Category: Actresses (Page 148 of 258)

What Else Ya Got? “Get Smart”

Welcome to a new installment we like to call “What Else Ya Got?” The market of home video is about much, much more than just owning your favorite movie these days; if a studio skimps on the bonus features – “What do you mean Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t available to do an audio commentary?” – some view it as nothing short of ripping off the customer, as if owning the movie were suddenly beside the point. We find this phenomenon amusing, but we also understand it; it’s what kept this writer from running out to buy either “Kill Bill” movie when they were released. Years later, he’s still waiting for the combo set that features Quentin Tarantino’s cut of both volumes together.

Our inaugural subject for What Else Ya Got? is “Get Smart,” Peter Segal’s high-octane reboot of Maxwell Smart’s Agent 86. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Disc One
There are two versions of the movie; the theatrical release, and the “Get Smart Takes” version, which has over 20 minutes of added jokes, alternate takes, etc. When a guy like Steve Carell is your lead, there is surely some comedy gold on the cutting room floor, so it makes sense that they would include a feature like this. The problem is that the only way of seeing these features is to watch the entire movie, meaning you’ll need two hours and ten minutes to watch 20 minutes of funny. Why they didn’t include the alternate jokes as a stand-alone piece is a mystery.

Disc Two
“The Right Agent for the Job”

This is a making-of featurette featuring interviews with Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson director Segal and the movie’s producers, and includes screen tests between Carell and Hathaway, where they realized that the two had incredible chemistry.

“Man in Moscow”
A quick featurette about shooting in Red Square, which features Hathaway again sparring deftly with Carell.

“Language Lessons”
Steve Carell pretending to speak French, Italian, German, and sign language

“Spy Confidential”
A quick gag reel.

“Spying on Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control”
Shameless plug for the straight-to-DVD release featuring Masi Oka and Nate Torrence, the gadget makers at CONTROL. But hey, the movie also features the lovely Jayma Mays, so perhaps it’s worth a look.

There is also a digital copy of the movie on Disc Two.

That’s it, kids. We’ll see you soon, covering something other than “Meet Dave,” which has one, count it, one featurette. And a lame one at that. But hey, can you blame them? The movie stunk on ice, and made about six bucks at the box office.

The Small Back Room

Life during wartime is getting to English weapons researcher and bomb disposal expert Sammy Rice (David Farrar). He’s in constant pain from an artificial foot and his preferred method of medication, whiskey, is highly problematic. It gets worse because his struggle to avoid drinking is just one of a few thorny issues that’s giving Susan (Kathleen Byron), his very serious girlfriend, some equally serious doubts about their future. Oh, and those damned bloody Nazis have taken to leaving a new kind of tricky unexploded bomb laying around, and it’s killing local soldiers and Prof. Rice’s own colleagues.

Based on a famed wartime novel by Michael Balcon, 1951’s “The Small Back Room” is one of the less well known films from “the Archers,” the writing and directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Best known for ravishing and slightly insane Technicolor spectaculars like “A Matter of Life and Death,” “The Red Shoes,” and their masterpiece, “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” the influential pair also had a flair for creating genuinely captivating black and white thrillers and love stories. “The Small Back Room” is a bit of both and possesses a degree of complexity and implied sexuality unusual in its time, and also today. Still, the film maybe bites off a bit more than it can chew resulting in a relatively distancing second act, and one semi-dream sequence involving a giant whiskey bottle shows how Pressburger/Powell’s admirable creative risk-taking could sometimes lead to unintended laughs. Still, there is humor, fine drama, suspense in the climactic bomb disposal sequence, and an amazing cast of some of Britain’s best local talent. This may not be the Archers at their absolute best but, trust me, that’s no insult.

Click to buy “The Small Back Room”

Heroes 3.7 – Repeat after me: “Robert Forster is AWESOME.”

Robert Forster is a god among men…and I’m not even talking about his character of “Heroes.” I don’t know what it is about the guy, but he just brings something to his roles where he can deliver more coolness than ought to be allowed by law, and “Heroes” is certainly no exception to that rule. Mind you, even with that ability, he still couldn’t pull off that awful line that was teased in last week’s preview (“Son, until you change that attitude, you’re grounded”), but I refuse to believe that there will be a funnier delivery of a line by any other character this season than his delivery of the punchline, “Have you met their mother?” Genius. But while Papa Petrelli’s scenes this week with Peter and Sylar were great, his best moment came with his handling of Maury Parkman. Wow. Nice knowin’ ya, Maury.

Claire and Mom have bonded over her handling of the Puppet Master, but it doesn’t stop Mom from being hesitant to accept the idea of Claire going on a road trip with her new best gal pal, Elle. And, really, can you blame her? Elle’s got a villainous past. Still, you have to like the fact that everyone from Claire’s little brother on up is aware that all they have to do to stop Elle is pour water on her.

There was a time when I would’ve heard Claire deliver that line about how “something’s wrong with us” and I would’ve figured it was just the writers being lazy…or possibly Claire just being stupid and somehow forgetting that her problems didn’t start until Sylar sliced into her brain. But, no, it appears that she’s actually being smart for a change and blatantly using Elle to get her own problem fixed, even if its origins aren’t the same as Elle’s. But speaking of stupid, I couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of Claire and Elle flying on a commercial aircraft while Elle’s powers were sparking left and right. I have to believe that the entire scene only existed because someone in the writer’s room was too proud of the “please turn off all electronic devices” joke to let it go unused.

While I’m glad that Mohinder seems to be working his way back to being the same guy we remember from the earlier seasons, it seems like somewhat of an abrupt about-face. Maya’s quivering speech about how he needs to redeem himself for his previous actions is presumably supposed to be the impetus for his return to good-guy status, but it’s going to take longer than an episode or two to erase the whole MohinderFly thing from my memory…especially as long as those cocoons are still hanging around his pad.

Speaking of Mohinder’s place, the scenes that took place there, with Nathan and Tracy meeting up with HRG and Meredith, worked better than I had anticipated. They felt more…real, I guess. Instead of the “Heroes” equivalent of a comic-book crossover, where one hero’s adventures cross path with another hero’s adventures, it felt weirdly casual. (“So, you’re her biological dad, you’re her adopted dad, and she’s her biological mom…?”) That feel lasted into the scenes were Nathan and Tracy met up with Peter and Claire, when Claire offered up that great line, “Dads aren’t always what they seem.” Actual drama in “Heroes” rather than melodrama? Will wonders never cease!

I’m not sure what to make of the whole Matt / Daphne love story. I don’t blame Matt for being naively hopeful that the future he’s seen will come to pass, but how naive is he going to be, and how much is he going to let Daphne get away with? I did enjoy the scene where he pulled a fast one on Knox; it’s been so long since Matt really had a chance to let loose with his abilities that I’d forgotten he could even do that. Or was this the first time we’d really seen him do something as profound as that? I noticed that he made a comment about how his dad could do it, but maybe we hadn’t actually seen him use his own powers on such a level before this.

As for the Peter / Sylar sibling rivalry, Peter definitely got the better one-liner this week (“Just kick his ass, and let’s get out of here”), but I’m interested to see where the Sylar storyline will go. He’s getting to be more of a Mama’s boy each week, reaching a point this episode where Mama Petrelli played to his desire for motherly approval in a big way, but it looks like Papa has his ear at the moment. Then again, Sylar’s so freaking wishy-washy that he’ll probably switch sides half a dozen more times before the end of the season.

Lastly, there’s Hiro and Ando, who served as the episode’s bookends. As much as I could do without another trip through time, the series’ flashback episodes have always proven to be a lot of fun, and the idea of seeing Malcolm McDowell, Robert Forster, and Eric Roberts in the same episode is too much to resist.

Heroes 3.6 – Wise Men at their End Know Dark is Right

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…tonight’s episode of “Heroes” was really good.

I’m not even going to limit my praise to calling it the best episode of the season (although it was), because it deserves more love than that; it was legitimately enjoyable across the board, with only a few moments which gave me pause.

Hiro and Ando: Clearly, we knew Hiro hadn’t really killed Ando, but doing a flashback which showed Hiro visiting a joke shop was pretty funny. As aware as Papa Petrelli and his secret society of super villains are, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that Ando isn’t really dead, but since Ando doesn’t have super powers, then the only person who’d really care about it one way or the other is Knox, and his ability isn’t one that lends itself to him finding out the truth. It was a nice touch that, when Daphne left, Ando pointedly released the breath he’d been holding. Why was it so nice? Because it showed that someone behind the scenes at “Heroes” finally realized, “Hey, the fans are actually noticing stuff, so we’d better start covering our asses a little better.” If Ando hadn’t released that breath, someone would’ve said, “Didn’t Daphne notice he was still breathing?”

When Hiro and Ando tried to catch Usutu the precog in Africa, it was a little bit like watching Austin Millbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume at work, but, c’mon, who didn’t laugh out loud at the caption of “One minute before Hiro got hit”? The sequence was funny, but the writers actually had fun with the notion of Hiro going back in time…and, again, I have to think that was in response to all the moaning about FuturePeter not choosing a better time to go back in time to change the past. If I didn’t love Usutu already, watching him smack Hiro over the head with the shovel would’ve cinched the deal. His otherwise Zen-like manner makes him my favorite new character of the season, so it should be interesting to see how things go when the villains attempt to make him for them.

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