The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall

The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall is a wonderful musical to own and in HD to boot. The singing is tremendous as mentioned in several other reviews. However, as everyone is entitled to their opinion, I am also very fond of the Phantom movie from 2004. I think Emmy Rossum had a beautiful voice and played a sweet and innocent Christine in the film and Gerard Butler might not be Michael Crawford when it comes to the voice, but he played a dark and menacing phantom who hit the nail on the head in the various dramatic scenes he was required to play. I think there is room for both the film and the newly released HD Blu-ray. The camera angles caught this play so well and the lighting is so good. The end was icing on the cake, with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman joining Andrew Lloyd Webber on stage. If you are wondering if you should buy this, take the plunge. You will be glad you did.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones
I love Game of Thrones, really good TV. I only watch shows or movies if I have found them to be or believe they will be fantastic. The best show I've ever seen is LOST, and when it ended I never thought anything would fill the gap left by it. Game of Thrones has done that, and more. I never even knew the books existed before this show. It's absolutely beautiful, the acting is incredible, and it follows the books very well. I don't even have a Blu-ray player yet, but I'm getting this!!

Link : http://sellmovies.blogspot.com/2012/01/game-of-thrones-graphic-novel-volume-1.html

Shameless

Shameless

In one of the making-of featurettes accompanying this two-disc set of all 12 episodes from the first season of the Showtime series Shameless, a member of the creative team reports that in adapting the show from the British version that preceded it, the producers and writers were determined to depict "real Americans." They succeeded admirably--assuming, of course, that one's idea of "real" includes a family headed by an unemployed single father who spends his waking hours blind drunk or hung over and the other ones passed out, scams the government out of money to buy more booze, and blames his six kids for his problems while contributing absolutely nothing of substance to their welfare, while the kids in question support themselves by lying, stealing, cheating, and other dubious activity. That doesn't mean Shameless isn't well written and well acted, beautifully produced, consistently entertaining, and often very amusing--it is. On the other hand, The Waltons it ain't. But "real"? Not so much.

The estimable William H. Macy stars as Frank Gallagher, the drunken paterfamilias and all-around loser. While he may have a shred of a conscience in there somewhere (as one character says of him, "Deep down, I think Frank is capable of doing the right thing"), far more often than not it's his children (one of whom turns out not to be Frank's after all) who keep this family afloat. That's especially true of the oldest and most responsible, daughter Fiona (the excellent Emmy Rossum), who acts as de facto mom while balancing a complicated love life (the two main men in her world are a car thief and the cop who wants to nail him), and Lip (Jeremy Allen White), a smart and enterprising teen who makes money taking tests and writing papers for other students but also looks out for his younger siblings, who include Ian (Cameron Monaghan), Carl (Ethan Cutkosky), Debbie (Emma Kenney), and Liam (an infant played by twins), all of whom have issues of their own. These (and various others in the sizable cast) are the folks who, we're told, put the "fun" in dysfunctional, and along with a steady dose of raunch (nudity, sexuality, and profanity all flow as freely as the liquor at Frank's favorite bar) and serious issues such as school bullying, cancer, suicide, prison, and Ian's burgeoning homosexuality, Shameless does have a darkly comedic sensibility. Perhaps most striking is that the kids, against all odds, are generally far more mature and sensible than the grownups, who also include Frank's agoraphobic girlfriend Sheila (Joan Cusack), her very snarky husband, Ian's older lover (who happens to have a wife and children), and various others of questionable character. Indeed, it's the younger Gallaghers, not Frank, who are the most dedicated to keeping the family together, and the grit, determination, and guile they use to do that are Shameless's heart and soul. --Sam Graham

Happy Feet Two

The sequel Happy Feet 2 begins a few years after the 2006 original ended: Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) is now married to Gloria (Pink) and the father of Erik (Ava Acres), a chick who's afraid to dance. When Erik sees the puffin Mighty Sven (Hank Azaria), he decides he can learn to fly: Sven is the leader of a cult that preaches if you believe it, it can happen. An unexplained seismic event causes a glacier to shift, trapping Gloria and all the other emperor penguins: Mumble, Erik, and two other chicks must rescue them before they starve. What begins as a familiar story about a diffident chick quickly becomes needlessly and hopelessly mired in subplots involving elephant seals, skua gulls, human explorers, and a pair of renegade krill (voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon). The motion-capture animation is adequate at best, with snow and water splashing around the dancing penguins to hide the fact that their feet aren't making contact with the ground plane. Endless tracking shots over the cracking glaciers recall the second Ice Age movie. The vocal performances feature a discordant mélange of accents, with African-American, Latino, and British penguins, surfer-dude krill, Australian seals, and "fugeddaboutit" Jersey Shore seagulls. Even more jarring is the presence of human actors who appear out of nowhere, start to help the trapped penguins, then disappear. The standard-issue poop and snot jokes do little to leaven the nonstop nattering. Happy Feet 2 confirms 2011 as the year of the unnecessary sequel in American animation. (Rated PG for some rude humor and mild peril) --Charles Solomon

Product Description

The sequel to "Happy Feet", the Academy Award®-winning animated smash hit, "Happy Feet Two" returns audiences to the magnificent landscape of Antarctica. Mumble, The Master of Tap, has a problem because his tiny son, Erik, is choreo-phobic. Reluctant to dance, Erik runs away and encounters The Mighty Sven - a penguin who can fly! Mumble has no hope of competing with this charismatic new role model. But things get worse when the world is shaken by powerful forces. Erik learns of his father's "guts and grit" as Mumble brings together the penguin nations and all manner of fabulous creatures - from tiny Krill to giant Elephant Seals - to put things right.

The Three Musketeers

 The Three Musketeers
     I must say that I loved this adaptation of the Three Musketeers, and I have seen most if not all of them. Of course it was not true to the book, and we were sure of this going into the theater, as the preview and movie poster had air-ships on/in them. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was hilarious, action packed, somewhat romantic and did I mention - The Three Musketeers it was hilarious!

     Bottom line: Is this a great period piece - no. Is it an amazing piece of drama - no. Is it completely true to Dumas' novel - no. Will it win an Academy award - no. What it was was sheer entertainment from begining to end. I am pre-ordering it today, and highly recommend it to anyone! The Three Musketeers

X-Men: First Class (2011)

When Bryan Singer brought Marvel's X-Men to the big screen, Magneto and Professor X were elder statesmen, but Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) travels back in time to present an origin story--and an alternate version of history. While Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) grows up privileged in New York, Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) grows up underprivileged in Poland. As children, the mind-reading Charles finds a friend in the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik finds an enemy in Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an energy-absorbing Nazi scientist who treats the metal-bending lad like a lab rat. By 1962, Charles (James McAvoy) has become a swaggering genetics professor and Erik (Michael Fassbender, McAvoy's Band of Brothers costar) has become a brooding agent of revenge. CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) brings the two together to work for Division X. With the help of MIB (Oliver Platt) and Hank (A Single Man's Nicholas Hoult), they seek out other mutants, while fending off Shaw and Emma Frost (Mad Men's January Jones), who try to recruit them for more nefarious ends, leading to a showdown in Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union, the good and bad mutants, and Charles and Erik, whose goals have begun to diverge. Throughout, Vaughn crisscrosses the globe, piles on the visual effects, and juices the action with a rousing score, but it's the actors who make the biggest impression as McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves worthy successors to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The movie comes alive whenever they take center stage, and dies a little when they don't. For the most part, though, Vaughn does right by playing up the James Bond parallels and acknowledging the debt to producer Bryan Singer through a couple of clever cameos. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Star Trek

Welcome to the next generation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, like you’ve never seen or heard it before! For the first time ever, you can experience some of the show’s most important and beloved episodes in glorious 1080p high definition, with true high definition visual effects and digitally remastered 7.1 sound – or with the original audio. You’ll witness new picture detail and depth you haven’t seen before, and enjoy spectacular visual effects that have been painstakingly re-created from the original film elements…not upconverted from videotape! This “Taste Of TNG” is a glimpse of what the upcoming complete season Blu-ray releases of TNG will be like, and will transport you to the next level.