Blu-ray Movie Reviews

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/smokinaces.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Magician turned gangster Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) is in a load of trouble by turning states evidence against the mob. When the jilted mob boss finds out he’s holding-up in Lake Tahoe, he offers a $1 million bounty on his head and every lowlife thug is out to earn a quick buck and it’s up to a couple of FBI agents to try and protect their key witness before one of the fortune seekers hits pay dirt.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/snowwhite.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>This is the time-honored story of a princess (voiced by Adriana Caselotti) whose blossoming beauty disturbs her insecure stepmother, the Queen (Lucille La Verne). Each day, the Queen asks a mysterious magic mirror (Moroni Olsen) the question: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" For years, the mirror answers the Queen's name, but when it suddenly says Snow White, the evil woman begins her quest to kill the young girl so she may once again be the fairest of them all.

Together, these are arguably the most grown-up entries in the Pixar canon, not for any sort of overly mature content, but rather for their sophisticated themes and storytelling. And Soul might be the most adult-skewing: It's the longest of the three, exploring The Great Hereafter and even "The Great Before," namely where souls originate prior to their arrival on Earth. This concept requires quite a bit of exposition, and it's executed masterfully by Docter, co-writer/co-director Kemp Powers, and co-writer Mike Jones, through bold visuals and pithy gags.

I was eagerly looking forward to giving this one a spin, and it more than met my expectations. It's nonstop action from start to finish, and Gyllenhaal has great screen presence as the troubled hero. Not only was I wildly entertained, but the DTS-HD MA audio track is outstanding and worth the price of admission all by itself. But don't get your hopes too high for the video encode, which isn't anything to write home about.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/southpark.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In the twelfth season, the boys from <i>South Park</i> follow the presidential election from the primaries through the new president-elect's acceptance speech, they help Britney Spears disfigure her body, and try to get the country of Canada back to work when it strikes for more money. The best episode during the season is "Elementary School Musical," when Stan realizes he'll lose Wendy forever unless he adopts the latest fad hitting the school&#151;singing (think <i>High School Musical</i>).

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/spacechimps.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Ham III (voiced by Andy Samberg) is the grandson of the first chimpanzee into space who's recruited to join two other NASA chimps on an important mission to retrieve a wayward spacecraft that disappeared into a wormhole. With the help of Lieutenant Luna (Cheryl Hines) and their trusty pilot Titan (Patrick Warburton), the three must work together to save the inhabitants of a distant planet from their evil dictator (Jeff Daniels) and find a way back to Earth.