North by Northwest on Blu-Ray

Oh my God, like the old James Bond movies, North by Northwest looks like evidence of time travel. I mean, the only way they could make a 50 year old movie look like this is if they traveled back in time and completely reshot it with modern high definition equipment.

North by Northwest on Blu-Ray
It’s so bright and sharp. The picture is smooth with almost no grain. It still looks like Technicolor so I couldn’t say it looks like reality with that palette, but it looks like a living breathing Technicolor world.

Uwe Bolls Far Cry Movie Trailer

Director Uwe Boll, who is famous for ruining the big screen adaptations of popular video games like Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, Dungeon Siege and Postal, is back again with yet-another- video game adaptation - Far Cry. Based on the best-selling videogame franchise that sold over 3 million copies, Director Uwe Boll (In the Name of the King, Bloodrayne) unleashes his latest non-stop action thriller Far Cry on DVD November 24 from Vivendi Entertainment. Til Schwiger (Inglourious Basterds), Udo Kier (Grindhouse), and Emmanuelle Vaugier (Saw IV) star in the action-packed story of a reporter who investigates the deaths of mercenaries on an island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Jack Carver (Schweiger), a retired special forces officer, escorts star journalist, Valerie (Vaugier), on the trail of a story on a mysterious island off the Pacific Northwest. Upon docking, they are attacked and pursued by a squad of mercenaries ...

Blu-Ray Review: NORTH BY NORTHWEST

The Movie:
“You know, we’re not making a movie. We’re constructing an organ…the kind of organ that you see in the theatre. And we press this chord and now the audience laughs, we press that chord and they gasp, and we press these notes and they chuckle.” – Alfred Hitchcock to NORTH BY NORTHWEST screenwriter Ernest Lehman.

You know the scenes. You know the music.  You know every one-liner and suave expression from Cary Grant’s debonair face.  There isn’t much that hasn’t already been said about NORTH BY NORTHWEST.  Easily Alfred Hitchcock’s most noted “mistaken identity” thriller and, arguably, his greatest achievement…

SLIFF 2009 Review: THE NORTH FACE

It’s not much of a qualifier, but writer/director Philipp Stolzl’s THE NORTH FACE, NORDWAND in its native German, could very well be the greatest story about mountain climbing put to film.  Full of staggering cinematography, incredible performances, and an epic sense of bravery in the face of tragedy, it is a truly engaging tale of man versus nature that never fails to rise to the heights set forth by its natural antagonist.

The film is based on the true story of Toni Kurz, played by Benno Furmann, and Andreas Hinterstoisser, played by Florian Lukas, two, young German men who always had…

Trailer: Tina Fey And Steve Carell In Date Night

I had been expecting Date Night, the movie that finally unites Michael Scott and Liz Lemon on an adventure of mayhem, to be something along the lines of The Out-of-Towners, in which an ordinary couple gets besieged by a series of bizarre circumstances that make their lives miserable. But based on the movie's first trailer, which debuted today at Apple.com, it's more like North by Northwest mixed with a dozen other gangster movies. Not that it won't be worth ...

DVD: North by Northwest

Chris Bumbray reviews "North by Northwest" Read More...

NORTH BY NORTHWEST Blu-ray Review

Going back to the old masters, going back to the classics is always illuminating. Someone like Alfred Hitchcock knew how to frame a film. He knew where he was putting his camera, and why it was there. As in North by Northwest he achieved one of the great visual representations of sex. Cary Grant lifts [...]

Blu-ray Review: North by Northwest (50th Anniversary Edition)

There was talk earlier this year that it wasn't in the studios' best interest to continue to release classic films on DVD/Blu-ray as the demand for them was dwindling and the cost of restoration was climbing. The article in question even quotes Warner Home Video senior vice president George Feltenstein saying "most of the studios [...]

Directors We Love: Alfred Hitchcock

This is a no-brainer, right? Everyone loves Hitchcock. But it was not always so. The great director, whose North by Northwest comes out on a new, 50th Anniversary DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, was once considered a populist panderer with little artistic value in his work. Even if you were a film critic, it was not the done thing to explore the mood and structure of a film. And even the rare critic that did that, such as Manny Farber or James Agee, tended not to go crazy over Hitchcock's work. (He was too popular and supposedly did not need defending.) At the time, it was more important in film to have a strong moral message, or to impress audiences with size and scale. Hitchcock worked in the lowest genres, telling stories about creeps and murderers and kidnappers, none of which had any benefit to society. Yes, Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director five times, so it's clear that other filmmakers at the very least acknowledged his skill, but he was mostly nominated for his biggest hits, like Rebecca, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho (just as George Lucas was nominated for Star Wars) and he never won.

Continue reading Directors We Love: Alfred Hitchcock

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What I Watched, What You Watched: Installment #15

On top of the titles listed below I also watch the Criterion Blu-ray for Howards End and the Blu-ray for Warner Home Video's North By Northwest, both of which will be reviewed on Tuesday along with the Criterion Blu-ray for Wings of Desire. On top of that I watched the Blu-ray for Disney/Pixar's Up, which [...]