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What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:15:49 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. Check out this week's picks!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Critics panned X-Men Origins: Wolverine when it first came out in theaters - and it got a rough start when an early version leaked online - but that didn't stop it from hitting it big at the box office.

The film, which serves as a prequel for X-Men favorite Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), gives us a peek at the mutant's childhood, his first love, and his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber). Overall, it's entertaining and fun, even though the storyline is hard to follow. Add to that a cast that includes Taylor Kitsch and Ryan Reynolds, and you have a movie that's easy on the eyes for what it lacks in substance - the perfect requisites for at-home viewing.

Special features include a segment called "The Roots of Wolverine" with Len Wein (co-creator of Wolverine) and Stan Lee (co-creator of the X-Men).

36%

Two more up next so read more.

Easy Virtue
Jessica Biel takes on Noel Coward in this big-screen adaptation of his 1920s-set play. Biel plays Larita, a feisty American race-car driver who is thrust into the world of upper-crust, uber-traditional English society when she marries a British man (Ben Barnes). Ultimately I felt like Biel just couldn't hold her own against acting veterans like Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth who portray her in-laws, and the film fizzled at the box office. But still, Easy Virtue is full of enough witty lines and gorgeous scenery to make it a pleasant weekend rental.

50%

Grey's Anatomy: Season Five

Get caught up on the most recent season of Grey's before the big premiere on September 24. It delivers another dose of dramadey at its finest as Meredith and Derek work on their relationship and Christina finds love with a new doctor at Seattle Grace. The show loses some of its focus mid-season, particularly when Izzie's hallucinations start taking a turn for the awkward, but it finds its way back again for the heartbreaking season finale.

Season five also showcased some superb acting, scoring Emmy nods for Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh. DVD extras include unaired scenes, outtakes, and an interview with Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Easy Virtue: Sparkling Cast Can't Help the Center Star

BuzzSugar — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:30:30 -0700

Easy Virtue, a film adaptation of Noel Coward's jazzy 1920s-set play, pits the old traditions of Europe's landowning gentry against the brash modernity that America had come to symbolize. The old guard is represented by a wealthy British family led by the brittle matriarch Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas). When her son, John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), marries a sexy race car driver named Larita (Jessica Biel) several years his elder, the entire family is thrown into a tizzy.

Once Biel's character arrives at the Whittaker home she's meant to represent a vibrant and mesmerizing new way of doing things that is utterly offensive to this family so steeped in tradition. But alas, Ms. Biel doesn't quite have what it takes to hold down the center of a film like this and the whole endeavor suffers. To see why, read more.

The cast includes the kind of immensely talented actors who can take on the old-fashioned, quick and witty dialogue with one hand tied behind their backs. Biel tries to keep up and at times she succeeds, but most of the time she simply appears to be swimming upstream. As you might expect, Kristin Scott Thomas deliciously inhabits her icy character with ease and delivers each line as a stinging backhanded compliment. Colin Firth plays her long-suffering husband still hurting from memories of war, and delivers an incredibly funny yet soulful performance. Even Ben Barnes, who is handsome but stiff in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, displays pizzazz as the prodigal son returning home.

As the movie clicks along, though, more and more is asked of Biel as she navigates the cruel and ruthless landmines set out for her by her new mother-in-law and sisters-in-law, and she's not quite able to rise to the occasion. As the tone shifts in the final act from a comedy of manners to a darker drama, the talented ensemble cast does all it can to prop the movie up, but the center can't hold in the end.

Photos courtesy of Sony Picture Classics

Families Are Kooky! Previews for Smother and Easy Virtue

BuzzSugar — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:34:25 -0700

These two movies might take place in completely different countries and time periods, but the Monster-in-Law/Meet the Parents/isn't-family-wacky overtones are the same. If there's anything to take away from the trailers for Smother and Easy Virtue it's "beware the in-laws!"

We've been keeping an eye on Easy Virtue for a while now, seeing as it's Jessica Biel's (as a bright blonde?) first big leading lady role in a comedy - a British comedy that takes place in the 1920s, no less. The movie, based on Noel Coward's play, follows an American divorcee, Larita (Biel), who travels to England to meet her new in-laws, having spontaneously married a young Englishman (Ben Barnes). Unfortunately, Larita's new mother-in-law is not too fond of Americans, and regards Larita specifically as a woman of "easy virtue." No U.S. release date yet, but Easy Virtue opens in the UK Nov. 7.

Coming back to present day, the trailer for Smother makes me laugh. To find out why, read more.

In Smother, Dax Shepard (who reminds me of Zach Braff more than a little here) stars as average guy Noah Cooper, whose wife (Liv Tyler) is anxious to make some babies. When Noah's wacky mother (Diane Keaton, whose manic tendencies come in handy here) comes to live with them for a while, Noah begins to have second thoughts about becoming a father. The movie (which has a really adorable poster) apparently opens in limited release next Friday, Sept. 26.

Check out these mother-knows-best trailers below.

Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Smother

'Smother' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

Source and source

Movie News Roundup: Biel, Arkin and Tisdale - Oh, My!

BuzzSugar — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:30:06 -0800

Lots of movie casting news these days - from Marley and Me to aliens lurking upstairs.

Alan Arkin will join Jennifer Aniston and Owen WIlson in the film adaptation of bestselling memoir Marley and Me. Wilson plays a newspaper columnist who adopts a dog with his wife (Aniston). Arkin will play the editor of the newspaper.
Jessica Biel will star as the lead in the romantic comedy Easy Virtue, based on the Noel Coward play. The movie follows Biel's character, "an American divorcee who travels to the South of France and marries a young Englishman, played by Ben Barnes, on the spur of the moment. The couple return to England to face his family, including his parents, played by Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas."
Amy Ryan is the lucky lady chosen to star opposite Matt Damon in an untitled Iraq war thriller directed by Paul Greengrass, the director of two of the Bourne movies and United 93.
High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale will make her feature film debut in "the adventure comedy" They Came From Upstairs about "a group of teens who have to defend their Maine home from the aliens who invaded the top floor." Just the top floor? Huh.