Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray]

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Review

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Feature

• Title: SIN CITY BLU-RAY
  
• Publisher: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO / Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE / Theme: CRIME / Rating: NR
• Product Type: VIDEO /
• Platform: BLU-RAY DISC

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Overview

SIN CITY - Blu-Ray Movie

Sin City (Two-Disc Theatrical & Recut, Extended, and Unrated Versions) [Blu-ray] Specifications

Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.

Based on three of Miller's immensely popular and immensely gritty books (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard), Sin City is unquestionably the most faithful comic-book-based movie ever made. Each shot looks like a panel from its source material, and director Rodriguez (who refers to it as a "translation" rather than an adaptation) resigned from the Directors Guild so that Miller could share a directing credit. Like the books, it's almost entirely in stark black and white with some occasional bursts of color (a woman's red lips, a villain's yellow face). The backgrounds are entirely digitally generated, yet not self-consciously so, and perfectly capture Miller's gritty cityscape. And though most of Miller's copious nudity is absent, the violence is unrelentingly present. That may be the biggest obstacle to viewers who aren't already fans of the books and who may have been turned off by Kill Bill (whose director, Quentin Tarantino, helmed one scene of Sin City). In addition, it's a bleak, desperate world in which the heroes are killers, corruption rules, and the women are almost all prostitutes or strippers. But Miller's stories are riveting, and the huge cast--which also includes Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devin Aoki, Carla Gugino, and Josh Hartnett--is just about perfect. (Only Bruce Willis and Michael Madsen, while very well-suited to their roles, seem hard to separate from their established screen personas.) In what Rodriguez hopes is the first of a series, Sin City is a spectacular achievement. --David Horiuchi

On the Blu-ray disc
Sin City looks and sounds great in high definition, with its rare colors looking especially splashy contrasting with the stark black-and-white and powerful 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (try Marvin's early escape scene to get a taste of the sound). Like the 2005 recut DVD, the two-disc Blu-ray edition has both the theatrical cut and the recut version that shows each of the four stories by itself. (Billed as "Recut, Extended, Unrated," the four separate stories are extended by only about 6.5 total minutes of movie action; the rest of the added running time is the splashy new title shots, named by the title of the story or book, and the four minutes of credits that run at the end of each segment.) New to Blu-ray on disc 1 is Cine-Explore, which plays the theatrical cut accompanied by the Rodriguez-Miller commentary track and drops in picture-in-picture panels of either the original graphic novel, the green-screen shots before the special effects were added, or both. This is a great way to watch a movie that was (1) based heavily on the look of the graphic novel and (2) shot almost entirely on green screen. Occasionally the shots are flipped as well, giving us the large green-screen shot with the theatrical cut in one of the inner panels. The other new Blu-ray feature is "Kill 'Em Good," an 8.5-minute condensation of The Hard Goodbye that combines Mickey Rourke's narration with scenes from the graphic novel similar to a motion-comic style. There's also some gameplay elements added: use the Blu-ray remote to drive the getaway car, toss money at Nancy, or battle Kevin and henchmen in the woods. As with most home-video set-top games, the controls are a bit clunky, but the last activity is worth making an effort to learn.

Also on the discs are almost all the other features that were on the two-disc unrated recut edition, though they're in standard definition. The theatrical cut has the two commentary tracks (the first is by Rodriguez and Miller discussing the concepts and the cast, and the second is mostly by Rodriguez, but Tarantino drops in briefly for the scene he directed as does an enthusiastic Bruce Willis for his segment) and the alternate audio track with a live audience in Austin, Texas. There are also 47 minutes of featurettes covering Miller, Tarantino, cars, costumes, props, and special effects; a 14-minute take in which Tarantino can be heard coaching the actors; Rodriguez's usual "flic school" (among the topics is how scenes were created by merging footage of actors who never actually met); footage of Bruce Willis's band performing in Austin at the time of the shooting; another Rodriguez cooking school (this time it's breakfast tacos); and the "green screen version" of the film: the entire film as it was shot in front of the green screen, sped up to play in only 12 minutes. --David Horiuchi

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Robin Hood: Unrated Director's Cut (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)

Robin Hood: Unrated Director's Cut (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) Review

Robin Hood: Unrated Director's Cut (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) Overview

Academy Award® winner Russell Crowe and visionary director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) reunite for the untold story of the man behind the legend. In an age of oppression and shameless tyranny, an outlaw becomes the unlikely hero that saves a nation and inspires generations to fight for freedom. In this thrilling action adventure, "Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott are at their most entertaining since Gladiator" (Dan Jolin, Empire (UK). Also starring Academy Award® winner Cate Blanchett.

Robin Hood: Unrated Director's Cut (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) Specifications

Cast aside all notions of men in tights: Ridley Scott's Robin Hood is decidedly earthier and more grown-up than most romps through Sherwood Forest. The presence of the over-40 Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett cinches the deal, lending a dose of worldliness to a project that means to be about the origins of the famous character, who in this incarnation was evidently a late bloomer. Robin Longstride (that's his name before he started wearing a hood) is just returned from a 10-year jaunt in the Crusades when he loses his king (Danny Huston as Richard the Lionheart) and his job. Back in England, Robin folds himself neatly into a Nottingham family, where a grieving widow named Marion (Blanchett) and her father-in-law (Max von Sydow) hardly care that he doesn't much resemble their own departed warrior. But the merry men and their famous sideline will have to wait: except for one bit of robbing from the rich (i.e., the greedy government of King John) and giving to the poor, this movie is more concerned with creating a portrait of the royal intrigue that went into creating Robin Hood than in detailing the high jinks of the Nottingham outlaws. And that's not a bad thing, because although Robin Hood lacks the mechanical action beats that distinguish most films of its scale, it creates an engrossing story line around its political chess playing (outlined by screenwriter Brian Helgeland and apparently a few others). Crowe is in reliable crusty-tender form and Blanchett summons up more than her sketchy character probably deserves, but the film has a large cast of chewy, fun performers: Mark Strong (Kick-Ass) does baddie duty as the treacherous pal of King John (preening Oscar Isaacs), William Hurt is stalwart and wise as a royal power broker, Eileen Atkins is a carefully considered royal mum, and Matthew Macfadyen is a Sheriff of Nottingham who's no longer central to the villainy--though no less hissable for his ineptitude (and a prime candidate at film's end for No. 1 bad guy in the sequel). In short, not a Gladiator re-do for Scott and Crowe, but a civilized tale of tyrants and rebels, staged in a pleasingly old-fashioned way. --Robert Horton

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Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut)

Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Review

I can't really compare this with the original version as I've not that in full yet, but of all the zombie films I've seen, this 2004 remake is definitely one of the best. I've seen this film 3 times now! It's exciting through out and creates a lot of suspence in many scenes even if you can predict what's going to happen. It's a bit like 28 Days Later with running zombies rather than slow, mindless zombies that can creep up on you from behind like with the Romero films. So more like the rage virus from 28 days Later only they're still undead rather than simply infected and they look like zombies as well, menacing, frightening and creepy giving an upper tempo to the film with a sense of emergency making the effort to keep them out of the mall much more intense. The only thing that I think could be improved about the living dead in this film is that everyone who dies from anything should come back as a zombie rather than just people who are bitten or infected, it would make it more exciting. Brilliant acting as well and a good wide variety of characters and although there isn't whole lot of character development, there are so many different characters - a strong police seargent, a tough, bitter security guard with a cowboy moustache, a sarcastic guy, a jack-of-all trades, a former criminal with his pregnant wife, and then there's the nurse who's the love interest. So like I said there's a wide variety of characters which I think again makes it more exciting because the higher the number of characters the more action filled zombie scenes you're going to see because any of them can be confronted by a zombie.

The special features on this DVD are good as well with the news broadcast and Andy's Terrifying Last Days. When watching the DVD it was good to watch these 2 features to warm up for the actual film. The news broadcast being that it shows you how the zombie outbrake increases more and more with scenes of bite victims being interviewed, people being got by zombies, and panicked news reporters. A brilliant feature with a lot of sparkle to it! Then Andy's Terrifying Last Days being a video made by Andy, the gunshop owner stranded alone in his gun store across the zombie infested parking lot. We don't get to see much of Andy's point of view during the actual film, so it's good to see what kind of a character he is, what he's thinking and how he fights to stay alive.

I would definitely give this film 5 stars as it's entertaining and exciting from start to finish and I'd certainly reccomend it to fans of the zombie genre. An exciting all action packed zombie film!

Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Feature

• POLLEY/RHAMES/PHIFER/BARRY

Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Overview

Packed with more blood, more gore, and more bone-chilling, jaw-dropping thrills, Dawn of the Dead Unrated Director's Cut is the version too terrifying to be shown in theaters! Starring Mekhi Phifer, Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley in an edgy, electrifying thrill-ride.

When a mysterious virus turns people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, a handful of survivors wage a desperate, last-stand battle to stay alive…and human.

Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Specifications

Are you ready to get down with the sickness? Movie logic dictates that you shouldn't remake a classic, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead defies that logic and comes up a winner. You could argue that George A. Romero's 1978 original was sacred ground for horror buffs, but it was a low-budget classic, and Snyder's action-packed upgrade benefits from the same manic pacing that energized Romero's continuing zombie saga. Romero's indictment of mega-mall commercialism is lost (it's arguably outmoded anyway), so Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn compensate with the same setting--in this case, a Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak--a well-chosen cast (led by Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer), some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. Horror buffs will catch plenty of tributes to Romero's film (including cameos by three of its cast members, including gore-makeup wizard Tom Savini), and shocking images are abundant enough to qualify this Dawn as an excellent zombie-flick double-feature with 28 Days Later, its de facto British counterpart. --Jeff Shannon

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Saw V (Unrated Director's Cut)

Saw V (Unrated Director's Cut) Review

If you are not familiar with the saw series I would highly reccommend it. I am a fan of the entire series because of the lesson that everyone must have a weakness or bad habit that comes back to bite them eventually, unless they are strong enough to overcome it. As for Saw V, it starts off where part IV left with detective Stroum being the only person to survive after jigsaws tests. The police find Stroum barely alive and with no leads to who is responsible. Jigsaw has been dead since the the end of the part III to be involved anymore. The plot becomes a guessing game as to who has taken over jigsaws plan. For me this series is still interesting and still has relevance as long as there are people left to take the test of survival that jigsaw has given them. Four out of five.

Saw V (Unrated Director's Cut) Overview

After Jigsaw's death, his apprentice and successor to his killing dynasty kidnaps five people, forcing them to complete a series of tasks in order to

Saw V (Unrated Director's Cut) Specifications

How do you keep a horror franchise going when your villain has been unquestionably and irrevocably killed off? That's a conundrum any number of genre series have tackled--to varying degrees of success--and the problem facing the sadistic Saw films in its latest entry, Saw V. The filmmakers' answer--faithful henchmen--is at first blush a savvy idea, as it allows the mayhem of original bad guy Jigsaw to continue unabated, despite the fact that he was dissected on a morgue slab in the previous film. Saw V extends the premise by having disgraced detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor from the previous two films) don the pig mask to unleash horrific tortures on another group of seemingly unconnected strangers. Scott Patterson (Aliens in America) also returns as Hoffman's Javert, a dogged fellow agent who escapes death in the fourth film and an ugly fate in this entry to continue his pursuit. All the elements that have made the Saw series popular with horror fans--the elaborate killing machines, the trompe l'oeil plotting, and the sociopathic judgments handed down by Jigsaw--are intact in Saw V, which is a positive for its most faithful followers, but a negative for just about everyone else. Saw V covers no new ground, expands no part of the mythology of the series and seems perfectly content to present a lifeless retread of Saw III and IV. It also suffers from the absence of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw, who despite his top billing, is glimpsed only in brief flashbacks. Bell, who could be unsettling even in the stillest moments, gave the series a gravity that kept its least plausible moments in check, and Mandylor, though game, simply cannot provide the same. What's left is dreary and relentlessly downbeat, and to make matters worse, ends on an open note that clearly indicates that a sixth film is in the works, no matter how obvious that the diabolical ingenuity of the original Saw has been worn to the bone by its sequels. Only diehard Saw fans need to sign up for this round of Jigsaw's games. -- Paul Gaita

Beyond Saw V on DVD

Saw 1-4 (Amazon.com Exclusive) on DVD

Saw V the Soundtrack

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MacGruber (Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray]

MacGruber (Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray] Review

This movie is completely epic. VERY funny and definitely worth a watch. I use catchphrases from this movie on the reg.

MacGruber (Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray] Overview

Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/07/2010 Run time: 96 minutes Rating: R

MacGruber (Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray] Specifications

No comic explosion, but not quite a dud, no Wayne's World, but not The Ladies Man either, MacGruber does manage to pull off the seemingly impossible mission of expanding a 90-second one-joke Saturday Night Live sketch into a feature film. What's next: "Toonces the Cat Who Could Drive a Car"? In those MacGruber sketches, Will Forte's mullet-maned hero "makes life-saving inventions out of household materials" but always gets sidetracked as the bomb he's defusing ticks down to its last 20 seconds. Blown up for the big screen, MacGruber finds a bigger payoff whenever the film sidetracks from the standard-issue '80s action movie plot, as witness MacGruber's deranged revenge fantasies toward a driver who hurled a drive-by insult at his car. MacGruber's secret weapon is Val Kilmer as a megalomaniacal villain (his name, not appropriate for a family website, is a profanely puerile running joke) with a stolen Russian nuclear warhead and a grudge against MacGruber. MacGruber's somewhat less than A-team includes Vicki St. Elmo (SNL MVP Kristin Wiig), more into her music than into saving the world, and straight arrow Lieutenant Piper (Ryan Phillippe), who begins to question MacGruber's unorthodox tactics (one involving a diversionary stalk of celery is just one of the film's more jaw-dropping gross-out gags). MacGruber may not set the world on fire, but the insanely committed Forte, like MacGruber, will do anything, no matter how obscene, to complete his mission. Mission pretty much accomplished, particularly in a sex scene that is the most outrageous of its kind since Team America: World Police (albeit, thankfully, not as graphic). --Donald Liebenson

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Unrated Widescreen Edition) Review

There seems to be a little comedy club, like a secret fraternity, and one wonders just what is the secret handshake to get in? It helps, rather than hinders, if you've been in TV, especially Freaks and Geeks, which was Forgetting Sarah Marshall Producer Judd Apatow's pet project. Judd Apatow is a name you might want to casually drop into a conversation over lunch at Wolfgang Puck's. Jason Segel cut his teeth on Freaks and Geeks, and he wrote FSM, and stars in it as the heart broken Peter Bretter. Some of the break up experiences were true, and some were exaggerated. He did in fact, try to get over a break up by writing a Rock Opera about Dracula:

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Rachel Jansen: [about his rock opera] Why Dracula?
Peter Bretter: Because he's just a man, he wants to be loved but every woman he gets near he ends up smothering and killing, and I've had similar experiences.
====================

Wonder if he got any advice about writing Show Tunes from Neil Patrick Harris, who is after all, an authority on the subject (check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. Not only that, but he hosted the Tony Awards). Segel and Harris are both currently on "How I Met Your Mother," and it would seem an excellent opportunity for Segel to get help finishing his Musical-within-a-movie while they waited around between set-ups.

Who else in FSM has worked more on the small screen than the silver one? Let's see.
There's Kristen Bell, who plays Sarah Marshall, the woman he's trying to forget. Kristen Bell was Veronica Mars on "Veronica Mars" (64 episodes, 2004-2007).

Mila Kunis is Rachel Jansen, the woman he's trying to forget Sarah with. Mila was Jackie Burkhart on "That '70s Show" (201 episodes, 1998-2006). Jackie was such an annoying brat that it is quite a surprise to see her in FSM. Even Russell Brand, who plays Sarah's new boyfriend, the polymorphously perverse and annoyingly full-of-himself rock star Aldous Snow, lead singer of Infant Sorrow (BTW, Brand is engaged to Katy Perry in so-called Real Life); confessed that he fancied her.

Bill Hader is from "Saturday Night Live," Jack McBrayer is on "30 Rock," and Paul Rudd was Mike Hannigan, one of Phoebe's many boyfriends, on "Friends" (18 episodes, 2002-2004). He also made an appearance on Kristen Bell's "Veronica Mars." Paul Rudd was Desmond Fellows (1 episode, 2007).

The plethora of TV actors was also appropriate because one of the main things that made Peter want to forget Sarah Marshall was that she was the star of a CSI-like cop show, while he was the show's composer. It was less than fulfilling work, though. He was reduced to producing ominous sounding fills, mostly percussion. There were some great clips that parodied those kind of shows, with William Baldwin skewering Horatio Kane and his ilk as Detective Hunter Rush:

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Sarah Marshall: [lifts up the sheet] What do you think, Rush?
Detective Hunter Rush: [cringes] It's going to be hard for her to reenter the pageant... without a face.
====================

He has the dramatic, Shatneresque pause, punctuated by taking off his sun glasses. Those shows are already a self-parody, so they're not as easy to make fun of as you would think. Meanwhile, what was it exactly that caused Sarah to dump Peter?

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Sarah Marshall: It got really hard taking care of you when you stopped taking care of yourself, I tried everything to get you off your little island, the couch.
====================

Wonder if Peter Bretten watched much TV while he was on his little island, the couch? Seems like Sarah Marshall was having as much trouble getting Peter off the island as the Skipper and Gilligan were, not to mention the Professor and Mary Ann. Three hour tour? Anyway, I'm not complaining about all the TV talent in FSM, because with all that comedy experience you have a crack ensemble ready, willing, and able to kick it up a notch. Before there was Robin Williams there was a little show called "Mork & Mindy," and Jim Carrey paid his dues with "Duck Factory" and "In Living Color."

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Peter Bretter: I love Hawaii.
Sarah Marshall: Yeah, it's nice, but I think for like a week, tops. Any more than that and I know that I'd go crazy, because I think that Hawaii is a place to escape for people who can't deal with the real world.
Rachel Jansen: Yeah, you know, there's so few personal shoppers and pet therapists. Gosh, it's such a hard life.
====================

A cool thing about FSM was the setting in Oahu, an island of Hawaii. It seemed like a great place to regroup and fix a broken heart. Even if Peter spent the first part of his vacation drinking potent cocktails with little umbrellas, he did eventually come to realize that he could be happy without booze and Sarah Marshall. Don't want to give away too much, but besides the cute and helpful desk clerk, Rachel, there was Surf Instructor Chuck (a rudderless Paul Rudd), and helpful staff like Kimo (Taylor Wily) ready to offer understanding and a little Kimo-therapy:

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Kimo: Are those sad tissues or happy tissues?
====================

FSM was a very funny movie, and it was enhanced by the setting. I love Hawaii--Oahu, Maui. Mahalo!

FSM was kind of a mish mash, but it comes at you like one of those gigantic waves all the surfers are always raving about. Shall I compare it to a Shakespearean comedy of errors? Another thing about FSM, it had sincerity.

My niece Lulu thinks it was just about the funniest movie ever, but I think that Superbad is. I thought that FSM had kind of a shaky start, but it picked up comedy momentum. Superbad rushes out of the gate and doesn't look back. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

The Bottom Line is that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a memorable and funny film, and Jason Segel would seem to have a future beyond TV--both writing screenplays and acting in films. He is not such a bad songwriter/lyricist, either. He wrote some cool tunes for the film, both the Dracula musical and some tunes for Aldous Snow. Of the songs that he did not write for the film, I liked that there were two versions of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, by both Sinéad O'Connor and The Coconutz with Daniel Ho. The second one captured the 'flava' of the islands, like that uke version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Who does that? It's awesome.

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Darald: Let me just say that if God was a city planner he would not put a playground next to a sewage system!
====================

I Love You, Man (2009) Jason Segel was Sydney Fife; Paul Rudd was Peter Klaven
Max Payne (2008) Mila Kunis was Mona Sax
Superbad (Unrated Widescreen Edition) (2007) Jonah Hill was Seth; Bill Hader was Officer Slater
Knocked Up (Unrated Widescreen Edition) (2007) Jason Segel was Jason; Bill Hader was Brent; Jonah Hill was Jonah; Paul Rudd was Pete
Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2007) Jack McBrayer was DJ; (uncredited) Jonah Hill was Older Nate; (uncredited) Paul Rudd was John Lennon
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Unrated Widescreen Edition) (2005) Jonah Hill was eBay Customer; Paul Rudd was David
Pootie Tang (2001) Kristen Bell was Record Executive's Daughter
Can't Hardly Wait (1998) Jason Segel was Watermelon Guy
The Size Of Watermelons (1996) Paul Rudd was Alex
Sliver (Unrated Edition) (1993) William Baldwin was Zeke Hawkins

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Darald: What's the state fish of Hawaii?
Dwayne the Bartender: The Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.
====================

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Unrated Widescreen Edition) Overview

Peter (Jason Segel) is a struggling musician who finds his world turned upside down when his TV celebrity girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), dumps him for a tragically hip rock star. It’s the hysterically funny look at how far one man will go to forget a girl – and all the fun he finds along the way!

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Unrated Widescreen Edition) Specifications

Breaking up is hard to do--but that doesn't mean you can't have some belly laughs about it. Forgetting Sarah Marshall provides that rare treat: a romantic comedy about breakups, that is both romantic and funny. The laughs, especially from writer-star Jason Segel, are both heartfelt and raunchy, and the film is just unexpected enough that it keeps the viewer's attention till the end. The touches of producer Judd Apatow, who's famously retooled rom-coms to appeal to guys as much as women, are woven throughout the film, but Segel's script, reportedly based on many of his own experiences, is fresh and original. And adult. Forgetting Sarah Marshall features male genitalia laffs presented in unexpected and human ways (the nude breakup scene is played for giggles but also deep poignancy), and the language and sex scenes are strictly for grownups--and rightly so. Segel's script, and his performance as Peter, show that he understands the true nature of adult re! lationships, which provides the refreshing difference between this film and some of Apatow's other crude creations. The cast is sublime; Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) plays title character Sarah, a self-absorbed actress, and Russell Brand is her new British honey who accompanies her to--what are the chances?--the exact same Hawaiian resort as Peter, who's nursing his broken heart. Mila Kunis plays Rachel, the resort employee who gives Peter a reason to hope, and Paul Rudd is the surfing instructor who gives him his own brand of heartfelt advice ("When life gives you lemons, just say 'F--- the lemons' and bail," he says cheerily). The pacing is screwball, and the absurdities fly (a "Dracula" musical puppet show, and a surprisingly lovely Hawaiian version of "Nothing Compares 2 U"). Nothing the viewer will forget any time soon.--A.T. Hurley

Get to Know the Cast From Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Kristen Bell (Sarah Marshall)

Jason Segel (Peter Bretter)

Mila Kunis (Rachel Jansen)

Beyond Forgetting Sarah Marshall on DVD

More from the Apatow Gang

Get it on Blu-ray

More Romantic Comedies

Stills from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Click for larger image)

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Caligula (The Unrated Edition)

Caligula (The Unrated Edition) Review

If you expect to be intellectually edified and historically informed after viewing Bob Guccione's film Caligula, you will be enraged upon viewing this gargantuan, Preminger-esque porn extravaganza.

Caligula (the film) has many things going for it; notably viable dialogue, largely contributed by Gore Vidal who, I believe, disowned this film once he got wind of the direction the film script was going in the hands of the producers, and wildly imaginative set pieces that are probably not too far off the mark in regards to what Rome looked like in 40 A.D. It also boasts an impressive cast of stars who seem to have believed in the project by forcing themselves to pretend they were making a movie for Lindsay Anderson (O Lucky Man) or Stanley Kubrick (Clockwork Orange). In fact, the ever-splendid Peter O'Toole gives a chilling, scary performance as Tiberius Caesar, Caligula's grandfather. His dying emperor reminds me of Willem Dafoe's character in David Lynch's Wild at Heart, very dangerous and very insane. Tiberius, like all the historical individuals in most films about Rome, is completely bogus here, but O'Toole falls into the spirit of the cartoony nature of this flick and has a grand old time going WAY over the top as he would love to have done in every movie he's made. He is at his best in these kinds of roles, see The Ruling Class and The Lion in Winter.

The English are nothing if not mercenary in a very practical sense, so the producers of Caligula were able to entice the great John Gielgud to give them one of his programmed performances for a, no doubt, very high fee for 10 minutes of film time.
And I expect he enjoyed all the naked people running around in his scenes on the isle of Capri. Good work if you can get it.

The historic person, Gaius Caligula, was a huge man according to the historians, who was hairy, bald and brawny. We have quite a different impression of this man stemming from the really off-base character in I Claudius, played by the otherwise great John Hurt, and this version here, played by a similarly wan and blonde, English, naughty choirboy type. Malcolm MacDowell has stated that he now knew what it was like to be a whore. Well, I expect he had a pretty good idea of that before this project, but having said that, he certainly seems to be enjoying himself enormously as this fantasy anti-hero, Caligula Caesar, who spends his days and nights fornicating with girls and fisting the boys.

Helen Mirren seems game for anything and it isn't all that surprising to see her flailing her enormous breasts about in priapic rituals in old Roma. Mirren was always a superb actress who has shown over the years how versatile and adventurous she is when choosing roles, and she does them all brilliantly. After Caligula was made she went on, years later, to star in Peter Greenaway's shocking, often disgusting film The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, finally making her way to Buckingham Palace as Queen Elizabeth II. An amazing career when you look at her curriculum vitae.

These four stars make for engaging viewing between orgies and atrocities, which are, in themselves, interesting to watch, if you have the stomach for it.

Caligula is a movie for people who appreciate the beauty of the human body and are not averse to seeing it on display in a wide array of positions and activities. The dialogue is not nauseatingly inane because Guccione opted to concentrate on the sex stuff so few words were needed to add on to Vidal's work. What a con! The man was a genius.

The film is made slightly cheesy, in an appropriate manner for a porn flick, by the use of 'classical' music by Aram Khachaturian and Serge Prokofiev, recorded in Mantovani-like ffffFrequency sound; lots of swooning violins in an indoor pool environment, sort of thing, alternating with blaring Ben Hur-like brass fanfares and bombast.

The sets, as I stated, are first class, no expense was spared on the production and is in many ways beautiful to behold.
Guccione was the Preminger porn kings.

You've been warned, but for those of you still interested, get it.

Caligula (The Unrated Edition) Overview

Before Rome. Before Gladiator. The most controversial film of all time as you've never experienced it before! Combining lavish spectacle and top award-winning stars, this landmark production was shrouded in secrecy since its first day of filming. Now, this unprecedented special edition presents a bolder and more revealing Caligula than ever before, with a beautiful new high-definition transfer from recently uncovered negative elements and hours of never-before-seen bonus material! From the moment he ascends to the throne as Emperor, Caligula enforces a reign like no other as power and corruption transform him into a deranged beast whose deeds still live on as some of the most depraved in history.

Malcolm McDowell (NBC's top-rated Heroes, Rob Zombie's Halloween, A Clockwork Orange, Time After Time, If..., Cat People and O Lucky Man), Helen Mirren: 2007 Academy Award & Golden Globe Winner for The Queen; 2007 Emmy & Golden Globe winner for HBO's Elizabeth I; star of hit TV series Prime Suspect and films including National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Calendar Girls, Excalibur, The Mosquito Coast, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover), Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year, Venus, The Stunt Man), John Gielgud (Gandhi, The Elephant Man, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent, and Academy Award-winning role in Arthur).

Supporting cast includes a wide array of European cult actors including Teresa Ann Savoy (Salon Kitty), John Steiner (Mario Bava's Shock), Leopoldo Trieste (Cinema Paradiso), Mirella D'Angelo (Tenebrae), Paolo Bonacelli (Mission: Impossible III) and Adriana Asti (The Best of Youth).

Caligula (The Unrated Edition) Specifications

Remember the dumbstruck, jaw-dropped expressions on "Springtime for Hitler's" shocked opening-night audience in Mel Brooks's original film of The Producers? That will no doubt be your face through much of the two-and-a-half-hour running time of this infamous 1979 pornographic epic that was a (Penthouse) pet project of publisher Bob Guccione. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But don't take our word for it. Listen to Helen Mirren--yes, the Oscar-winning Queen herself--who stars as Caesonia, Caligula's third wife and "the most promiscuous woman in Rome" (and in this film's salacious vision of Pagan Rome, that is saying something). In her very gracious, thoughtful and candid audio commentary that alone is worth the price of this set, she remarks, "I think it's a movie that is unlike any other, which is difficult to achieve." And for those of a more prurient bent, she adds, "It has an awful lot of bottoms." Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) gives a brave and fearless performance as Caligula, the hated and feared emperor corrupted by absolute power and no doubt voted Most Likely to Be Assassinated. The film unflinchingly charts his plummet into madness and the brutality of his reign in scenes of hardcore sex and violence that cannot be described here ("I can't watch," Mirren cries to her interviewers over one scene in which unfortunate characters are beheaded by a blade-spinning combine. "I can't even listen to it").

Caligula is also a career curiosity for author Gore Vidal, who wrote the original screenplay, but later demanded his name be removed from the credits, and venerable actors Peter O'Toole, appearing briefly as the syphilitic Emperor Tiberius Caesar, and John Gielgud as Nerva, a Senator who'd rather take his own life than "live with this reptile." This controversial film's tortured history is untangled in a very helpful booklet that is packaged along with this set's three discs. One is hard-pressed to think of a more reviled film graced with such a gala presentation, but Caligula's defenders and the curious will be amply rewarded with both the original uncut theatrical version of the film and a re-edited alternate version. Supplementary material includes an hour of deleted footage, a pretentious "making of" documentary made during the film's production and a new interview with director Tinto Brass, whose softcore tendencies clashed with Guccioni's more extreme vision (Brass did not have final cut, allowing Guccione to insert more explicit footage into the film). McDowell contributes his own lively audio commentary. "God help us," he groans as the film begins, but by its bloody conclusion, he proclaims he has "no regrets at all" about making the film. Caligula, Mirren maintains, is "an irresistible mix of art and genitals." And you've got to hand it to Guccione. Especially in these politically correct times, it is still strong and scandalous stuff. --Donald Liebenson

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