Brick

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• AC-3; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC

Brendan Frye is a loner, someone who knows all the angles but has chosen to stay on the outside. When the girl he loves turns up dead, he is determined to find the "who" and "why" and plunges into the dark and dangerous social strata of rich girl Laura, intimidating Tug, drug-addled Dode, seductive Kara, and the ominous Pin. But who can he really trust? These are the ingredients of Brick, a gritty and provocative thriller that critics describe as "a clever, twist-filled whodunit!" (Claudia Puig, USA Today) 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

Godzilla Bandai 6.5 Inch Classic Figure Godzilla Millennium

• Godzilla Bandai 6.5 Inch Classic Figure Godzilla Millennium

Godzilla must save Tokyo from a UFO that transforms into the monster Orga.
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: PG
Release Date: 1-MAR-2005
Media Type: DVDGaaaaaaaargh! The guy in the rubber suit is back with a vengeance. Godzilla's back in the nurturing hands of Toho Studios, and they've beefed up the big beast with more highly developed spinal fins, resembling large crystals, and more menacing teeth. But he's the same guy in the rubber suit who smashes Tokyo's buildings and cars and dukes it out in larger-than-life smackdowns with the universe's monstrous villains. The plot is familiar to anyone who was a 12-year-old boy: Godzilla erupts from the sea for reasons that are never made clear, proceeds to wreak havoc amongst the buildings of a model city, and meets and beats a monster his own size, thus! saving humanity. His nemesis this time around is a 600-foot-long rock that scientists find at the bottom of the ocean and unwisely bring to the surface, where it proves to be an alien spacecraft bent on acquiring Godzilla's regenerative abilities. "A visitor from outer space?" exclaims one of the scientists, "My god, it's just too crazy to believe!" To which the lead scientist responds, "Right, like Godzilla's normal. Anyway, it's my theory that..."

The film is thoroughly entertaining, and not just for the breathtaking sequences of destruction that follow Godzilla's emergence and his battles with the alien space monster. These do have a preternatural beauty. But the human story, if you can call it that, holds your interest due to the shear preponderance of improbabilities it generates. You laugh at the "mistakes"--assuming they weren't planted there as amiable self-deprecation. --Jim GayThe theme to the latest Godzilla adventure sounds halfway between a classic m! onster motif and heroic fanfare, which appropriately reflects ! the cons tantly shifting role of Japan's favorite giant lizard. After all, one minute he's threatening to crush Tokyo under his giant frame; the next, he's saving the populace from alien intruders. (Of course, Godzilla inevitably crushes Tokyo while saving it--there's irony for you.) For this film, composer Takayuki Hattori (who also scored 1994's Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla) refreshingly opts not to overdo the action scenes. Despite the occasional, clichéd use of string and brass crescendos for dramatic effect, pieces like "The Self Defense Force Swings into Action" are unusually understated. Considering the bombastic onscreen carnage, this makes for a striking contrast. Most memorable on the Godzilla 2000 soundtrack is the unconventional music--the tribal drumming insinuated into the anxious orchestrations of "Giant UFO Approaching" and "Before the Explosion"; the soothing, hypnotic tones of "Wonder of G Revealed"; and the wonderful, modern rendition of Akira Ifukube! 's classic, "Godzilla's Theme." Tohophiles will also appreciate the inclusion of Godzilla and Orga sound effects from the film. --Bryan Reesman Godzilla Bandai 6.5 Inch Classic Figure Godzilla Millennium

Alone With Her

• Surveillance is often used by directors who are keen to add a voyeuristic touch to their work, and has been cleverly used as a plot device inics such as BODY DOUBLE, THE CONVERSATION, and REAR WINDOW. In ALONE WITH HER, director Eric Nicholas (RIVER RATS) takes the theme to its logical conclusion, shooting an entire movie on cameras stashed in ingenious locations by the film's central protagon

(Thriller) Obsession can be deadly. ALONE WITH HER is the harrowing story of a disturbed young man’s attempts to win the affections of an unsuspecting young woman. As his fascination grows into obsession he’s no longer satisfied with just watching.

Orphan

• Tragedy seems to follow nine-year-old Esther. She was orphaned in her native Russia. Her last adoptive family perished in a fire Esther barely escaped. But now the Coleman family has adopted her, and life is good. Until amate takes a serious fall from a slide. Until an orphanage nun is battered to death. And until Esther s new mom wonders if that tragic fire was an accident. From Dark Castle Produ

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns t! o the horror genre with a vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly)Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. You got your gypsy gargoyles with rotted dentures, your upchucking corpses, your flexible two-way orifices--yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamil! iar types. Along with the giddy horror-comedy that bursts out ! of the m ovie every 10 minutes or so, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. (Lohman's own little-girl-lost quality adds to this feeling.) But don't let that get in the way of the fun-ride aspects of this goofy enterprise: Drag Me to Hell is a bunch of Z-movie gags wrapped in top-drawer production values. --Robert Horton


Stills from Drag Me to Hell (Click for larger image) Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns to the horror genre with a vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly)Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. You got y! our gypsy gargoyles with rotted dentures, your upchucking corp! ses, you r flexible two-way orifices--yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamiliar types. Along with the giddy horror-comedy that bursts out of the movie every 10 minutes or so, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. (Lohman's own little-girl-lost quality adds to this feeling.) But don't let that get in the way of the fun-ri! de aspects of this goofy enterprise: Drag Me to Hell is a bunch of Z-movie gags wrapped in top-drawer production values. --Robert Horton

Stills from Drag Me to Hell (Click for larger image) Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 10/27/2009 Run time: 122 minutes Rating: RA bad seed with a Russian accent, 9-year-old Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a nasty little girl with a nasty little plan. Unfortunately, this malevolent tyke has landed in the home of! adoptive parents Kate and John (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsga! ard), an unsuspecting couple with two kids of their own and considerable grief over recent family tragedies. It doesn't take long for Esther to make her creepy presence known, as broken limbs on the playground and torched tree houses can attest. Give this movie some credit--the psychological underpinnings are all set carefully in place: Maternal trauma? Check. Backyard pond as emotionally charged danger zone? Check. Feminist parable about husbands not listening to troubled wives? Check. The casting of reputable actors such as Farmiga and Sarsgaard also ups the movie's class quotient; Farmiga in particular has an emotional workout, and this gifted actress strikes few false notes even as the scenario becomes increasingly lurid. (There's some déjà vu here: Farmiga also played a mother realizing her kid was "not right" in Joshua, a much superior film.) Director Jaume Collet-Serra, of House of Wax notoriety, knows full well the unsettling weirdness of seeing a child commi! t murderous mayhem, and he presses all the buttons with something like unholy joy. The movie begins to drive off the rails even before a clumsy twist hits the fan near the end, and at that point, the mechanical exercise becomes downright silly. The Omen's Damien has nothing to worry about. --Robert Horton

Hunter - After The Fall (Book One)

• Twenty-First Century Civilization Will Soon Collapse
• Just One In Ten Thousand Will Survive The Apocalypse
• You Have Been Chosen To Escape The Great Purging
• Welcome To The Future...

Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best of the Year

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:

"Gorgeously crafted stories."â€"Nancy Pearl, NPR

"Hauntingly beautiful."â€"Booklist

"Unpredictable and poetic ! work."â€"The Plain Dealer

Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.

This science fiction collection contains three stories: After Things Went Bad, Mr. Tinker, and At Home on Wintebury Circle.

From SIFT BOOK REVIEWS: "Even more than the distinctive voices, impeccable writing, and well-wrought characters, the dark captivating atmosphere will wrap around you and linger long after you have finished reading. These two are clearly talented writers with wicked imaginations. I believe each story has something important! to say about humanity and packs a punch the reader will feel ! for a wh ile." -- Sarah NicolasThis science fiction collection contains three stories: After Things Went Bad, Mr. Tinker, and At Home on Wintebury Circle.

From SIFT BOOK REVIEWS: "Even more than the distinctive voices, impeccable writing, and well-wrought characters, the dark captivating atmosphere will wrap around you and linger long after you have finished reading. These two are clearly talented writers with wicked imaginations. I believe each story has something important to say about humanity and packs a punch the reader will feel for a while." -- Sarah NicolasThe apocalypse was yesterday. These stories are today.

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced ove! rseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Table of Contents

The Naturalist

Special Economics

Useless Things

The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large

The Kingdom of the Blind

Going to France

Honeymoon

The Effect of Centrifugal Forces

After the Apocalypse

Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:

"Gorgeously crafted stories."â€"Nancy Pearl, NPR

"Hauntingly beautiful."â€"Booklist

"Unpredictable and poetic work."â€"The Plain Dealer

“Poignant and sometimes heartwrenching.”â€"Publishers Weekly

Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China! Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice ! Nekro polis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.The apocalypse was yesterday. These stories are today.

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Table of Contents

The Naturalist

Special Economics

Useless Things

The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large

The Kingdom of the Blind

Going to France

Honeymoon

The Effect of Centrifugal Forces

After the Apocalypse

Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:

"Gorgeously crafted! stories."â€"Nancy Pearl, NPR

"Hauntingly beautiful."â€"Booklist

"Unpredictable and poetic work."â€"The Plain Dealer

“Poignant and sometimes heartwrenching.”â€"Publishers Weekly

Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.The apocalypse doesn't need plagues or zombies or bombs. All it needs is us. Set in the very near future, WHAT CAME AFTER takes place in a too-credible third-world America that's been hijacked by corporations in the service of the wealthy. The Federal government has collapsed, health care is inac! cessible, and private armies keep order. The upper class is co! ncentrat ed in the cities, while the middle classâ€"decimated by disease and poisoned by genetically engineered foodsâ€"labors on in a handful of desolate Empowerment Zones. One man, Henry Weller, has had enough. With his five-year-old daughter going blind, he sets out across a ruined America to find her the health care she deserves. He'll have to face a strange and hostile worldâ€"from the financial districts of a walled New York to the armed camp of Washington, DCâ€"but if he's successful, his daughter might see again. And along the way, a revolution might get started. WHAT CAME AFTER is shaped by issues on everyone's mind right now: poverty, corporate power, access to heath care, the outsourcing of government, parents' obligations to their children. But at its core, it's a post-apocalyptic adventure in a desolate and treacherous world: THE WIZARD OF OZ meets HEART OF DARKNESS, at the end of the American dream.Harriette Madyson is the last woman alive. Twenty years ago ! her world came to an end when a zombie plague engulfed the population of Earth. At the tender age of seven she found herself in a nightmarish situation where the dead literally returned to life. Left with little to use and nowhere to hide Harri now finds herself stalked across the frozen desolate landscape of North America pursued by the former love of her life. All that she has to keep her going is the hope that she can make it home to die in peace.In volume one of his epic post-apocalyptic adventure saga, master storyteller John Phillip Backus brings this not-so-distant vision of the future to life with intriguing characters, gifted narrative, believable settings and mythic heroes and villains. Driven by a riveting storyline brilliantly illustrated by Asheville, NC artist, Chad Schoenauer, the author weaves his linguistic magic until the reader is utterly immersed in this brave new world and dare not fail to turn the next page for fear of missing out. On his own in the Wyoming wilderness, fourteen years after the End War and its aftermath nearly wiped out the human race, self-exiled survivor, Hunter Macintosh, is suddenly faced with more than he bargained for-three sisters and a child crossing the uncharted wilds alone. Suspicious at first, Hunter soon discovers they've traveled more than three hundred miles to find him, at the request of their father, Adam Planchet-Hunter's former commander and comrade-in-arms-whose besieged Colorado community is at risk of being overrun by lawless hordes! Honor-bound by a pledge made many years earlier, Hunter agrees to return with Elise Planchet to help turn the tide before all is lost. Set against the majestic backdrop of the North American Rockies, Hunter - After The Fall is an engrossing tale of adventure, betrayal and hope, where the true character of an individual is thoroughly tested and the outcome uncertain at best. Join Hunter and Elise as they battle bands of outlaws, enraged grizzlies, numbing blizzards, armed militias and their own stubborn hearts in an epic tale of good-versus-evil in a potential future all too easy to conceive!