Movies

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1; English, DTS 5.1 ES; French, Unknown

Subtitles: Spanish, Japanese, Georgian, Chinese

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: In the year 2003, Uma Thurman will kill Bill

Summary: The lead character, called 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, lead by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, and on the day of their wedding was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill (with the assistance of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad). Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby. The saga of Kill Bill Volume I begins.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1; English, DTS

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Summary: The Bride woke up after a long coma. The baby that she carried before the coma was gone. The only thing on her mind was to get revenge on the assassination team that betrayed her - a team she was once part of. With two of the people on her Death List taken care of, she must pursue Budd, Elle Driver and of course Bill himself. But she is in for a surprise...

Sound: Mono

Comments: A hilarious study in the gentle art of murder.

Summary: Louis Mazzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family D'Ascoyne, but she ran away with an opera singer. Therefore, she and Louis were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and him, by becoming the next Duke of the family. Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieve his goal...

Sound: Dolby

Comments: As the sand shifts...madness nears.

Summary:

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 1.0; Commentary by Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, with interpolated interview excerpts of Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray, Unknown

Subtitles: English, Spanish, French

Sound: Mono

Comments: A Monster of Creation's Dawn Breaks Loose in Our World Today!

Summary: Carl Denham needs to finish his movie and has the perfect location; Skull Island. But he still needs to find a leading lady. This 'soon-to-be-unfortunate' soul is Ann Darrow. No one knows what they will encounter on this island and why it is so mysterious, but once they reach it, they will soon find out. Living on this hidden island is a giant gorilla and this beast now has Ann is it's grasps. Carl and Ann's new love, Jack Driscoll must travel through the jungle looking for Kong and Ann, whilst avoiding all sorts of creatures and beasts.

Languages: French, Dolby Digital 5.1; English, Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles: French

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: The eighth wonder of the world.

Summary: Carl Denham (Black) needs to finish his movie and has the perfect location; Skull Island. But he still needs to find a leading lady. This 'soon-to-be-unfortunate' soul is Ann Darrow (Watts). No one knows what they will encounter on this island and why it is so mysterious, but once they reach it, they will soon find out. Living on this hidden island is a giant gorilla and this beast now has Ann is it's grasps. Carl and Ann's new love, Jack Driscoll (Brody) must travel through the jungle looking for Kong and Ann, whilst avoiding all sorts of creatures and beasts. But Carl has another plan in mind.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

Subtitles: English, Spanish, French

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

Comments: Over 3 1/2 Hours of Behind the Scenes Footage From "King Kong"

Summary:

Sound: DTS-ES

Comments: Kiss Fear Goodbye

Summary: In Kiss of the Dragon, Chinese undercover agent Jet Li chops his way through Paris after he's framed in some sketchily defined drug sting operation. The fight sequences are tough and quite brutal, and the over-the-top finale is arguably worth the price of admission, wherein an implacable Li takes on the entire Paris Police Bureau, working his way up toward police chief Tchéky Karyo's office through cops, a pair of peroxide-blond twin henchmen, and a whole class of kung fu cadets. Coscreenwriter Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) should know by now what makes for a nifty genre piece, but the woeful dialogue is a shame, and there aren't nearly enough action sequences to get your blood boiling. Poor Bridget Fonda gives it the old-school try in a thankless role as an ex-junkie prostitute from the Midwest whose young daughter is being held captive by duplicitous police chief/drug lord/pimp Karyo (who fairly inhales the scenery). Director Chris Nolan might have pushed further the strangers-in-a-strange-land camaraderie between Li and Fonda, but the script still would've sunk him. --Steve Wiecking
On the DVD:Kiss of the Dragon is a film that relies on its superbly choreographed fight scenes, so luckily the anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 widescreen presentation is spotless. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track positively shakes the room in the action sequences and atmospheric music by Craig Armstrong perfectly underscores the highs and lulls in the drama. Extras are plentiful: the audio commentary from Director Chris Nahon with Jet Li and Bridget Fonda is informative. "Jet Li--Fighting Philosophy" is a 12-minute bluffer's guide to Li and his life on and off-screen. "Cory Yuen--Action Academy" is about the work of long-time Li collaborator Yuen and details his fighting methodology. The "Police Gymnasium Fight: Martial Arts Demo" follows Yuen and fellow stuntmen blocking the stunning battle sequence. There are also a number of production stills and trailers for other Fox releases. --Kristen Bowditch

Sound: Dolby Digital

Comments: Truth Or Spin?

Summary:

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: Life out of balance

Summary: Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi ("life out of balance") and Powaqqatsi ("life in transformation") are the first two parts of a trilogy of experimental documentaries whose titles derive from Hopi compound nouns (2002's Naqoyqatsi, or "life in war", is the third). Both feature indispensable musical contributions from minimalist composer Philip Glass.
Made in 1983, Koyaanisqatsi was shot mostly in the desert southwest USA and New York City on a tiny budget with no script. But it then attracted the support of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas and reached a much wider audience. Its techniques, merging cinematographer Ron Fricke's time-lapse shots (alternately peripatetic and hyperspeed) with Glass' reiterative music (from the meditative to the orgiastic)--as well as its ecology minded imagery--crept into the consciousness of popular culture. The influence of Koyaanisqatsi has by now become unmistakable in television advertisements, music videos and, of course, similar movies.
Dating from 1988, Powaqqatsi finds the director somewhat more directly polemical than before, with Glass's score stretching to embrace world music. Reggio reuses techniques familiar from the previous film (slow motion, time-lapse, superposition) to dramatise the effects of the so-called First World on the Third: displacement, pollution, alienation. But he spends as much time beautifully depicting what various cultures have lost--cooperative living, a sense of joy in labour and religious values--as he does confronting viewers with trains, airliners, coal cars and loneliness. What had been a more or less peaceful, slow-moving, spiritually fulfilling rural existence for these "silent" people (all we hear is music and sound effects) becomes a crowded, suffocating, accelerating industrial urban hell, from Peru to Pakistan. Reggio frames Powaqqatsi with a telling image: the Serra Pelada gold mines, where thousands of men, their clothes and skin imbued with the earth they're moving, carry wet bags up steep slopes in a Sisyphean effort to provide wealth for their employers. While Glass juxtaposes his strangely joyful music, which includes the voices of South American children, a number of these men carry one of their exhausted comrades out of the pit, his head back and arms outstretched--one more sacrifice to Caesar. Nevertheless, Reggio, a former member of the Christian Brothers, seems to maintain hope for renewal. --Robert Burns Neveldine