New to On Demand & DVD Archives - Page 85 of 90

VOD Spotlight: “How Do You Know”

March 22, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Written and directed by James L. Brooks (As Good as It Gets, Terms of Endearment), How Do You Know has Brooks’ signature look at lives in transition. The title refers to that moment when people realize they are truly in love but there is far more going on in this film. “We all have, at some point, a feeling that everything we’ve depended on we can’t depend on anymore. And when that happens, the only thing we have left is love,” says Brooks. “You can think your life is terrible, and then he or she walks in and it’s not […]

VOD Spotlight: Johnny Depp falls prey to Angelina Jolie’s charms in “The Tourist”

March 22, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

By Karl J. Paloucek It’s unflattering to think it, but some movies are conceived in the boardroom. Or at least, they could be. It’s easy to look at The Tourist with those eyes, on the surface. It’s an enticing formula: Take two of the most visually appealing stars working in film — Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie — and put them in a thriller in a sumptuous and exotic setting, like Venice, where they’re bound to fall in love. It’s the kind of thing that, on paper, should seem like an obvious hit. Except that it wasn’t. But what is […]

VOD Spotlight: Performances in “The Fighter” pack a punch

March 15, 2011 StayTuned Staff

A friend of mine told me recently that he wasn’t in a hurry to see The Fighter because, frankly, he felt like he’d seen it already. I could hardly blame him. The broad strokes of the story — a down-on-his-luck, mush-mouthed boxer struggles through family strife and hard knocks on his way to glory — fit right into the tired sports-movie template. But thankfully, The Fighter has much more firepower in its arsenal than just the same old jabs. Long a passion project of star Mark Wahlberg, the film tells the real-life story of “Irish” Micky Ward, a determined brawler […]

VOD Spotlight: Eastwood’s “Hereafter” explores life on the other side

March 15, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

As a star and a director, Clint Eastwood has had a relationship with death for years. In his acclaimed recent films, he explored the effect of death on the living in Mystic River and the need to die with honor in Gran Torino. In Hereafter, Eastwood looks at what life may be like after death. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, but on this side it’s final,” he says. “People have their beliefs … but those are all hypotheticals. Nobody knows until you get there.” And in that spirit, Eastwood has crafted a film that raises questions viewers […]

VOD Spotlight: The compassionate supervillain of “Megamind”

March 11, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

All superheroes have their supervillains, but the title character in Megamind examines life from the perspective of the “bad guy.” Megamind is a cuddly blue alien baby who fell to Earth and landed in a prison where he was raised by convicts. Now an adult, Megamind believes it is his destiny to be evil and fight the “good” alien, Metro Man. But Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt) may not be as good as Megamind or the public believes. Conversely, Megamind may not be so evil.

VOD Spotlight: “Jackass 3”

March 8, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

So you think your kid is crazy? In 1997, aspiring lunatic Philip John “PJ” Clapp shot himself in the chest with a .38-caliber revolver to test the strength of a bulletproof vest. But according to his mother, the man who would change his name to Johnny Knoxville was apparently crazed from early childhood. The toddler who would climb out of his playpen and throw himself on the floor “matured” into a teen who reportedly dove out of a second-floor hotel window into the pool. Jackass, the TV series and the films, worried Knoxville’s mom, Lemoyne Clapp, who says she hopes […]

VOD Spotlight: “Morning Glory”

March 8, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

There is a great tradition of comedies featuring ambitious young women, from the 1940 film His Girl Friday to the modern dramedy Working Girl. In Morning Glory, the comedy is set in the frequently funny world of morning news broadcasts. It stars Rachel McAdams as Becky Fuller, a talented television producer who tries to make peace between an egotistical news reporter (Harrison Ford) and a morning show host (Diane Keaton) so she can turn the falling ratings around. “If you’ve seen any clips on YouTube, you know that morning news is full of some of the most absurdly hysterical stuff […]

VOD Spotlight: “Due Date”

February 22, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Right from the start it was a mismatch made in heaven. Writer, producer and director Todd Phillips loves working with creative comics skilled at improvisation. Though he worked had worked with Due Date star Zach Galifianakis, most notably on the hilarious comedy The Hangover, he’d never had that experience with Robert Downey Jr., who he calls “one of the greatest talents out there.” He knew Downey was looking to do a comedy and thought the actor would be perfect for the role of a husband trying to get home in time for the birth of his son. “The thing that […]

The top 10 Movies On Demand of 2010

February 9, 2011 Ryan Berenz

By Ryan Berenz Global digital media measurement and research company Rentrak released its Multi-Screen Top Performing Titles of 2010 list, which includes the top viewed Movies On Demand from last year: Title/VOD Release Date/Domestic Box Office Gross (Millions) 1. The Blind Side (3/23/10) $226 2. Couples Retreat (2/9/10) $109.2 3. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (3/19/10) $296.6 4. Hot Tub Time Machine (Unrated) (6/29/10) $50.3 5. Grown Ups (11/9/10) $162 6. Date Night (8/10/10) $98.7 7. It’s Complicated (4/27/10) $112.7 8. The Book of Eli (6/15/10) $94.8 9. Shutter Island (6/8/10) $128 10. The Hurt Locker (1/12/10) $17

VOD Spotlight: “Life As We Know It”

February 8, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

Life as We Know It is a romantic comedy about a man and woman (Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel) who become guardian of their mutual friends’ baby when the parents are killed in an auto accident. The pair, now sharing their friends’ house, have nothing in common but a mutual dislike for each other and a love of little Sophie. Because of the limitations of filming infants and small children, identical twins are often used to play one very young character. With Life, the film’s creators found charming identical triplets — Alexis, Brynn and Brooke Clagett, born in May 2008 […]