Surfer, Dude
January 20, 2009
With his laid-back, bohemian reputation, cultivated by his break-out performance in Dazed and Confused (1993), being cast a professional surfer seems like the role of a lifetime for Matthew McConaughey. Surfer, Dude (2008) was a personal, pet project...
Funny Face: Centennial Collection
January 16, 2009
Funny Face (1957) started as a 1927 Broadway musical starring Fred Astaire with songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Paramount Pictures decided to remake it into a film starring Astaire and based on an unproduced musical play by Leonard Gershe. MGM was originally...
Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Centennial Collection
January 9, 2009
Based on the novella by Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) is one of those classic, quintessential New York City films, like Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The World of Henry Orient (1964), and Manhattan (1979). These films are all snapshots...
Burn After Reading
December 19, 2008
As they did with Fargo (1996), the Coen brothers followed up the Academy Award-winning crime thriller No Country For Old Men (2007) with a comedy, in this case Burn After Reading (2008), a farce set in Washington, D.C. The Coens have adhered to the pattern...
Bottle Rocket: Criterion Collection
December 12, 2008
Bottle Rocket (1996) saw the auspicious debut of a uniquely talented filmmaker with his own distinctive cinematic worldview. Wes Anderson made a very personal film with several of his friends starring in it, most notably brothers Luke and Owen Wilson,...
Fanfan la Tulipe: Criterion Collection
December 5, 2008
Adapted from a beloved French story dating back to an 1819 song, Fanfan la Tulipe (1952) is a French swashbuckling bodice-ripper, an action-adventure film as if written by Oscar Wilde – in other words, all kinds of amusing double entrendes and bawdy...
Sabrina: The Centennial Collection
December 2, 2008
Based on Samuel Taylor’s play, Sabrina Fair, Sabrina (1954) was Audrey Hepburn’s follow-up to Roman Holiday (1953), her very successful Hollywood film debut. On this next one, she would be directed by Billy Wilder and starring alongside Humphrey Bogart...
Roman Holiday: The Centennial Collection
December 1, 2008
With only play to her credit, Audrey Hepburn was cast as the star of Roman Holiday (1953) after first choices Elizabeth Taylor and Jean Simmons were unavailable. Having never taken any acting classes or had any formal training, she went on to win the...
Tropic Thunder: 2-Disc Director’s Cut
November 25, 2008
For the last few years, Ben Stiller has been coasting on his patented, one-note neurotic doormat shtick in films like Night at the Museum (2006), The Heartbreak Kid (2007), and others. What happened to the guy who could play a self-destructive junkie...
Spin City: The Complete First Season
November 20, 2008
Before he had critical and commercial success with the Scrubs television program, Bill Lawrence co-created Spin City with Gary David Goldberg, himself no stranger to producing a hit T.V. series with the huge triumph that was Family Ties. Spin City saw...
