Bonus Feature:
Audio commentary with Writer / Director Dagen Merrill, Producer Chris Wyatt and Alexa Vega.A handsome high-school senior aspires to become a classical composer in this tuneful drama. Tommy (Luke Arnold, who recalls Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel) lives on an Australian sheep ranch with his widowed father, George (Timothy Hutton), a stern soccer coach, and nurses a crush on exchange student Kat! (Alexa Vega, Spy Kids), who barely knows he exists. One night, Tommy and George come across escaped convict Kalae (Che Timmons) on their drive home. They turn the unconscious man over to the police, and get on with their lives. Later, when Kat finds out that Tommy has access to a truck, she convinces him to chauffeur her around during a night of vandalism, which lands him in jail, where he reconnects with Kalae, who tells him about a prison choir. Upon Tommy's release, he convinces Kat to help him form a convict band in order to fulfill their community service requirement and to facilitate his entrance into Sydney's prestigious Music Conservatorium. At first, the inexperienced duo attract only two participants, but other inmates eventually materialize, and as their repertoire takes shape, Kat's hard shell softens. Unfortunately, Tommy has to cancel their performance at Broken Hill when a prisoner goes missing, but Kat and the other players convince him to try again.! The conclusion feels more like wish fulfillment than a realis! tic outc ome, but director Dagen Merrill does depict Tommy's daydreams at times, so it seems rather fitting. Extra features include commentary from Merrill, producer Chris Wyatt, and a sleepy Vega. --Kathleen C. FennessySet in 1897, a man and his nephew are trying to deliver a herd of horses when they become the reluctant guardians of five abandoned Chinese girls.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 30-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVDThe lives of two stoic cowboys and five abused Chinese women become intertwined in Walter Hill's sprawling miniseries Broken Trail. Print Ritter (Academy Award winner Robert Duvall) and his nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways) agree to deliver a herd of 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. Along the way, they rescue the young women--most of them still just girls--who're being transported to a brothel to have their virginity auctioned off. When the madam sees she is about to lose the gi! rls, she screams at Tom, "What about my property?" He shouts back, "That's the price of being a capitalist, lady." Unable to overcome the language barrier, Print assigns numbers to the girls. Number 3, Sun Foy (Gwendoline Yeo, Desperate Housewives) is the most fearless and perceptive of them. Though the others don't want to be called Number 4--an unlucky numeral in their homeland--Ye Fung (Olivia Cheng), the most tragic of the group, doesn't care. Targeted for her beauty, she finds herself unable to overcome the trauma. The number suits her, in her mind. Along the way, Print and Tom rescue Nola Johns (Greta Scacchi), the proverbial hooker with the heat of gold, who was forced into prostitution after her husband died.
The cinematography is gorgeous as the camera sweeps over the lush landscape (the Canadian Rockies subbing in for wild West of the late 1800s) and Hill does a formidable job of pacing this 3-hour drama with just the right balance of dialogue and actio! n. For Duvall, Broken Trail is the last piece to his We! stern tr ilogy, which started with the miniseries Lonesome Dove followed by the feature film Open Range. He is instantly likeable as a father figure and the viewer never doubts that his intention for the girls is honorable. As for Haden Church, he has never been as appealing as he is in this role. Gruff and flawed, he softens when he exchanges shy glances with Sun Foy. The trek is long and hard and the unlikely band of travelers will face much hardship. If not as satisfying as the rich, detailed Lonesome Dove, Broken Trail makes up for it with a wonderful storyline and some fine acting by all involved. As for the conclusion, it may surprise some viewers who are expecting a more traditional version of the happy ending. --Jae-Ha KimStudio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 09/30/2008 Run time: 184 minutesThe lives of two stoic cowboys and five abused Chinese women become intertwined in Walter Hill's sprawling miniseries Broken Trail. Print! Ritter (Academy Award winner Robert Duvall) and his nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways) agree to deliver a herd of 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. Along the way, they rescue the young women--most of them still just girls--who're being transported to a brothel to have their virginity auctioned off. When the madam sees she is about to lose the girls, she screams at Tom, "What about my property?" He shouts back, "That's the price of being a capitalist, lady." Unable to overcome the language barrier, Print assigns numbers to the girls. Number 3, Sun Foy (Gwendoline Yeo, Desperate Housewives) is the most fearless and perceptive of them. Though the others don't want to be called Number 4--an unlucky numeral in their homeland--Ye Fung (Olivia Cheng), the most tragic of the group, doesn't care. Targeted for her beauty, she finds herself unable to overcome the trauma. The number suits her, in her mind. Along the way, Print and Tom rescue Nola Johns (Gr! eta Scacchi), the proverbial hooker with the heat of gold, who! was for ced into prostitution after her husband died.
The cinematography is gorgeous as the camera sweeps over the lush landscape (the Canadian Rockies subbing in for wild West of the late 1800s) and Hill does a formidable job of pacing this 3-hour drama with just the right balance of dialogue and action. For Duvall, Broken Trail is the last piece to his Western trilogy, which started with the miniseries Lonesome Dove followed by the feature film Open Range. He is instantly likeable as a father figure and the viewer never doubts that his intention for the girls is honorable. As for Haden Church, he has never been as appealing as he is in this role. Gruff and flawed, he softens when he exchanges shy glances with Sun Foy. The trek is long and hard and the unlikely band of travelers will face much hardship. If not as satisfying as the rich, detailed Lonesome Dove, Broken Trail makes up for it with a wonderful storyline and some fine acting by all ! involved. As for the conclusion, it may surprise some viewers who are expecting a more traditional version of the happy ending. --Jae-Ha KimYour Love Never Fails is the story of Laura (Elisa Donovan), a working mother who just wants to spend more time with her daughter Kelsey, 9. Unfortunately, her demanding boss Paul (Fred Willard) has other ideas. When Kelsey's father, Dylan (Brad Rowe) files for joint custody, Laura is forced to take Kelsey to Texas, where she confronts the lifestyle, church and father (Tom Skerritt) that she left behind. With the help of the local church Pastor, Frank (John Schneider), Laura and Dylan will find their way back to the commitment they made to each other and to Kelsey.
With kitschy character names like Jericho and Chicago (Arnie's partner, played by Kevin Pollack) and lapses in logic that any 5-year-old could spot, End of Days is a loud, aggravating movie that would be entertaining if it were intended as comedy. But Schwarzenegger and director Peter Hyams approach the story as an earnest tale of redemption and tested faith, delivering a ridiculous climax full of special effects and devoid of dramatic impac! t. You're left instead to savor the verbal and physical sparri! ng betwe en Satan and Jericho, resulting in the most thorough pummeling Schwarzenegger's ever endured onscreen. Of course he eventually gets his payback, just in time for New Year's Eve. Perhaps he was touched by an angel. --Jeff ShannonAll hell breaks loose when Arnold Schwarzenegger battles the ultimate evil in this chilling supernatural action thriller. When Jericho (Schwarzenegger), a burned-out former New York City cop is assigned to security detail for a mysterious stranger (Gabriel Byrne), he thwarts an incredible assassination attempt. During the ensuing investigation, he and his partner (Kevin Pollak) save the life of the beautiful and terrified Christine York (Robin Tunney), whose destiny involves death, the devil and the fate of mankind. Now it's up to Jericho to save the girl, the world and his own soul as he comes face to face with his most powerful enemy ever!After a two-year hiatus that included recovery from heart surgery, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to the ! big screen in November 1999 with End of Days, a Thanksgiving turkey if ever there was one. Overcooked and bloated with stuffing, this ludicrous thriller attached itself to the end-of-the-millennium furor that kicked in a year too early. A prologue begins in 1979 with panic in the Vatican when a comet signals the birth of a child who will, 20 years later, become the chosen bride of Satan, destined to conceive the devil's spawn between 11 p.m. and midnight on December 31, 1999. It's hard to decide who has the more thankless role--Robin Tunney as Satan's would-be bride, or Schwarzenegger as Jericho Cane, the burned-out alcoholic bodyguard assigned to protect the girl from Satan, billed as "The Man" and played with cheesy menace (and an inconsistent variety of metaphysical manifestations) by Gabriel Byrne.
With kitschy character names like Jericho and Chicago (Arnie's partner, played by Kevin Pollack) and lapses in logic that any 5-year-old could spot, End of! Days is a loud, aggravating movie that would be entertain! ing if i t were intended as comedy. But Schwarzenegger and director Peter Hyams approach the story as an earnest tale of redemption and tested faith, delivering a ridiculous climax full of special effects and devoid of dramatic impact. You're left instead to savor the verbal and physical sparring between Satan and Jericho, resulting in the most thorough pummeling Schwarzenegger's ever endured onscreen. Of course he eventually gets his payback, just in time for New Year's Eve. Perhaps he was touched by an angel. --Jeff Shannon
Lydia Lozen Magruderâ€"the great-granddaughter of a female Apache war-shamanâ€"has seen visions of the End since childhood. She has constructed a massive ranch-fortress in the American Southwest, stocked with everything necessary to rebuild civilization.
Now her visions are coming true. John Stone, once a baseball star and now a famous gonzo journalist, stumbled across a plan to blast humanity back to the stone age. Then he vanished. Lydiaâ€! ™s only hope of tracking him down lies with her stubborn, globe-trotting daughter, Kate, Stone’s former lover.
Kate is about to step right into the plotters’ crosshairs. Stone has been captured by a pair of twin Middle Eastern princesses, hell-bent on torturing him until he reveals all he knows.
Meanwhile, a Russian general obsessed with nuclear Armageddon has also disappeared...as have eight or more of his Russian subs, armed with nuclear-tipped missiles.
The world is armed for self-destruction.
Who will survive?
With kitschy character names like Jericho and Chicago (Arnie's partner, played by Kevin Pollack) and lapses in logic that any 5-year-old could spot, End of Days is a loud, aggravating movie th! at would be entertaining if it were intended as comedy. But Sc! hwarzene gger and director Peter Hyams approach the story as an earnest tale of redemption and tested faith, delivering a ridiculous climax full of special effects and devoid of dramatic impact. You're left instead to savor the verbal and physical sparring between Satan and Jericho, resulting in the most thorough pummeling Schwarzenegger's ever endured onscreen. Of course he eventually gets his payback, just in time for New Year's Eve. Perhaps he was touched by an angel. --Jeff Shannon
Why is it that our current twenty-first century A.D. is so similar to the twenty-first century B.C.?
Is history destined to repeat itself? Will biblical prophecies come true, and if so, when?
It has been more than three decades since Zecharia Sitchin's trailblazing book The 12th Planet brought to life the Sumerian civilization and its record of the Anunnakiâ€"the extraterrestrials who fashioned man and gave mankind civilization and religion. In ! this new volume, Sitchin shows that the End is anchored in the events of the Beginning, and once you learn of this Beginning, it is possible to foretell the Future.
In The End of Days, a masterwork that required thirty years of additional research, Sitchin presents compelling new evidence that the Past is the Futureâ€"that mankind and its planet Earth are subject to a predetermined cyclical Celestial Time.
In an age when religious fanaticism and a clash of civilizations raise the specter of a nuclear Armageddon, Zecharia Sitchin shatters perceptions and uses history to reveal what is to come at The End of Days.
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?
What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?
How much do parents really matter?
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday lifeâ€"from cheating and crime to parenting and sportsâ€"and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head.
Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the se! crets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentivesâ€"how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent crimi! nals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that pr! eempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe
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