Editorial Product Review: :'There are angels over the streets of Berlin,' quotes the movie poster, but these are like no angels you've ever seen. Bundled in dark overcoats, they watch over the city with ears open to the heartbeat of the human soul, listening to the internal musings and yearnings of earthbound humans like existential detectives. In these delicate, astounding scenes we float through the thoughts of dozens Berlin citizens, from the weary and worn to the hopeful and young, as the angels record the magic moments ...
Editorial Product Review: :Here's an intriguing little premise: Inside Stalin's Kremlin, as seen by... his movie projectionist! Now that's glasnost. As played by Tom Hulce, he's an optimistic little dweeb who believes that Fearless Leader has only his best interests at heart. Most of the film is about his waiting to do his job, getting occasional glimpses of Uncle Joe, not realizing that, when the ruthless dictator finally does engage him in conversation, Stalin might as well be talking to a bug. Bob Hoskins pops up as ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Winner of nine Academy Awards and almost every critic's heart, The English Patient (based on Michael Ondaatje's prizewinning novel of love and loss during World War II) is one of the most acclaimed films of modern times. Hana, a nurse (Juliette Binoche), tends to an archaeologist (Ralph Fiennes) who has been burnt to a crisp in a plane crash. As their relationship intensifies, he flashes back to his overwhelming passion for a married woman (Kristin Scott Thomas). Meanwhile, Hana begins a new ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Emma Thompson scores a double bull's-eye with this marvelous adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not only does Thompson turn in a strong (and gently humorous) performance as one of the Dashwood sisters--the one with 'sense'--she also wrote the witty, wise screenplay. Austen's tale of 19th-century manners and morals provides a large cast with a feast of possibilities, notably Kate Winslet, in her pre-Titanic flowering, as Thompson's deeply romantic sister. Winslet attracts the wooing of shy Alan Rickman (a nice change of pace ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Emma Thompson scores a double bull's-eye with this marvelous adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not only does Thompson turn in a strong (and gently humorous) performance as one of the Dashwood sisters--the one with 'sense'--she also wrote the witty, wise screenplay. Austen's tale of 19th-century manners and morals provides a large cast with a feast of possibilities, notably Kate Winslet, in her pre-Titanic flowering, as Thompson's deeply romantic sister. Winslet attracts the wooing of shy Alan Rickman (a nice change of pace ...
Editorial Product Review: :Micky O'Neill (Adrian Dunbar) is a born salesman. As the booker of the local theater/dance hall, he is famous for hiring almost-celebrities like Franc Cinatra. When he is unable to tell his girlfriend (the beautiful Tara Fitzgerald) that he loves her, in so many words, she storms out of their bedroom. In order to win her back--and curry favor with her mother, not to mention keep his job--he decides to book famous tenor Joe Locke, who's wanted by the government for tax reasons and ...
Editorial Product Review: :Italy's rubber-faced funnyman Roberto Benigni accomplishes the impossible in his World War II comedy Life Is Beautiful: he shapes a simultaneously hilarious and haunting comedy out of the tragedy of the Holocaust. An international sensation and the most successful foreign language film in U.S. history, the picture also earned director-cowriter-star Benigni Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor. He plays the Jewish country boy Guido, a madcap romantic in Mussolini's Italy who wins the heart of his sweetheart (Benigni's real-life sweetie, Nicoletta ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:The prestigious filmmaking trio of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala had made other critically acclaimed films before A Room with a View was released in 1985, but it was this popular film that made them art-house superstars. Splendidly adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster, it's a comedy of the heart, a passionate romance and a study of repression within the British class system of manners and mores. It's that system of rigid behavior that prevents ...
Editorial Product Review: :After scoring an art-house hit and Oscar nominations for his previous film, My Left Foot, Irish director Jim Sheridan made this ambitious and hard-hitting drama, set in Ireland during the 1930s, about one man's obsession with a plot of land that his family has tended for generations. The results are decidedly mixed, and it's obvious that this kind of tragic allegory is better suited for the stage (where it originated as a play by John B. Keane). What makes the film worthwhile is the ...
Small and light enough for a shirt pocket, Samsung's Helix YX-M1 is a one-stop audio entertainment center with an XM radio, a digital music player, and room for 50 hours of tunes, but it comes up short on battery life.
