- LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS:THE OWLSBR/HD3 (BLU-RAY DISC)
I Want My MTV. Think Small. Just Do It. Got Milk? Where do these phrases come from? ART & COPY introduces the cultural visionaries who revolutionized advertising during the industry s golden age in the 1960s by creating slogans to live by and ads we all remember. You may have never heard of them, but pop pioneers Lee Clow, Hal Riney, George Lois, Mary Wells, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, Phyllis K. Robinson, Dan Wieden, and David Kennedy have changed the way we eat, work, shop, and communicate often in ways we don t even realize. From the introduction of the Volkswagen to America to the triumph of Apple Computers, ART & COPY explores the most successful and influential advertising campaigns of the 20th century, and the creative minds that launched them.George Clooney (
The Perfect Storm) and John Turturro (
Cars 2)embark on th! e adventure of a lifetime in this hilarious, offbeat road picture. And now, for the first time, this quirky gem shines more brightly than ever in Blu-ray High Definition! Fed up with crushing rocks on a prison farm in Mississippi, the dapper, silver-tongued Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney) busts loose...except he's still shackled to two misfits from his chain gang: bad-tempered Pete (Turturro), and sweet, dimwitted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). With nothing to lose and buried loot to regain, the three embark on a riotous odyssey filled with chases, close calls, near misses and betrayal. Experience every unpredictable moment as it plays out in the crystal-clear sound and breathtaking picture quality of Blu-ray. Populated with strange characters, including a blind prophet, sexy sirens, and a one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman),
O Brother, Where Art Thou? will leave you laughing at every outrageous and surprising twist and turnOnly Joel and Ethan Coen, the fraternal dir! ector and producer team behind art-house hits such as
The B! ig Lebow ski and
Fargo and masters of quirky and ultra-stylish genre subversion, would dare nick the plot line of Homer's Odyssey for a comic picaresque saga about three cons on the run in 1930s Mississippi. Our wandering hero in this case is one Ulysses Everett McGill, a slick-tongued wise guy with a thing about hair pomade (George Clooney, blithely sending up his own dapper image) who talks his chain-gang buddies (Coen-movie regular John Turturro and newcomer Tim Blake Nelson) into lighting out after some buried loot he claims to know of. En route they come up against a prophetic blind man on a railroad truck, a burly, one-eyed baddie (the ever-magnificent John Goodman), a trio of sexy singing ladies, a blues guitarist who's sold his soul to the devil, a brace of crooked politicos on the stump, a manic-depressive bank robber, and--well, you get the idea. Into this, their most relaxed film yet, the Coens have tossed a beguiling ragbag of inconsequential situations, a weal! th of looping, left-field dialogue, and a whole stash of gags both verbal and visual. O Brother (the title's lifted from Preston Sturges's classic 1941 comedy
Sullivan's Travels) is furthermore graced with glowing, burnished photography from Roger Deakins and a masterly soundtrack from T-Bone Burnett that pays loving homage to American '30s folk styles--blues, gospel, bluegrass, jazz, and more. And just to prove that the brothers haven't lost their knack for bad-taste humor, we get a Ku Klux Klan rally choreographed like a cross between a Nuremberg rally and a Busby Berkeley musical. --
Philip KempFeatures include:
•MPAA Rating: PG
•Format: Blu-Ray
•Runtime: 97 minutes
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole,
300 director Zack Snyder's debut animated feature, is based on Kathryn Lasky's juvenile novel series Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Soren (voice by Jim Sturgess), a young owl, has grown up listening t! o his father's stories about the Guardians, a legendary band o! f heroes who fought to keep owldom free. But when he and his jealous older brother Kludd (Ryan Kwanten) are kidnapped, Soren learns the evil Pure Ones are once again plotting to enslave owlkind. Escaping from their clutches, he and a typically mismatched group of friends set out to find the Guardians, the only owls capable of defeating the Pure Ones. The first feature from the Animal Logic studio since the Oscar-winning
Happy Feet,
Legend of the Guardians quickly degenerates into an unsatisfying muddle of elements borrowed from
Star Wars,
The Lord of the Rings, and
The Lion King. The storytelling borders on the inept: The Pure Ones are using bats to create some sort of blue electricity that paralyzes owls, but no one ever explains what it is, how it works, or why the bats created it. The first battle between the Pure Ones and Guardians is presented as an ancient myth, yet many of the participants are still alive. Soren and his friends look up at th! e stars to navigate their way to the Guardians' island, but when the camera pans down to them flying, the sky is the blue of a summer afternoon. The vocal cast includes Helen Mirren, Miriam Margolyes, and Geoffrey Rush, who somehow manage to read hokey lines like "listen to your gizzard" without snickering. Despite Snyder's elaborate use of swooping 3-D pan shots to energize the visuals, the film feels achingly slow at 91 minutes. Too scary for small children and too clichéd for their older siblings and parents,
Legend of the Guardians ranks among 2010's most disappointing animated films. (Rated PG, but suitable for ages 9 and older: considerable violence and grotesque imagery)
--Charles Solomon
