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It has been said that the only person to fear is an unloved one. Precious Jones (Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, film debut) is sixteen and is about to have the second child by her mother’s boyfriend, who is also her father. She lives at home with her mother Mary (Mo’Nique, SOUL PLANE) who belittles her at every turn and treats her like a servant. She’s obese and practically illiterate. She’s ridiculed for her appearance simply walking down the street. She’s been beaten down by life so hard that she barely speaks.

Then she is given an option to attend an alternative school, where they will prepare her to take her GED. Her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain (Paula Patton, HITCH), isn’t some miracle worker teacher. She’s just the first person in Precious’s life to care even a bit. In class, the students write about themselves and their lives. Ms. Rain encourages them to think. Mrs. Weiss (Mariah Carey, WISEGIRLS) is Precious’s social worker. She’s a woman who has probably heard a thousand stories like Precious’s, but something about this sad girl really touches her.
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I will say some things in this review that some readers might find blasphemous. Stephanie Meyer’s book is unread by me and after this film production I have no desire to run out and read it. While TWILIGHT was a passable soap, the sequel is a mopey melodrama that drags through one sulky sequence after another. I know it’s a tale of first heartbreak, but none of it rings with any real emotion.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) can’t be without each other, they say. Bella wants to become a vampire so she can be with her Edward forever, but he is not ready to have her lose her soul over him. After an incident where Bella is hurt, Edward decides that to protect Bella he must leave her. Bella is devastated. Depression takes over.
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John Woo attempts to bring the legendary Han Dynasty Battle of Red Cliff to the screen. It is the most expensive Asian produced film to date. For U.S. audiences, we receive an edited version of this four hour plus epic. Having not seen the longer version, I can’t say if this is good or bad. Some of the film’s problems seem to be due to this missing hour and a half, but not as much as one might think. Even at 2 ½ hours, this is still epic filmmaking.

Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang, FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE) is the Prime Minister of the Han Empire. Some believe that he isn’t simply content with controlling the young Emperor (Ning Wang), but wants to rule himself. He claims he wants to unite all of China, but his thirst for power is endless. With a million soldiers he issues a crushing defeat to Xu Kingdom leader Liu Bei (Yong You, TRIANGLE). Liu Bei’s chief strategist Zhuge Liang, or better known as Kongming, (Takeshi Kaneshiro, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), suggests that they align with the Wu Kingdom, which is lead by its young ruler Sun Quan (Chen Chang, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON). Sun’s army is lead by the calm warrior Zhou Yu (Tony Leung, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE), who happens to be married to Xiao Qiao (Chiling Lin, Chinese model), the woman Cao Cao has desired ever since their one and only meeting as children.
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With STAR TREK arriving on DVD and Blu-ray, This Weekend’s Film Festival run downs the five best TV series turned feature films. To keep things simple, I didn’t include films based on TV characters fro sketch shows or miniseries. What are your favorites?
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CLERKS Review

Okay there is only so good a 16mm blown-up black & white film can look. For the 10th anniversary DVD, the film was restored and an HD version was made. Now we get the full extent of the restoration. It looks cleaner but most shots are still full of grain. None of the problems with the look of the film are part of the bare bones production not the transfer. The audio has also revamped for the 10th anniversary edition. It sounds as good as the source audio files can provide. The alternative and punk soundtrack takes advantage of the rear speakers. Otherwise, the sound is front speaker heavy, but what can one expect from a talky flick like this one?

As for the special features, they’re mostly from the CLERK X DVD. But that’s not a bad thing. Fans of the film can delve into the View Askewaverse for hours. New to the Blu-ray disc is “The Making of JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK.” Wait, what? In an intro director Kevin Smith explains that if Miramax was going to release yet another version of the film, he wanted to give fans something new. This 90-minute doc from Malcolm Ingram and Smith’s wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, is well worth it. It serves as a great extension of the “Snowball Effect” doc from the 10th anniversary disc. The STRIKE BACK making-of chronicles the making of that film and extends a look at Smith’s career since CLERKS. A fact I never knew before was that it was Smith who gave the script for GOOD WILL HUNTING to Harvey Weinstein at Miramax.
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CHASING AMY Review

Much like Kevin Smith’s CLERKS, CHASING AMY has done on a limited budget and it shows on the screen. The picture is grainy and focus is not always sharp. For this new 1080p version, noise reduction has lessened the clarity of the picture. Details don’t pop and sometimes images just look flat (and that’s beyond Smith’s shot selection). On the upside, the colors are far richer than they’ve ever been. One can particularly take notice of this in the crucial scene at the end when Ben Affleck’s character confronts the characters of Joey Lauren Adams and Jason Lee. It’s not the best picture presentation, but it’s certainly a step up from the DVD. As for the audio, Smith’s talky flicks are not the movies to show off the surround sound with. This one in particular is front speaker heavy. Even the CLERKS disc utilized the rear speakers better and that film had 10 times less budget.

While not as jammed-packed with features like the CLERKS Blu-ray, CHASING AMY has a bunch of gems. The new audio commentary from Smith and producer Scott Mosier is typical of View Askew production commentaries. They dissect some of the challenges or point out trivia and then spend the rest of the time cutting into each other or relating funny stories. Not as funny of the Criterion commentary, which featured the cast, but an adequate replacement and one that’s more focused on the film. The highlight of the special features is certainly the making of doc “Tracing Amy.” Presented in HD, the 82-minute doc chronicles the story behind the making of the film from how the project came together to the personal conflicts that arose during the production. Smith gets very personal about how his relationship with star Adams is forever intertwined with the production of the film in his mind.

Supplementing the great “Tracing Amy” feature is the simple two shot discussion between Smith and Adams. They cover a lot of the same subjects addressed in the doc, but it’s fascinating to see them together. Smith is greatly apologetic to his former flame and she seems to be more comfortable with being around Smith. That does not seem to be the case in the “10 Years Later Q&A” from 2007 where Adams comes off prickly toward her former boyfriend who promised her the lead in DOGMA and then backed away when the studio wouldn’t go for it. It’s still another entertaining look into the craziness of filming on such a small budget from Smith, Adams, Affleck, Lee, Moiser, Dwight Ewell and Jason Mewes. In some ways it makes up for not having the Criterion commentary. Rounding out the special features is a collection of deleted scenes and outtakes.

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Buy the Kevin Smith Blu-ray Box Set Here!

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JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK Review

JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK arrives on Blu-ray with little fan fare. Still Kevin Smith’s most successful theatrical opening to date, this 1080p release in bare bones. For what amounts to one of the better shot films on Smith’s resume the HD presentation here isn’t perfect. Details don’t pop. But one thing that Disney does well on most of their discs is color. The colors are rich and the blacks are deep. As for the sound, the 5.1 Dolby Digital track was disappointing. Of all of Smith’s films, this should have been the one that could have best utilized the 5.1. Instead the track is front speaker heavy like CLERKS and CHASING AMY. The directionality is decent and the LFE track does resonate at times though.

As for the special features, you might actually miss them. The disc doesn’t even have a main menu. The only feature is a commentary from Smith, producer Scott Moiser and star Jason Mewes, who sounds drugged throughout and who actually gets up to leave and go to the bathroom at one section. It’s not even new, but leftover from the DVD release so some of it is dated. It reveals some nice trivia and feelings about the production and as usual it’s funny, but it’s nothing spectacular. What really doesn’t make any sense is that the CLERKS Blu-ray includes a new making of doc of this film, but this disc doesn’t. And that doc is great. Oh yeah, the disc also includes “Movie Showcase,” which allows you to instantly jump to three scenes that show off the HD picture and sound. That must have been a joke, right?

In the end, the picture is better than the DVD, but the Collector’s Edition had way more bonus material to offer fans. And let’s face it — this movie was made for View Askew fans. This release really feels like a last minute production just to include a third movie in the Kevin Smith Blu-ray box set.

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Up until last year when UCLA restored it and Milestone Films released it, few people had seen Kent MacKenzie’s THE EXILES since it played three film festivals in 1961. MacKenzie had recently graduated from the UCLA Film School and was hanging out in Los Angeles with a group of Native Americans who had left the reservation for the big city. He decided to tell their story in this fictionalized documentary where the actors play versions of themselves.

Homer Nish is married to Yvonne Williams. She’s pregnant and he’s a drunk. The film chronicles a typical day in their lives. Homer sleeps most of the day until his friends show up. Tommy Reynolds is the instigator of the group, always trying to pick up girls, find some way to score some extra cash. The boys go out on the town and drop Yvonne at the all-nite movies. She often ends up sleeping at a friend’s apartment just so that she doesn’t have to sleep alone.
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Italian horror master Dario Argento followed up his classic debut film, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, with his thriller, starring Oscar-winner Karl Malden. This who-done-it throws a lot of characters at the audience to keep us guessing and gives use two protagonists to keep us wondering who the main character is supposed to be. For Argento it’s twofold, it often shows off his skills as a director, but also shows off his weaknesses as a screenwriter.

Franco Arno (Malden, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE) was a reporter before an accident turned him blind. Now he creates crossword puzzles and cares for a young orphan girl named Lori (Cinzia De Carolis, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE). On the walk home one night, they overhear two men arguing in a car. Franco hears a story. The next morning he learns of a break-in at a near-by genetics facility. The company has discovered that an extra chromosome is linked to criminal activity, which could turn criminal prosecution and genetic screening upside-down. Reporter Carlo Giodani (James Franciscus, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES) is assigned the story and Franco teams with him when murders start happening following the break-in.
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This humorous road picture tells the tale of how the Muppets got into show business. And along the way it skewers show business as well. Through wonderful songs, well timed gags and puns and cameos galore, this movie captures the Muppet spirit on a big scale and serves as one of the best examples of how to take a TV series and transform it into a big screen spectacle.

When the story begins, Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson) pines away on his lily pad about unfulfilled dreams and finding the rainbow connection to his pot of gold. Enter stage left in a rowboat is an agent (Dom DeLuise, CANNONBALL RUN), who tells him to head to Hollywood because he’s got talent. And that’s what Kermit does. Along the way he meets a menagerie of talented (and not-so-talented) animals and whatcha-call-its who share his dream.
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