Blu-ray Movie Reviews

File this one under Wasted Potential. The Green Hornet does have plenty of visual style, courtesy of director Michel Gondry. It also has the likable Seth Rogen as the title character, the awesome Christoph Waltz (Oscar winner for Inglourious Basterds) as the bad guy, and Cameron Diaz as the brainy eye candy.

File this one under Wasted Potential. The Green Hornet does have plenty of visual style, courtesy of director Michel Gondry. It also has the likable Seth Rogen as the title character, the awesome Christoph Waltz (Oscar winner for Inglourious Basterds) as the bad guy, and Cameron Diaz as the brainy eye candy.

Technologies that distribute audio and video around a home are incredibly cool—if you can afford them, if you can tolerate complicated installation, and if you can figure out how to use them once they’re in. I’ve long assumed a big consumer electronics company like Samsung or Sony would invent a more practical multiroom A/V solution, but it seems the technology that finally gets us past the old paradigms may be Apple’s AirPlay.

Technologies that distribute audio and video around a home are incredibly cool-if you can afford them, if you can tolerate complicated installation, and if you can figure out how to use them once they're in. I've long assumed a big consumer electronics company like Samsung or Sony would invent a more practical multiroom A/V solution, but it seems the technology that finally gets us past the old paradigms may be Apple's AirPlay.

There’s a particularly wonderful scene in The Illusionist, the animated movie adapted and directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) from a previously unfilmed script by Jacques Tati. When the Monsieur Hulot-like character familiar to fans of Tati goes into a movie theater, there’s Tati’s Mon Oncle up on the screen in live action.

A brown leaf floats on brilliantly clear water that flows over rich green seaweed. That’s just one of the many lyrical images that fill the opening sequence of Solaris. A horse trots along in the background. A cup of tea overflows in a momentary thunderstorm — the rain stopping as quickly as it started, leaving the sound of dripping water and then a serene silence.