romance/Foreign (French).
Audrey Tautou/Gad Elmaleh.
Directed by Pierre Salvadori.
* Tautou plays a gold-digger who normally just dates the rich dudes, but eventually finds someone who is not wealthy, but has a real heart proving the axiom that emotional honesty will ruin you.

SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2.
Comedy/Drama.
Amber Tamblyn/America Ferrera/Blake Lively/Alexis Bledel.
Directed by Sanaa Hamri.
* Movie two about a quartet of young women on the road to adulthood, sharing one pair of pants.

TROPIC THUNDER. ****ALSO ON BLU-RAY****
Comedy
Ben Stiller/Jack Black/Robert Downey Jr./Nick Nolte/Steve Coogan/Bill Hader/Tom Cruise.
Directed by Ben Stiller.
* Nolte plays a war vet who has written a book about his experiences in Vietnam. Stiller, Black, and Downey, Jr. play some of the guys who are on location shooting the film that has been adapted from the book. Unfortunately, things are not going so well on the shoot, and soon the director aims for a little improvisational acting by dropping them off in the middle of the jungle and having them just act out the scenes without a bunch of obvious cameras around them. Too bad the local heroin production gang is in the same woods and is not so psyched at the perceived DEA infiltration. Soon, the actors are involved in a much more real battle then they realize, but there is no way out, except to fight! This band of brothers that emerge are tougher, and wiser than when they went in. Cruise gives a terrific performance as a tough Hollywood Producer that is prepared to sacrifice the whole bunch of them and cash in on the insurance. Robert Downey Jr.’s character is an Australian so deep into his role as an African American that he has had a skin treatment rendering him black. His character is so weirdly captivating; it helps smooth over the rough patches.

WALL-E. ****ALSO ON BLU-RAY****
Sci-Fi/Animation/Family.
Fred Willard/Jeff Garlin/Sigourney Weaver.
Directed by Andrew Stanton.
* A truly amazing film, it manages to be a beautiful children’s story and a dark environmental omen at the same time. Very little dialog marks this latest Pixar release; in fact the two main character’s do not even have mouths (let alone gastro-intestinal systems). Early silent films were studies for the making of this film as they prepared to have so much communicated without the use of words. The film is quite entertaining, it steers clear of the usual scary imagery that many kids and adult movies thrive on, and introduces a melancholy longing to the genre. In essence, WALL E is a lonely robot who finds love in the form of a beautiful probe (not the one Cartmen deals with) named Eve. Dig especially the terrific credits animation sequence at the end where we are treated to a whole array of animation styles.

WINKY’S HORSE.
Family/Foreign (Dutch).
Ebbie Tam.
Directed by Mischa Kamp.
* Winky wants a horse. And, really, who doesn’t?

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

DR. WHO: COMPLETE 4TH SERIES.
Sci-Fi Television.

DR. WHO: THE INFINITE QUEST.
Sci-Fi/Animation.
Directed by Gary Russell.
* Animated Dr. Who feature following the doc as he races through the universe trying to find the legendary spaceship Infinite before bad guy Balthazar does.

HANNAH MONTANA: 1st SEASON.
Television/Shila.
Miley Cyrus.
* She’s got the best of both worlds, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

PROJECT RUNWAY: SEASON FOUR.
Catwalk.
Heidi Klum.
* Right Said Fred said it best:

I'm too sexy for my car too sexy for my car,
Too sexy by far
And I'm too sexy for my hat
Too sexy for my hat what do you think about that.

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I shake my little tush on the catwalk.

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

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
Documentary.
Directed by Werner Herzog.
* Here, Herzog takes his camera to Antarctica to meet the men and women who have left society to devote themselves to the sciences that are being studied in this hard and treacherous environment.

GONZO: LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON.
Documentary.
Directed by Alex Gibney.
* Home movies, audiotapes, unpublished manuscripts – Alex Gibney mines it all to get to the essence of the man who changed journalism forever and brought mainstream America inside the dark and musty corners of life.

THE LAST KLEZMER.
Documentary/Music/Foreign (English/Polish/Yiddish/Russian).
Directed by Yale Strom.
*A search for a great Klezmer musician living in Poland uncovers truths about the Holocaust while celebrating the spirit of humanity and the amazing place music plays in our lives.

NEW YORK CITY BALLET: BRINGING BALANCHINE BACK.
Documentary/Music/Performing Arts.
* Great in-depth look at the NYC Ballet as it travels to St. Petersburg, where one of its founders, George Ballachine, first learned to dance.

102 MINUTES THAT CHANGED AMERICA.
Documentary.
* History Channel doc on the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC: THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION LIVE 1976 .
Documentary/Music.
George Clinton/Bootsy Collins/Bernie Worrell.
Directed by Brian Blum.
* Tear the roof off the muthasucka! Tear the roof off the mutha! Put on your funkiest duds, do your hair up right, pop this DVD in and prepare to be transported to another planet.

STARS AND THEIR GUITARS: HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC GUITAR.
Documentary/Music.

WORKING CLASS ROCK STAR.
Documentary/Music.
Directed by Justin McConnell.
* The painful tale of touring rock bands these days. This doc follows three bands around and takes an intimate look at an industry that does very little to support its hard working artists.

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

BEAR SNORES ON AND MORE BEARY TALES.

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

HEATHERS.
* One of the finest films in the teen genre of all time.

............// REPLACEMENT DISCS//............

KILL YOUR IDOLS.
* Awesome doc about the New York rock scene featuring Sonic Youth among others.

****

****new release list no.192

We Win!

And enough for this week about politics.

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY arrives this week, with its crazy array of monsters and evil elves stirring up the universe as only Guillermo del Toro can. Also, this week we have the first of a bunch of huge animated blockbusters coming this holiday season. This week it is KUNG FU PANDA. Little Po must learn how to fight if he is to save the Valley of Peace from the bad bad Snow Leopard. Grrrrr! Follow the further adventures of the animated Anakin Skywalker in STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS a film that takes place between the second and third Star Wars tales and fills in some blanks on the mighty Clone Wars!

On the quirky side is WESTERN, a movie about a Spaniard and a Russian walking the streets of France and WHATEVER YOU SAY, another French film about a television producer who gets in over his head with his boss and his sexy wife.

Voyeurism plays a big role in the films CRUEL BUT NECESSARY, where a jilted housewife decides to film her entire life and MISTER FOE about a teenager who spies on people from the roofs of Edinburgh ostensibly with the hopes of solving the mystery of his mother’s death.

Also released this week are a bunch of newly released (and in some cases re-released) older films such as APPRENTICE (starring a young Susan Sarandon), THE BOYS IN THE BAND, SABRINA and ROMAN HOLIDAY.

Scroll on down to check out the new editions and the new Blu-ray titles we have added this week as well.

Don’t forget about Four Star Video while you are contemplating your holiday shopping. We have awesome Four Star Shirts and Wristbands as well as our usual Gift-Certificates on sale now.

Love and Kisses,
Ken

............//NEW RELEASES//............

APPRENTICE.
Drama/Romance/Foreign (French).
Susan Sarandon/Steve Fiset.
Directed by Larry Kent.
* 1971 Sarandon film just hitting DVD. This French-Canadian love triangle tale concerns a young criminal who falls for Sarandon, but who’s involved with the girlfriend of his crime partner.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND.
Drama.
Kenneth Nelson/Leonard Frey.
Directed by William Friedkin.
* Tempers fly in this 1970 film just getting to DVD at a party mostly populated by homosexual men when a het is accidently invited.

CRUEL BUT NECESSARY.
Drama.
Kate Albrecht/Fred Goss.
Directed by Saul Rubinek.
* Voyeurism takes a strange twist as Betty (Albrecht) videotapes every aspect of her life after discovering on tape that her husband is cheating on her. The camera, which is the entire viewpoint of the film, captures the disintegration of Betty’s life.

GAMER.
Drama/Foreign (French).
Said Taghmoui.
Directed by Patrick Levy.

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY.****ALSO IN BLU-RAY****
Action/Suspense.
Ron Perlman/Selma Blair/.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Brian Steele.
* The Golden Army is a vicious group of fighting machines intent on destroying the human race (before global warming). It is up to Hellboy to stop the evil elf intent on setting them loose. I love me an evil elf.

KATT WILLIAMS: IT’S PIMPIN PIMPIN.
Stand-up Comedy.
* Four Star favorite Katt Williams delivers snarky humor while giving you deep insight to the big pimpin’ culture.

KUNG FU PANDA.****ALSO IN BLU-RAY****
Drama.
Jack Black/Jackie Chan/Dustin Hoffman/Lucy Liu/Seth Rogen/Angelina Jolie.
Directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne.
* More CG animation! This time it is Po, a lazy pandude living in the Valley of Peace who must learn Kung Fu to from an evil and treacherous (but gorgeous!) snow leopard named Tai Lung. Voiced by many of Hollywood’s faves!

MISTER FOE.
Suspense/Indie.
Jamie Bell/Sophia Myles.
Directed by David Mackenzie.
* Tweaky Scottish film about a young man searching for the truth behind his mother’s suicide. His search leads him on a dangerous and voyeuristic exploration of the cities rooftops and the lives he can spy on from above. This dark and erotic thriller features good music, by Franz Ferdinand, among others.

OPIUM: DIARY OF A MADWOMAN.
Drama/Foreign (Hungarian/English).
Ulrich Thomsen/Kirsti Stubo.
Directed by Janos Szasz.
* Thomsen (Adam’s Apples, The Celebration, Kingdom of Heaven) plays a drug-addicted doctor working in an asylum.

ROMAN HOLIDAY: CENTENNIAL EDITION.
Comedy/Romance/Classic.
Gregory Peck/Audrey Hepburn.
Directed by William Wyler.
* Princess Anne (Hepburn – hot!) is a sheltered young princess who sneaks away from her handlers and hooks up with Joe the American News Reporter (Peck) stationed in Rome. Hijinks follow. Won three Oscars including Best Actress for Audrey in 1953.

SABRINA: CENTENNIAL EDITION.
Comedy/Drama/Romance/Classic.
Humphrey Bogart/Audrey Hepburn/William Holden.
Directed by Billy Wilder.
* Sabrina (Hepburn again) is the young hottie daughter of the chauffeur (see Monica Lewinsky) who becomes the amorous focus of attention for two very brothers who employ her dad. Ms. Hepburn almost won the Oscar again for this film in 1954. She lost (to Grace Kelley in The Country Girl), but the film did take home the hardware for Best Costume Design.

SHRED.
Comedy.
Tom Green.
Directed by David Mitchell.
* Washed up snow-boarders attempt to regain some glory when they start a snow-boarding camp.

STAR WARS: CLONE WARS.****ALSO IN BLU-RAY****
Sci-Fi/Action/Animation.
Matt Lanter/Ashley Eckstein.
Directed by Dave Filoni.
* Set between the 2nd and 3rd movies, this animated story fills in more plot about the Clone Wars and follows Anakin on a secret mission with far-reaching consequences!

THE STILL LIFE.
Drama.
Rachel Miner/Jason Berry.
Directed by Joel Miller.
* Little indie film exploring the artist’s life as seen through their intake of sex and drugs.

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO.
Action/Western/Foreign ().
Hideaki Ito/Koichi Sato/Quentin Tarantino.
Directed by Takashi Miike.
* Have you seen Miike’s movies? They are range from the uber-violent to the almost ridiculous. They generally contain fantastical plots and a lot of weaponry. This is no different. A mysterious gunslinger stumbles upon two warring factions and pimps himself to the highest bidder.

WESTERN.
Comedy/Foreign (French).
Sergi Lopez/Sacha Bourdo.
Directed by Manuel Poirier.
* Paco (Lopez) is a Spanish shoe salesman; Nino (Bourdo) is a Russian drifter. Their paths diverge on the highways of France and soon they are hitchhiking together and discovering the (drum roll, please) true meaning of friendship. Or at least that’s how Hallmark would put it. This looks really good to me!

WHATEVER YOU SAY.
Comedy/Crime/Drama/Thriller/Foreign (French).
Francois Berleand/Diane Kruger/Guillaume Canet.
Directed by Guillaume Canet.
* A young man (Canet) new to television gets involved with a powerful producer (Berleand) who submits him to strange and dangerous demands involving his beautiful wife (Kruger).

YO-YO SEXY GIRL COP.
Action /Foreign (Japanese).
Mihiro.
Directed by Daigo Udagawa.
* She’s a high school beauty working underground for the Japanese Government armed with a deadly yo-yo.

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

THE COMMANDER: SET ONE.
Television/Cops and Robbers/British TV.
Directed by.
* From the creator of PRIME SUSPECT comes this police story of Clare Blake (Amanda Burton) who is Scotland Yard’s highest ranking female cop. She heads the Serious Crime Group and the Murder Review Team. The crimes are gnarly, but Blake will do anything to solve them.

STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO: SEASON TWO VOLUME TWO.
Television/Cops and Robbers.
Karl Malden/Michael Douglas.
* The streets are tough. And steep. But not snowy.

TRACY ULLMAN’S STATE OF THE UNION.
Comedy.
Tracy.
* Hysterical mad-cap comic Tracy Ullman delivers a glimpse into her concept of American life today. Remember the original Tracy Ullman show? THE SIMPSONS got it start on that show back in 1987.

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

FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN.
Documentary.
Directed by Jennifer Fox.
* Six hour mini-series about female life and sexuality filmed around the globe.

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

I SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUSE.
* Ain’t no particular sign she’s more compatible with, she just wanted his extra time and his – kiss.

IMPY’S ISLAND.

MIRACLE ON 34TH ST (1994 Version).
* Three copies of this for the season…

PINGU: SOUTH POLE ADVENTURES.

SHAUN THE SHEEP: OFF THE BAA.
* From the folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit comes this tale of Shaun, who is no flock follower.

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

BLACK CHRISTMAS.
* Just got this Olivia Hussey and Margo Kidder horror film on DVD a few months ago. Now you can watch it in high definition.

STORY OF O.
* Cue up the chicka-bow. Super explicit 70’s tale of sexual deviancy, bondage and perversion. File this under the “movies we don’t have on regular DVD but do have on Blu-ray.”

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

SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET.
* Brad Pitt becomes friends with the Dalai Lama years before he meets Angelina and sees God.

WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE.
* Cassavetes film starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands as a couple dealing with madness.

****

****new release list no.191

Well, as I write this, it is Monday morning, November 3rd and America is perched on the edge of Election Day 2008. Wow! I can barely believe that W had 8 full years in office. How tragic.

I have found myself, as I am sure so many of you can relate, endlessly thinking about this election and what it means to me and my community and the country and the world, and I cannot shake the feeling that this election is the most important one of my lifetime. In a sense, we are perched on the edge of a group evolutionary moment. How cool is that? Yesterday someone told me that we could become the first white majority country to elect a black president. I am not sure if that is true or not, but I think the message that America could send to the rest of the world by electing Barack Obama President is tremendous.

I am not under any illusion that this will make the economy better immediately, or improve interpersonal relations, or even help create peace. I don’t think any of us can predict that. However, I do think that what it does say is that we are no longer willing to accept what we KNOW is wrong. We are no longer willing to go with the status quo JUST BECAUSE.

Does Joe the Plummer (or for that matter, Ken the Video Store Owner) understand exactly how the economy is affected by presidential policy? Of course not. Does Ken the Video Store Owner have a deep sense of how to conduct Foreign Policy? Not really. Does Ken the Video Store Owner even really understand how the Electoral College works? No, I don’t. But I think what most of the Ken the Video Store Owners DO understand is that something is deeply wrong with the way we are currently running our government.

Something is wrong with our health-care systems, and our insurance systems.

Something is wrong with our environmental policies and our ability to adapt to scientific data.

Something is wrong with our corporate structures and the ability for CEO’s to get impossibly rich while people are losing their savings.

Something is wrong with our international policies and our inability to be honest about why we are doing what we are doing.

This is not deep analysis, just basic concerns clear to anyone who reads the news.

I am not going to urge anyone to vote any certain way in this blog. I know that mostly I am preaching to the choir. To that end, I am tremendously proud of the community I live in, both on the micro level (Bernal Heights) and the macro (The San Francisco Bay Area). Just vote, vote your conscience and that’s all you can be expected to do.

I look forward to tomorrow, because I think that by the time I am ready to go to sleep, we will be looking forward to a tremendous new time in our history, a time that will likely be written about in school books in years to come. As we face the economic fears that will likely not go away right away, let’s remember that we are still living and breathing and we still have a responsibility to ourselves to be positive and spread positivity! As a community, we can get through tough times. Isn’t that one of the basic reasons we have a government?

Today, in light of the election, I have written most of the film encapsulations highlighting the special archetypes that one of the parties likes to see us as. I think it is likely you will find yourself somewhere in these capsules.

In the event that the other party wins tomorrow, all I can say is thank god for movies.

Alrighty, then. See you at the store. We’ll have snacks and drinks all evening, come by and whoop it up with us.

Love and Kisses,
Ken

............//NEW RELEASES//............

BIRDS OF AMERICA.
Comedy/Drama.
Matthew Perry/Ben Foster/Hilary Swank.
Directed by Craig Lucas.
* Morrie the Regular Guy (Perry) struggles with his weird-ass normal life and his freaky abnormal siblings while trying to make sense of it all.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL.
Drama.
Daniel Craig/James D’Arcy/Claire Forlani/Keeley Hawes.
Directed by Baillie Walsh.
* Joe the Aging Hedonistic Hollywood Star (Craig) looks back on his childhood after the death of his friend and confronts the pain that he has been hiding from his whole life.

FUTURAMA: BENDER’S GAME.
Animation.
John DiMaggio/Billy West.
Directed by Dwayne Carie-Hill.
*Bender Bending Rodríguez, the “Alcoholic, Whore-Mongering, Chain-Smoking Gambler” Robot (DiMaggio) gets involved in a deep and lethal game of Dungeons and Dragons in this the third (of four) planned Futurama films.

GET SMART.****ALSO IN BLU-RAY****
Comedy/Action.
Steve Carell/Anne Hathaway/Dwayne Johnson/Alan Arkin/James Caan.
Directed by Peter Segal.
* Maxwell Smart the Secret Agent Man (Carell) helps thwart KAOS from world domination with super hottie Agent 99 (Hathaway) at his side.

THE GOOD LIFE.
Comedy/Drama/Suspense.
Mark Webber/Zooey Deschanel/Chris Klein/Bill Paxton/Drea de Matteo/Patrick Fugit/Harry Dean Stanton.
Directed by Stephen Berra.
* Jason the Almost Normal Guy Who Has Problems Fitting In (Webber) kinda fits in with Frances (Deschanel) but not really. This character driven film about isolation features great performances from its character actor cast.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN: COLLECTOR’S EDITION.
Drama.
Raul Julia/William Hurt/Sonia Braga.
Directed by Hector Babenco.
* Valentin Arregui the Imprisoned South American Revolutionary (Julia) shares a jail cell with Luis Molina, the Wrongfully Charged Yet Correctly Characterized Transvestite Homosexual (Hurt) and through the beautiful and charged fantasy of films come to an understanding and respect for each other. This movie is so wonderful!

MOSCOW ZERO.
Action/Suspense/Drama/Mystery/Thriller.
Vincent Gallo/Val Kilmer.
Directed by Maria Lidon.
* Owen the Priest (Gallo) hires some people to look for his friend Sergei the Demon-Researcher and Looker For The Entrance To Hell who has disappeared under ground in Moscow where they encounter Andrey the Head of The Underground People (Kilmer). While there, they search for both Gallo and Kilmer’s missing careers.

7 VIRGINS.
Crime/Drama/Foreign (Spanish).
Juan Jose Ballesta.
Directed by Alberto Rodriguez.
* Tano the Fucked-Up Teenager In Juvenile Hall gets a 48 hour leave and tries to accomplish everything he is prevented from doing while in jail. In the meantime, he experiences a collapse of his community causing his ride of recklessness to turn into a journey into adulthood.

SHREK THE HALLS.
Animation/Holiday.
Mike Meyers/Eddie Murphy/Cameron Diaz/Antonio Banderas.
Directed by Gary Trousdale.
* Shrek the Big Green Ogre Dude (Meyers) stars in a thirty minute holiday Shrektastic Shrektacular Shrektacle.

TRANSSIBERIAN.
Suspense/Crime.
Woody Harrelson/Emily Mortimer/Ben Kingsley.
Directed by Brad Anderson.
* Roy and Emily the American Couple Who Travel All Over the World In Exotic Places Foreign-Relations Be Damned, get caught up in a dark world of drug dealing and international smuggling in this take on the classic train suspense film.

WHAT WE DO IS SECRET.
Drama/Rock and Roll.
Shane West/Bijou Phillips.
Directed by Rodger Grossman.
* The true life story of Darby Crash the Punk Rock Icon Who Died Early (West) ex-frontman for the L.A. band, The Germs who lived fast and died young. Produced by Pat Smear, the guitar player for The Germs.

WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER.
Drama.
Colin Firth/Jim Broadbent.
Directed by Anand Tucker.
* When Blake the Somewhat Alienated Adult Son (Firth) finds out his father Arthur the Pinched Older Guy Who Opens Up a Bit During the Dying Process, is near the end, he travels to visit him and the time they spend together helps them understand and process their lives. Based on the book by the real-life Blake Morrison.

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

DJ SPOOKY’S: REBIRTH OF A NATION.
Music Remix.
Directed by DJ Spooky.
* Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky the Trippy Hyper-Intellectual Supersonic Music Collagist DJ Guy remixes D.W. Griffith's infamous inflammatory film BIRTH OF A NATION.

GUNNIN FOR THAT #1 SPOT.
Documentary/Sports.
Directed by Adam Yauch.
* Adam Yauch, the Documentary Filmmaker brings us this snapshot in time of eight high-school basketball players competing in 2006 at an elite tournament who all have hopes of being drafted first in a future NBA draft.

TOO TOUCH TO DIE: JOHNNY RAMONE.
Roc-Doc.
Deborah Harry/Nicholas Cage/Eddie Vader (I think he is Darth’s son) – fine Vedder.
Directed by Mandy Stein.
* A rockumentary following a benefit concert celebrating the Ramones 30th anniversary right before the death of Johnny Ramone the Long-Haired Heroin-Addicted Punk Rock Legend.

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

BARBIE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

CHRISTMAS IS HERE AGAIN.

THE CHRISTMAS TOY.

EMMET OTTER’S JUG-BAND CHRISTMAS.

HIT FAVORITES: SNOW DAYS.

MIFFY & FRIENDS: MIFFY’S CHRISTMAS TREE.

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

A CHRISTMAS STORY.
* Ken the Video Store Owner’s favorite Christmas movie of all time.
-
............// HALLOWEEN NEW ADDITIONS//............

CASPER.
* First DVD of this, er, spooky film.

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

DEATH BECOMES HER.
* First DVD of the Meryl Streep comedy co-starring Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini.

MY FATHER’S GLORY.
* First DVD.

MY MOTHER’S CASTLE.
* First DVD.

............// REPLACEMENT DISCS//............

CASTLE IN THE SKY.
* Masterful Hayao Miyazaki animated film.

PRINCESS MONONOKE.
* Another super amazing Miyazaki film. Have you seen any of these? You must.

****