Michelle Pfeiffer

New Year’s Eve

/ / Home Video
  • Title: New Year’s Eve
  • IMDB: link

new-years-eve-blu-rayNew Year’s Eve follows the lives of an ensemble of New Yorkers, somehow each of whom find themselves in a series of cliched, sickeningly sweet entanglements or awkward situations that only bad screenwriters can dream up, in the hours leading up to Times Square’s biggest night.

The cast includes a single man (Tad Hamilton) with car trouble dreaming of the woman he met last New Year’s Eve,  a single mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) whose teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin) wants to spend New Year’s Eve with a cute boy (Jake T. Austin) in Times Square, Robert De Niro as a man dying of cancer wanting to see the ball drop one last time and his doctor (Cary Elwes) and nurse (Halle Berry) who try to make his final hours comfortable, and a pair of couples (Seth Meyers, Jessica Biel and Til Schweiger, Sarah Paulson) jockeying to be the parents of the first born baby of the year.

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Gothic Melodrama

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Dark Shadows
  • IMDB: link

dark-shadows-posterLike most of director Tim Burton‘s work Dark Shadows, a humorous hyper-melodramatic update of the 1960’s television show of the same name, gives us an offbeat sense of humor and the macabre, Johnny Depp, and a big-eyed, pale-skinned, waifish young leading lady. Dark Shadows certainly isn’t going to rank among the director’s biggest successes (Sweeney Todd, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands), but for most of it’s running time it finds a way to entertain by showcasing a tale of an 18th Century vampire thrust into the 1970’s.

200 years after being buried alive by the witch (Eva Green) who cursed him and left him to rot, Barnabas Collins (Depp) is freed from his coffin by a group of construction workers making way for a McDonald’s. Confused by the nature of the new world, Barnabas makes his way to his ancestral home where he meets his descendants Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) and David (Gulliver McGrath).

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Neil Gaiman’s Stardust

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Stardust
  • IMDb: link

“There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire…The tale started, as many tales have started, in Wall.”
 

Stardust

Tristan (Charlie Cox) is your average leading character, a dreamer, a bit of a bumbler, from modest backgrounds, and in love with a girl (Sienna Miller) who doesn’t take him seriously.

To prove his love Tristan vows to go over the wall and bring back a falling star.  Though Tristan makes it over the wall his quest leads him where he least suspects for on the other side of the wall exists a magical realm which includes witches (Michelle Pfeiffer, Sarah Alexander, Joanna Scanlan, Melanie Hill), princes (Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett) with agendas of their own, and pirates (Robert De Niro, Dexter Fletcher).

Tristan’s goal is further impeded when the star itself turns out to be a sentient creature named Yvaine (Claire Danes) whose life is now in danger from those who wish to kill her and take her power.  Tristan’s journey home with Yvaine will teach him much about himself and the world, help him discover where his heart truly lies, and give him clues to his past and his destiny.

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I Know Where I’ve Been

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Hairspray
  • IMDb: link

“I wish every day was Negro Day.”

hairspray-poster

Hairspray is a toe-tappin’ good time with a strong cast, good music, and plenty of fun.  It would be easy to dismiss it as simply a feel good story and the discovery of first-time actress Nikki Blonksy (who was found, in all places, at a Coldstone Creamery).  But beneath the film’s smiles, laughs, dances, and shakes, there’s a story about acceptance and struggle, about a willingness to sacrifice for doing what you believe is right, no matter what it may cost you.

Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) is your average teen who daydreams in school about being a celebrity.  Tracy and her best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes) race home every day to catch the Corny Collins Show on television.  Hosted by Corny Colins (James Marsden) the dance show is the hippest thing in all of Baltimore.

From here the story breaks into two parts, that are surprisingly wll meshed together.  The first involves Tracy earning a spot on the show despite her size and the concerns of her mother Edna (John Travolta), her crush on Link Larkin (Zac Efron) and her hopes to win Miss Hairspray against the beautiful but malelovent Amber Van Tussle (Brittany Snow).

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