Hollywood doesn’t have much to offer this week on DVD and Blu-ray…well, there’s Entourage , Season Eight , which would be a great choice except Ari, Vince & Co. failed to provide any nudity on the last season of their HBO bro-down. Sorry, guys, but we’d rather not hug that one out. Maybe with Perry Reeves … So instead this week we’re hopping the pond for some tea and (chest) crumpets from Kerry Fox in Shallow Grave (1994), the directorial debut of Oscar winner Danny Boyle . Plus, we’ve got the right proper British sex comedies Carry on Loving (1970) and Carry on Up the Jungle (1970), both new on DVD, and Lina Romay is her usual full-frontal self in the skin-filled Euro throwback The Perverse Countess (1974), nude on DVD. More after the jump!
‘Scandal’ Season One Out On DVD Today Kerry Washington and Columbus Short are smokin up primtime with one of the season’s hottest shows, ABC’s ‘Scandal.’ A political thriller loosely based on actual events that went down in the White House, Scandal is produced and directed by African-American screenwriter Shonda Rhimes. Kerry solidifies her banger status as former White House Communications Director for the Presdient, Olivia Pope, while cutie Columbus Short is easy on the eyes as smooth talking litigator, Harrison Wright. If you missed season 1, you can pick it up on DVD starting today.
‘Scandal’ Season One Out On DVD Today Kerry Washington and Columbus Short are smokin up primtime with one of the season’s hottest shows, ABC’s ‘Scandal.’ A political thriller loosely based on actual events that went down in the White House, Scandal is produced and directed by African-American screenwriter Shonda Rhimes. Kerry solidifies her banger status as former White House Communications Director for the Presdient, Olivia Pope, while cutie Columbus Short is easy on the eyes as smooth talking litigator, Harrison Wright. If you missed season 1, you can pick it up on DVD starting today.
July 20 is the summer’s most anticipated date for Bat-fans, but if you haven’t yet pre-ordered for The Dark Knight Rises you might want to hop on the IMAX train and snag your ticket before too long. Why? With over an hour of footage shot with IMAX technology, Chris Nolan’s trilogy-ender is set to blow minds in the larger format. And that could make the IMAX experience worthwhile. Personally, I’m not an IMAX diehard (same goes for 3-D — obviously — though that can be done well on occasion). When it comes to Nolan and Wally Pfister’s meticulously crafted movies, however, color me interested in watching a movie in the intended format. With TDKR , I find I’m willing to spend a little more and get to the theater early enough to snag one of the dozen or so prime seats in the theater that don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. (Seriously, have you ever been stuck in the nightmarish peripheral edge seats of an IMAX theater?) Of course, TDKR is pretty much the exception for me, though watching Tom Cruise scale the Burj Khalifa and whatnot was a thrill; I won’t go IMAX if I can help it otherwise. Who needs the headache, both literal and figurative? I’m hoping that The Dark Knight Rises will live up to the hype — Tom Hardy’s Bane already promises to be a hulking, monstrous entity leaping off the screen even without being the size of a building. The folks at IMAX want to make sure you don’t forget that Nolan & Co. went to the trouble of filming an hour of Batman’s last outing in IMAX (full press release follows). So who else is sold on Bat-MAX? Or The Hobbit in 48 fps ? Hell, Douglas Trumbull wants us to watch movies on giant screens at 120 fps, projected more brightly than ever before . By comparison, IMAX seems like an utterly conventional next step in movie-watching. Los Angeles, CA – June 11, 2012 – Tickets are now on sale for the IMAX release of The Dark Knight Rises, the third film of the critically acclaimed trilogy that introduces Gotham City’s newest super villains, Bane and leading lady Selina Kyle. Director Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated epic conclusion hits IMAX theatres worldwide day-and-date with the traditional release on July 20. While making the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan was the first filmmaker to use IMAX® cameras in a major motion picture release. Nolan employed the extremely high-resolution cameras even more extensively on The Dark Knight Rises: The IMAX Experience® —including the film’s prologue — incorporating a record of more than an hour of footage filmed with IMAX cameras. These specific sequences, which will expand to fill the entire screen exclusively in IMAX, will deliver unprecedented crispness and clarity and a truly immersive experience for moviegoers. “Director Christopher Nolan, Producers Emma Thomas and Chuck Roven, and Cinematographer Wally Pfister’s cinematic vision is unparalleled and continues to set the bar for excellence,” said Greg Foster, Chairman and President of IMAX Filmed Entertainment. “They are long-term partners and we’re happy to team with them and our friends at Warner Bros. to offer IMAX fans an opportunity to experience this highly-anticipated conclusion to the Batman trilogy the way it was meant to be seen – in IMAX theatres.” Sequences shot in 35mm have been digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images coupled with IMAX’s customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie. Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar® winner Christian Bale (“The Fighter”) again plays the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film also stars Anne Hathaway, as Selina Kyle; Tom Hardy, as Bane; Oscar® winner Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”), as Miranda Tate; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as John Blake. Returning to the main cast, Oscar® winner Michael Caine (“The Cider House Rules”) plays Alfred; Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon; and Oscar® winner Morgan Freeman (“Million Dollar Baby”) reprises the role of Lucius Fox. More on TDKR in IMAX here .
Whether you loved Prometheus or were left frustrated by it, everyone who’s seen Ridley Scott ‘s sci-fi pic can agree it leaves you with a plethora of unanswered questions . So maybe it’s good news that Scott has revealed the eventual DVD/Blu-ray release will feature deleted scenes and a 20 minute-longer extended cut of the film — even if Scott is perfectly happy stymieing audiences with his theatrical cut. Scott’s chat with Collider sheds light not only on what the Prometheus home video release might contain, but on Scott’s attitude toward bonus materials and post-theatrical cuts and the film nerds who love to pore over every second of supplemental materials. “[The theatrical cut] is fundamentally the director’s cut. But there will be half an hour of stuff on the menu because people are so into films — how they’re made, how they’re set up, and the rejections in it. That’s why it’s fascinating. So this will all go on to the menu.” Riiight . So Fox wants to issue a bonus-packed Prometheus extended cut DVD/Blu-ray package. Who’s Scott to get in the way? He’s a business, man! (Ka-ching!) It sounds like Prometheus ‘s theatrical cut is Scott’s ideal director’s cut, but he promises a half hour of bonus material for fans who want to go deep into detail: “I’m so happy with this engine, the way it is right now. I think it’s fine. I think it works. It can go in a section where, if you really want to tap in, look at the [DVD] menu. To see how things are long, and it’s too long.” And my favorite part of the chat (emphasis mine): ” Dramatically, I’m about putting bums on seats. For me to separate my idea of commerce from art — I’d be a fool. You can’t do that. I wouldn’t be allowed to do the films I do. So I’m very user friendly as far as the studios are concerned. To a certain extent, I’m a businessman. I’m aware that’s what I have to do. It’s my job. To say, ‘Screw the audience.’ You can’t do that. ‘Am I communicating?’ is the question. Am I communicating? Because if I’m not, I need to address it.” Along the lines of those scenes that viewers might agree are “too long,” Scott describes a scene that wound up on the cutting room floor, seemingly for good reason: [ SPOILERS ] [In the deleted scene described by Scott, Noomi Rapace’s Shaw fights with the remaining Engineer in a hand-to-hand fight.] “The problem about it is, while she gives as good as she gets with an axe… he’s so big, for him to be clouted with a conventional weapon somehow diminished him. It’s subtle. It’s drama. I didn’t want to diminish him by having this person who has a weapon to be able to back him off. It minimized him.” [ END SPOILERS ] Hmm, let’s see now. “Am I communicating?” Scott claims he asks himself. Well… that’s debatable. (See Movieline’s discussion of the still-unanswered questions and dumb script moves in Prometheus .) As for future Prometheus alternate/extended versions, I guarantee folks on both side of the Prometheus fence will clamor for a gander. The question is, will we get any real answers? [via Collider ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Before Sunday’s Batman sneak peek, we list five of the all-time best. By Josh Wigler, with additional reporting by Jim Cantiello Christian Bale in “The Dark Knight Rises” Photo: Warner Bros. UNIVERSAL CITY, California — “The Dark Knight Rises” is still over a month away from hitting theaters, but you’ll get a brand-new look at the hotly awaited superhero flick this Sunday during the 2012 MTV Movie Awards . We’re presenting exclusive footage from the film during the show, though the specifics remain under wraps — exactly as the mysterious Batman would want it. “I was put in a room, the door was locked, I was handcuffed, I had a bag over my head, the bag was revealed, they pressed play on the DVD, and I’m sworn to secrecy — but I’m telling you, it’s good,” Movie Awards director Hamish Hamilton told MTV News when we asked him about the “Dark Knight” footage. As we said: mysterious — but presumably awesome. Indeed, if Movie Awards history tells us anything, the “Dark Knight Rises” footage will be a beautiful sight to behold. Our annual awards show has a strong track record when it comes to rewarding viewers and attendees with cool, exclusive sneak peeks at the coming year’s hottest flicks. From sparkly skinned vampires to robots in disguise, here are five of the all-time best Movie Awards footage premieres: “Twilight” (2008) The first look that started a phenomenon. In 2008, we unveiled the first complete scene from “Twilight,” featuring superstars-in-the-making Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in their most iconic roles to date. It was an action-packed scene, too, ripped straight out of the climax of “Twilight” where Bella is being brutalized by bad vamp James — until a certain pale-skinned mega-hunk flies in to save the day. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009) Eventual outcome aside, our excitement for “Revenge of the Fallen” ahead of the movie’s release was through the roof. And we were equally psyched to debut an exclusive clip from the second “Transformers” movie at the Movie Awards in 2009, showing Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes fighting for their lives against a Decepticon spy. Just as exciting was our exclusive reveal of the Fallen himself. LaBeouf gave MTV News the exclusive first details about the monstrous villain that more than whetted our appetite for the film to come. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010) Even if it wasn’t a box-office hit, “Scott Pilgrim” remains one of our favorite flicks from 2010 — and our excitement hit an all-time high when we got a first look at the film at the 2010 Movie Awards. The scene, presented by director Edgar Wright, centered on heroic loser Scott’s battle against the second (and most famous) of Ramona Flowers’ evil exes: Lucas Lee, the skater-boy celebrity played by eventual “Captain America” star Chris Evans. It was our first fully formed look at Wright’s frenetic vision, and the scene shown at the Movie Awards ended up being one of the highlights of the final film. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1” (2011) Just as we were the first to bring the beginning of “Twilight” to the masses, so too were we there for the beginning of the end. The first trailer for the “Twilight” finale’s opening act — “Breaking Dawn – Part 1” — premiered at last year’s Movie Awards and was met with all the fanfare you’d expect. Twilighters oohed and ahhed over the first glimpses of Edward and Bella’s hotly awaited wedding, not to mention gratuitous shots of shirtless Jacob Black. The “Breaking Dawn” trailer was the talk of the Movie Awards that year. Though it had to share some of the spotlight with … “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” (2011) “The boy who lived … come to die.” The wicked Lord Voldemort’s cruel words sent shivers down fans’ spines when a brand-new clip from the “Harry Potter” finale premiered at last year’s Movie Awards. Easily one of the greatest footage reveals in the show’s history, if not the greatest, this look at “Deathly Hallows, Part 2” rocked the “Potter” community to the core for showing such a pivotal scene so far in advance of the film’s theatrical release. Harry’s walk through the Forbidden Forest to meet his maker at the hands of You Know Who stands out as one of the strongest scenes in “Potter” history, and we’re thrilled to have been able to supply fans worldwide with their very first look. Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET. Related Videos Behind The Scenes At The 2012 MTV Movie Awards
When it rains, it pours, and we are positively dripping with skin-filled options this week on DVD and Blu-ray: First, True Blood Season 4 hits DVD with things that go hump in the night like Anna Paquin , Alexandra Breckenridge and Janina Gavankar . Then hot hockey groupies Brandy Jaques and Veronica Malinowski flash their pucks in Goon (2011), Tilda Swinton gives us something to talk about in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), and Harriet Andersson gives us a tit-story lesson in Summer with Monika (1953), the film that solidified Sweden’s reputation as a SKINema pioneer. Plus, if you prefer your vampires foxy, French, and full-frontal, check out the re-releases of Jean Rollin ‘s Demoniacs (1974), Requiem for a Vampire (1971) and The Rape of the Vampire (1967), all nude on Blu-ray. More after the jump!
British boy band talks to MTV News about their ‘incredible’ Stateside tour experience and their ‘Up All Night’ DVD dropping Tuesday. By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Wigler One Direction Photo: Getty Images One Direction are in the first week of their headlining U.S. tour . And, according to the guys themselves, they’ve gotten as much love from fans in the States as they did abroad. “[It’s going] good, great,” Louis Tomlinson explained to MTV News. “We did the first show [Tuesday and] it was amazing.” Liam Payne still hasn’t gotten over the scope of the shows they are playing here in the States, adding, “[It’s] incredible. It’s the biggest show we’ve done as a band so far, biggest audience for our own tour. So, it’s amazing, absolutely amazing, incredible.” For fans who weren’t able to nab tickets to the show, or have seen it and want to relive it, the band will drop their concert DVD , “Up All Night: The Live Tour” on Tuesday. And, Niall Horan explained how it all came together. “It was a show of our U.K. tour we did in January and we shot one of the shows for people who couldn’t get tickets to the show,” he said. “And we’re actually touring that show now in the U.S., so everyone’s going to get to see it at some stage.” “Up All Night: The Live Tour” is 73 minutes of 1D goodness, filled with campfire sing-alongs, quick shots of the guys shirtless during costume changes and even the fellas all done up in sleek suits as they close out the show with “I Want.” Once the band wraps up their tour here in July, One Direction will come back to the States in 2013 as a part of their massive world tour . Are you planning on seeing One Direction on tour? Leave your comment below!
New in theater, Alice Eve co-stars in Men in Black 3, but to see Alice’s heavenly body, check her out in 2009’s Crossing Over . New on DVD, Eva Green will get you perfectly erect baring T&A in Perfect Sense , and nude on HBO, Oona Chaplin carries on a mam-ily tradition by baring butt on Game of Thrones .
Whenever I throw away one of those large round plastic lids from an orange-juice jug, in my head I hear my mother saying, as she would have said to my 8-year-old self, “That would make a great table-top for a doll’s house.” As an adult I don’t have a dollhouse, but I still have a hard time throwing away those orange-juice lids; the mentality dies hard. So why — with one luminous exception — can’t I love the movies of Wes Anderson, the most dollhousey of all filmmakers? Why, specifically, can’t I love Moonrise Kingdom , a sweet-natured picture set in 1965 on a mythical New Englandy island, in which two oddball kids run away together and pledge undying love? Moonrise Kingdom, like all of Anderson’s films, has been made with a master miniature-cabinetmaker’s care and specificity: It opens with what we might now call an Anderson special, a dollhouse-cutaway tracking shot that distills, in the space of a few minutes, the texture of one family’s life in their grand, ramshackle home. We see a bunch of little boys clustered around a mini record player (they’re spinning Benjamin Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra , conducted by Leonard Bernstein), a distracted dad stomping around in madras pants (this would be that glorious deadpan peacock Bill Murray), a young girl who arrives from elsewhere in the house to sit near, yet apart from, her brothers, settling into a window seat with a book. There’s tension in that opening, as well as a sense of comfort: It turns out that the girl, Suzy (Kara Hayward) — a groovy nerdling in the making who loves François Hardy and has a collection of beloved library books she has failed to return — has been corresponding with a boy, whose faux-Boy Scout troop is stationed elsewhere on the island during this late-summer idyll. The boy, Sam (Jared Gilman), is an orphan who’s been bouncing from foster home to foster home, and he doesn’t fit in very well with his scout troop, either: Along with his badges he wears an ornate costume-jewelry brooch — it’s short a few scratchy pearls. For indiscernible yet understandable reasons, at least in the cruel logic of kids, the other boys don’t like him. He leaves a resignation letter for his ultra-conscientious Scout master (played earnestly and quite wonderfully by Edward Norton) and treks off to meet Suzy for the sojourn they’ve planned, an escape from all the grown-ups and kids who just can’t comprehend their weirdo world of wonder. That means, in this old Yankee version of The Blue Lagoon , that Sam and Suzy camp out on a deserted beach (where he makes earrings for her out of fish hooks and dead beetles; it’s a minor complication that her ears haven’t been pierced — yet). Eventually, there’s even a marriage of sorts, performed in the eyes of God and of Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman (as a disreputable but hardly heartless Scout master). It should all be so lovely, and yet… Anderson — who co-wrote the script with Roman Coppola — can’t forget for a minute how lovely it all is, and he reminds us with every detail: The aluminum ashtray into which Norton’s cigarette-smoking Scout Master Ward tips his ash; a record player that’s operated, impractically but wonderfully, by battery; Suzy’s shift dress, knee-sock and saddle-shoe getups, as if she were a ghost doomed to wear the perennial back-to-school outfit. These relics from a vanished childhood that we either lived or wish we’d lived are all designed to impart a shared intimacy, a response of “Oh! I remember that too!”, whether we actually remember it or not. And perhaps that’s why the picture’s exceedingly manicured quality works against it. All of Anderson’s pictures are stylized, and stylization is one of the great tools of moviemaking — its very broadness can capture nuances that naturalism fails to detect. But what’s the tipping point between “mannered” and “stylized”? Is a mannered movie simply a stylized one you don’t really like? Maybe. It could also be that most of the true emotion in Moonrise Kingdom exists in the world outside of the kids, a world Anderson dips into only occasionally: He shows us how the marriage between Suzy’s parents, played by Murray and Frances McDormand, is efficient yet frayed at the seams. (Oddly, and marvelously, the essence of this marital frustration is telegraphed best by a bit of shorthand dialogue from Murray, delivered as he grasps an axe in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in another.) The children, on the other hand, are relatively unformed and uncharismatic — they’re a little weird, a little cute, but they’re just not finished yet. They’re dream kids, too wispy to hold down a whole movie, and it’s not their fault. There are some wonderful things in Moonrise Kingdom : Bruce Willis plays yet another law-enforcement person with deep regrets, the kind of role he can do in his sleep and probably has, yet he infuses the performance with a cartoon melancholy that works — he’s the guy who’s never recovered from having an anvil dropped on his head. Alexandre Desplat provides a score that’s delicate where it needs to be and jaunty everywhere else. There’s a kiss that is, literally, electric. And the whole thing, shot by Anderson regular Robert Yeoman, looks characteristically gorgeous — its color palette is semi-psychedelic and dreamily pearlescent at the same time. So why can’t I love Moonrise Kingdom ? For all the movie’s technical meticulousness, the storytelling still has a wiggly-waggly quality, like a dangly loose tooth. In fact, while I appreciate the brashness of Rushmore , there is only one Wes Anderson movie I truly love, and I know I’m not alone: My informal investigations over the past few years have identified Fantastic Mr. Fox as the Wes Anderson Movie for People Who Hate Wes Anderson Movies. In addition to being a marvel of stop-motion animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox is joyous in trillions of unspoken ways — in the way the texture of the characters’ rangy fur changes in accordance with whatever they’re feeling at the time, in the way it finds such rapscallion pleasure in antiestablishment actions such as digging a tunnel into a rich fatcat’s storehouse. (I’m only just now realizing that Fantastic Mr. Fox was an unwitting precursor to Occupy Wall Street.) Maybe Anderson’s live-action movies don’t work as well because he’s asking real actors to do the work of puppets — human beings can’t help buckling beneath the thunderous burden of his precocious, overrefined ideas. And that’s Moonrise Kingdom in a tiny, mousebed nutshell: It’s oddly ambitious and weightless, a movie made with great care and, probably, love, that still sounds hollow when you thump it. Fantastic Mr. Fox explains why I want to save the orange-juice lids. Moonrise Kingdom explains why I steel myself and throw them away. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
