Hoot (New Line Platinum Series) (2006)

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The natural beauties of Florida find some young champions in Hoot, based on the young adult novel by satirical crime writer Carl Hiaasen. While trying to resist being bullied on the school bus, Roy (Logan Lerman, Jack & Bobby) becomes intrigued by a barefoot boy running frantically along the sidewalk. As he investigates, Roy learns that a nearby construction site is a habitat for a protected species of burrowing owl and that a tough girl at his school named Beatrice (Brie Larson, Sleepover) has some connection with the barefoot boy, who has some connection with vandalism at the construction site. Hoot has been attacked by conservative critics for promoting eco-terrorism--a charge most viewers may find overheated--but the movie's real weakness isn't political but artistic; the clumsy dialogue barely sounds like human speech and the plot takes some hard-to-believe turns. At one point, as part of protecting the burrowing owls and their chicks, a kid releases poisonous cottonmouth snakes onto the construction site; apparently his ecological knowledge doesn't include the feeding habits of these snakes, which eat birds. The colorful scenery and the affable presence of Luke Wilson (Bottle Rocket, Old School) keep the movie alive. Also featuring Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Holes) and singer Jimmy Buffett, whose tropical honky-tonk bubbles up all over the soundtrack. --Bret Fetzer

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The Simpsons - The Complete Eighth Season (1989)

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Synopsis:

The Simpsons are very politically incorrect family. Homer works with pride in a nuclear power plant run with more regard for profit that safety. His wife is Marge, a kind of supermom. They have three kids: Bart, an underachiever ("and proud of it"), Lisa (who is as serious and responsible as Bart isn't), and Maggie.

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RV (Widescreen Edition) (2006)

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The long tradition of family vacation comedies continues in RV, with Robin Williams doing his best to keep things amusing. He succeeds, for the most part, by downplaying his manic persona and settling comfortably into his role as well-meaning husband and father Bob Munro.

Determined to combine work and pleasure, Bob rents the titular motor home to drive his wife (Cheryl Hines), teenage daughter (Joanna "JoJo" Levesque) and pre-teen son (Josh Hutcherson) on a scenic vacation in the Colorado Rockies while secretly preparing his presentation for a high-stakes corporate merger. Their dysfunctional road trip leads to repeated encounters with the all-too-happy Gornicke family (led by Jeff Daniels and Kristin Chenoweth), who only appear to be stupid rednecks, when in fact they represent the familial togetherness that Bob is striving to regain. As directed by comedy veteran Barry Sonnenfeld (whose image as "Irv" the RV rental king is plastered across the side of the Munro's RV), these warm-and-fuzzy sentiments are strictly by-the-numbers, along with plenty of jokes about raw sewage, scavenging raccoons, and RV's run amuck. There aren't any real highlights, and the outcome is utterly predictable, but RV delivers enough comedy to qualify as an enjoyable diversion.

Those who remember Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Vincente Minnell's 1954 hit The Long, Long Trailer may find RV similarly entertaining. --Jeff Shannon

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Rome - The Complete First Season (2005)

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Family dysfunction. Treachery. Betrayal. Coarse profanity. Brutal violence. Graphic (and sometimes brutal) sex. No, it's not The Sopranos, it's Rome, HBO's madly ambitious series that bloodily splatters the glory of Rome just as savagely as Monty Python and the Holy Grail soiled the good name of Camelot (but with far fewer laughs; very few funny things happen on the way to this forum). Set in 52 B.C. (Before Cable), Rome charts the dramatic shifts in the balance of power between former friends Pompey Magnus (Kenneth Cranham), leader of the Senate, and Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds), whose imminent return after eight years to Rome after conquering the Gauls, has the ruling class up in arms.

At the heart of Rome is the odd couple friendship between two soldiers who fortuitously become heroes of the people. Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) is married, honorable, and steadfast. Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) is an amoral rogue whose philosophy is best summed up, "I kill my enemies, take their gold, and enjoy their women." Among Rome's most compelling subplots is Lucius's strained relationship with his wife, Niobe (Indira Varma), who is surprised to see her husband alive (but not as surprised as he is to find her upon his homecoming with a newborn baby in her arms!) Any viewer befuddlement over Rome's intrigues and machinations, and determining who is hero and who is foe, disappears the minute Golden Globe-nominee Polly Walker appears as Atia, Caesar's formidable niece and a villainess for the ages. In the first hour alone, she offers her already married daughter as a bride to the recently widowed Pompey. One eagerly awaits to see what (or who) she'll do next as much as we anticipate her comeuppance in the final episode.

Rome is a painstakingly mounted production that earned eight well-deserved Emmy nominations in such categories as costumes, set design, and art direction. Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter) was honored with a Director's Guild Award for the first episode, "The Stolen Eagle." But artistic considerations aside, instantly addicted viewers will agree with Atia, who notes at one point, "I adore the secrecy, the intrigue. It's most thrilling." --Donald Liebenson

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How Art Made the World (2006)

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Sysnopsis:

Why does our world look like it does? That great modern mystery is spectacularly unraveled in this international landmark series and epic quest across five continents and 100,000 years?via some of the greatest treasures of the ancient world?to the heart of human creativity. Encompassing everything from cave paintings to ceramics and pyramids to palaces, How Art Made the World probes the global trend for unrealistic depictions of the human body; the secret powers of the feature film; how politicians manage to manipulate people so easily; visions of death and the afterlife; and, crucially, why we use imagery at all.

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Inside Man (Widescreen Edition) (2006)

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Sysnopsis:

"Inside Man" is the story of a tough cop, Detective Frazier (Denzel Washington), who matches wits with a clever bank robber, Dalton (Clive Owen). As the dangerous cat-and-mouse game unfolds, a wild card emerges: Madaline (Jodie Foster), a power broker with a hidden agenda, who injects even more instability into an already volatile situation.Spike Lee scored his biggest hit to date with Inside Man, an unconventional thriller with fascinating details in the margins of its convoluted plot. The screenplay (by first-timer Russell Gerwitz) could've used a few more rewrites; it moves at a brisk pace but in hindsight a lot of it doesn't make sense. That makes Inside Man more fun to watch than to think about afterwards (when you discover plot holes big enough to drive a truck through), but it's curiously involving, especially as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) struggles to outsmart a high-stakes bank robber (Clive Owen) who, along with a well-trained crew of accomplices, has seized control of a Wall Street bank, turning what initially looks like a hostage crisis into a personal crusade to expose some mysterious evil secrets. As you might expect from the director of Do the Right Thing, Lee seizes several satisfying opportunities to examine post-9/11 issues of racial prejudice and domestic terrorism, and the mysterious "problem solver" Madeline White (Jodie Foster) is worthy of her own movie, as eerily sinister as she is vaguely defined. With the benefit of his most stellar cast to date (including Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor), Lee's seems more interested in character details than well-crafted suspense, but that doesn't stop Inside Man from being engrossing, subtly amusing, and quirky enough to qualify as a welcomed break from the formulaic thrillers that are Hollywood's bread and butter. --Jeff Shannon

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Arrested Development - Season 3 (2003)

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Sysnopsis:

Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), a widower with a 13-year-old son, named George-Michael (Michael Cera), is forced to keep his large and dysfunctional family together after his father (Jeffery Tambor) is arrested for shifty accounting practices at the family-owned conglomerate and the Bluth family assets are frozen, making each member of the eccentric family panicing. Michael's snobbish mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), finds herself living alone in a penthouse without the financial means to maintain it, while Michael's two brothers, GOB (Will Arnett) and Buster (Tony Hale), and his sister Lindsay (Portia DeRossi) with her husband Tobias (David Cross) and her daughter Mae (Alia Shawkat) also find themselves having to recreate their lifestyles to fit their new financial status.
Arrested Development--one of the greatest comedies in the history of television--went out in a blaze of glory. The truncated final season packed more biting humor per minute than ever before. In only 13 episodes, dozens of intertwining storylines spun in all directions: In addition to the overarching story about the fractious infighting of the Bluth family and the family's housing development company being investigated for treason in Iraq (a plot arc that comes to a dazzlingly surreal conclusion), the put-upon "good son" Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman, Teen Wolf Too) pursues romance with a lovely British woman (Charlize Theron, Monster) who turns out to be woefully inappropriate; swaggering magician Gob (Will Arnett, Monster-In-Law) flees from his newly-discovered teenage son while still pandering for the affection of his self-absorbed father (Jeffrey Tambor, The Larry Sanders Show); flighty Lindsay (Portia de Rossi, Ally McBeal) and her sexually blurry husband Tobias (David Cross, Mr. Show) both get the hots for the family's new lawyer, Bob Loblaw (Scott Baio, Charles in Charge); and much, much more. It's difficult to describe what makes Arrested Development so brilliant. The ensemble is uniformly superb (Jessica Walter, as the family's boozing, scheming matriarch, is particularly devastating this season) and the surprising guest stars (including Andy Richter, James Lipton, Justine Bateman, and many others) are perfectly cast; the characters' abominable behavior defies conventional television notions of "likability", yet they only grow more endearing the more you watch; the humor embraces wild slapstick and sharp satire, often within a single scene; and the nimble documentary style allows for sly glancing references to jokes and scenes from long-past episodes, rewarding devoted fans. But the key is that, no matter how screwball Arrested Development becomes, the show offers a rich, textured, and wonderfully coherent world in which these characters feel genuine, a world completely unlike the flat, plastic simulacrum offered by the average sitcom. Arrested Development was true to itself to the end. Its followers will cherish it forever. --Bret Fetzer

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Brick (2005)

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Sysnopsis:

Self consciously imitating BThe Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon this original thriller is indebted to 'Donnie Darko' in its hallucinogenic feel. Brendon (based on Humphrey Bogart) is a loner investigating the death of his ex girlfriend Emily. The police are making no progress, so he enlists The Brain to catch the killer. Uncovering Emily's dubious friends they meet femme fa-tale Nora Zehetner.High school collides with hard-boiled film noir in the twisty, cunning Brick. When he gets a mysterious message from his ex-girlfriend, a high school loner named Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mysterious Skin) starts to dig into a crisscrossed web of drugs and duplicity, eventually getting entwined in the criminal doings of a teenage crime lord known as the Pin (Lukas Haas), his thuggish henchman Tugger (Noah Fleiss, Joe the King), and a mysterious girl named Laura (Nora Zehetner, Fifty Pills). Brick has not only the seductive, labyrinthine plot of a crime thriller by Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) or Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely) but also a dense high-school version of hard-boiled lingo that's both comic and poetic. The movie unfolds with headlong momentum as Brendan manipulates, fights, and staggers his way through layers of high-school society. Gordon-Levitt is excellent; between this and the equally compelling Mysterious Skin, he's left his 3rd Rock from the Sun days behind. Also featuring Meagan Good (Waist Deep) and Richard Roundtree (Shaft). --Bret Fetzer

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Prison Break - Season One (2005)

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Synopsis:

An engineer (Wentworth Miller) installs himself in a prison he helped design, in order to help his brother (Dominic Purcell), a death-row inmate who insists he did not commit the crime for which he has been sentenced to die and help him escape.Season one of Prison Break is great television. Here's the set-up. Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) is framed and wrongfully convicted for assassinating the Vice President's brother. Lincoln's brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), who just happens to have designed Illinois' Fox River Penitentiary where Lincoln is on death row, hatches an elaborate escape plan. Michael's plan involves getting himself incarcerated in Fox River and smuggling the prison's blueprints by having them hidden in tattoos that cover his entire torso. Once inside, Michael must form alliances with a rogue's gallery of felons with their own sometimes unsavory motives. Meanwhile, on the outside, Lincoln's lawyer and one-time girlfriend Veronica Donovan (Robin Tunney), pursued by Secret Service agents, attempts to unravel the conspiracy that sent her man to the slammer.

Prison Break is anchored by tight, suspenseful writing clearly relished by the largely little-known cast. Standouts include Robert Knepper as the murderer/pedophile T-Bag, who somehow makes such a despicable character likeable. Stacey Keach of Mike Hammer fame plays the warden-with-a-heart-of-gold, who clashes with Captain Brad Bellick (Wade Williams) over whether to rehabilitate the inmates or makes their lives more miserable. Peter Stormare, famous for his skills with a wood chipper in Fargo, turns in a deliciously menacing performance as mob boss John Abruzzi, while Amaury Nolasco's winsome Fernando Sucre shares a cell and secrets with Miller's Scofield. Watching the show one gets a sense that this is the opening salvo of Wentworth Miller's career, which will doubtless include roles as assassins, detectives, super heroes, and perhaps the champion of staring contests. Midway through the season it's explained that Scofield is a genius with an heightened sensitivity to other peoples' suffering, which sums up what makes the show so great--the mind-bendingly intricate plot is a framework for moments when people make others suffer and cope with the burden of their own suffering.

The six-disc set includes 22 addictive episodes, audio commentary on selected episodes, three featurettes, and alternate and deleted scenes. As with most TV shows on DVD, the "previously on Prison Break" intros can get tiresome, but that's what the fast forward button is for. --Ryan Boudinot

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