Blu-ray Movie Reviews

It’s been nearly 200 years since Mary Shelley and her poet friends got together in a mansion in Lake Geneva and challenged each other to write the best ghost story. The fruits of those labors wrought a significantly chilling parable about a mad scientist who foolishly reanimates a deceased man stitched together with spare body parts from other corpses. At a time when science was exploring new territories and pushing boundaries, Frankenstein was conceived as a terrifying morality tale about the dangers of playing God. Rumor has it Shelley dreamt up her classic gothic horror tale in the midst of a whirlwind binge of hedonistic orgies and hallucinogenic substances. Think Jane Austen meets The Wolf of Wall Street.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/403iceage.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Unlikely heroes Manfred, Sid, Diego, and Scrat join together to return an infant boy to his father before the coming ice age dooms them all. These brave souls, however, are not human. Manny is a wooly mammoth, Sid is a sloth, Diego is a saber-toothed tiger, and Scrat&mdash;one of the funniest creatures ever created&mdash;is a tiny saber-toothed squirrel who just wants to protect his precious acorn.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/ia3.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano) is a nervous wreck eagerly awaiting the birth of his first child, but a new distraction comes along when Sid (John Leguizamo) disappears into a lost world of ferocious dinosaurs, and Manfred and his pack must do whatever they can to save their friend. Meanwhile, Scrat (Chris Wedge) goes nuts over the beautiful Scratte (Karen Disher), but is the attractive saber-toothed squirrel trying to win his heart or steal his precious acorn?

Animated features are well represented in these early days of HD DVD and Blu-ray discs (though nothing yet from Pixar). This CGI –animated sequel to Ice Age may not have quite the audience appeal of that first adventure with Manny the Mammoth, Sid the Sloth, Diego the sabre-toothed tiger, and, not to forget, Scrat, the acorn-obsessed squirrel-rat, but it's still appealing, funny, and beautifully animated.

Image Entertainment made its mark in the home-entertainment game with the dawn of LaserDisc, and some of its first titles were music concerts. History has a way of repeating itself, and with Blu-ray gaining momentum, Image is beginning to release its vast music library with HD video and audio.

Moby Dick is considered one of the great American novels. Most don’t know—I sure didn’t—that the book was based on the true events that took place in the winter of 1820 when the whaling ship Essex left the port of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and sailed around the tip of South America looking for prey. While in a South American port, they hear a tale of a mammoth whale that can be found in the Pacific, so they venture dangerously far from land and get a lot more than they bargained for when they find that said whale has a vengeance against humanity.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/incendiary.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Michelle Williams stars as Young Mother (really, that's her name), who suffers a devastating loss when London is attacked by a terrorist bombing while she's shagging her lover (Ewan McGregor). Filled with guilt and shame, she tries to piece her life back together by getting intimately involved with the Police investigation behind the bombing.