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Up (Single Disc Widescreen) Only $14.99 This review is from: Up [Theatrical Release] (Theatrical Release) Here's a movie for dog lovers, the elderly, children of divorce, FOBs (Friends of Birds), former Boy Scouts, people yearning for adventure, and anyone who has ever loved... and lost. Up is for everyone. It made me laugh out loud, and it made me cry. I thought it would be tough for Up to match the emotional power of Wall-E. The two Pixar films are similar in their lack of dialogue in the first act, which helps deepen the emotional impact. Up begins with Carl, a shy young boy star-struck by a famous explorer; and kookie Ellie, who has a similar obsession. The two kids become fast friends, and vow to one day travel to Venezuela's Paradise Falls. After getting married, they buy their dream home and fix it up, hoping to fill it with children. Carl and Ellie's life together from childhood through old age is depicted, silently, with delicacy and subtlety. The first 15 minutes is like a celebration of a happy marriage, and you truly feel Carl's pain when he is left alone. He sits slumped in his chair, talking to the house as if it is the missing Ellie. When developers close in on Carl's beloved home, he decides to fulfill his promise to Ellie and travel to Paradise Falls. A former balloon vendor, Carl lifts his home with hundreds of colorful balloons. Stowing away on the porch is Russell, a plump, plucky kid trying to earn a scouting badge. After landing in Paradise Falls, the old man and the little boy are joined by a golden retriever named Dug who can talk with his collar, and a huge rare bird that bonds with Russell (he names her "Kevin"). Dug is priceless: spot-on for every dog that ever lived, including an obsession with squirrels. Through a series of close calls and adventures, the quartet vanquishes a villain, saving the day. And Russell earns his scouting badge. In the process, Carl learns to let go of his sad mourning for Ellie, and live life again. When this happens, a truly magical thing happens. Before, Carl's craggy face is gray and monochromatic. At the moment of his transformation, Carl's face is awash in color, and he is surrounded by beautiful hues. It reminded me of The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of her gray world and into a candy-colored Munchkinland. Carl, too, enters a whole new world. Up is a deeply emotional film, full of truth. It's the year's best film. Score another triumph for Pixar. Comment Comments (14) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on Up (Single Disc Widescreen). Star Wars Trilogy Only $22.49 What you'll get here are the 2-disc limited editions of the original trilogy in a handy-dandy box. What are the limited editions? Two disc packages that contain the recent special editions and a "bonus disc" for each film that contains the respective originals. And by originals, I mean the complete un-altered films the way audiences saw them back in 1977, 1980 and 1983. Even the added-in-'81 "A New Hope" in the title crawl of the first film is no longer there. It is simply STAR WARS. Simply put: these are the versions audiences (who were born before the 90s) fell in love with. These are the versions that made Star Wars a phenomenon. The versions that are worth a damn. Does anyone seriously know ANYBODY who prefers the special editions to the originals? Unfortunately, these are still the same old non-anamorphic transfers. They look great (and are light years better than my fullscreen VHS tapes), but how much effort does it take to enhance these films for widescreen televisions? It's not messing with the legacy or "raping childhoods." It's simply updating the format for 2008. Even two years ago, when these editions were first released, letterbox was outdated. Get with the program, Georgie. These are not simply programs on a bonus disc. They're the films that made you a trillionaire. And they're the films everybody who buys this set wants. Also unfortunate is that they're not including the bonus disc from the 2004 set of the special editions. However, if I had to choose between that set and this one, I'd go with this one all the way. Special features are nice, but it's the movies that count. I'd rather have bare-bones editions of the original trilogy than all the bells and whistles of the special edtions. Comment Comments (16) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on Star Wars Trilogy. Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 Only $24.99 Warning! Spoiler alert! The following review contains very signficant spoilers, including several regarding the final episode of the series. If you wish to remain spoiler free, do NOT read the following review. In the words of the immortal Butthead, forewarned is . . . uh . . . something. I am astonished that the finale of BSG is proving to be controversial. I watched the final episode with a sense of excitement, delight, and deep gratitude. I found it moving and appropriate to the series as a whole. I would rank it with the best series finales that I have ever seen, alongside BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and SIX FEET UNDER. In particular I found the final 20 or so minutes to be especially gratifying, as we see the final 38,000 some odd survivors of the long journey from the 12 Colonies to New Earth finally find their new home. Did everything end precisely as I wanted? Of course not. But what is important is that it ended the way that Ron Moore clearly intended it to end. I had long suspected that one of the first things that had been conceived was the role of Hera (or someone like Hera) in the overall scheme of things. That she would indeed prove to be "The Shape of Things to Come" was something of which I was confident, and I found the role ascribed to her -- essentially the DNA mother of our own humanity -- as both powerful and fulfilling of the great importance assigned to her. [And Ron Moore's brief cameo as the gent reading the magazine about what is obviously Hera's remains was similar to J. Michael Straczynski's cameo at the end of BABYLON 5.] The 2008-2009 television season has seen the ending of a string of truly great series. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, THE SHIELD, and THE WIRE managed to end on their own terms, with their overall arcs ended on their own schedule. Other equally great series like PUSHING DAISIES were stopped in mid-stride. That a show as great as PUSHING DAISIES could be cancelled makes me all the more grateful that some shows like BSG manage to make it all the way to the end. My own television viewing will now be greatly diminished by the end of BSG. No show of the past five years has so consistently obsessed me. It wasn't always as consistent as I would have liked. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is a far steadier, more consistently brilliant show, but while it has never had anywhere near as many as weak episodes as BSG, neither has it ever reached BSG's best moments. Never, ever have I had a series (with the exception of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) at its best so completely shock and amaze me. No other show (except BUFFY) has managed to astonish me so frequently. And it did this by almost never recycling stories seen on other series. BSG not only never recycled stories from other shows, but never recycled its own stories. Any stunning plot twist, once used, was never used again. Rarely do series redefine their genre, but BSG has done more to alter what one can do on a television Sci-fi series than any since STAR TREK first debuted in the late sixties. No future serious series in the genre can ignore the achievements of BSG. They might decide not to take up the challenge that BSG has laid down, but even that is a way of acknowledging the new standards it has laid down. Series like STARGATE SG-1 now seem oddly simplistic in comparison. Ron Moore stated in his initial mission statement that his goal was to completely redefine TV Sci-fi and in this he was supremely successful. It is impossible to overstate the importance of BSG in taking TV Sci-fi to the next level. Many have noted that it was the first important Sci-fi series that was made for adults rather than teens, but it is also the first that was directed to thinking adults instead of only Sci-fi geeks. BSG expanded the audience of those interested in Sci-fi, with thousands of people who had previously been determined not to watch any show in the genre obsessed with the fate of those on Galactica. And it has also been a huge hit with academics and intellectuals. The only television series that has received as much attention from academics has been BUFFY, and the only show to attract as much attention from nonacademic intellectuals has been BUFFY and THE SOPRANOS. Who would have thought a show based on the passionately maligned 1978 series (a show that has a small but dedicated cadre of fans, but which is otherwise attacked by TV critics and serious Sci-fi fans and writers as one of the worst series in TV history) could have ascended to such heights? I have started rewatching the series from the very beginning in light of the series finale and I am amazed at how good it all feels knowing how it will end. The series finale of BSG fit the rest of the series so perfectly that it managed retroactively to make the rest even better. I frankly have long suspected that Ron Moore is a big, fat liar. He has often stated things that were not true or at least were only partially true. I think he had a great deal of the overall story planned from near the beginning. I believe he had many of the main arc details in mind from the beginning. I do think that he left a lot of room for alternation and development, but I believe he knew from the time of the miniseries that he intended to have the remnants of the human race align with the Cylons to become the genetic ancestors of our own human race. One of the first moments in BSG of note was when Caprica Six looked at an infant with amazement, shortly before she broke its neck (an act that is one of the most effective mission statements I've ever seen -- after that, you knew the show was capable of anything). And the crucial moment came when President Laura Roslin stressed to Commander Adama that it was crucial that they leave that part of the galaxy to find a new home where the survivors could "start having babies." Early in the first episode of Season One Head Six asks Gaius Baltar if he would like to have a child. We then soon learn of the mission of the other Sharon on Caprica to try and make Helo fall in love with her and get her pregnant. In retrospect, we see that "The Plan" was to perpetuate the Cylon race by biological reproduction. Similarly, from early on the show was concerned with ever deepening religious themes, as God (though Head Baltar in the finale tells Head Six that he doesn't care for that name) directed the fate of both Cylons and humans to their eventual fate. Even Starbuck is shown to be an instrument of God, as she is sent back to the fleet after her death in order to help them find their way to their new home. Until the finale we had no idea precisely how deep this idea that God had a plan for them truly was, but as the series comes to an end we realize that Head Six's words to Baltar in the first regular season episode were absolutely true: this all was God's plan. To what degree this God coincides with a Christian or Muslim or Jewish god is very much open to debate, but that it unceasingly is at the core of BSG cannot now be questioned. BSG begins with the question -- put forward by Bill Adama as he participates in Galactica's decommissioning ceremony -- whether humanity had a right to survive. The answer to this is delayed for the length of the series, as we see the fleet undergo a series of trials. The parallels with the account in Exodus of the Children of Israel departing from Egypt to the Promised Land increase as the series nears its end. Just as the Children of Israel undergo a series of temptations, so do the members of the fate. Likewise, the fleet's Moses, Laura Roslin, is allowed to see the promised land but not enter (she dies as Adama finds the spot upon which to build the cabin she longed for). That humanity has earned the right to survive comes as the crew of Galactica undertakes the ship's final mission, the rescue of the Human-Cylon hybrid child Hera, whose DNA becomes the foundation of a new humanity. So, the show's many rich and deep themes are successfully and beautifully resolved at the end. Those who found the ending unsatisfying seem not to recognize this. But I'm baffled. What more can one ask of a series than to resolve successfully all its major themes? While I loved the end of the series, I can understand some of the uneasiness some felt. In order to break the cycle ("All of this has happened before; all of this will happen again") of death and destruction, Lee Adama persuades the survivors to embrace a nontechnological culture. I understand this on a poetic level even as I question it on a psychological level. And like many I found the departure of Starbuck, one of the great iconic characters in the history of TV (it is funny now to remember how upset some were that Starbuck was going to be played by a girl), both too sudden and less than satisfying. But this is nitpicking and should be recognized as such. To carp on something that wasn't quite done to one's satisfaction while ignoring the massive number of things that were done so exceptionally well is petty. Sadly the end of BSG signals the disbanding of one of the most wonderful and largest casts in the history of television. Only LOST can match BSG in the size and richness of its cast of characters. I'm going to miss Adama, Laura Roslin, Lee, Kara, Sharon (in whatever form), Helo, Hera, Tigh, Tyrol, Baltar, all of the Sixes, Dee, Ellen, Duck, Kat, Billy, Tory, Anders, Racetrack, Cally, Doc Cottle, Jake, Elosha, Sgt. Mathis, Captain Kelly, Zarek, Gaeta, Seelix, Hotdog, Romo Lampkin and all the others (all the way down to the tattooed Asian guy who never had a line of dialogue and whose main function seemed to be to keep Galactica's card games going) -- not to mention the Cavils, Dorals, D'Annas, Simons, and Leobens. And I'm going to miss Galactica itself. For five years this show has been one of the great... Read more › Comment Comments (34) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5. The Jungle Book (40th Anniversary Platinum Edition) Only $18.99 I picked this DVD up today and got it home to find that Disney had altered the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.33:1 to make the movie "fit" on widescreen TVs. They did this by chopping off the top and bottom of the image. This results in the loss of a good deal of character animation (at least the tops of their heads and their feet). Trust me, I own the original Limited Issue DVD of this film and I did a side-by-side comparison as soon as I got the new Platinum Edition home. If you are a purist about original aspect ratios, please avoid this release and petition Disney to start a free disc replacement program. We should at least have the option of watching the original unaltered film the way that it was meant to be seen. ***NOTE: There are now user images that can be viewed for this product that illustrate the cropping discussed in my review. Comment Comments (31) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on The Jungle Book (40th Anniversary Platinum Edition). Battlestar Galactica - Season 4.0 Only $17.99 I would describe the first half of this season as occasionally mind-blowing, always gripping. It wasn't perfect, certainly, but it was pretty close. Each of this season's episodes was consistently good, compared to some of the weaker stand-alone episodes in the second half of seasons 2 and 3. BSG has made a successful and compelling transformation from a black/white, us vs. them SciFi/action series into a morality tale about peaceful coexistence, and every step of the way has been executed brilliantly. I'm eagerly awaiting the finale, though I would have welcomed additional seasons. Also, I'm going to join the other reviewers asking people to stop posting 1-star reviews based on something completely unrelated to the quality of the show or something about the DVD set itself. Complain about the price, or the fact that it's split in half again (though the latter is due more to the writer's strike than anything), but don't come here to complain about problems downloading episodes. Over half of the 1-star reviews have nothing to do with the show or the DVDs. Comment Comments (12) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on Battlestar Galactica - Season 4.0. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Single-Disc Edition) Only $15.99 This review is from: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs [Theatrical Release] (Theatrical Release) Very loosely based on the acclaimed children's book of the same name, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs actually succeeds with the modernization and embellished plot. Perhaps diehard fans of the original material will nitpick the expanded mythos, but the film adaptation offers a hearty mix of humor that will appeal to nearly every age group. A wide range and variety of humor can be found within, from the childish and absurd to the clever and insightful; even self-referential mockery and fat jokes make an appearance. Beneath all the layers of food and fun exists a story of finding love and acceptance, though the impressive visuals and wild laughs leave little room for such morals. And between the man-eating roast chicken and the living gummy bears, one wouldn't expect it anyway. Ever since he was a child, Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) has dreamed of becoming a great scientist whose inventions would change the world. When he constructs a synthesizer that can change water into food his dream comes true, and as the sky rains down cheeseburgers, pizza, ice cream, and more, Flint finally achieves the adoration and respect he's always desired. But when the greedy town mayor demands an ever-increasing assortment of cuisine, the machine overloads, bringing down mountains of meatballs and cyclones of pasta. Now it's up to Flint, his pet monkey, and nerdy weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) to save the world from certain extinction by eatables. The 3D effects being slapped onto almost every computer animated film to hit theaters rarely does anything to improve the imaginative visuals. While there are certainly opportunities for random objects to pierce the third dimension and tantalize the audience, "Cloudy" never flaunts the awesomeness of the gimmick. One of the most impressive moments involves a massive food avalanche (foodalanche) that looks amazing either way. The incredibly obese mayor (Bruce Campbell) provides many of the most hilarious visual gags along with "sentient" food, the pessimistic dad unloads the downer realism and the deeper emotional revelations, the elderly and their stereotypical inadequacies with technology is mocked, we're lectured about embracing inner ugliness and supposedly unattractive intelligence, and picking up girls has never been easier than building an enormous, perfectly sculpted, fully furnished Jell-O mansion. Good to know. Although it's based on the famous children's book, many of the beefed up ideas in the film are so ludicrous that they'd never normally work. But with a wildly creative, inventive approach to the environments, character designs and animation, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs pulls it off. Full of eye-rolling puns, wacky inventions (including the always-necessary mouth funnels) and unbelievable solutions, it's a deliciously zany, adventurous treat. - The Massie Twins Comment Comment | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } Yes No (Report this) Click Here for more information on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Single-Disc Edition).