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Volume CCXX-
November Rain
For
the Week of 11/3/09
Videoport
gives you a free rental every, single day. You're welcome...
Middle
Aisle Monday. (Get one free
rental
from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller,
Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)
>>>
Ed the Renter continues his perilous A-Z journey through Videoport's
Incredibly Strange section. Hold on tight:
Alien
Prey-
A couple of lesbians get attacked by a carnivorous alien. What more
needs to be said! Rent now!
The
Adventures of Barry Mackenzie- Pretty good especially if you
thought Crocodile Dundee needed more comedy and crossdressers.
The
Alarmist- Not very impressive but begs the question "who
decided the best way to advertise this disc was with a picture of
Stanley Tucci tied to a chair with David Arquette leering over him"?
Hey, if the phrase "Stanley Tucci in bondage" is your
thing, go for it.
The
Anarchist's Cookbook- This could have been much better but fell
into the whole "rebelling isn't really such a good thing"
mold- boring.
Andy
Warhol's Trash- Yeah that pretty much sums up all those films for
me. I hate Warhol, never understood his appeal, and pretty much hold
him responsible for ruining modern art. But if you're feeling
pretentious certainly check these out.
Tough
and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or
Classics sections with your paid rental.)
>>>
Dennis suggests you take ACTION, and rent a free CLASSIC today!
(Apologies for the shameless pandering, and the bad wordplay, but the
deadline looms, and the inches must be filled. If you want to avoid
such unpleasantness in the future, send in your own movie reviews,
movie lists, or anything else movie related to us at
denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones,
or our Facebook page "Videoport Jones". SO take ACTION
today and...oh, forget it...)
Wacky
and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or
Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)
>>>
B.S. Eliot suggests Local
Hero (in
Comedy). As I waited for the frigid arms of Death to cradle me into
the Infinite Slumber, I popped in Local
Hero,
hoping that the main menu screen would have some peaceful music that
I could die to. Guess what? Totally shafted? Turns out it's one of
those old-ass DVDs that not only doesn't have peaceful main menu
music, but also it just starts playing the movie after a couple
minutes, whether you like it or you don't like it. Indignantly, I
hurled the empty bottle of Aleve at the television and took a haul
off my Bud Light/Clamato beverage. Paralyzed by laziness, I was
forced to watch Local
Hero.
However, 111 minutes later (allegedly, according to the back of the
case), this tale of strange and subtle charms had restored my will to
live, my hunger for adventure, my sex drive, and, most importantly,
my devotion to Gorgon, the disembodied voice that commands me to
steal alcoholic Clamato beverages from 7/11. I give this film a B+.
Thrifty
Thursday. (Get one free
movie
from any section with your paid rental.)
>>>
Anime
Ed suggests these selections from Videoport's collection of Japanese
animation:
Shigurui-
This is the best anime I have seen in long time. Very dark samurai
drama, concentrating on the madness and violence of the life instead
of the whole honor and bushido thing. Highly recommended!! Banzai!
Hell
Girl- Man the Japanese sure love revenge. This series is all
about that and the price paid for exacting it. A little repetitive at
first but pays off towards the end. Hell Girl's so cute when she
dispatches folks to purgatory, I just want to hug her! Banzai!!
Free
Kids Friday. (Get one free
rental from
the Children's or Family sections, no other rental necessary).
>>>
Dennis suggests that you don't
allow your little darlings to handle DVD until they learn that you
never, EVER touch the
shiny side of the disc
with your adorable, jam-smeared fingers. Maybe when they're ready to
head off to college...
Having
a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any
section on Saturday and Sunday.)
>>>For
Saturday,
No More Mistress Nice Mommy suggests 'Leverage'
(in
Mystery/Thriller). If you're anything like me, you have literally
stayed awake all night, thrown into adrenalin-fueled insomnia with
thoughts of revenge. You don't want anyone to get hurt and you can't
get caught, but someone needs to get ruined. You're an average,
hard-working, dirt-poor American like me; you've had a boss who
screams at you no matter how hard you work, an ex- who tries to
brainwash your child, or maybe you've even been physically hurt by
someone. I feel your pain. This is the show for you. Three men and
two awesome women (all former "loaners") form a
multimillion dollar, philanthropy-type operation that specializes in
getting back at really bad guys who totally victimize really super
nice people like you and me (who are totally innocent!!) Suspend
your disbelief for 42 delightful, campy minutes an episode with this
very satisfying show. A great cast and 'Mission
Impossible'-
type action make up for the preposterous storylines. I guarantee
this show will entertain you and take your mind off all the bad
people for a while.
>>>For
Sunday,
Emily S. Customer suggests Twin
Falls Idaho.
If ever an indie film had all the false hallmarks of being an
exploitative mess, Twin
Falls Idaho
is it. The film opens in a hotel of Lynchian dim seediness where two
shy, faltering conjoined twins receive a visit from a zany young
prostitute named Penny. The film soon introduces a substory with an
ambiguous doctor (played with ironic distance by Patrick Bachau,
veteran of many vampy and vampirific Eurotrash roles*), and its
turning point is a misunderstanding at a Halloween party. This sounds
like a voyeuristic peepshow or a maudlin mockery... but instead Twin
Falls, Idaho
manages to be a tender character study, a solemn, sweet tale about
love and interdependence and loneliness. It's a mournful little story
with some gently touching performances. Mark and Michael Polish,
writer and writer-director brothers, also star as Blake and Francis
Falls, and they convey their closeness with a (quite literally) quiet
intimacy: the two murmur confidingly to each other as if they have,
indeed, spent a lifetime only inches apart. Michele Hicks is brash
and gentle by turns, a convincing portrait of a hard-bitten young
hooker struggling between self-interest and compassion. And Lesley
Ann Warren** turns in another of her remarkable small supporting
roles here, wrestling with a really unlikeable part and giving it her
all. The whole film is a very successful oddity. It's tentative and
slow, almost peaceful in its startling way --- a meditative and
lovely study that pushes the audience to consider an experience
completely outside the scope of most daily lives and simultaneously
makes us realize how very alike we are in our desires and our
limitations.
*Editor's
Note: Such as his suavely villainous turn in one of my all-time
favorite movies Choose
Me.
**Editor's
Other Note: Also from the cult classic Choose
Me!
New
Releases this week at Videoport:
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (for
the second week in a row, we get a big budget action flick based on a
line of toys! We are clearly being punished for something!), Lemon
Tree (metaphorical
drama about a Palestinian widow trying to keep her new neighbor, an
Israeli defense minister , from having the titular item cut down),
The
Taking of Pelham 123
(John Travolta and Denzel Washington team up with soulless
action-meister Tony Scott to remake the 1974 thriller about the
hijacking of the titular New York City subway train; this one is
fine, but please ignore the dismissive comments made by the dingbat
Scott about the original- that one's better), Will
Ferrell: You're Welcome America- A Final Night With George W. Bush
(filmed version of Ferrell's one man Broadway show as the former, um,
president, I guess you'd have to call him; this is absolutely
hilarious, by the way), Food,
Inc.
(as a vegetarian, I try not to be all self-righteous about eating
meat; it's easier when someone makes as harrowing a documentary
about the unspeakably horrifying methods corporate food producers use
to get that yummy meat to the table; was that a little snotty?
Sorry), Aliens
in the Attic
(some adorable little moppets have to fight off the aliens invading
their beach house; starring former SNL
pals Tim Meadows and Kevin Nealon, and at least two tweens named
Ashley), I
Love You, Beth Cooper
(hen the nerdy high school valedictorian proclaims his love for the
most popular girl in school, she shows up at his house and gives him
the best night of his life in this teen comedy undoubtedly written by
a lonely one-time valedictorian), The
Answer Man
(Jeff Daniels plays a reclusive self-help author who finds out that
real life is a little more complicated than he'd thought when he
meets troubled single mom Lauren Graham), Command
Performance
(Dolph Lundgren is back! He punches a bunch o'guys! What else do
you need to know!), Sand
Serpents
(the guy from Iron
Eagle
fighting, well, serpents, that live in the sand, I guess), Fears
of the Dark
(check Videoport's Foreign Language section for this new, animated
anthology film where sic of the creepiest dudes in cartooning work
together to give you the heebie-jeebs), The
Tournament
(overqualified actors Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle lend their
seemingly-currently-unvalued talents to this direct-to-DVD action
flick about an assassin tournament where assassins try to assassinate
each other), 'Monty
Python's Almost the Truth'
(comprehensive documentary where all the surviving Pythons dish on
how they became the funniest human beings in the history of the
universe).
New
Arrivals this week at Videoport:
The
Dead
(absolutely lovely; John Huston's final film saw him directing
daughter Anjelica and doing justice to James Joyce's short story,
which I maintain is the single most beautiful thing ever written by
anyone, ever), The
English Surgeon
(documentary about the titular doctor, working at an underfunded
Ukraine hospital, and the wrenching decisions and compromises he must
make on a daily basis), Black
Devil Doll
(where do you find a willfully-offensive horror comedy about the
spirit of a black militant who comes back in the body of a murderous,
horny ventriloquist dummy? Why in Videoport's Incredibly Strange
section, of course!), Strip
Nude for Your Killer
(the all-time worst advice? Perhaps, but see for yourself when you
rent this 1975 Italian sleaze- and murder- and boob-fest, starring
the queen of same, the sluttily-lovely Edwige Fenech), 'Private
Century'
(filmmaker Jan Sikl spellbindingly edits together forty years of home
movies from ordinary people in order to tell the modern history of
Czechoslovakia through their eyes), Unmistaken
Child
(documentary follows a young Buddhist monk who embarks on a
years-long journey to find the child who he believes is the
reincarnation of his beloved teacher; touching and all, but, since
that child's parents might not believe in spooky ghost nonsense, also
kind of creepy, no?), Paraiso
Travel (a
seductive young woman with dreams of riches in New York City and the
puppylovestruck young man who's devoted to her attempt to travel
illegally from their home in Colombia to America in this one), The
Hellbenders
(this 1967 Spaghetti Western starring Joseph Cotten is beloved of
Quentin Tarantino, so you are gonna watch it; also, check out the
informative documentary The
Spaghetti West
to find out what that whole deal was all about), 'Edge
of Darkness' (when
his nuclear activist daughter is killed, a straightlaced British
father is forced to confront his country's nuclear policies in the
80s in this British miniseries),
Earth 2100
(speculative [translated: terrifying] documentary posits how our
current glutinous habits could mean all human life is doomed in the
next century, unless people make some small, manageable personal
sacrifices; oh crap...), Dr.
Bronner's Magic Soapbox
(documentary about the story behind the liquid soap with all of the
utterly bananas and borderline creepy sayings on the bottle), Red
Cliff
and Red
Cliff 2 (how
did Videoport get a hold of two precious copies of legendary action
director John Woo's [The
Killer,
Hard
Boiled]
massive, epic historical drama? You don't know...you don't wanna
know...), IP
Man
(Donnie Yen and Simon Yam star in this martial arts biopic about the
first teacher of Wing Chun [and Bruce Lee's teacher]), Shinjuku
Incident
(the new Jackie Chan movie! A violent tale of illegal Chinese
immigrants, the Yakuza, and, one presumes, a lot of kicking).
BUY
THINGS!
All
right, we've held off until November, but it's time to kick the
holiday shopping frenzy into overdrive for the year. Here, then are
the iron-clad reasons why you should shop at Videoport this year,
instead of throwing your money to some giant, local-economy
crippling, employee-exploiting, crappy customer service-having
corporate behemoth:
1.
You get something for yourself for buying something for
someone else: for every movie you buy from Videoport, you get a free
rental on your Videoport account! So, buy one movie for a loved one
and you get one free rental for yourself. Buy two, get two. You get
the idea...
1a.
Of course, Videoport, in addition to all of the movies for sale right
here in the store, can order any movie, boxed set, or TV show
currently in print. It'll take about a week.
2.
Videoport has gift certificates: yup, for the big movie
renter on your list, give the gift of rentals! And, make sure to
tell the lucky stiff that Videoport gift certificate rentals are good
with Videoport's daily specials! That means, essentially, that
you're giving twice as many movie rentals as it seems! You're twice
as good a friend/lover/obligated co-worker! (Our 'three rentals for
ten bucks' gift certificate makes a perfect Secret Santa gift that
says "I had to get you something"!
Check
out the VideoReport (and more) online!
You
can read back issues of the VideoReport, leave comments, read
the weekly new release review column by Videoport Jones and Justin
Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald), and pretty much any weird movie
article, link, or list we can come up with in our spare time. Just
type in www.videoportjones.wordpress.com to your computer-type device
and join in the fun.
Park
for free at Videoport!
1.
Parking meters are silly and inactive after 6pm Monday-Saturday and
all day on Sunday.
2.
The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour
parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on weekends.
3.
Videoport takes part in the Park & Shop program (because we're
so super), which means you can just pull in to any downtown parking
garage (including the courthouse garage, about a minute away) and
we'll get you a free hour of parking. Again, you're welcome...