The Young Victoria

It's Oscar DVD Tuesday! That's right, all of the featured new releases today are films that were nominated for at least one Academy Award. So you can feel very cultured as you're popping your popcorn and settling in to your sofa with one of these flicks.

Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges won the best actor Oscar for his role as Bad Blake, a grizzled, alcoholic country singer whose poor life choices have led to a life of playing bowling allies. Things change for him a bit when a journalist (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was also nominated) comes to interview him, and winds up falling for him.

Colin Farrell has a memorable cameo as Bad's protege, but don't be fooled: this movie is all about Jeff. DVD extras include some deleted scenes and alternate music takes.

92%

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold's heartbreaking novel gets an adaptation at the hands of director Peter Jackson, who succeeds at getting good performances from his actors. Saoirse Ronan stars as Susie, a murdered 14-year-old girl who watches her family grieve from the afterlife. Where he fails is in the depiction of her "in-between," which is both cartoonish and disturbing. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz are her impassioned parents, and Stanley Tucci plays the creep who kills her in the part that nabbed him a supporting actor nomination.

There are no DVD extras, though the Blu-ray disc has a production diary from Jackson.

32%

To see one more release, just read more

When it comes to period films that involve corsets and longing romantic looks, Keira Knightley is usually, er, queen. But in The Young Victoria she gets some stiff competition from Emily Blunt as a teenage version of the 19th century royal.

Blunt is already up for a Golden Globe for her performance in the film, and it's easy to see why. As an 18-year-old woman learning the ways of government and love, Victoria isn't the stuffy version of the queen that you associate with history books. She's sharp, silly, bullheaded, and vulnerable at the same time — all of which Blunt captures adeptly. But Blunt's performance isn't the only element that shines in this film, which, it should be noted, counts Martin Scorsese and Sarah Ferguson as producers. For more of my thoughts, read more

The Young Victoria is finally debuting in the US this Friday, after its UK premiere earlier this year. Other than marrying her cousin and having a stuffy, misogynistic era named after her, I've never thought much of the queen. But the trailer for The Young Victoria depicts her as a vibrant young woman, aware of her of burden but determined to find happiness.

The Victorian era was not a good time for women. They were expected to be selfless, pure, and pretty much perfect. The Victorian Angel of the House was a common theme in literature, which Virginia Woolf best described in "Professions For Women:"

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draft, she sat in it — in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all — I need not say it — she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty — her blushes, her great grace. In those days — the last of Queen Victoria — every house had its Angel.

Was the Victorian Angel of the House made in the likeness of the queen? To find out, read more