Sales Rank:38 List Price: $28.98 Lowest New Price: $12.99 Lowest Used Price: $7.69 MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Format:
Color
Full Screen
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NTSC
Director(s):
Actor(s):
Abigail Breslin
Stanley Tucci
Joan Cusack
Julia Ormond
Chris O'Donnell
A period piece set in the Great Depression and based on the extremely popular American Girl book series, Kit Kittredge is a moving and believable story about a smart 10-year-old girl whose family is profoundly affected by the Depression. May, 1934 finds Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) living a very comfortable life in a nice home with her mother (Julia Ormond) and father (Chris O'Donnell) despite the Depression that is affecting many of her neighbors. When her father's auto dealership is taken back by the bank, Kit's father is forced to head for Chicago to look for work, leaving his family struggling to make ends meet by taking in borders. Kindhearted and generous by nature, Kit's nose for news and her aspirations of becoming a great reporter lead her to write a portrait of the boardinghouse run by her mother, essentially a kid's view of the Depression as well as an article about hobos that challenges many commonly held prejudices. Kit determinedly submits her articles to the local Cincinnati Register paper, regardless of the chief editor's stern ways and obvious lack of interest. When her own family and boarders become the victims of a crime, Kit's must utilize her investigative skills to solve the crime and exonerate her friend Will (Max Thieriot). Breslin's performance in this film is stellar--viewers can't help but believe that she is Kit Kittredge. The filmmakers' attention to detail ensures that everything from scenery props to music and dialogue seem completely authentic, and performances by Joan Cusack as the mobile librarian, Stanley Tucci as the traveling magician, Jane Krakowski as the desperate-for-love dance instructor, and Zach Mills as Kit's young friend, are all impressive. Serious American Girl fans, period film lovers, and viewers just looking for a good story will love this film. (Ages 3 and older) --Tami Horiuchi
Sales Rank:238 List Price: $299.98 Lowest New Price: $128.95 Lowest Used Price: $128.99 MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Format:
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC
Widescreen
Director(s):
Actor(s):
Martin Sheen
Allison Janney
John Spencer
The West Wing ventured where no other TV series had gone before: an extraordinarily intimate look at an American President and the inner workings of the White House. Experience all the crises, triumphs, lofty idealism and hard realities of the acclaimed series in this complete seven-season DVD set. Here, on 45 discs, are all 154 episodes of the series that won 26 Emmys, including 4 for Outstanding Drama Series. Hail to chief - and to the creators and stars of this ground-breaking series. Also Included: Pilot Script with Foreword from Series Creator Aaron Sorkin. Hours of Special Feature: Over 20 Commentaries Over 20 Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes Unaired Scenes, Gag Reels and More
Sales Rank:158 List Price: $39.98 Lowest New Price: $16.40 Lowest Used Price: $17.17 MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Format:
AC-3
Box set
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC
Director(s):
Craig Zisk
Ernest R. Dickerson
Julie Anne Robinson
Lev L. Spiro
Martha Coolidge
Actor(s):
Mary-Louise Parker
Elizabeth Perkins
Hunter Parrish
Kevin Nealon
Alexander Gould
Weeds: Season Three continues the dark line of comedy that emerged in the previous season for this Showtime series. The story picks up exactly where it left off, with Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) faced with a half-dozen guns pointing at her in her own kitchen, while an Armenian gang and Nancy's buyer, U-Turn (Page Kennedy), both demand she turn over her entire stash of marijuana (worth several hundred thousand dollars). Problem is, the pot is in the trunk of on-again, off-again friend Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), whose car has been stolen by Nancy's oldest son, Silas (Hunter Parrish). Silas wants in on mom's business, but his timing couldn't be worse as Celia and a police officer show up to reclaim the car while Nancy is still at gunpoint. The fallout from all this is that Nancy ends up working for U-Turn to repay her debt to him, a dangerous relationship that sends Nancy down a rabbit hole of underworld threats and violence. Meanwhile, Celia gets booted out of her home by her husband and becomes estranged from her young daughter, Isabelle (Allie Grant), who insists she's a lesbian. Celia rebounds a bit when a corrupt developer (Matthew Modine) gives her a house in exchange for her support on city council for one of his schemes. That goes wrong, too, when Celia allows Nancy, Doug (Kevin Nealon), and Conrad (Romany Malco), all of whom go into business after U-Turn stops being a problem, to put their endangered trove of marijuana plants in her house. Nancy's other son, Shane (Alexander Gould), claims he can see and talk to the ghost of Nancy's late husband, and Nancy's brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) goes AWOL from the U.S. Army after his comrade is deliberately killed in an experimental missile test. As always, it's one thing after another on Weeds, and the blend of humor and suspense is uniquely compelling. Parker and the rest of the cast pull off some pretty surreal situations with great credibility. The show's lead star, particularly, can carry moments of blended terror and comedy: one of the season's most memorable moments finds Nancy forced to put on a sexy dance for a group of drug dealers in order to pick up a package U-Turn requires. The scene is humiliating, frightening, sexy, and comical all at once. Few actresses could have pulled it off, but Parker does. --Tom Keogh
Sales Rank:222 List Price: $19.99 Lowest New Price: $12.84 Lowest Used Price: $11.00 MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Format:
AC-3
Animated
Color
Dolby
DTS Surround Sound
Dubbed
DVD-Video
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC
Director(s):
Actor(s):
Stephen Apostolina
Sacha Baron Cohen
Cody Cameron
Cedric the Entertainer
David Cowgill
The penguins steal the show. In the sprightly Madagascar, a mid-life crisis inspires Marty the Zebra (voiced by Chris Rock) to escape from his lifelong home, a New York zoo. His equally pampered friends--Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer)--then escape to bring him back. Unfortunately, their attempt at damage control persuades zoo officials that the animals are unhappy, so all four get shipped to an animal preserve in Kenya...only a squad of maniacal penguins change the destination to Antarctica. The quartet end up on an island where, in addition to meeting some hedonistic lemurs, they learn about the food chain--and that Alex is a different link on the chain from the other three. Madagascar doesn't achieve the snappy perfection of a Pixar movie, but it tops most other computer-animated efforts; the collision of friendship and predator instincts makes for an unusually gripping conflict. The vocal performances of the central characters is serviceable, but Sacha Baron Cohen (Da Ali G Show) provides topnotch lunacy as the lemur king, and the penguins--voiced mostly by the animators themselves--are the best thing in the movie. --Bret Fetzer
Sales Rank:70 List Price: $28.98 Lowest New Price: $7.43 Lowest Used Price: $6.51 MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Format:
Color
Full Screen
Widescreen
NTSC
Director(s):
Actor(s):
Brendan Fraser
Josh Hutcherson
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D is full of whizz-bang demonstrations of how far 3D technology has come--trilobite antennae quivering towards the audience, a T-rex lunging out of the frame, even affable star Brendan Fraser spitting on us--as well as a half-dozen action sequences clearly destined to become videogames or theme park rides. The plot is incidental: When a seismic geologist (Fraser) discovers his lost brother's notes in a copy of the titular Jules Verne novel, he and his nephew (Josh Hutcherson, Bridge to Terabithia, Zathura) head to Iceland. There, joined by a fetching mountain guide (played by Icelandic actress Anita Briem), they get trapped in a cavern and go down, down, down, finally arriving in a primeval underworld full of prehistoric beasts and carnivorous plants. It would be pointless to complain about the empty-headedness of it all; Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D aspires to be a kinesthetic experience. It wants to engage your adrenal glands, not your brain or your heart (the dialogue and characters are so generic, the script may have been cut-and-pasted from previous versions of Verne's book). Fraser, with his goofy handsomeness and accessible presence, provides a reasonably human axis around which all the frantic flying and swooping CGI effects revolve. The movie is as hollow as the world it depicts, but as mindless action movies go, you could do a lot worse. --Bret Fetzer