SPEND YOUR MONEY!

NEW RELEASES

*Blu-Ray prices are in BOLD
BLUE
  
The Last Song                                                          $17.99     $25.99      
Furry Vengeance                                                       $12.99    $26.99      
Dexter: The Complete Fourth Season                        $29.99    $39.99   
Me and Orson Welles                                              $12.99 

TV on DVD Sale

$14.99

Scrubs: Season 8
The Golden Girls: Season 6

$19.99

Chuck: Seasons 1-2
Two and a Half Men: Seasons 1-6
Entourage: Seasons 1, 5 or 6
The Big Bang Theory: Seasons 1-2

$36.99

One Tree Hill: Season 7

$4.75 DVD sale

The Lost Boys
Spongebob Squarepants: Home Sweet Pineapple
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Happily N’Ever After

$7.50 DVD sale

Juno
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
He’s Just Not That Into You
The Parent Trap (1998)

$14.99 DVD Sale

The Crazies (2010)
Brooklyn’s Finest

$16.99 DVD Sale

The Bounty Hunter
Shutter Island
She’s Out of My League
Cop Out
Green Zone
The Wolf Man (2010)
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Alice in Wonderland
Hot Tub Time Machine

$17.99 DVD Sale

Kick-Ass


BLU-RAY
sale

$9.99

The Kingdom
The Stranger
Law Abiding Citizen
King Kong (2005)
Interview with the Vampire
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

$19.99

The Crazies (2010)
Brooklyn’s Finest

$24.99

Clash of the Titans (2010)
Alice in Wonderland
The Ghost Writer
Cop Out
Hot Tub Time Machine
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
She’s Out of My League
Cop Out
Green Zone
Kick-Ass
The Wolf Man (2010)
The Bounty Hunter
Shutter Island

———————————————–

NEW RELEASES

*Blu-Ray prices are in BOLD
BLUE
   
Cougar Town: Season 1                                           $29.99     
Ugly Betty: Season 4 – The Final Season                   $29.99    
The Last Song                                                          $17.99     $25.99      

Furry Vengeance                                                       $14.99    $25.99      
Dexter: The Complete Fourth Season                        $29.99    $39.99   
Friday Night Lights: Season 4                                    $19.99 
   
DVD SALE

$5.99

Transporter 3
Rambo: First Blood
Crank 2
The Bank Job
Johnny Handsome
Terminator 2: Judgment Day

BLU-RAY
sale

$9.99

Transporter 3
Rambo: First Blood
Crank 2
The Bank Job
Johnny Handsome
Terminator 2: Judgment Day

$19.99

Wanted
Smokin Aces 2
Drag Me To Hell
12 Monkeys

$24.99

Apollo 13
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Video Game
Sales Update

Target

Purchase Madden 11,and any game listed below and get a FREE $20 Gift Card:

Splinter Cell Conviction
Final Fantasy XIII
Aliens Vs. Predator
UFC 2010

$59.99 Kane and Lynch 2 (includes FREE $10 GC)
$24.99 Tetris Party Deluxe

Best Buy

• Nothing Major

TOYS R US

• Nothing Major

K-Mart

• Nothing major

THIS
WEEK’S DVD REVIEWS at CHUD

Did
you miss a review this week? A lot of titles go unnoticed during the
hectic news days around the site.

Click
here to discover some of the latest DVD reviews.

THE REST OF
THE DVDs THIS WEEK

Alice Goodbody AKA Gosh!
The Assassin Next Door
Batman: The Brave And The Bold – Season One, Pt. 1
Black Orpheus (Criterion Collection)
Burning Bright
Cash
Casshern Sins, Pt. 1
Casshem Sins, Pt. 2
Cemetery Junction
The City Of Your Final Destination
The Conversation
Cougar Town: The Complete First Season
Dark And Stormy Night
Dark Oracle: The Complete Series
Dead Man Running
Dexter: The Fourth Season
Dumping Lisa
L’Enfance Nue (Criterion Collection)
Four Seasons Lodge
Friday Night Lights: The Fourth Season
Furry Vengeance
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
The Heart Of The Peloton
A History Of Scotland (BBC)
Ichi 1: Origin
Jesse Stone Collection: Stone Cold/Night Passage/Death In Paradise/Sea Change/Thin Ice/No Remorse
Keeping Up With The Kardashians: The Complete Third Season
The Last Song (2010)
The Lost Skeleton Returns Again
Madeline’s Halloween And Other Spooky Tales
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya: Second Season
My Friends Tigger And Pooh: Bedtime With Pooh
National Geographic: Inside Hurricane Katrina (Commemorative Edition)
Off And Running
One Tree Hill: The Complete Seventh Season
Origin: Spirits Of The Past (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Rocky And Bullwinkle And Friends: Complete Season Four
Shigofumi: Complete Collection
Simon Schama: A History Of Britain (Special Edition) (BBC)
Skellig: The Owl Man
Sorority Wars
Soundtracker
Spring Fever (2009)
Ugly Betty: The Complete Fourth And Final Season
Wolverine And The X-Men: Final Crisis Trilogy
WWE: Money In The Bank 2010

BLU-RAY: IT’S
GETTING CHEAPER

Badmaash Company
Black Orpheus (Criterion Collection)
Casshern Sins, Pt. 1
Casshem Sins, Pt. 2
Cemetery Junction
The City Of Your Final Destination
Dead Man Running
Dexter: The Fourth Season
DOA: Dead Or Alive
Furry Vengeance (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
Hamlet (1996) (Book Packaging)
The Last Song (2010) (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Nanny McPhee
Skellig: The Owl Man
Total Terror 1: Demonic/Uninvited
Total Terror 2: Brush With Death/Harvest Of Fear
TT: Official Review 2010 (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

VIDEO GAMES

section by: Justin
Clark and SCOTT!

KANE & LYNCH 2: DOG DAYS
Square Enix
360, PS3, PC
8/17
MSRP: $59.99 360/PS3; $49.99 PC

CLICK TO BUY FROM AMAZON!

The first Kane and Lynch had two fairly awesome set pieces that hid the fact that it was really a mediocre co-op shooter, a fact that revealed its hideous face once all out war broke out. I remain skeptical that Eidos learned much for the sequel gameplay-wise, but they’ve put out a couple of ace trailers so far that really highlight a change for the better in terms of story. Giving a damn about the story would’ve helped the first game immensely, so I suppose half the battle’s won already.

OOOHHHHH: ON THE DLC TIP

LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT
Eidos/Square Enix
XBox Live
8/17
1200 MS points

There are people who still care a new Lara Croft game is happening. These people are abhorrent to me, and can feel free to eat my scorn. I don’t know how anyone can still hold this series in any sort of regard in a world where Uncharted 2 happened, but Eidos, bless those stubborn sons of bitches, keep trying though, and the last dance for the Summer of Arcade at least does the series a favor by keeping shit simple: running, jumping, climbing, shooting things. And at least $14.99 seems a lot more reasonable than the $60 they tried to glean from Miss Croft’s last clusterfuck.

TOP GUN
doublesix
Playstation Network
8/17
$14.99

I will still never rest until someone creates the Top Gun Extreme Beach Volleyball game the property desperately deserves, but I suppose a downloadable title scripted by the guy behind the original film, with the theme and Danger Zone as licensed music is just as good. Just promise me there’s none of THIS SHIT involved.

ROCK BAND TUESDAY

The Black Keys Pack 01 ($5.49/440 MS points)

• Strange Times
• I Got Mine
• Your Touch

Neon Trees Pack 01 ($5.49/440 MS points)

• Animal
• Sins of My Youth
• 1983

$1.99/160 MS pts each

One pack has an awesome duo who makes simple but ass-kicking basic rock, and one pack has a man whose nasally bitch lead singer has killed Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zerg, and wears his pelt as a warning to others. Choose wisely.

Music

Section By Jeb D.

THE FINAL FRONTIER

Iron Maiden

BUY IT FROM AMAZON!

I suppose if metal is going to remain associated with adolescent fantasy wish-fulfillment, better kings and talismans than the endless drone of suicide and rape that fuels a lot of what I have to listen to every week to prepare this column. Bruce Dickinson gives with the shrieks and sobs, and Murray and company deliver the expected ration of power chords with arpeggios signaling impending doom. There’s less pointless slash-and-burn to the expert guitar work than is the case with so many of their peers: these guys know exactly where every solo is headed. It’s almost as though they let cover model Eddie and his monstrous pals handle the juvenile aggression and grossout aspect of things, so they can just get on with the music.

NO BETTER THAN THIS

John Mellencamp

BUY IT FROM AMAZON!

On the upside, John Mellencamp is as sincere as the day is long. Downside? He pushes. Guy can’t help himself. So he can’t simply accept the inevitability of his move out of the pop music spotlight (“I am done being a rock star,” he proclaims, with no trace of irony), he has to aggressively go the opposite way by not only once more recruiting T-Bone Burnett to get him all rootsy, he has to cut this new album live, in a series of venues associated with great musicians of the past (just going to Sun Studios isn’t enough– he has to go to an actual hotel room where Robert Johnson recorded!)… and records the damn thing in mono! Age and wear have thickened his voice appropriately, and it’s virtually impossible for Burnett to turn out an album that doesn’t sound great, so fans of T-Bone’s recent efforts with Plant or Costello will find this easy on the ears. But as a songwriter, Mellencamp’s always been too derivative for his own good, and his noble social intentions are expressed in on-the-nose lyrics that range from forgettable to condescending. It’s really pretty simple: you try to cut him some slack–he means well– but he aspires to a place in the rock hierarchy that his talent just doesn’t warrant. Not a crime, but not a compelling reason to buy his albums, either.

CATCHING A TIGER

Lissie

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Anyone can try to ape the Ramones’ punk sound, but it takes a sharp ear to actually lift one of their melodies (“Stranger”). Elsewhere, this Brit-transplanted corn-fed Midwestern blonde is the beach girl of Brian Wilson’s dreams with some U.K. snap laid atop the California sun; she’s even got some of Wilson’s wacked-out sensibility (“Record Collector” suggests that a female God should be keeping better track of things, and includes my favorite stanza of the week: “There I was with a choir of bees / They were all a-buzz / Oh my, how amusing“). There’s also a more polished sheen to the production than on her somewhat folkier-sounding EP from last year. Given the assembly line of corporate pop thrushes that advances upon us almost weekly, it’s nice to hear someone who can deliver the fun of pop without lowest-common-denominator tedium.

BRIAN WILSON REIMAGINES GERSHWIN

Brian Wilson

BUY IT FROM AMAZON!

Given that Wilson once wrote a song positing a more or less direct lineage from Gregorian Chant to rock and roll, you don’t naturally trust him to step outside his established pop strengths. And, at first, you think this is going to be a dismissable experiment as a vocalise snatch of “Rhapsody in Blue” gives way to “The Like I Love in You,” one of two songs Wilson wrote around song fragments that the Gershwin estate let him have; it’s musically a bit bland, and lyrically Wilson at his most awkwardly hippy-dippy. But just as you’re about to give up on the project, Wilson wraps his voice around a sublime version of “Summertime.” I wouldn’t put it past the guy to engage in a bit of studio trickery, but whether it’s some kind of manipulation, or just good living, his voice sounds stronger and more supple than it has in years, stressing the song’s melancholy opposition of lyric and melody. Even stronger is “I Loves You Porgy,” from a time when gender-switching narrative in music was unremarkable. And while the rest of the album has both weak points and strong, Wilson’s singing is a consistent delight. There’s a few places where the arrangements sound right out of the Frankie Valli playbook, but there’s plenty of musical delight and sheer off-the-wall invention: “‘S Wonderful” is a sleek Bossa Nova; “Someone to Watch Over Me” bounces along like a missing b-side from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!), “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” is lush doo-wop, and the album peaks in a cascade of Beach Boys harmonies on “I Got Rhythm.” Maybe my favorite is the bubbling, joyous instrumental version of “I Got Plenty of Nuttin;” which would have fit perfectly at the end of Pet Sounds. Over and over Wilson freshens these chestnuts, putting his own stamp on them every bit as much as Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra ever did.

Other Noteworthy 8/17 Releases

NOFX, Longest EP. The jokes were always better than the music, but, then, the jokes were pretty strong, as was their nakedly humanistic outlook. Here’s the band’s history neatly summed up in a couple of dozen tracks, with an extra batch of rare/previously-unreleased stuff.

Karen Lovely, Still The Rain. Producer/songwriter Dennis Walker, who helped craft distinctive musical personalities for both Robert Cray and Bettye Lavette, takes on a woman he calls “the most talented singer I have been associated with since my early days with Robert Cray.” And she’s absolutely got the pipes; still working on the personality, though: near as I can tell, she’s a bad mama. Noted. And…?

American Hi-Fi, Fight the Frequency. Can’t wait a few weeks for the new Goo Goo Dolls? This should tide you over: earnest, somewhat catchy, occasionally toe-tapping. The best part? According to Amazon, this group possesses “A breadth and vision nearly untouched in modern jazz except by the likes of Wayne Shorter and Bill Frisell.” So there’s that.

Hey Monday, Beneath It All. The most remarkable thing about this album is its description as “pop-punk.” Singer/songwriter Cassadee Pope strikes me as being about as “punk,” as iCarly, and not quite as interesting.

Toadies, Feeler. Whether or not (as the band suggests) it was a crime against art that this album was rejected by its initial label, it crunches along just fine in its post-grunge mode, and even includes a fond tip of the hat to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Nils, What The Funk?. When a guy is described has having been nominated as “Best Jazz Guitarist for the American Smooth Jazz Awards in 2010,” do I really need to tell you what the album sounds like? He tosses in “Sara Smile” for you covers collectors.

Eliza Carthy & Norma Waterson, Gift. Waterson is arguably the greatest folk singer Britain ever produced; Carthy, her daughter, inherited all the right genes. The material ranges from familiar folk (“Wayfaring Stranger”) to the vintage weirdness of the English music hall (“Boston Burglar”), and never attempts to compromise or update its sound; it’s a bracing shot of historic musical tradition.

Boris & Ian Astbury, BXI. Because The Cult were just too poppy.

Esperanza Spalding, Chamber Music Society.”Chamber music” defined as modern trio jazz underlying one of the most technically amazing and annoyingly showoff vocalists since Minnie Ripperton.

Filter, The Trouble With Angels. New guitarist = comeback? No reason why not: it’s as hard-hitting as the band has ever sounded, with a few years of raised eyebrows and added perspective (“Drink it, take it, snort it, smoke it… every little thing I love about it“).

John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, So Many Roads. You can argue that Mayall only released two genuinely great albums in his career (Bluesbreakers and The Turning Point, and I might be over-valuing the latter). Which is why forty years of cherry-picking is no bad thing. I’ll grant that the point could probably have been made with half as many tracks, but the guy who, among other things, helped Clapton find himself, birthed the rhythm section of Fleetwood Mac, and gave the Stones the natural successor to Brian Jones is worth the time, even if there’s a helluva lot of pretty basic I-IV-V going on here. Plus, with four disks to work with, there’s room for such discoveries as the funky wah-wah on “No Reply” and the seven-minute rant of “Television Eye” that would have been omitted from a more selective overview. Still, for all his historic importance, Mayall has been out of whatever limelight he was ever in for some time now, so a bit of a price break would have been welcome.

THE WEEK OF AUGUST 17th 2010

GROUP EDITED by: TROY ANDERSON

DVD/BR
SECTION by: Troy Anderson

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD
Director: Ji-Woon Kim
MPI

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT AT AMAZON!

Special Features

The Good, The Bad and The Weird is a wonderful Kimchi Western from the guys that did A Tale of Two Sisters. A bounty hunter, an assassin and a thief stumble through Korea in the 1930s. Each one of the men is after a stolen treasure map that will lead to riches that only exist in the Sierra Madre. I’ve been dismissive of Korean cinema in the past, but Ji-Woon Kim is emerging as a fun voice in international cinema that is borrowing from the world’s rich cinematic history. A dash of Italian Spaghetti Western, a dash of American slapstick and a whole lot of Asian History Piece thrown into the mix offers up a wonderful diversion from the latest slate of late summer shit.

BLACK ORPHEUS (CRITERION COLLECTION)
Director: Marcel Camus

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT AT AMAZON!

Special Features

Black Orpheus was my introduction to Marcel Camus. I picked up the first Criterion DVD for the title at a library sale and I spent some time watching over every scene. Over the years, I wondered when Criterion would return to this release and clean up the transfer. For those that haven’t seen the film, it’s a wonderful dance-oriented retelling of the Eurydice myth. Young lovers in Brazil during Carnival try their hardest to beat the odds and find love. It’s just that you can’t get your swerve on if Death is beating down your door. Stay for the amazing 1080p transfer and enjoy the new uncompressed mono track. If only all Criterion upgrades could be this sweet.

TEMPLE GRANDIN
d.
Mick Jackson

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT AT AMAZON!

SPECIAL FEATURES

Temple Grandin is an amazing biopic that plays with its structure to present a realistic view of autism. David Strathairn, Catherine O’Hara and Claire Danes provide amazing turns as we see Grandin age and learn about autism. It’s an easy game to praise HBO Original Films and Series, but I love to see the Home Box Office nail what should be tired material. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments in the film that dabbled into the weepy melodramatic bullshit that comes with the biopic territory. In the end, it’s a wonderful tale of a young woman finding news ways to better herself without having to rely on the medical establishment.

HAMLET
d. Kenneth Branagh

CLICK HERE TO BUY IT AT AMAZON!

Special
Features

• Commentary
• Featurettes
• Trailer

Hamlet has been told many times on the silver screen. Kenneth Branagh perfected it with his 1996 adaptation. Going word for word in an updated setting, Branagh assembled a veritable Who’s Who of A-list actors to bring the Bard’s words to laugh. Speaking as someone who sat through the film during its first-run theatrical exhibition, allow an afternoon for viewing. At 4 hours and 2 minutes, this isn’t something that I would recommend for all audiences. But, it’s a bounty for the eyes and ears to finally witness in 1080p High-Definition goodness. The Blu-Ray release comes in a Digibook package that will appeal to all design nerds out there.

NETFLIX INSTANT
VIEW (POURING THE DIRT INTO BLOCKBUSTER’S
GRAVE)

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