Sunday, November 6, 2011

Hoodwinked (Widescreen Edition)

  • A new spin on an old fable. In this film, Red, Granny, The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodman, all face Detective Flippers as he attempts to determine the 'real' events of the Little Red Riding Hood story. Original songs and witty humor fill this fun and adventurous film. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN Rating: PG Age: 796019791090 UPC: 796019791090 Manufacture
So you think you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Don’t be too sure. . . . One of your favorite fairy tales is turned upside-down and inside-out in what the L.A. Times called "high-energy, imaginative entertainment." With irreverent storytelling, spunk and wit, Hoodwinked delivers a comedy caper for the young, the young at heart and everyone in between. When the police arrive at Granny’s cottage in the woods to answer a domestic disturbance call, it looks like just another open-and-shut case. But Red, Granny, the B! ig Bad Wolf and the Woodsman are not your usual suspects, as they have their own dark secrets, wily deceptions and conflicting accounts of the crime. Together, they must put aside their differences and find their own original twist on Happily Ever After in this "raucous, genre-busting, animated gem (Entertainment Weekly, The Must List)."Hoodwinked fuses the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood with the crisscrossing storylines of film noir--pretty ambitious stuff for a computer-animated cartoon. The police cordon off Grandma's cottage and an amphibious version of William Powell named Nicky Flippers (voiced by David Ogden Stiers, M*A*S*H) begins interrogating the suspects: A Little Red in bell-bottoms (Anne Hathaway, Ella Enchanted), a Wolf turned investigative journalist (Patrick Warburton, The Woman Chaser), a snow-boarding Granny (Glenn Close, 101 Dalmatians), and a dimwitted would-be Woodsman (Jim Belushi, Curly! Sue), each of whom have very different reasons for ending! up in t hat cottage living room. The visual style of Hoodwinked mixes a clunky, video-game look with an homage to the stop-motion puppetry of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Rankin-Bass holiday specials. While sometimes awkward, there are also moments of surreal beauty, such as when a depressed Red wanders through a field of blue and red flowers--and moments of lunatic comedy, such as the Schnitzel song, which is irresistibly bizarre. The Shrek-style pop-culture references grow annoying, but the left-field goofiness of a yodeling goat points toward a far more distinct and delightful comic world. Also featuring the voices of Anthony Anderson (Kangaroo Jack), rapper Xzibit, and an especially witty turn by Andy Dick (NewsRadio) as a deceptively cute bunny rabbit. --Bret Fetzer

Glory Road (Widescreen Edition)

  • Very Black
The studio that brought you REMEMBER THE TITANS now delivers another winner with this exciting and inspirational true story of the team that changed college basketball -- and the nation -- forever! Josh Lucas (SWEET HOME ALABAMA) stars as future Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins of tiny Texas Western University, who bucks convention by simply starting the best players he can find: history's first all-African American lineup. In a turbulent time of social and political change, their unlikely success sends shock waves through the sport that follow the underdog Miners all the way to an epic showdown with all-white, #1 ranked Kentucky for the National Championship!One of the greatest basketball games in NCAA history is immortalized in Glory Road, an engaging sports movie that dramatizes a pivotal milestone in the racial integration of college athletics. While it may not be as rousi! ng as similar movies like Hoosiers or Friday Night Lights, this fact-based drama gains depth and substance from the groundbreaking achievement of Don Haskins (well-played by Josh Lucas), who coached the 1965-66 team from Texas Western University to the NCAA championship, using the first-ever all-black lineup in the championship game and forever changing the rules of college basketball. Texas Western's underdog season is followed from anxious start to glorious finish, as Haskins recruits many of his black star players from the North, including Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) and Willie Cager (Damaine Radcliff), and this typically wholesome Disney film doesn't flinch from the harsh realities of racial tension (including player beatings and vandalized motel rooms) that Texas Western's black players had to struggle against as their victories began to draw national attention. Jon Voight (under heavy makeup) makes a memorable cameo appearance as legendary Kentucky coach! Adolph Rupp, whose favored all-white team was no match for Te! xas West ern, and Haskins' unforgettable achievement is celebrated in an end-credits sequence that demonstrates the positive ripple-effect of his color-blind coaching. Glory Road relies a bit too heavily on sports-movie clichés, but its shortcomings are easily overlooked in favor of its greater historical significance. --Jeff Shannon

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