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DVD Review - Blue Jasmine

Genre:
Drama, Comedy
DVD/BD Release Date:
17th February 2014 (UK)
Distributor:
Warner Bros Home Entetainment (UK)
Rating: 15
Director:
Woody Allen
Cast:
Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard , Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale
Buy:DVD or Blu-ray [Amazon]

After middle-age flings with exotic beauties from Barcelona, London, Paris and Rome, Woody Allen has decided, in his sunset years, to return home to a true American broad, and in Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine he has unearthed one of his greatest creations yet. It seems almost formulaic to insist upon calling each Allen release a return to form but if, like many, you weren’t totally convinced by Midnight in Paris and numbed by To Rome with Love then believe me when I say Blue Jasmine is not just Woody’s best for a decade but rivals the classics of his golden age.

Blanchett shines as the eponymous star in this skewed re-working of Streetcar Named Desire infused with a Bernard Madoff modern spin. We meet a broken Jasmine on a flight to San Francisco, escaping her once glorious existence as a New York socialite that instantly soured the moment her husband Hal – a suitably despicable Alec Baldwin - was collared by the FBI for questionable financial dealings. Assets seized, bank accounts frozen and friends long since departed, a maddening Jasmine seeks solace in her sister, Ginger’s, west-coast home. The pair, adopted into the same family at a young age, have gone on to lead hugely differing lifestyles and Jasmine soon finds herself plunged into the kind of blue-collar existence she thought  she had well and truly escaped and had no intention on revisiting. Her upstate New York drawl drips with catty condescension fired at will towards her sister’s home, her children and her choice of partner.

Largely seen as little more than a nuisance during Jasmines ‘blessed’ years, Ginger now becomes the base upon which she must carve out a new life. Although, Jasmine was quite content with her old life – tirelessly informing anyone who cares to listen (often those who don’t) about her legendary Hampton’s dinner parties, holidays around Europe and the glamourous setting in which Hal first swept her off her feet.

These sporadic and scattergun recollections allow us into the New York high life, filled with designer shops, holiday homes and bejewelled gifts from partners. Running alongside Jasmine’s current plight, Allen seamlessly blends these memories, navigating away from a tired fish out of water tale to provide us with glimpses of a life lost, as well Hal’s casual approach to monogamy and the root of the major rift dividing the two sisters.

At the films heart is a crackling script, penned by one of the industry’s finest and held aloft by a colossal central performance by Blanchett, a wound up ball of tension hidden underneath booze and delusions of grandeur. It feels like a homecoming of sorts for Allen without ever feeling showy, whitewashing over a decade of midlife ennui more notable for it’s misses than it’s hits. Back on from then and back on American soil, although not so much his well-trodden Manhattan streets but the relatively foreign San Francisco hills. Here again, Allen distances himself from his European phrase – eschewing the tourist friendly scenery – bar one shot of the Golden Gate bridge nestled in the background, otherwise notable by it’s absence – in favour of bringing these characters and their stories to the forefront of each frame.

A genuine return to from for Allen, but Blue Jasmine is more than merely that. A standout American film of the year so far, expect it to feature heavily come award season.

★★★★★

Matthew Walsh

This is a repost of the cinema review from The Peoples Movies

Win Suspenseful Frost On DVD

To celebrate the release of the highly suspenseful horror that's “Guaranteed to deliver chills” (Dread Central) - ‘Frost’ out on DVD 10th February through Entertainment One - we have a copy to give away to one brave winner!

‘The Thing’ meets ‘The Blair Witch Project’ in this terrifying tale of arctic survival. ‘Frost’ keeps the found footage genre alive with its edge-of-your-seat tension and visually ominous atmosphere. The breathtaking landscape of the desolate icy glaciers superbly adds to the suspense especially when the dark of the night descends making ‘Frost’ one of the most tense expeditions into the snowy unknown we’ve encountered for a very long time.

Filmmaker Gunnar (Björn Thors) arrives at a remote glacier camp on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle to meet up with physiologist Agla (Anna Gunndís Guðmundsdóttir) to make a documentary about the research being conducted there. The next day they discover the camp mysteriously abandoned and their co-workers gone without a trace.

As darkness descends and the camp is shaken with ear-splitting shrieks and violent flashing lights, the couple bravely venture out into the vast nothingness frantically following a trail of blood in the snow in the hope that it’ll lead them to their missing colleagues, unaware of what they’ll find at the other end…

Fancy 'frosting up' your DVD collection by winning a copy of Frost on DVD? Great! To enter please answer this simple question...

Q.What Frost famously interviewed Former President Nixon in 1970s which became a Hollywood movie starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella?

Deadline is 2nd March  2014 (23:59pm),If you haven’t done already Like us and stay with us at our Facebook page (if you are already liking us just share this post on twitter and facebook). Must be 18 or older to enter.

1.The competition is not opened to employees, family, friends of  Cinehouse, The Peoples Movies, eOne UK employees who have the right to alter, change or offer alternative prize without any notice.2.All The Peoples Movies entries must be done via contact form. deadline Sunday 2nd March  2014 (23:59pm)  15 years or older to enter 3.Failure to include any information required to enter could result in your entry been void.  4.automated entries are not allowed and will be disqualified, which could result you been banned, DO NOT INCLUDE telephone numbers as for security reason your entry will be deleted.5.If you are friend or like us at facebook for every competition you enter you get double entry, but you must stay friend/like us all the time,or future entries maybe considered one entry if you are liking us share the post on facebook and re-tweet the post.6.The Peoples Movies, Cinehouse takes no responsibility for delayed, lost, stolen prizes 7.Prizes may take from days to a few months for delivery which is out of our control so please do not complain 8.The winning entries will be picked at random and contacted by email for postal details and will be announced via facebook, sometimes we are unable to confirm winners. Uk & Irish entries only.

UK Competitions and Prize Draws at UKwins
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ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions

Blu-Ray Review - Frivolous Lola (1998) & Cheeky (2000)

Win Iron Sky 'Dictator's Cut' Steelbooks (Blu-ray)

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg 50th Anniversary Blu-ray Review

Genre:
Drama, Musical, Romance
Distributor:
StudioCanal UK
BD Release Date:
10th February 2014 (UK)
Rating:
15
Director:
Jacques Demy
Cast:
Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon
Buy:Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (50th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray] [1964]
Being the first French New Wave film (and possibly, though I could be mistaken, the first non-English language film) I watched, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg will forever hold a special place in my heart. Back then, the New Wave was just a name and its significance I knew nothing about. And the film, though I found it to be rather enchanting and thoroughly entertaining, was just another film. But seeing the film again now, and in a wonderfully restored edition, I can finally fully appreciate it as the masterpiece it so clearly is.

What Demy’s film does so well is bridge the gap between those New Wave filmmakers he was more associated with, the Left Bank (Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker), who became filmmakers in a more traditional way, and those of the Cahiers du Cinéma ilk (François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, et al), who began as film critics. Demy achieves this, much in the same way Godard did in films such as Une femme est une femme, through the way he pays homage to the Hollywood musicals he was inspired by while at the same time deconstructing and parodying them in such a way that he simultaneously reinvents the musical.

And what a magnificent musical it is. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ups the ante on that tired old Hollywood tradition of characters bursting into song by having all the dialogue sung by its cast in a recitative style normally found in the world of the operetta. This gives the film a level of artifice that is further increased by the addition of the most splendidly coloured buildings imaginable. But far from making the film too artificial and far removed from reality, this artifice emphasises the need of escapism from the ordinariness of everyday life. This is especially true when you get to the nitty-gritty of the films story which is grounded in a recognisable world where war, death, teenage pregnancy, prostitution, and debt are very much a part of reality.

The films story is deceptively simple. In the first part, the departure, we are introduced to Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), who works with her widowed mother in a chic but debt ridden umbrella shop, and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), a mechanic who lives with his bedridden godmother. They are in love and share a passionate night together before Guy leaves for two-year military service in Algeria. The second part, absence, concentrates on how a now pregnant Geneviève copes with Guy’s departure and the pressure she faces from a mother who wants to marry her off to a rich suitor (played by Marc Michel who also appeared in Demy’s first film Lola, which, along with Umbrellas and the later Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, forms a loose trilogy). The third part, the return, sees Guy return from his military service and focuses on how he copes with the discovery that Geneviève is now married.

Now this scenario may sound familiar enough when you compare Umbrellas structure with the conventional Hollywood romance, musical or otherwise, but it is the ending that makes the film special. Convention would dictate that the ending would see Geneviève and Guy inevitably end up together again, no matter how implausible that may seem. What Demy does instead, whether it is through coincidence and chance, those two staple themes of his oeuvre, or fate and destiny, is make sure that the couple are no longer together. He does not cop out and give the audience that happy ending they are all expecting but instead has the couple meet in a chance encounter at Guy’s gas station five years down the line. We quickly learn that both of them have moved on and that both are happy with their current situation. This gives the film a more moving finale. It is closer to the realities of life than anything that is thrown up in a conventional musical. Ultimately, we are left in agreement with Geneviève’s mother when she says: “Time heals many things.”


★★★★½

Shane James

Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises Gets A UK Cinema Release Date

 After months of speculation on when Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises will finally arrive in the UK.Today via their Twitter account StudioCanal put British anime fans minds at rest , the anime maestro's Swansong will arrive in UK cinemas on 9th May.

Here's the  the tweet which also gives you a chance to win a steelbook edition of one of the many classic Studio Ghibli blurays they have on offer...

Hayao Miyazaki’s new masterpiece THE WIND RISES to hit UK cinemas on May 9! RT to #win one of these in preparation.. pic.twitter.com/AfL8cgIi5K

— STUDIOCANAL UK (@StudioCanalUK) February 7, 2014

It's been a long frustrating year for fans even critics here in UK since it's release in Japan Summer 2013 it's made it's  way slowly around the world's film festival circuit surprisingly not London Film Festival. Now the date has been set for the arrival of the film  we can finally look forward to some vintage Studio Ghibli most of all

The Wind Rises is inspired by Miyazaki's own personal dreams, the film centres around Jiro a young man inspired to become a aeronautical engineer. The Wind Rises is  the epic tale of love, perseverance, and the challenges of living and making choices in a turbulent world.The film is set in the first half of the 20th Century and will chronicle major events of his life from falling in love right upto Japan entering World War 2 a pivotal event in Jiro's career.

If you missed the  trailer here's another chance to watch it...

Post by The Wind Rises.

The Wind Rises will more likely be released in UK dubbed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt lending his voice to play adult Jiro along with Emily Blunt, Elijah Wood, Many Patinkin, Stanley Tucci, Martin Short, William H Macy even Werner Herzog all lend their voices to the film. Anime fans mark 9th May in your diaries however if you can't wait that long, This Sunday 9th February you can catch the UK premier at Glasgow Youth Film Festival (click on link to book/more info).
source: Yahoo UK