Editorial Product Review: essential video:Adapted from the controversial novel by J.G. Ballard, Crash will either repel or amaze you, with little or no room for a neutral reaction. The film is perfectly matched to the artistic and intellectual proclivities of director David Cronenberg, who has used the inspiration of Ballard's novel to create what critic Roger Ebert has described as 'a dissection of the mechanics of pornography.' Filmed with a metallic color scheme and a dominant tone of emotional detachment, the ...
Editorial Product Review: :Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers) continues to delight and disturb us with his talent for combining storytelling with optic artistry. The Pillow Book is divided into 10 chapters (consistent with Greenaway's love of numbers and lists) and is shot to be viewed like a book, complete with tantalizing illustrations and footnotes (subtitles) and using television's 'screen-in-screen' technology. As a child in Japan, Nagiko's father celebrates her birthday retelling the Japanese ...
Editorial Product Review: :This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy Jack's way of doing things and that of the school's founder (Delores Taylor), but their tension doesn't ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:They don't make 'em like this anymore. Well, John Waters might, if he ever had a big enough budget. A steamy 'inside look' at the alternately sleazy and glamorous world of catfighting, backbiting show-biz starlets, this Hollywood hit from the bestselling novel by Jacqueline Susann is a high-gloss camp artifact--a time capsule (or some kind of capsule, anyway)--from the screwy '60s, when a broad was a broad, a bitch was a bitch (whether 'her' name was Neely ...
Editorial Product Review: :When you consider that the big movies of 1960 were films such as Elmer Gantry and The Alamo, it's hard to imagine what people made of this, John Cassavetes's first independent feature. Improvised by the cast, shot in black and white, it looked like no other film of its time. Cassavetes, seeking to both deal with social issues and create a new kind of cinema, told a story about a family of black siblings in Manhattan trying to make ...
Editorial Product Review: :This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring filmmaking debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-lam flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the ...
Editorial Product Review:Description:Tully High School seniors Richie, Joey and Perry run with a gang called the Wanderers in the Bronx. The time is fall 1963 but their experiences are universal: falling in love, surviving in school and defending turf against rivals like the Fordham Baldies, the Del Bombers and the Ducky Boys.
Editorial Product Review: :John Heard plays Charles, a sardonic civil servant who can't seem to get over his breakup with Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). While listening to his mother describe how she's thinking of killing herself, Charles begins to reflect on how the relationship started. From there, the movie flashes back and forth between his present obsessiveness and the ups and downs of his two months with Laura. The rambling but entertaining progress of Chilly Scenes of Winter is sprinkled with sharp, ...
On paper, the Mio DigiWalker P550 looks to be an attractive gadget for the mobile professional, combining the capabilities of a PDA and GPS into one device. However, its poor battery life and subpar navigation skills tell a different story.
Though it won't appeal to the masses quite yet, the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is a nice, portable device for on-the-go Web browsing, and it has some worthy upgrades.
Though it's expensive, the Sony VAIO VGN-TX670P delivers a great combination of business and entertainment features, long battery life, and unparalleled connectivity in an incredibly ultraportable package.