DVD releases
Big movies coming to the small screen
By Marni Weisz
FEBRUARY 3
NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST
(pictured above)
Stars: Michael Cera, Kat Dennings
Director: Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas)
Story: After a chance meeting at a nightclub, nebbish Nick
(Cera) and lonely Norah (Dennings) spend a chaotic night together,
searching New York City for a mystery show by their favourite band, and
looking for Norah’s friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) who’s drunk and AWOL.
DVD Extras: deleted scenes, gag reel, commentary, a puppet rendition of Nick & Norah by Kat Dennings, storyboard animations
BOTTLE SHOCK
Stars: Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman
Director: Randall Miller (Nobel Son)
Story: The true tale of how California wines finally became taken seriously around the world. A British wine connoisseur working in Paris (Rickman) organizes a blind wine-tasting contest to pit French wines against vintages from the Napa Valley, and in the process gives a boost to an American vintner’s (Pullman) flagging business.
DVD Extras: commentary, deleted scenes, “An Underdog’s Journey,” “Chateau Montelena: One Winery’s Search for Excellence”
PASSCHENDAELE
Stars: Paul Gross, Caroline Dhavernas
Director: Paul Gross (Men with Brooms)
Story: Gross’s unabashedly Canadian recounting of the Battle of Passchendaele revolves around Sergeant Michael Dunne (Gross), who returns home from the First World War mentally and physically scarred. He falls for a nurse (Dhavernas) and things are finally looking up. But when her little brother decides to join the good fight, Dunne is compelled to return to the front to protect him.
DVD Extras: “The Road to Passchendaele”
FEBRUARY 10
BLINDNESS
Stars: Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore
Director: Fernando Meirelles (City of Men)
Story: When an epidemic of blindness takes over an entire city, the affected are thrown into a prison where they devolve to their basest natures. Even though she can still see, the wife (Moore) of one of the incarcerated (Ruffalo) pretends to be blind so she can enter the prison with her hubbie and bring some humanity to the place.
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
Stars: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks
Director: Kevin Smith (Dogma)
Story: Hard up for cash, platonic friends Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Banks) decide to make a porn film together for fun and profit. Can their dirty little project transform their lives into a sweet romantic comedy?
DVD Extras: a two-disc edition includes “Money Shots Webisodes,” “Popcorn Porn,” deleted scenes, commentary
FEBRUARY 17
FLASH OF GENIUS
Stars: Gren Kinnear, Lauren Graham
Director: Marc Abraham (debut)
Story: The true story of Robert Kearns (Kinnear), a professor and part-time inventor who, in the 1960s, came up with the design for the intermittent windshield wiper. But the big auto manufacturers didn’t want to give him credit for the device (or any of the profits), so he sued.
DVD Extras: deleted scenes, commentary
Jennifer Carpenter in Quarantine
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QUARANTINE
Stars: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris
Director: John Erick Dowdle (Dry Spell)
Story:
A reporter (Carpenter) shadows the Los Angeles fire department for a
night hoping to get a good story. But when they head for an apartment
building to help an old lady it looks like her report will be a snooze
— until that old lady turns on them, and the building is placed under
quarantine because a virus is turning its residents into bloodthirsty
killers.
DVD Extras: “Dressing the Infected: Robert Hall’s Make-Up
Design,” “Anatomy of a Stunt”
RELIGULOUS
Stars: Bill Maher, Julie Maher
Director: Larry David (Borat)
Story:
Political commentator, talk-show host and proud agnostic Bill Maher has
long been sharpening the spear he uses to poke holes in those who
accept religion and God as if they are knowable
and infallible
truths. In this documentary, Maher travels the world with that spear,
taking on some of the most out-there characters in the religious
realms.
DVD Extras: deleted and extended scenes, commentary |
FEBRUARY 24
WHAT JUST HAPPENED
Stars: Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis
Director: Barry Levinson (Man of the Year)
Story: De Niro plays Ben, a Hollywood producer whose career already has one foot in the crapper when the star of his next action-packed thriller (Bruce Willis, playing Bruce Willis) shows up to the set overweight and sporting a bushy beard he doesn’t want to shave.
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