Week of November 30

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Action Blockbusters

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is set during an endless battle between two of Merlin's students: the loyal Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) who fights for good and Horvath (Alfred Molina), who betrayed Merlin and fights to free the evil Morgana (Alice Krige). After centuries, Balthazar finds the prophecy's Chosen One who can finally defeat Morgana: a young physics student (Jay Baruchel) who's more concerned with winning his childhood sweetheart (Teresa Palmer) than becoming a sorcerer... but Balthazar has to train him to fight against Horvath (and Toby Kebbell-- his own celebrity magician apprentice) to finally end the struggle between the good Merlinians and the evil Morganians and decide the fate of the world. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Cameron Diaz's flight home from a business trip takes an unexpected turn when a dashing spy (Tom Cruise) does battle with everyone on the plane in Knight and Day, with only the two of them surviving the flight. Since they boarded and survived the flight together, the secret agent community assumes they're partners, and her life suddenly becomes a rapid-fire adventure. Though she's never sure who the good guys or the bad guys are, she has her mysterious bodyguard (or abductor) to fight off everyone chasing them as they track a whiz-kid inventor (Paul Dano) and a device that could change the world. With Peter Sarsgaard and Marc Blucas. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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Vampires - pro or con?

The third Twilight movie is Eclipse, furthering the triangle between Bella (Kristen Stewart), her devotion to the vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson), and the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) who believes Bella ought to be with him. As Bella considers eternity with Edward, another vampire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is raising an army of newly created undead to hunt and kill Bella and take revenge for her own lost love. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Based largely on the Twilight series, Vampires Suck is parody team Friedberg & Seltzer's take on supernatural teen romance, where the the incredibly mousse'd vampire (Matt Lanter) and the often shirtless werewolf (Chris Riggi) try to win Bella's affections in the town of Sporks, surrounded by pop culture in-jokes about Tiger Woods, the Kardashians, and Lady Gaga.

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Relationships

Erin (Drew Barrymore), a newspaper intern, meets Garrett (Justin Long), a record label A&R scout and strike up a whirlwind romance in Going the Distance, but she's only in New York for a few weeks; when her internship is done and Erin has to go back to the west coast, they decide to stay together in a long distance relationship. They both know how difficult long distance is, and while Garrett has his friends (Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) questioning his choices, Erin has her sister (Christina Applegate) to make her paranoid about fidelity in each others' absence. They both have hard choices ahead if they want to make their lives work, together or apart. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Patricia Clarkson travels to Egypt with her UN official husband in Cairo Time, but she's mostly left on her own while he's at work. Her husband's friend (Alexander Siddig) helps guide her as she develops a love for her new surroundings, a new culture she's never experienced, and, unexpectedly, her guide.

Slightly less romantic, Michael Sheen and Helen McCrory reprise their roles from The Queen as Tony and Helen Blair in The Special Relationship, and their friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton (Dennis Quaid and Hope Davis). As the Presidential and Prime Minister's families befriend one another and support as each sees the other through hard times in their personal and political careers.

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Mads Mikkelsen is a Norse warrior in Valhalla Rising, surviving in 1000 AD as a captive and fighting for sport at the whim of his captor (Alexander Morton). Once he escapes and takes his revenge, the warrior joins a Christian crusader (Gary Lewis) and begins an epic journey of war and bloodshed that continues the only life he knows.

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Two Disney documentaries are new this week, with Walt and El Grupo recounting Walt Disney's time in South America before America entered World War II, and Waking Sleeping Beauty focusing on the history of Disney studios between 1980's Fox and the Hound and 1994's The Lion King. Both films offer previously unavailable glimpses behind the scenes at Disney Studios.

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The second season of Parks and Recreation continues the comedic story of the deputy director (Amy Poehler) of a midwestern Parks and Rec office, and the misadventures of a small, local government administration trying to turn a construction pit into a public park.

Week of November 23

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Dangerous Men

Sylvester Stallone leads an all-star cast of action icons in The Expendables as the head of a group of mercenaries hired to overthrow the dictator of a small, South American island. Amidst the group of rag-tag warriors, all aging professionals including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Eric Roberts, conflict within their ranks is more dangerous than any enemy they could face, and when old comrades become bitter enemies, The Expendables stand against their most dangerous foes: their own former members. On DVD and Blu Ray.

A pair of men make a prison out of a nondescript apartment in The Disappearance of Alice Creed to hold the daughter of a wealthy man for ransom. They abduct Alice (Gemma Arterton) and set their plan in motion, but all three of them have different ideas about how the ransom should unfold. The powerful and demanding Vic (Eddie Marsan) wants to control every aspect of the ransom, while his more sensitive accomplice Danny (Martin Compston) is less predictable... and Alice just wants to escape, but nothing is ever certain in the balance of survival, jail time, and enough money to remake their lives.

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Eat, Pray, Love

Based on the bestselling memoirs, Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love, a divorcee who travels the world, leaving her unsatisfying life behind and seeking adventure, happiness, and love. With her ex-husband (Billy Crudup) behind her, she flies to Italy (Eat), discovers her spiritual side (Pray) in India, and eventually finds Love. With Javier Bardem and Viola Davis. On DVD and Blu Ray.

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How you see the artist...

Set during the end of The Beatles' career, Lennon Naked addresses John Lennon's (Christopher Eccleston) reunion with his estranged father (Christopher Fairbank). Falling out of favor with the press after the "bigger than Jesus" incident and suffering troubles at home, Lennon is urged to confront his father for leaving, even as he's divorcing his first wife and possibly allowing history to repeat itself with his own son.

Only recently revealed as a performance art experiment based on Joaquin Phoenix's amazement that most viewers believed "reality television" is unscripted and genuine, I'm Still Here is a Borat-style documentary of a fictional, provocative character. Directed by Casey Affleck, the film re-imagines the publicly accepted version of Phoenix into a confrontational figure tired of playing the character of himself-- his new persona scorns Hollywood, his fans, fellow actors, and the media as he attempts to reinvent himself as a revolutionary hip hop artist... with disastrous results.

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Kids

Rob Reiner's Flipped is a coming-of-age, young love story as 8-year-old Julianna (Madeline Carroll) meets Bryce in 2nd grade and is sure she's found true love. As the story flips between the girl's and boy's points of view, they progress from their young start, where Bryce wants nothing to do with girls, into their teen years as they advance into junior high and reassess what they really mean to one another.

Sam Rockwell is a divorced, dead-beat dad in The Winning Season when he lands a job coaching a girls' basketball team. The coach is reluctant and the girls are stubborn, but his former success as a boy's coach gives him a little credibility, and if he can get the girls to start winning games he might just win them over and regain a little self respect. With Emma Roberts.

A sequel to Santa Buddies, The Search for Santa Paws sends the troupe of talking puppies out into the world looking for a missing Santa, who's lost his memory and is working as a department store Santa. The puppies need to save Santa, spread holiday cheer, and rescue Christmas.

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Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is a documentary composed of footage smuggled out of Burma during the 2007 uprisings by students and Buddhist monks against the military regime in power. Lucy Walker's documentary about the control of nuclear material and its spread after the end of the cold war, Countdown to Zero focuses on the dangers of nuclear theft and black market trading, and the ways these weapons can end up in dangerous hands.

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A peaceful kingdom is terrorized by a fire dragon in SyFy's Fire and Ice: The Dragon Chronicles, and a brave princess (Amy Acker) and the son of a dragonslayer (Tom Wisdom) quest to free an ice dragon to save their kingdom from a fiery end... but dragons aren't easily controlled, and their solution may be a bigger hardship than the one they originally faced. With John Rhys-Davies.

Set during the 12th century, The Pillars of the Earth stars Ian McShane as a crafty and ambitious priest during the construction of a cathedral in England. During a dramatic struggle for power in an uncertain time in history (known as The Anarchy) the massive construction is a multifaceted symbol of power and the center of diabolical political plotting. With Matthew Macfadyen and Eddie Redmayne.

Week of November 16th

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Family Films

Robert Zemeckis brings us the newest adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol this week, using motion capture and computer animation to spin on actor into most of the major roles. Here, Jim Carrey is Ebeneezer Scrooge, but he's also the three ghosts that visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve and take him on a journey through time, learning what makes him such a Humbug during Christmas time, and what really lies within the miser's heart. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Derived from the popular animated series, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender stars a cast of relative unknowns as the children who adventure to stop the Fire Nation from ruling the world. A young brother and sister from the Water Nation find a boy trapped in the ice and discover that his is the Avatar, a prophesied leader who will help to free the world. On DVD and Blu Ray.

A sequel to the popular kids movie, Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore catches up with the super-spy conflict between household pets as a police dog (James Marsden) and his human owner (Chris O'Donnell) are recruited by secret agent dogs to bring down the supervillain Kitty Galore (Bette Midler). Led by Butch and Diggs from the first movie, the dogs have to best a cat agent (Christina Applegate), secure an informant pigeon (Katt Williams), and take down Kitty Galore once and for all. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Based on the character from Pixar's Cars, Mater's Tall Tales is a collection of shorts that let the rusty tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) tell wild yarns about his past adventures. In the shorts, Mater gets to be a fire truck, a matador, a daredevil, and more as he tells the tales that make him a legend in his own mind.

Exactly what it claims to be, The Wonderful World of Kittens is all kittens, all the time. Set to music, the film is simply kittens running, playing, jumping and frolicking.

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Relating

Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) have been raised by their moms, the stern and powerful Nic (Annette Benning) and the softer more artistic Jules (Julianne Moore). Before she goes off to school, Joni seeks out her "father," a free-wheeling bachelor (Mark Ruffalo) who donated to a sperm bank eighteen years ago, in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. Though the kids are glad to meet him, involving him in their family causes unexpected consequences for everyone involved. On DVD and Blu Ray.

Sophie Marceau is renown for writing biographies in Don't Look Back, but she wants to novelize her childhood in order to recapture a time she can't recall: she has no memory of her life before she was was eight years old. When she begins to change, both mentally and physically, into a new version of herself (Monica Bellucci), and no one can see these changes but her, she has to travel back to her childhood home to search for answers.

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Outspoken and Opinionated

Louis (Paul Dano) moves to New York City and ends up living with a colorful and wildly over-the-top male escort in The Extra Man. Henry (Kevin Kline), his new roommate, is a collection of strange opinions on life, literature, and women, all of which seem contrary to his job as an "Extra Man," escorting wealthy women to social engagements... when he takes Louis with him on these assignments, they always seem to end in buffoonery and slapstick. With John C. Reilly and Katie Holmes.

Jack Rebney, known across the internet as the agitated and foul mouthed spokesman from Winnebago advertisement outtakes, is the subject of the documentary Winnebago Man. As the film looks into Rebney's past and gets to know its subject, it explores who he is, why he's known as "The Angriest Man On Earth," and how his flowery and inventively profane language have made him a cult hero.

Set in 1912, the crotchety and argumentative Seth (Richard Dreyfuss) takes on an amnesiac lodger calling himself John Brown (Tom Wisdom) in The Lightkeepers. Though they bicker constantly, they agree on one thing: they don't want or need women around... especially since they can't seem to find any. When Blythe Danner and Mamie Gummer show up in their lives, they're suddenly at odds with their declarations.

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From the Weird

"Your body smells rank and you've got no sense of delicacy, so I'd been worried you were unpopular with the ladies. Well, I gotta go concentrate on making these bombs."

The newest film from the director of Machine Girl, Robogeisha continues his tradition of hysterically over-the-top gore combined with the most overly earnest melodrama this side of Ed Wood. Centering on sisters who have dreamt of being geisha since they were little girls, the movie follows their recruitment into a society of female assassins and their modification into cybernetically enhanced super-soldiers. They are supposed to kill terrorists... but are they on the side of good or evil?

Harmony Korine returns to form in the bizarrely non-sequitur Trash Humpers, a lo-fi experiment that combines images of violence, poetry, vandalism, manifestos, and deviant performance art that is closest in tone to Korine's own Gummo.

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When his Grandma (Loretta Devine) sends Kevin (Bow Wow) out to buy a Lottery Ticket, he finds himself in a tricky situation. Holding a winning ticket worth millions, Kevin needs the help of his friends (Brandon T. Jackson and Naturi Naughton) to avoid the neighborhood bully (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and survive the three day weekend until he can cash in the ticket and secure his Grandma's future.

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This week's only addition to our TV New Releases is the 6th season of the CBS procedural CSI: NY, rejoining the ex-marine Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his team, including Carmine Giovinazzo, Hill Harper, and Eddie Cahill.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World Review

Scott Pilgrim vs the World Review

At a time when we are bombarded with handheld camera moves and quick draw editing, few directors seem up to the challenge of taking hold of the camera to compose a shot or two. Near the top of that short list is British director Edgar Wright. Wright got his start in directing television, most notably the entire fourteen episode run of the BBC sitcom “Spaced”. Based on the loose premise of two people pretending to be a couple in order to rent a flat, the show was very stylized considering the relatively low budget.

The show was co-written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson who stared in the show as well, although Wright played a significant hand in the creation and writing process. The show was heavy with homages of films, television, and pop-culture. characters and story, which would become a hallmark of Wright’s style.

While working with Pegg on the show, they collaborated together on Wrights first feature film, Shaun of the Dead. The film was a buddy comedy sendup of zombie films. They collaborated yet again on Hot Fuzz, a tongue in cheek love-letter to buddy cop movies like Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is Wright’s first outing without Pegg, which left many curious of his ability to sustain the energy and charm of his previous works without his right hand man. This would also be his first time adapting a someone else's work. The film is based on the six book volume series about the title character Scott Pilgrim.

Opening with an 8-bit style Universal Studios logo, the film makes it obvious that the world that the characters will inhabit is a hyperreal one. No time is wasted selling the style of the film to the audience, and for good reason. Running just under two hours, there are only a few real moments to rest as the film zooms through all six book story arc of Scott Pilgrim (Played by Michael Cera) and his journey to defeat the 7 evil exes of his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers (Played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

This is by far the best utilization of Michael Cera awkward disposition since Arrested Development. That’s not to say that this is just like every other role Cera has played. As a matter of fact, I think this is his most versatile role to date. Scott isn’t a terribly sympathetic character for the majority of this film. He’s self loathing, self centered, and fairly apathetic to anything outside of himself.

It’s that kind of quality in a protagonist that makes it more interesting than the standard rom-com variety that has clear and uninteresting external obstacles, but doesn’t have much emotionally at stake. As Scott fights each of the 7 evil exes, each fight has a very specific style and purpose in helping Scott learn more about himself and what he needs to succeed. Scott’s journey hits all the emotional beats of Say Anything and the action (and style) beats of Kill Bill.

There is so much going on in this film, that many have criticized it as suffering from ADD, but looking at the lush sets and the obvious attention to detail I’d say that Wright wanted the film to reflect the pace and style of the characters. They’re young, full of energy, and heavily tied to their pop-culture. The very style of the film is a character, complete with voice over (by Bill Hader).

The most important attribute that the film has is that the film is still grounded in a sincere way that is true and honest to the characters, and geographical setting of the film. These aren’t dreamy people living outside of their means in some big expensive apartment. These are strange looking twenty-somethings, struggling to get by, dealing with problems true to their age. And it is that which makes this film able to resonate with those who may not catch every little video game reference. Edgar Wright has proved that characters and story are still most important, even when given a lush budget.

David