New to On Demand & DVD Archives - Page 83 of 90

VOD Spotlight: “Jane Eyre”

August 2, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre has a timeless quality and an equally timeless appeal that makes it a natural to adapt to film. The story has been filmed nearly two dozen times, including the famous 1944 film starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. The 2011 version of Jane Eyre stars Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) as Jane and Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) as Rochester and — in much the same way that the hotel in The Shining became a character in the film — Haddon Hall in Derbyshire as Rochester’s home, Thornfield […]

VOD Spotlight: New toys for “Arthur”

July 15, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

In the original 1981 film Arthur, the immature billionaire (Dudley Moore) drove a Rolls-Royce and got into trouble. In the remake, the film’s creators felt that Arthur (played by Russell Brand) would need far more bling to be convincingly wealthy. “In 1981, you could put someone in a tuxedo and give him a Rolls Royce and say he was a billionaire, but in 2011 people have a different concept of what it means to be incredibly wealthy,” says director Jason Winer. “They’ve seen it all. So we had to come up with more extreme and unique ways for him to […]

VOD Spotlight: “Insidious”

July 13, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The creators of Saw and Paranormal Activity team up to reinvent the haunted-house genre for a new generation with Insidious, which pays tribute to such horror classics as The Exorcist, Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense. Renai (Rose Byrne) and her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) are unpacking boxes in their family’s new home when they first start to sense a sinister presence. Eerie events slowly escalate into supernatural attacks until one accident puts their son in a mysterious coma. When the family flees its ghost-ridden home and attempts to heal itself, Josh’s mother (Barbara Hershey) brings in a team of paranormal […]

VOD Spotlight: “Sucker Punch”

June 28, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Sucker Punch is an action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary. She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls—the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), the outspoken Rocket (Jena […]

VOD Spotlight: “Battle: LA”

June 28, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

In Battle: Los Angeles, Earth is under attack from unknown forces. As people everywhere watch the world’s great cities fall, Los Angeles represents the last stand for mankind in a battle no one expected. For years, there have been documented cases of UFO sightings – Buenos Aires in 1965, Seoul in 1983, France, Germany, China – but all of these had official stories that covered up and dismissed these inexplicable events. For example, on the night of February 24-25, 1942, with America on nationwide alert following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Angelenos were wakened to air raid sirens. The 37th […]

VOD Spotlight: “Unknown”

June 21, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

There have been many thrillers about amnesia — the Bourne films likely the first to come to mind. But in Unknown, botanist Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) has an even bigger problem. After he and his wife land in Berlin for a conference, he is in an auto accident. When he wakes after a four-day coma, he discovers that no one else, not even his wife, knows who he is. Complicating his situation, a man who claims to be Dr. Harris (Aidan Quinn) has taken his place. The star of Unknown was pulled into the story from the start. “For […]

VOD Spotlight: “The Adjustment Bureau”

June 21, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Many couples will say that there are people conspiring to keep them apart. But in The Adjustment Bureau, rising politician David Norris (Matt Damon) glimpses a much darker conspiracy — agents of the Bureau, who not only want to keep him from pursuing a relationship with a ballerina (Emily Blunt), but also control the rest of the world as well. In the short story “Adjustment Team” by science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, the protagonist was an insurance salesman. The film creators made him a politician because, says producer Michael Hackett, “Picking a politician allowed us a character whose decisions can […]

VOD Spotlight: “The Eagle”

June 21, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The Eagle has its story in fact — that the Ninth Legion of Roman soldiers vanished into what is now Scotland. Furious at what was likely a defeat by barbarians, the Roman emperor Hadrian built a wall to seal off the edge of the known world. Known as Hadrian’s Wall, the ruins of it exist to this day. The story was the basis for the novel The Eagle of the Ninth, an epic tale of heroism by Rosemary Sutcliff, one of the favorite novels of The Eagle producer Duncan Kenworthy. “It’s a wonderfully resonant and exciting story, with characters, issues, […]

VOD Spotlight: “Red Riding Hood”

June 14, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The story of Little Red Riding Hood has its origins in 14th-century European folk tales. In a time when dangerous and dark forests were a way of life, stories such as this kept children safely close to home at night. The story and others like it also served as warnings to young women to be careful of men — the term “wolf” surviving to this day to describe a predatory male. Moving from the wolf to the werewolf, as the film Red Riding Hood does, we have a monster that can be destroyed if it falls in love with a […]

VOD Spotlight: “Hall Pass”

June 14, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

There are plenty of date movies that will leave couples talking, but for many, Hall Pass may generate the most intense conversations. In this romantic comedy, two wives become fed up with their husbands’ constant rubbernecking of beautiful women, So they give the men, Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis), a two-week “hall pass” in which they can do whatever they like with no questions asked.