Saturday, January 31, 2009

Wall-E (Widescreen Single-Disc Edition) (2008)






About movie...

Set 800 years in the future, WALL-E tells us the story of its title character, one of the last Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class robots still working on an uninhabitable planet Earth. The cubic rover continues to carry out his intended functions by cleaning and compacting all that's in his path. It's loneliness, not trash, that stands as WALL-E's biggest foe. He can take pleasure in trinkets and the regular viewing of Hello, Dolly!, but not in the company of anyone or anything else bigger than a cockroach.That changes when a fellow robot, EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), lands amidst the dirty, desolate wasteland. Though the sleek airborne EVE greets WALL-E with a few formidable attempts to destroy him and a sizable radius around him, WALL-E overlooks that and becomes quite smitten with his clean, distaff neighbor.



The Incredibles (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) (2004)




About movie...

The Incredibles is marked by a series of firsts, from the first opening logo that doesn't feature Randy Newman's theme music to the first time that human characters are in the foreground. In fact, the film centers on a family of humans (another first). That family is the Parr family, who on the surface may seem pretty ordinary in appearance and behavior. The father, Bob Parr, is an insurance claims adjuster. Helen, the mother, is a housewife who tends to baby Jack-Jack. Two additional kids, the shy Violet and the hyper Dash, round out the family unit. There's more to this typical middle class suburban family, though, because, as the film's opening scenes reveal, once, not too long ago, both Bob and Helen were superheroes protecting the public with their superstrength and elasticity, respectively. They had costumes, names (Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl), and an adoring public. Several lawsuits later, amidst criticism and protest, "supers" became relocated, involuntarily retired, and had their secret identities become their only identities.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Hellboy - Blood and Iron (Animated) (2007)

About the movie...























In 1939, young Professor Bruttenholm destroyed Erzsebet Ondrushko, a female vampire who bathed in the blood of innocents to stay young. Now someone in upstate New York is trying to bring her back, and the elderly Professor Broom has decided to investigate it himself. He takes the top BPRD agents, Hellboy, Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, who are more worried about his welfare than the return of any vampire. Their tune changes when they face a horde of ghosts, a phantom wolf pack, witches, harpies, a giant werewolf and Erzsebet herself. Hellboy ends up battling the Queen of Witches, the goddess Hecate, who wants him to embrace his true destiny, a destiny that includes the destruction of mankind. In some ways, Blood and Iron captures more of graphic novelist Mike Mignola's original vision than Guillermo del Toro's lackluster feature did in 2004. Hellboy, the demon brought into this world by the Nazis, but raised by "Professor Broom" to fight for good, was conceived as a drawing, not an actor buried under make-up and latex. The story, which incorporates elements from Mignola's "Wake the Devil" collection, sends Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and Prof. Broom to the haunted mansion of a vulgar millionaire. Hoping to cash in on the supernatural angle, he's filled the house with relics of "Blood Countess" Erzsebet Ondrusko (based on the 16th century Hungarian noblewoman Elizebeth Bathory), whom Prof. Broom defeated in 1939. It's really haunted, and the gang tackles harpies, ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires, and the goddess Hecate. The key actors from the live action film repeat their roles as voices: Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Selma Blair (Liz), Doug Jones (Abe), and John Hurt (Broom). Perlman makes a suitably underplayed Hellboy, growling his annoyance at everything from a bad donut to a vicious blow from the iron-clad goddess.