Dream Street
Welcome to their Nightmare…again.
This new and greatly improved infinifilm edition of A Nightmare on Elm Street reminds me that New Line had other blockbuster franchises before the reign of hobbits and snaggletoothed British spies. Director Wes Craven’s imaginative script struck a nerve with audiences who were growing tired of contemporary horror flicks. He introduced us to the iconic Freddy Krueger, a supernatural murderer relegated to attacking his young victims in their sleep, where no one can protect them from his knife-enhanced fingers. Elm Street also marked the big-screen debut of a baby-faced boy next door named Johnny Depp.
Video: 5
Audio: 4
Extras: 4 Akeelah and the Bee is a moving story about a precocious “tweenager.” She discovers she is more than the sum of her spelling parts and helps others around her realize their own abilities to become powerful beyond measure. Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett reunite in this inspirational tale of hope, audacity, and some very hard-to-spell words. Fishburne gives an impeccable performance as the candid Dr. Larabee, who guides Akeelah to the national spelling bee under his rigorous tutelage.
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
I enjoy a good black comedy as much as anyone, but Bad Santa just didn’t work for me—and I can’t quite pinpoint why. It’s better than any recent holiday film that comes to mind. Billy Bob Thornton is outstanding as the truly distasteful Willie, a safe cracker who poses as Santa each year to pull off a master robbery. The movie’s ultimate triumph is that you find yourself caring about Willie by the end, not because he becomes much more likable but because his flaws are put into perspective as other characters’ true natures are revealed. Still, in the end, it just didn’t generate enough laughs to offset the cringes.
Somewhere back in the dusty corridors of time, in a house in New Jersey, a child found an old radio in the basement. It was a Sears Silvertone with a dark brown plastic chassis. No FM, just AM, and therefore not of much interest to the increasingly music-aware child. But he--oh, all right, I--was fascinated by the tubes inside. Unlike all the other radios in the house, which immediately started blaring when turned on, this one took time to warm up. When ready to play, its single speaker emitted a rich tone. Not exactly a silver tone. More of a chocolate tone. But I did love it, and was sorry when it suddenly disappeared from the house, as so many artifacts of my childhood did in those days.
| Feb 01, 2007 | First Published: Feb 02, 2007 | 0 comments
Recently released independent sales tracking from Nielsen's VideoScan has shown that Blu-ray Disc has nearly caught up to HD DVD in total number of discs sold since launch, and that the Sony-backed format outsold HD DVD at a rate of better than 2:1 in the first two weeks of January. While this is certainly too short a window to draw conclusions from, there are some significant reasons that this news bodes well for Blu-ray.
