Tuesday, March 15, 2011

****new release list no.311

Bonjour mes merveilleux amis de la France!

In THE FIGHTER, Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale play half-brothers struggling to help each other as life threatens to drag them down…Bale is the older, substance-abuser, ex-fighter turned trainer and Wahlberg is Micky Ward, a real life future boxing champion at a cross-roads in his life. Two Academy Awards were won for this film and it was nominated for five others.

HEREAFTER is Clint Eastwood’s new meditative exploration about death. Matt Damon stars as a psychic who has the tantalizing but frightening power to commune with the afterworld.

We have a new trio of documentaries that all look awesome this week. WASTELAND was nominated for an Oscar and is about art and garbage and where the two connect. THE PARKING LOT MOVIE is a strange, funny and wonderful story about parking lot attendants at a huge lot in Virginia. WILDEST DREAM follows the lives of two men who are forever connected but never actually met. One, George Mallory, was one of the first people to attempt to summit Mount Everest and the other, Conrad Anker, found his cold dead body 75 years later. Interesting!

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS is a new Iranian film about a band trying to find new members while simultaneously trying to obtain visas to go play in London. It is ground zero for rockers in Tehran and while it plays like a documentary, it is actually a feature film, full of longing, desperation and hope.

In THE SWITCH, Wally (Jason Bateman) switches out his good friend Kassie (Jennifer Aniston)’s newly purchased sperm with his own. Oh, the humanity!

I have been mentioning here and there to some of you that Amy and I are completely gaga for SLINGS AND ARROWS, a brilliant Canadian television show from 2003-2006. Only lasting three seasons, full of just six episodes apiece, it is the tale of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival and the completely crazy theatre people who work there. Funny, sad, outrageous and brilliant, I would characterize it as the best show you’ve never seen. Had this been an HBO show, it would have been insanely huge. I have just bought a second copy of the entire series and next week I will further encapsulate the entire show. For those of you searching for something different, something you haven’t seen, something with depth and beauty and a story line that will hook you, this just might be your show.

Last week I mentioned that we are now open on Friday and Saturday nights until 10pm. Many of you asked us for this, and we listened. Please do come in during those hours so that we know that this was indeed a smart move. Also, I want to remind everyone that we are offering all of our shirts at 50% off for the next month. That is $10 for the adult sizes and $7.50 for the kiddos. Thanks everyone, for shopping at Four Star!

Alrighty, that’s all folks, hope to see you at the stores.

Love and Kisses,

Ken

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

THE FIGHTER.****BD****

Drama.

Mark Wahlberg/Christian Bale/Amy Adams/Melissa Leo.

Directed by David O. Russell.

* The story of "Irish" Micky Ward was made into an Academy Award winning film (Best Support Actor for Bale and Best Supporting Actress for Leo). Wahlberg plays Ward, a boxer from Massachusetts whose half-brother, former fighter Dicky Eklund, helped both of them regain their path to success both in the ring and in life itself. This is a true Rocky story about an underdog, addiction struggles, a fractured family and a burning desire to pummel someone in the ring.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

Drama/Romance.

Mena Suvari/Jack Huston/Matthew Modine/Caterina Murino.

Directed by John Irwin.

* This sexy erotic film is based on the last novel of Ernest Hemingway and follows a young American writer and his wife and her Italian girlfriend across Europe in the 1920’s.

HEREAFTER.****BD****

Drama/Suspense.

Matt Damon/Bryce Dallas Howard.

Directed by Clint Eastwood.

* This Oscar-nominated (for Best Achievement in Visual Affects – it didn’t win) Eastwood film follows three characters around the world who are having intense experiences with death and its ramifications. Damon plays a young man whose psychic abilities let him communicate with people from beyond, a seductive ability that he feels burdened and frightened by. Features intense tsunami footage…

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS.

Drama/Music/Foreign (Persian).

Directed by Bahman Ghobadi.

* Ghobadi (A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES) brings us this awesome rocker story about a couple of Iranian musicians trying to fill their band for a big gig in London, and having even more difficulty getting visas to make it to the gig. Wanna know what it might be like for a Western-minded young person living in Tehran right now? Check this film out.

THE SWITCH.

Comedy/Romance.

Jennifer Aniston/Jason Bateman/Patrick Wilson/Jeff Goldblum.

Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon.

* Kassie (Aniston) wants a baby, she doesn’t need a man. She turns to the sperm bank and methodically picks her donor for a myriad of reasons. Her curmudgeonly best friend Wally thinks she’s crazy. But who is crazier? Kassie, for wanting to take control of her life? Or Wally who secretly switches out Kassie’s specially-picked donor sperm with some of his own life-creating juice? Oh, the humanity!

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

THE PARKING LOT MOVIE.

Documentary/Oh, the Humanity.

Directed by Meghan Eckman.

* This little bit of brilliance is about the owner and workers of a parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. Is this an unusual parking lot? Are the workers here secret geniuses? Is there something incredibly unusual about the philosophical nature of these young attendants? Or are their secret geniuses at every little business, toiling away in obscurity, struggling to maintain their dignity in the face of disrespect and condescension? I don’t know. But we think this movie is extra funny and cool

WASTELAND.

Documentary/Art/Garbage.

Directed by Lucy Walker and Karen Harley and Joao Jardim.

* This documentary follows Vik Muniz, a successful contemporary artist, on a journey through landfills and mayhem as we learn about recyclers who pick through the garbage and find the most amazing things and use them to create incredible art. This gorgeous film was nominated for the Academy award for Documentary, and won Sundance’s award, and many other awards on the festival circuit.

WILDEST DREAM.

Documentary/Nature/Adventure.

Directed by Anthony Geffen.

* George Mallory and Conrad Anker will always be connected, although they never met. Mallory was the first guy (that we know of for sure) who attempted to summit Mount Everest, and for many years afterwards, his story ended mysteriously, without a trace. That is until Anker found his frozen body 75 years later. This documentary uses gorgeous imagery to trace their stories.

............//FAMILY/KIDS/............

BARBIE: A FAIRY SECRET.

* Shhhhh, it’s a secret!

............//THE REPLACEMENTS/............

STAR WARS IV: A NEW HOPE (DOUBLE DISC) .

TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE .

* It’s a long title, right?


TROY.

* Bradley looks very handsome in this one.

****

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