- GIRL IN THE PARK (DVD MOVIE)
Wo young women work as maids in a maui resort community.With othing else to do with their time the girls decide to surf. Hey become very good and enter an all-male contest. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 03/28/2006 Starring: Kate Bosworth Matthew Davis Run time: 105 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: John StockwellNot to be confused with the 2002 feature film of the same title,
Blue Crush is billed as the original all-girl surfer's movie, and it's guaranteed to please devotees of the sport. It's a mixed blessing, however, because it assumes familiarity with the sport and its superstars, dispensing with any educational or historical detail that would appeal to neophytes. After all, how can this film be dedicated to Rell Sunn (the pioneer of female competitive surfing, who died in of breast cancer in 1998 at age 47) and fail to explore her illus! trious career? This haphazard approach extends to profiles of the young women who regard Sunn as their hero; we learn little of their backgrounds and how they rose to prominence on the waves.
Blue Crush works best as a globetrotting, music-video tour of surfdom's prime locations (Samoa, Hawaii, the Gold Coast, South Africa) hosted by the sport's most prominent competitors, including several (Rochelle Ballard, Megan Abubo, Sanoe Lake, Keala Kennelly, Kate Skarratt) who appeared in Universal's popular feature. It's a lot of fun, especially if you "hang ten" on a regular basis.
--Jeff ShannonAcademy Award® Winner Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Danny Huston and International sensation Jang Dong Gun star in this boldly original film that blends intense martial arts action with a dazzling visual style. After a lifetime of training in swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat, the world’s most dangerous fighter (Jang) flees his homeland to start a new life in the Ameri! can West. But soon the hunter becomes the hunted, and now the ! legendar y warrior must wage a fierce, all-out battle against a renegade gang of outlaws and a pack of murderous assassins from his own past."This is the story of a sad flute, a laughing baby, and a weeping sword," a voice intones at the beginning of
The Warrior's Way. It's also a story in which bullets fly, blood flows, and the body count mounts to the point where you'll need a calculator to keep track, often to the accompaniment of a Verdi opera. Writer-director Sngmoo Lee's film centers on a lone warrior named Yang (Jang Dong-gun), "the greatest swordsman in the history of mankind," who has managed to wipe out all of his enemies save one, that being an adorable infant whom he refuses to murder, much to the displeasure of his boss, the leader of a band known as the Sad Flutes. For reasons never quite explained, our exiled hero soon finds himself in a thoroughly dilapidated town in the American west, where a half-finished ferris wheel looms and the inhabitants consist mainly ! of a bunch of worn-out circus performers (clowns, bearded lady, midget ringmaster, the whole shebang), the town drunk (Geoffrey Rush, a very long way from his Oscar-winning performance in
Shine), and a beautiful young woman (Kate Bosworth, sporting a ridiculous accent) whose family was slaughtered by a local bad guy known as the Colonel (Danny Huston, suitably sadistic). Yang improbably takes over the town's laundry service, plants a garden, and cares for the baby, but we know it won't be long before his real talents will be needed--and sure enough, when the Colonel and his band of filthy wretches ride back into town, followed not long thereafter by a platoon of acrobatic ninjas sent to dispatch our hero, Yang and the locals have their hands full. All of this is fairly ridiculous, but the movie has a surreal, painterly look (imagine a cross between Dali, Fellini, and a graphic novel) that's never less than engaging. Jang is no Olivier, to say the least, but he's hand! some and charismatic, and although the ending holds few surpri! ses (esp ecially once he instructs the Bosworth character in "the warrior's way"), genre fans are likely to be enchanted.
--Sam GrahamGIRL IN THE PARK - DVD Movie
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