New to On Demand & DVD Archives - Page 79 of 90

Yule Log is back on Video On Demand (VOD) for 2011

December 21, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The iN DEMAND holiday favorite Yule Log is back and available for free to many cable subscribers via their free Video On Demand (VOD) platforms this season. Although the original televised Yule Log first launched in 1966, iN DEMAND’s version for cable viewers was first produced in high definition in 2002 and started on VOD in 2007. Last year, it erupted in 3D for the first time. This year, another new element is added — viewers can now access the video log online anytime, for free, from the national Movies On Demand website, rentmoviesondemand.com. RELATED: WHEN IS THE YULE LOG […]

VOD Spotlight: “Dolphin Tale” casts Winter the dolphin in her own inspiring true story

December 20, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The uplifting family film Dolphin Tale — starring Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd, Nathan Gamble, Kris Kristofferson and Morgan Freeman — tells the true story of Winter, a three-month-old bottlenose dolphin that became trapped in a fishing net near Cape Canaveral in December 2005. Most dolphins that become entangled in nets die in them. Winter survived. Rescued by Clearwater Marine Aquarium, she began to recover. However, her tail was so badly damaged that it had to be amputated. This meant that Winter would not be able to be released into the wild after recovery. She also had to learn an […]

VOD Spotlight: “Colombiana” continues Luc Besson’s theme of the powerful female action hero

December 20, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Producer Luc Besson is well known for his films featuring strong, powerful, but emotionally damaged women. The latest entry in this oeuvre is Colombiana, starring Zoe Saldana (Avatar) as an assassin focused on avenging the murder of her parents. “When Luc approached me to star in the movie, I asked him what it was about. He said, ‘It’s as if Mathilda (from Léon/The Professional) is all grown up and became an assassin,’” says Saldana. “That was it; I was in. It hit all the beats of a classic revenge film, but it was also compelling and very moving.” Besson wrote […]

VOD Spotlight: “Midnight in Paris” is Woody Allen’s valentine to the City of Light

December 20, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Although he is most connected as a filmmaker with New York City, Woody Allen considers Paris to be the Big Apple’s equal as one of the world’s great cities. Allen fell in love with the City of Light during the 1965 shooting of What’s New Pussycat, his debut film as an actor and writer. Much like Gil — the Hollywood screenwriter protagonist of Allen’s Midnight in Paris (played by Owen Wilson) — Allen is rueful about not staying there after the filming, as others on that film did. “It was an adventure that was too bold for me at the […]

VOD Spotlight: “Straw Dogs” offers new take on tension-filled tale

December 20, 2011 StayTuned Staff

By Stacey Harrison Follow @ChannelGuideSRH Some remakes can be judged on their own merit without really taking into account their predecessor. Not too many folks, for instance, spend much time viewing 1956’s The Ten Commandments through the prism of the 1923 version. But with a story like Straw Dogs, the comparisons are necessary.

VOD Spotlight: “Warrior” stars Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as two underdogs worth rooting for

December 20, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Warrior pits brother against brother, as both train for a championship — and a $5 million prize — in a mixed-martial-arts (MMA) fight. Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy, pictured left, of Inception and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises) and his mother escaped an abusive father and, after his mother’s death, he joined the Marines. His brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton, Animal Kingdom, pictured right), chose to stay with his father so he could be close to his girlfriend, Tess, who he married. Years later, the brothers confront each other as they train for the fight of their lives.

VOD Spotlight: Return of “The Smurfs”

December 16, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Google “The Smurfs” and over 41 million hits come up, indicative of the popularity of the little blue folk. The Smurfs have epitomized the best of humanity since their first comic book by Belgian cartoonist Peyo in 1958. The Smurfs television series launched in the United States in 1981 and entertained a generation of children. Now the little blue family is back in The Smurfs, a film blending live action and animation.

VOD Spotlight: Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain team to collect on “The Debt”

December 6, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

In the dramatic thriller The Debt, Oscar winner Helen Mirren plays Rachel Singer, a former Mossad agent who discovers that a notorious Nazi war criminal she had helped hunt down and kill 30 years earlier may still be alive. Needing to know the truth, she returns to Eastern Europe to relive her past. The film features flashbacks to the original 1966 mission, with costar Jessica Chastain (who’s had a breakout year in 2011, also starring in Coriolanus, The Tree of Life, The Help and Take Shelter) playing Rachel in these scenes. While the producers wanted to find the best actress […]

VOD Spotlight: Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in the genre-blending “Cowboys & Aliens”

December 6, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Classic Westerns are filled with familiar situations and characters — ironhanded sheriffs and outlaws, and clannish townsfolk who fear the Indians and distrust outsiders. Cowboys & Aliens, based on a graphic novel series, has all of these, and more. As the title of the film suggests, the Southwest town of Absolution ain’t seen nothing yet! Producer Ron Howard was sold on making the film from the comic’s cover art, showing a cowboy on horseback fleeing from a spaceship hovering above him. “It was everything I hoped for: the coolest version of the West meeting some badass aliens,” Howard says of […]

VOD Spotlight: “The Hangover Part II” headliner Bradley Cooper is officially a box-office star

December 6, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

By Lori Acken Follow @ChannelGuideLLA Bradley Cooper seems to have taken a page from the George Clooney playbook — cloak your matinee-idol looks in such an easygoing everyman charm that ladies will happily sit through man-centric films and their guys won’t question the reason they’re there. Still, it took 10 years and a pair of irresistibly goofball buddy films to make Bradley Cooper a Clooney-class star (and People‘s Sexiest Man Alive for 2011). Sure, plenty of folks loved him as Sydney Bristow’s sidekick Will Tippin on the ABC spy series Alias. And as egotistical Hearts ’n Scalpels doctor Aidan Stone […]