Coming Distractions December 19th, 2008

Friday is Tomorrow:

The House Bunny
The Women
Hamlet 2
Traitor
America Teen
Burn After Reading
The Taste of Tea
Madhouse
Kicking It
Alien Apocalypse
Kordavision: The Man Who Shot Che Guevara

HolIday extravaganza
all the MovIes listed above are beiNg releaseD this weekend, rather than their customarY tuesday ingress into our lives. the Wait is almost ovEr. Many people (my self Included) are very excited that thiS SundaY is the winter sOlstice and then oUr dAys wiLl not be so shoRt and dark and wE cAn start getting taller again (Due to the chlorophYll that has been languishing in our bodies since winter began... oh, and the vitamin d... and the as yet unactivated human growth hormone.)

Did you know Salvador Dali put out a cookbook? Apparently it contains a recipe for a Venus de Milo of hard-boiled eggs (imagine the pleasure of biting into her yolky breast) but I don't understand enough french to read it. But there are pictures.

Dolly Parton has at least one cookbook too. All great Dali/dollys think alike, I suppose.

Coming Distractions December 16th, 2008

Movies are to the soul as 3 halved Maraschino Cherries are to a can of Fruit Cocktail:

Mamma Mia!
Louis C.K.: chewed up
The Wedding Director
Bangkok Dangerous
Swingtown - 1st Season
The Cheetah Girls: One World
Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea
BlacKout
Teenage Angst
thomas pynchon - a journey into the mind of [p.]
Wesley Willis: The Daddy of Rock'N'Roll (Willis: "Back in 1991, I used to hit old people with folding chairs.")

Wednesday, December 17th we will be closing at 7 p.m. for our holiday staff party. If you worked here you'd be invited too!

Word of the week: Destinesia - Arriving at a location and then forgetting why you went there. Ex. I walked to the office and had an overwhelming sense of destinesia, so I wrote this blog entry.

Last Friday The New York Times posted an article about a Malaysian man who was shot for hogging the microphone at a karaoke bar.

"Karaoke rage is not unheard of in Asia. There have been several reported cases of singers being assaulted, shot or stabbed mid-performance, usually over how songs are sung.

Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” has reportedly generated so many outbursts of hostility that some bars in the Philippines now do not offer it on the karaoke menu anymore. In Thailand this year, a gunman shot eight people dead after tiring of their endless renditions of a John Denver tune." (The John Denver Tune: Take Me Home Country Roads.)

With that in mind, here are some movies in which karaoke appears in a way that either pleases or confuses me or that I have never seen:
Eat Drink Man Woman
Lost in Translation
True Stories
The Cable Guy
Duets

Challenge of the week: Create a narrative from these three pictures:









Britain on Top: Apparently the Brits are the most sexually promiscuous people in any large western nation, ahead of Australia, the US, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.

Coming Distractions December 9, 2008

The Grande Dames of Next Tuesday's Debut Ball:

Dark Knight
Horton Hears a Who!
Lost - 4th Season
Elephant Tales
Man on Wire
Flow
Europa
White Dog
Frost/Nixon
Tate Modern/Alchemy of Building
Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras

Baz Luhrmann's latest film Australia just opened in theaters. One of the stars, David Gulpilil, is an Aborigine actor who has been a mainstay of Australian cinema since the 1970s. If Luhrmann's brand of epic romance isn't your cup of tea, may we suggest some other top-notch films from down under that all feature Gulpilil:
Ten Canoes
The Proposition
The Tracker
Rabbit-Proof Fence
The Last Wave
Walkabout

Milk opens on Friday the 12th, and Vermont Freedom to Marry and RU12 will be in attendance at the the 6:30 premiere at Cinema 9: so I highly suggest you rent the documentary Times of Harvey Milk beforehand (if you can get your paws on it--our copy is in deserved high demand.)

I know the six days between each blog post are long for you (cuz they're certainly long and lonely for me), so here's a heads up on another great local movie blog: Millie at the Pictures.

--Pre AND Post-- THANKSGIVING SALE!!

From Now Until the End of November

All Previously-Viewed Movies Are $5

Coming Distractions, December 2nd, 2008

Next Tuesday's You're Welcome Movies:

Step Brothers
Wanted
Lower Learning
24: Redepemption
Fly Me to the Moon
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Metalocalypse- 2nd Season
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The Longshots (directed by Fred Durst)

I really wanted to believe in the X-Files movie. Instead, I laughed a lot. Much more believable: the spirit pictures in Shutter (on our shelves just yesterday), which I would certainly recommend. I can't speak for the Joshua Jackson remake, but the original took me places I was not expecting to go (in a good, pleasing, not too many loose ends kind of way.)

I am sure all you lovely readers noticed that this blog is being posted an entire day early due to Thanksgiving! We should all take a moment of silence to thank Lincoln for this particular contribution to the great tradition of American feasting. Then I would like to share with you a thing I am very thankful for--my favorite words of November:

Pandiculate: v. to stretch and yawn at the same time.



Dysphemism: n. antonym (along with cacophemism) of euphemism--the usage of an intentionally harsh word or expression instead of a polite one. ex. replace to die with to assume room temperature.

Chimera: n. mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail or any organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues.

What are your favorite November words? Only a few days left to figure that one out...

Coming Distractions, November 25th, 2008

Hancock
Meet Dave
Executive Koala
George Carlin: It's Bad For Ya
Still Life
Madhouse
Two Front Teeth
Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader
A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All


Here's a horse (Molly!) with a prosthetic leg.


Can't write too much today because I have to go buy a mixer so I can make tarts. But I have enough time to tell you that in the last two weeks I watched two movies I would recommend:

Mister Lonely
and especially
Shock Corridor.

I love movies about insane asylums. Don't you? Any of you kind film connoisseurs have any crazy people movie recommendations for me? Why isn't movie spelled movy?
Other good crazy people movies:
snake pit
one flew over the cuckoo's nest
a woman under the influence
I know I must be forgetting more.

Here is the point where I need to share with you a racy comment, so cover the eyes of any children that may be lingering nearby:

We will have the adult film Who's Nailin' Paylin? next week. In case anyone cares anymore.

Now: here's an all-ages koala picture!

Coming Distractions November 18th, 2008

It's gonna be a big week (finally!) for new releases:

WALL-E
Tropic Thunder
Mister Lonely
Noam Chomsky On the World
Project Runway - 4th Season
Encounters at the End of the World
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Gonzo: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson



I've come here today to tell you about an oft-overlooked, heartwarming little 1990 documentary we just got on DVD called Troll 2. This film follows the Waits family on vacation as they fall for the good people of Nilbog and their unusual agricultural practices. Caveat: there are no actual trolls in this movie, for that you may want to partake of the wonderful escapades of a summer vacation in Llort. I think it's somewhere near Nilbog, though you may have to take a wrong turn through the mouth of hell to get there.

If you can turn people into plants, and then you eat them, do you still qualify as a vegetarian? It makes more sense than vegetarians who eat chicken, right? Unless, of course, you're turning the chickens into vegetation first, too... Woah, this is getting too convoluted for my overwrought brain. Instead of pondering the Big Questions I'm a gonna focus on this chicken's extravagant plumage and comforting backdrop. Is that not one of the most majestic chickens you've ever seen?


Popcorn is passé. Some canned food to snack on while you relax?

Coming out on Tuesday:

Kung Fu Panda
Hellboy II
Eight Miles High
Mister Foe
Impy's Island




What a week it has been! Since we last met, Halloween was celebrated, clocks got set an hour back, and I think there might have been an election or something. I've been particularly excited to see the amount of voter turnout and it looks like we got around 62.5% and 64.1% of eligible voters to the polls (133.3 million Americans!). That is the highest turnout in over 40 years, and may be equal to the turnout in 1960, when JFK just barely beat out Nixon. Our numbers are generally pretty dismal, and similar to the 47% low Australia hit before they made voting compulsory in 1924. Fines as high as $20 may result from non-voting in Australia, and they now have turnout rates of around 95%. Please discuss these facts and figures amongst yourselves.

In movie news, the documentaries just keep rolling into our store. Next week we are gonna have Mix-Up, a french film from 1963 about two women who discover at age twenty that they were switched as babies at the hospital and have been raised by the wrong families. If you find you have an hour of aural void to fill, This American Life also produced an amazingly compelling radio show on two women who did not learn they had been Switched at Birth until age 40 and another episode about the case of Bobby Dunbar, which details what happened when a young boy was found in 1914 and claimed by two separate sets of mothers whose sons had been kidnapped. We are also documentaries getting Alice Neel, Swing State, Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright... and so many more that you will just have to stop into the store to peruse them yourself, at your leisure.

Coming Distractions November 4th, 2008

Get Smart
Transsiberian
Moscow Zero
The Good Life
Flashbacks of a Fool
When Did You Last See Your Father?
Futurama: Bender's Game

Thanks to everyone who came out to see the Vermont International Film Festival this last weekend! Gracias todos! I can now confirm that Let the Right One In was well worth my time and money, and I might even read the novel: if only to solve some gender mysteries the movie didn't quite make clear. Ahora, con el ataque de los gatos!

Astral Projection? Tell me how.

Coming Distractions October 28th, 2008

We's a gonna gets 4 U:

The L Word - 5th Season
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Zombie Strippers



Firstly: the Vermont International Film Festival begins today and we now have schedules for the films at Cinema 9 on the front counter at the video store. I am personally very excited for Let the Right One In (even, I dare say, more excited for that than for Zombie Strippers, if you can believe it). Another intriguing offering: the documentary Flow: For the Love of Water.


Congratulations to Chris & Mike for each winning a pair of tickets to see the Spaghetti Western Orchestra at the Flynn Theater on Monday! 5 musicians playing up to 100 instruments, celebrating Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Sergio Leone.




In case you hadn't been in the store yet to see: this past Tuesday we documentaries, lots of documentaries! (the numbers are upwards of a dozen and downwards of two sets of ten!) Some highlights include:
Constantine's Sword
Fall From Grace
Cinematographer Style
Palestine Blues
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Critical Condition

We do it just to prove learning can be fun, and that our sign about movies making you a better person isn't just a marketing ploy. It works, right? Please leave comments as to what personal affirmations we could include on our signage that would make you want to rent more movies.

Here's one sample: You're Beautiful. Rent Some Movies.

Vermont International Film Festival

The Vermont International Film Festival is taking place October 23rd - 26th. Check out www.vtiff.org or www.palace9.com for details!

Come see some great films and help support the world's oldest environmental and human rights festival as it embarks on the 24th edition of this annual event!

There will be programs available at Waterfront Video starting next week.

Coming Distractions October 21st, 2008

Bustin' out Tuesday:

The Incredible Hulk
Family Guy - Volume 6
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Entire Series
The Legend of Sasquatch


As you will soon discover, The Legend of Sasquatch box art has fur. Now, I trust it's not real fur, and that no actual sasquatches (sasquatchi?) (not to be confused with the Sasquatch music festival: now carbon neutral!) or other mythic creatures were harmed in the making of The Legend of Sasquatch, but it got me thinking about giant hair-covered man-like animals (which, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization have been spotted in North America for over 400 years.) In fact, just this last year the American Museum of Natural History hosted an exhibit about Mythic Creatures exploring the many composite creature/monsters that humans have invented during our time on this earth, and the exhibit allowed one to even create their own animal amalgamation (soon to be possible through the powerful science of genetics?! hot. dog!). Though the exhibit is shut down they still have the website up here. I heard about the exhibit, 9 months too late, listening to old episodes of Radiolab.

Few things are as satisfying as listening to Radiolab while making soup (except... of course... renting videos...), but still the question plagues me... Are Champ and Nessie relatives separated during the dispersal of the continents? Are they long lost lovers waiting out their eternal sentences of loneliness? Have they never met and wouldn't necessarily like each other if they met- would they fight and who would win?


the gentle giant from Lake Champlain <3 or vs ? The Sweet Gaelic Lady


Fun fact: did you know that Kevin Peter Hall was the 7'4'' actor who forged his career by playing such roles as Harry in Harry and the Hendersons, the Monster in Monster in the Closet, and the Predator in both Predator 1 & 2?

Coming Distractions October 14th, 2008

Out next Tuesday:

War, Inc.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Standard Operating Procedure
Slacker Uprising (a.k.a. Captain Mike Across America)
Mongol
YPF
The Sarah Silverman Program - 2nd Season
Ten Nights of Dreams - one of the directors of this omnibus, Kon Ichikawa, recently died. We also now have on dvd his Fires on the Plain.

Quick Quiz: Did you know that our great independent local music store Pure Pop Records was named after a Nick Lowe album? The album, released 1978, was originally called Jesus of Cool, but that title was rejected for US release and was changed to Pure Pop for Now People. (maybe you already knew - (I had to check) - but we can't thank Tipper Gore for that - she didn't co-found Parents Music Resource Center until she found Prince was corrupting the youth of 1985) Lowe's music has been featured in many movies (heard often is "cruel to be kind") and he also wrote a song for the show Deadwood.

Cool things going on in Burlington (other than the release of all those lovely DVDs):
1. slam poetry at Finnegan's tonight! (thurs-9pm)
2. Open House Saturday at the Radiator and The Microphones are playing with Swale and Crinkles at The Bakery
3. Postsecret comes to UVM on Tuesday (and yes it is part of an overwhelming conspiracy that you can only find that information out on the insidious Facebook)

m says something else.

i have recently discovered that i have a love for cheesy horror/"horror" movies and was very excited to see the happening. i think i may have even seen it opening night, maybe not, but my excitement was definitely opening night excitement. it is the funniest movie i've ever seen! mark wahlberg, HOT, zooey deschanel, SUPER COOL, john leguizamo, i think i liked him in something, and while m. night s. has repeatedly disappointed i still thought maybe this will be awesome. i'm definitely a person who completely falls for trailers. i don't know if it's the talented trailer creators or if it's the constant repetition of them airing, but if the trailer is remotely interesting i'm sold. i don't want to give you the wrong impression the happening is NOT a piece of cinematic genius, it IS very entertaining. the happening is the kind of movie you should watch with a bunch of friends, a bucket of booze, and be in the mood to laugh. DO NOT see this if you want to watch a horror movie, but DO see this if you enjoy making fun of a movie. a nod to the trailer creators who convinced me to see these movies, flightplan, red eye, obviously the happening, eagle eye, and wanted. please don't judge me by this list!

Coming Distractions October 7th, 2008

TUESday on dVd:

The Visitor
The Happening
You Don't Mess With Zohan
Robot Chicken - 3rd Season

I cried (a lot) during Snow Angels. I'm not afraid to admit it, and it wasn't just because I could feel the imminent chill in my bones watching the characters skid and stumble through gray Pennsylvania days (at least Vermont skies aren't so vast --our mountains relieve me of pondering over-long on the cloudy expanse). Stories of families and individuals falling apart; the movie was heartbreaking even before cinematic tragedy struck.

Sweet memories of Amy Sedaris' previous roles couldn't keep me from my sadness. For example: as Jerry Blank in Strangers With Candy. Though I understand why some have trouble watching the face muscle-strain of Jerry's overbite, it makes me smile to remember the goofy, ridiculous, and downright disgustingness of that show. (Don't bother with the movie though - trying to explain absurdity takes all the fun out of it)

David Gordon Green, who wrote and directed Snow Angels, directed Pineapple Express (estimated for DVD release in January), and is also the man behind Undertow, All the Real Girls, and George Washington.


Before I leave you for another week, let's just have a moment to thank Paul Newman for all the great movies (53 of which we have in the store), not to mention the salad dressing, and popcorn, and lemonade, and cookies, and charity work.

m says...

hi everyone! the blog author and i just saw eagle eye and i wanted to let you all know that it was kind of awesome. it made me think of that simpsons treehouse of horror episode, house of whacks, but with tons of expensive explosions, car crashes, running away from things and running to save things, an excess of ridiculousness, yet no blood, as it was pg13.

some people you didn't think you would see in this were, lynn cohen, magda from sex and the city, ethan embry, come on you all know who he is, mark from empire records, michael chiklis, the commish!, and bill smitrovich, life goes on. i didn't realize life goes on was from 1989. sorry we don't have the commish or life goes on at the store, but i'm sure if anyone really wanted them they would've already bought them for themselves, as who wants to go to waterfront and ask for the commish?

oh shia and your doofy mugshot, who knew you could create such a wildly entertaining movie that had me laughing from start to finish. well like we said in an earlier post there are many movies at waterfront that relate to eagle eye and i think you should come on down to the store tomorrow a.m. and rent every single one, especially demon seed as that's the one our blog author mentioned while we were watching eagle eye.

Coming Distractions September 30th, 2008

On Tuesday the world (might) implode.

Taxi to the Dark Side
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Iron Man
Kenny
Bigger Stronger Faster
Beaufort
The Unforeseen
CSNY/Deja Vu

Tomorrow-Friday, September 25th-is a big day for theater movies. But don't go out to see Choke or Eagle Eye or Nights in Rodanthe, because you know you want to wait several months until they come out on video. Or you want to see them in the theater and then rewatch them in the comfort of your own home.

From its advertising campaign one can infer that Eagle Eye is a story in which several characters must run away from something. Another movie where someone has to run from something: The Game, which was directed by David Fincher. Fincher also directed Fight Club, which is adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who also wrote Choke. Clark Gregg is the man who directed Choke and he acts in Iron Man. Hopefully, knowing all that will make each of your days on this earth a little easier to endure.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana must run from a boulder. Right? Yeah!

<---here's another advertising campaign! Think of all those times you've cut yourself spreading peanut butter or had to wash that spoon from your late night snack. Finally! Gosh, what took mankind so long?? We already put a man on the moon (...or did we?)

Coming Distractions September 23, 2008

Tuesday: That Great Day in The Beginningish Part of Your Week

Sex and the City Movie
Run, Fat Boy, Run
Leatherheads
The Foot Fist Way
Boston Legal - 4th Season

I love art history. It has almost everything I would be inclined to learn about: history, religion, art and architecture, fashion and film. There are even interesting movies about art historians, such as Don't Look Now, which I would recommend not only for having one of the better sex scenes ever filmed, (Question: Are Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie smoking hot? Answer: Yes!) but also for its depiction of some risky church restoration.

Fashion! Last Tuesday we added Lagerfeld Confidential to our collection. After three years of collecting footage, the world can now see Karl Lagerfeld's countless rings, priestly collars, and Nicole Kidman. And clothes. After that, you can also watch our new Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton documentary, or Unzipped, with Isaac Mizrahi.


The only thing art history doesn't include is enough music. But you know what does? The movie Unknown Woman, score by Ennio Morricone, man of a million soundtracks. Unknown Woman, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, A Pure Formality, Malena) is tense and engaging, and after its all-too-brief one week run is returning to Cinema 9, on Shelburne Road next Friday. (Correction: where Helvetica did not play last Saturday...oops...)

In fact, a lot of exciting "awesome" movies are falling into theaters next week, so stay tuned for the next installment of WATERFRONTVIDEOBURL.BLOGSPOT.COM



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