Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Fri., Nov. 20th
This week marks the 70th anniversary of the all-time box-office champion “Gone With the Wind,” and the new Ultimate Collector’s Edition boasts more than eight hours of enhanced content with two new documentaries and nostalgic collectibles, including a tribute to 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, in “Bruno” Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”) stars as a flamboyantly gay Austrian ‘fashionista’ who’s determined to be an American celebrity, cajoling real, unsuspecting people into awkward situations involving homophobia – with raunchy, satirical consequences.
In the amusingly bittersweet “My One and Only,” Renee Zellweger plays a Southern belle (based on George Hamilton’s real-life mother) who takes her teenage sons (Mark Rendell, Logan Lerman) on a road trip in 1963 to search for a new man and a new life.
Incomparable Michael Caine (Batman’s butler Alfred in “The Dark Knight”) explores the ramifications of aging as a curmudgeonly, widower magician in the bemusing and beguiling farcical dramedy “Is Anybody There?”
Avoid the agonizing, maudlin “My Sister’s Keeper” in which a baby is conceived to be spare parts for her older sister who has leukemia. Narrated by Abigail Breslin, it shows how her parents (Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric) exploit her until she enlists the aid of a flamboyant lawyer (Alec Baldwin) for “medical emancipation.”
For kids, “Art House Vol.1: Basic Shapes and Animals” teaches the basics of art and creativity to children ages three and up, using squares, circles and triangles to illustrate almost anything. And “Barney: We Love Our Family” celebrates the various relatives and friends who touch a child’s life..
PICK OF THE WEEK: “Star Trek,” as J.J. Abrams (creator of TV’s “Alias” and “Lost”) resurrects Gene Roddenberry’s 43 year-old franchise, re-imagining it for cynical 21st century audiences. Using an ingenious ‘alternate reality’ device and a bit of time-travel by Leonard Nimoy, there’s a new, young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew, battling the villainous Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) who seeks revenge for a horrific disaster that hasn’t happened yet.