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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Kid With a Bike
Fred Kaplan  |  Jun 19, 2013
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Sound
Extras
The Kid With a Bike is a heartbreaking, gripping, ultimately unsettling, but very satisfying film—an odd jumble of adjectives, I know, but the Dardenne brothers of Belgium routinely provoke these dissonances in the works they jointly write and direct. Their earlier films (The Child, The Son, La Promesse, among others) are notoriously hard to warm to: The characters are obstinate, the pace slides and rambles. The Kid With a Bike, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, is sunnier, more kinetic, but it, too, disrupts assumptions, snaps you in unexpected directions: just like life.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Frankenweenie
David Vaughn  |  Jun 19, 2013
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3D-Ness
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Extras
Coerced into playing baseball by his father, Victor connects with the hit of his life and sails one over the fence. His beloved dog, Sparky, thinks it’s a game of fetch, races after the ball, is hit by an oncoming car, and dies. Terribly depressed and lonely, Victor is inspired by his science teacher to bring his dog back to life. Successful in his task, his home-sewn creature draws the attention of an evil classmate when he escapes, and Victor is forced to reveal his secret on how to raise the dead. All hell breaks loose when the town is suddenly overrun by reanimated pets, and it’s up to Victor and Sparky to save the day.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Flight
Corey Gunnestad  |  Jun 19, 2013
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Extras
Interactivity
Director Robert Zemeckis makes his dramatic return to live-action feature films with Flight after a decade-long foray into performance-capture animated films like The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. His last live-action film before this was Cast Away with Tom Hanks in 2000, which either coincidentally or ironically also featured a crashing jetliner.
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Audio Video News
Poll Results: Action/Adventure Movies Rule the Demo; HT Readers Recommend Their Favorites
HT Staff  |  Jun 19, 2013
The results of last week’s survey are in. We asked what type of demo material you use to impress unsuspecting friends and family and action/adventure movies were the runaway winner capturing more than half of the votes. Computer animated movies were a distant second with 22 percent of the votes, followed by concert videos with 10 percent and current hit TV shows with 8 percent. Read on to see a list of demo recommendations from fellow enthusiasts with links to our reviews.
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Wireless Multiroom Speaker Reviews
Review: Cambridge Audio Minx Air 200 and Minx Go Wireless Speakers
Michael Berk  |  Jun 18, 2013

When we checked out Cambridge Audio's original Minx 5.1 setup just about two years back we plain loved the little things, which we felt represented about the best miniature speaker system to date, the bargain price notwithstanding. Cambridge hasn't rested on their laurels, and in the intervening years they've taken the Minx concept and have built a whole line of cool little (and not so little) lifestyle products - read small, portable, wireless systems - around it.

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Headphone Reviews
Review: Monoprice 10010
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 18, 2013

I’ve been searching a long time for a good noise-cancelling headphone priced around $100—something that might approach the performance of the $299 Bose QC-15 but at one-third the price.

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This Week
This Week in Music, June 18, 2013: Celebrating album cover art
Ken Richardson  |  Jun 18, 2013

What you are looking at above is the “cover art” for Kanye West’s new album, Yeezus (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam). In fact, there’s no cover or CD booklet at all, just a sticker on the back of the package with the track listing. This dovetails nicely with Kanye’s mysterious anti-campaign for the album’s release today. He did perform “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” on Saturday Night Live in May, and if those hard-hitting, industrial-sounding tracks are any indication, then Yeezus could be a wowzer.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about that “cover art” and, paradoxically, how much it reminds me of this:

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Headphone Reviews
Philips Fidelio X1 Headphones
Steve Guttenberg  |  Jun 18, 2013

Performance
Features
Comfort
Value
Price: $299 At a Glance: Sinfully comfy • Artfully balanced frequency response • Lavish build quality boasts aluminum trim and real leather

It wasn’t that long ago that Philips wasn’t the first name that would come to mind for audiophile headphones. Things picked up early last year when the company totally revamped its headphone lineup, and the Fidelio Series turned a lot of heads. Philips was in the big leagues and fully competitive with the majors.

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Audio Video News
Like Magic: Black Diamond Motorized Projection Screen
Bob Ankosko  |  Jun 18, 2013
Hailed as a sleek “zero-glare” alternative to flat-panel TVs, the Black Diamond Motorized projection screen is ideal for minimalist décors and spaces that simply don’t have room for a huge screen. Hit a wall switch and, like magic, a slender tube descends from the ceiling and the screen unfurls, suspended from ultra-slim aircraft cable.
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This Week
This Week in Movies & TV, June 18, 2013: Visions, Vampires, & Werewolves
Josef Krebs  |  Jun 18, 2013

Lifeforce

With a great sci-fi/horror pedigree - directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Salem's Lot, Poltergeist), screenplay co-written by Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Total Recall, and Dark Star) and Don Jakoby from the 1976 novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, special effects supervised by Oscar-winner John Dy

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