Trading Christmas

A Christmas mix-up of crossed wires and crossed paths.
Emily is a widow of almost 3 years and is still adjusting to holidays without Frank. Her daughter, Heather, is in Boston going to college and is asserting her independence, insisting that just this once she not come home for Christmas. She tells her Mom she is going to stay put for the holiday, when actually she is going to Arizona with her boyfriend. Emily gets the bright idea to take Christmas to Heather. She goes online and arranges a house swap with a Scrooge-ish college professor in Boston who is also a writer of novels. He happens to be under pressure of a deadline and needs somewhere quiet to get away and write. She ends up in his stark city apartment, with no daughter in town, and he gets her heavily holiday decorated Victorian style home in a friendly little town that won't leave him alone. If that isn't enough, throw in lots of Christmas cookies, a tripped security alarm, a man who is afraid of being sued for almost having Emily arrested, a friend who decides to drop in...

Cute Entertaining movie
This movie premiered on the Hallmark Channel last Christmastime. I liked it, it was cute and entertaining. There were some humorous parts. It seemed a little predictable, but it was enjoyable to watch.

TRADING CHRISTMAS MOVIE REVIEW
I have seen this movie a number of times.I also have the book.It takes a bit to warm up to ,but I found myself liking it more each time.A comfy movie for a cool evening..

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Three Stooges [3D Blu-ray]

NOT LAUGHING OVER THE TRANSFER QUALITY
Columbia Tristar continues to neglect their wealth of classic catalogue titles by giving us movies that we really want to see in transfers that range from disappointing to absolute rip-offs. Over the course of their tenure at Columbia, "The Three Stooges" made some 200 short subjects that rank among the funniest one reelers ever made. It's no wonder these guys are a cultural icon - they're incredibly funny.
But you won't be laughing when you see the quality of some of the transfers represented on these discs. Here's the long and short of it - in the mid 1990's somebody at Columbia decided it was time to honor the stooges with a laserdisc box set. So technicians at the studio went to their library and digitally remastered 32 short subjects and marketed them as a box set.
However, in the intervening years, DVD replaced laserdisc and, with sales of classics slumping over at Columbia, the new regime decided that they would rather just slap any old quality of transfer onto a...

MORE NYUKS FOR YOUR BUCKS!
This Three Stooges boxed set collects 3 of their best DVDs, for a total of 19 shorts. "CURLY CLASSICS" has 6 shorts, starting with their very first one from 1934, "Woman Haters." It's also unique in that the entire short is done in rhyme. "Men In Black" features the stooges as doctors whose motto is, for duty and humanity! It's one of their best and was even nominated for an Academy Award. "Three Little Pigskins" finds the stooges mistaken for star college football players, and is notable for featuring a blonde Lucille Ball. "A Plumbing We Will Go" shows the stooges to be three of the best plumbers who ever plumbed! As with many of their shorts with Curly, it was later remade with Shemp. In "Punch Drunks" Curly pops off whenever he hears Pop Goes The Weasel and punches his way to the heavyweight boxing championship. "Micro-Phonies" is hilarious, with Curly in drag as Senorita Cucaracha and Moe and Larry as Senors Mucho and Gusto. Not since Andy Kaufman did Mighty Mouse has lip...

Beware non-Columbia Stooges videos
The four movies included in this set -- 'Disorder In The Court', 'Malice In The Palace', 'Sing A Song Of Six Pants' and 'Brideless Groom' -- are in the public domain, which means anyone with recording equipment and a copy of the movie can release their own video. Frequently, the results are of poor video/audio quality (although the movies themselves are quite good -- 'Brideless Groom' is one of the funniest Stooge comedies ever). Columbia has just released an 'official' Stooges DVD (with six of the films on one disc) -- hopefully the first of many. Stick with Columbia, and avoid these cheap knock-offs.

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I Play the Piano [Blu-ray]

Phenomenal Musician!!!
I have always been a fan of Terry Trotter. First heard him in the 80's as the keyboardist for LARRY CARLTON when Larry opened up for the Yellowjackets in Houston, TX. I have every one of his recordings - the great Sondheim jazz trio recordings, as well as the interpretations of Star Wars, Fantastiks, and Michel Legrand's great music. This brand new blu-ray is very good. Even though Trotter has been featured on most recordings in jazz piano trio format, this is all solo piano. One of the tunes he plays entirely with his left hand (In a Sentimental Mood). Unless you were looking at him do it, you wouldn't know it. In the liner notes there are many comments by some of the finest LA musicians known to man! It is a who's who list of great people ALL of whom respect Trotter's many years of fine musicianship as well as mentorship. The blu-ray recording sounds fantastic, and has several audio formats to enjoy. All tracks are performed on a fabulously beautiful 9-foot Steinway. If you...

Stunning Recording
It's so refreshing to hear the full dynamics and harmonics of an instrument. As close to a live performance as i have heard. A wonderful experience having Terrry Trotter in my home theatre.

Steve J



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DreamWorks Holiday Classics (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

The Dreamworks Christams classics all on 1 disc! (well 2, DVD & blu ray)
This set is great! All of the Dreamworks Christmas shorts are on it (except the newly released Ku Fu Panda Holiday). They're each 5-20 minutes (the whole disc is over 1 hour long!) and they're all very cute! There's humor for all ages in them, and the best part is that all the shorts are entertaining! (except for Donkey's Christmas carol intro but young ones might like to sing along to the songs) it would have been better if they didn't change the lyrics to Christmas classics. I love watching Shrek the Halls, Merry Madagascar, and the Penguins Christmas Caper each Christmas season, but switching through 3 different discs to watch each one is not much fun since they're short films, you find yourself changing to the next movie every 15 minutes, but with this set they're ALL ON THE SAME DISC TOGETHER! I was so excited to see them come out with them all together like this, so much easier to enjoy and the bonus of having the new How to Train Your Dragon Christmas special on it too makes...

All were cute, Dragons was the best
I honestly could take or leave Shrek - Pinocchio creeps me out and I'm not a HUGE fan of gross-out humor...but that being said, you get more than just 3 short holiday specials, you get a Shrek holiday-themed intro, a Madagascar and a Penguins of Madagascar special and then the Dragons and Shrek holiday specials. Dragons was really cute though. My kids loved the Madagascar specials as well. Definitely a good addition to the holiday collection if you're a fan of these movies!

short but good
These little short videos are like hors d'oevres (sp?). They leave you wanting a full movie of each. My favorite and the reason to keep this blu-ray is the one that is not listed - the penguins - Private goes looking for a gift for the polar bear. Hilarious. Madagascar is good as always and How to train your dragon is fun. A keeper, as is anything with the penguins in my book. I gave it a 4 since they are all too short to feel satisfied.

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My Friend Bernard

Dreadful
Forgettable characters, really confusing and random story line. The animation is lousy. The movie seems to be inspired by 'Harold and the magic crayon' (Sam is a little boy running aound in his PJ-s all the time...)- but while Harold is endearing and artistic, this movie is simply annoying...The 'action' is not engaging to the point that I am writing this review while the movie is still running in the background. This might be a show that could hold the attention of a toddler, but, on the other hand, it contains bits that I would find highly inappropriate for a toddler audience (some quite scary scenes, and questionable moments, like, for instance, the polar bear character killing a bunch of fish by farting into the water through a hole cut out in the ice). I am just not getting it...Please save your money and time, and go with something else for a family movie night.

Great for toddlers
I rented this movie from red box for my 3 year old he cried when we had to return it.I don't know exactly what caught his attention but he watched it over and over.He just loved Bernard.I would probably not suggest for a child over 5 years of age.I seen another review called it slow well for toddlers that is not a bad thing they get more understanding of the movie verses a show like spongebob that is way to fast and they can't even tell you what happened the movie.We will be preordering.

Great for younger kids!
This may not be for older kids, but our 3 and 4 year old boys were belly laughing through the entire movie. It is pretty cute too. The characters don't talk; it's all action with the occasional bit of voice over narration (like Shaun the Sheep, Wallace and Grommet, or similar). Our kids LOVED it!

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Reef 2: High Tide

awesome kids movie.
my girls loved it 4 & 6. we got the reef then i looked for the sequel. as good as finding nemo.

Better than the first!
The Reef was...okay, I suppose. Characters were bland, toilet jokes were all over the place, the plot was just Karate Kid with fish...but the voice acting was good.

The Reef 2: High Tide is thousands of times better than the original.

The characters are much more vibrant and animated this time around. They actually seem alive, rather than just toy fish suspended in place. The storyline is much more interesting than "Karate Kid with fish": without giving away too many details, it's about finding out who you really are and using that to define yourself rather than letting someone else define you. The voice acting is great: Jamie Kennedy does a great job as Ronny, and this is coming from someone who greatly dislikes Jamie Kennedy. Some of the puns are groan-worthy, but that's what puns are for.

In short, this movie's worth checking out if you're a fan of ocean movies.

Reef 2
My grandson has watched it over and over and over again. His parents finally had to hide it they got so tired of watching it. Now I have it at home and intend to watch it.

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Long Day's Journey Into Night [Blu-ray]

Landmark film....medicore presentation from Artisan/Republic
Another strip-down medicore presentation from Artisan....

This is a landmark brilliant film of perhaps Eugene O'Neill's great play. The directing by Sidney Lumet and the acting by Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell is nothing less than amazing. This has got to be one of the 3 all-time greatest performaces from the late Ms. Hepburn!

Simply one of the most amazing films of the 1960's.

This should have been issued on Criteron. We should have gotten a first-rate restoration job with either a good documentary/back story on the making of the film, or a commentary by the two survivors of the film, Dean Stockwell and Sidney Lumet.

Instead we get a nearly public-domain quality release.

I'm so happy to finally get this important film on DVD...but I'm utterly disappointed at the slap-dash quality one has come to expect from Artisan.

Absolutely Definitive
This is perhaps the finest film of a serious American play ever produced. The acting, the direction, the music (by Andre Previn), the cinematography, and (most of all) the timeless anguish of Eugene O'Neill's script---all come together in a film so astonishingly powerful that it will take your breath away.

If there is a complaint to be lodged about this film, it is this: that the performances of the four leads (Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell) are so definitive that, at least for me, watching any other version of this play has become impossible. I walked out on a well-reviewed live staging at intermission and turned off the PBS remake with Jack Lemmon at the end of the first act. It should not be this way, but it is: the filmmmakers did their work all too well!

Be forewarned: this film is very long (three hours), very talky, and very, very bleak. If you are expecting car crashes or hot sex scenes, look elsewhere. When Hollywood...

FIVE stars for the performances, ONE star for DVD quality
I agree with the reviews, the performances are absolutely stunning, especially Katharine Hepburn's, possibly the best of her career if not one of the best ever captured on film.

HOWEVER, this DVD release is atrocious. This is close to a three-hour film and they crammed on to one disc. That wouldn't be so bad had they done a new transfer, but this looks like the same one used for the VHS tape. Cropped for the TV screen like the video release, (this was definitely shot in widescreen, according to imdb.com), it's got the same gritty, low-res quality. You could tape this movie off of TCM or Bravo and get better quality. Rent it, tape it, but hold off on buying this until it's given a proper DVD release (if anyone from the Criterion Collection's listening, please license this movie!)

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