The Oscars are this weekend. The Hurt Locker is going to win, right? We’re looking forward to hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. We miss the old days, though. Have you ever seen the ten minute musical number with Rob Lowe and Snow White from the ‘89 Oscars? That was pure Hollywood entertainment.
Well, we’re on the Twitter now. Yep. We’ve got the blog. We’ve got the newsletter. And now we’ve got the tweeting.
We are so with the times.
(Except for Facebook, which is, well, kinda last decade, right?)
Anyway, you probably want to know why you should follow us on Twitter. I mean, it’s not like there’s any breaking news around here, right?
Not so fast! Things are happening around here… um… every few days!
Okay, it’s not that exciting around here, except for New Release Tuesday. But we totally give away free stuff on Twitter. We’re creating our own excitement. That’s what Twitter does. It’s the excitement-maker.
Look, just check out some of our recent tweets and you’ll totally see what we’re talking about:
Yay! It’s Saturday! Come into the store and say the password “Rhinestone” and get $1 off a bag of delicious popcorn! (2/13/10)
BLIZZARDPOCALYPSEGEDDON!!! Yes, we’re open. May we suggest renting a whole season of a TV show to occupy yourselves… (2/10/10)
Ok, so that last blizzard didn’t happen but 2nite it’s gonna snow 7ft. Get DVDs now or be stuck @ home w/ nada. No we’re not being alarmist. (2/9/10)
It’s New Release Tuesday! Come get any Coen Brother’s film rental, for free! Just say the password: “White Russian.” See you soon! (2/9/10)
As you may have heard there’s a blizzard coming, with a 70% chance of wild dogs and zombies roaming Bedford Ave. Get your DVDs now! (2/5/10)
This week’s new releases: ZOMBIELAND, ONG BAK II, Hilary Swank in AMELIA, Paul Giamatti in COLD SOULS, and NEW YORK I LOVE YOU (2/5/10)
Get ready for the 82nd annual Academy Awards by brushing up on your best picture nominees, many of which are already on DVD!
Avatar - Not on DVD yet, and no release date. This one’s still tearing it up at the box office, so we wouldn’t expect to see it on DVD until April at the earliest.
You may not know this, but Videology has a secret “back room” stash.
(No, not porn.)
Haven’t you always been annoyed when you go to the video store and the movie you want to rent is checked out? We know how you feel! And although no one at Videology has a PhD (I know, it’s hard to believe), we’ve still managed to figure out that a good way to prevent this from happening is to have more than one copy of our popular movies and TV shows.
But since this is New York, our square footage is limited, and we can’t keep all of the copies on the shelves.
Hence, the secret stash.
What we’ve done is pioneer a state-of-the-art DVD storage system (okay, we keep them in CD binders), along with a high-tech retrieval system (we go in the back room and get them), and best of all, an easy way for you, the customer, to know when to look on the shelves, and when to ask at the counter for the movie you’re looking for: our website!
So, wait, when do you ask us?
When you search for a movie or TV show on our website and you see something that looks like this, don’t look on the shelves, come ask us:
Maybe this is very 1998 of us, what with the twitter and the blogging and the facebook, but isn’t there something nice about getting a little surprise waiting for you in your email inbox? Something that’s addressed just to you (and everyone else on our mailing list)?
We think so!
So… you see that little form there to your left, right underneath the twitter logo? Just type your email address in there and you will get a weekly email with:
That week’s new releases
Videology news (this just in: on Wednesdays, rent 3 and get the 4th free! Did you know?)
Fun trivia questions and other contests (win free rentals!) that are only in the newsletter!
Insider information (I’m not even going to hint at what this might be, but I will say this: we are far more exciting than you may think!)
What holiday is truly complete without Charlie Brown and the gang imparting a gentle lesson about its true meaning? Here, they tackle turkey day at Chuck’s house: a musket is fired, jelly beans are served, and, of course, Snoopy comes to the rescue.
Beginning and ending with Thanksgiving dinners, Hannah and Her Sisters follows three sisters as they negotiate marriage and family, loyalty and betrayal. The eldest daughter of show-biz parents, Hannah is a devoted wife, loving mother and successful actress. A loyal supporter of her two aimless sisters Lee and Holly, she’s also the emotional backbone of a family that seems to resent her stability almost as much as they depend on it. But when Hannah’s perfect world is quietly sabotaged by sibling rivalry, she finally begins to see that she’s as lost as everyone else.
In a span of 36 hours Claudia Larson has managed to lose her job, make out with her boss and learn that her daughter is planning to go all the way. But Claudia’s fortunes actually take a turn for the worse when she flies home to endure an even more grueling trial: the family Thanksgiving. Beset by a neurotic mother, kooky father, eccentric brother, and compulsively “normal” sister, Claudia struggles to maintain her calm.
Rebellious daughter April Burns has offered to host an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner for her suburban clan in her Lower East Side apartment. but her attempts to create an unforgettable feast go awry when she discovers that her oven doesn’t work. Now, as her weary family makes its way to the city, April must rely on the kindness of strangers to pull off the perfect meal… and the perfect memory.
Neal Page is an advertising executive who just wants to fly home to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with his family. But all Neal Page gets is misery. Misery names Del Griffith - a loud mouthed, but nevertheless lovable, salesman who leads Neal on a cross-country, wild goose chase that keeps Neal from tasting his turkey.
Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While the Watergate hearings blast from the TV, the wayward Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentments, sexual experimentation, and cultural confusion. With crystalline clarity, characteristic subtlety, and even a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee adapts Rick Moody’s acclaimed novel of American malaise into a trenchant, tragic portrait of lost souls.
If you weren’t familiar with Peter Jackson before that whole Lord of the Rings stuff, then check out this classic gem which clearly influenced The Mighty Hollywood Powers to put him in charge of a massive three-picture multi-million dollar franchise.
It starts off innocently enough; a trip to Strange Foreignland to bring back an evil rat monkey for a zoo in New Zealand, a comely Spanish girl falls in love with a fuddling mama’s boy because her crazy-eyed gypsy grandma says so, and OH MY GOD PEOPLE ARE EATING THEIR OWN EARS.
Better known as Braindead anywhere else but the ‘States, Dead Alive is easily one of the most goriest, silliest, straight-up insane comedy horrors to ever be created on a modest budget. There are things that simply defy conventional imagination, like fat-cheeked zombie babies riding around in split heads, kung-fu priests with no patience for leather-clad ruffians, and the importance of reading labels on suspicious jars of poison.
Jackson is someone who understands the importance of “the big finish,” and boy oh boy does he give it in spades here. There’s nothing wrong with your screen; that red-orange tinge you’re seeing is the mass amount of PEOPLE STUFF left over from the climax. Not since Evil Dead 2 has a movie had so many satisfyingly ridiculous blood & guts moments while still keeping its captive audience laughing and screaming at the same time.
This movie is bad. It’s so bad that the ending is catapulted to levels of extreme awesomeness nary achieved in the history of terribly amazing horror films.
Director Brian Yuzna, based known from the Re-Animator films, has a habit of making half-assed political and social statements in his silly scare-fests, and in his first major feature he jumped straight to the high class. In this Beverly Hills community, Bill, a young guy in a well-to-do family who’s at the top of his game before he’s even hit college, is starting to suspect there’s something weird and sinister going on with his family. Why it took him nearly two decades to notice that sometimes his sister’s head is facing the wrong side or that there are people in the neighborhood who like to eat hair, we will never know.
While there’s a a simple set up for a weird secret society murder plot going on, and an uncomfortable romance between the star and his flexible wannabe-girlfriend, it’s told in such a campy way with some of the worst acting ever that it is incredibly entertaining to just make fun of. You’ll be MST3King your way up until the last 15 or so minutes when everything, to put it lightly, goes bat-shit crazy.
Like Dead Alive, Society is a movie you watch with a group of friends. It’s better with alcohol but, really, don’t overdo it because your stomach might not be able to handle itself during the shunting. And that’s all I’ll say on the subject. The subject of the shunting.
Let me tell you something about horror films: I love them. And yet, they spurn me. There are so few actual good ones and so few of those are good in literal quality, not just “absolutely hilarious in its awfulness.” Heck, I even have trouble pronouncing “horror,” leading to very embarrassing situations. It would seem the stars defy me to love the genre, yet I do. And that love will be shared by telling you the best ones to enjoy this All Hollows’ Eve from your local Videology.
Sam Raimi is perhaps best known for being “that guy who made two reallygreat and one really, really bad Spider-Man movie.” But true fans know him as the creator of the epic EvilDeadtrilogy. You see, horror is easy to do on the cheap, something Raimi exploited for his first major film and then followed it up with two incredible sequels that defined slapstick horror. He’s a bit of a master at this craft. Remember the scene with Dr. Octopus’ arms coming to life in the hospital? That shit was freaky.
So thank gosh he came back to his roots for what is easily one of the best films of the year.
The story is about a young, doe-eyed woman trying to get a promotion at her bank job. She’s probably never even used a penny from the penny tray at the store. But she needs that promotion if she’s going to marry a talking computer boy. So when an old woman… okay, you know what? Skip to the end. The chick gets cursed by a gypsy and there is just no way around that. You are screwed. Thus she spends the movie trying to save her very soul while being haunted so as not to be taken to a fiery doom for all of eternity.
Going into Drag Me To Hell, you need to leave your disbelief at the door and just enjoy what’s happening. It’s absurd, it’s silly at times, once in a while you might even jump, but mostly it is just plain fun.
The go-to film recommendation for people wanting a scary movie that’s not more than 15 years old, the Descent is genuinely jump-worthy and cringe-heavy even in the beginning.
A group of ladies get together for a cave expedition, because apparently they’re way more hardcore than they look. And in this cave… terrible things happen. That’s really all that needs to be said. Heck, even before the terrible things show up, it’s an unnerving film to watch in the dark from the claustrophobic sensations it dishes out.
It’s certainly not the most revolutionary film, especially in terms of plot details, but there’s a genuinely scary sense of realism despite some of the things that, on the surface, should be pretty damn silly. It’s also damn unrelenting and not in a Hostel sort of way.
Purists should do their best to make sure they watch the original ending over the US version. You won’t be disappointed.
This movie is not scary. But! It has great indie cred in its cast, a soundtrack by Kelley Deal of the Breeders, and some really adorable moments. And then it gets wacky and Halloween-appropriate. Poor, shy veterinarian May just wants to be loved but everyone else is so selfish and nasty. Time and again, she’s tricked into falling for a boy or (as the case may be) a girl, only to be jilted once more. All she has is her doll that she talks to and the screwed up memories of childhood. Golly, I hope nothing really terrible happens to tip her over the edge into a vixen-y rampage!
My favorite new show of the 2008 - 2009 season was FRINGE, which is sort of an X-Files for the ’00s, but swapping out weird science for alien abductions. Here’s the setup: FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) investigates a commercial flight that has made an emergency landing but the crew and passengers are all dead, and not by any normal means. The only person who may be able to help solve this mystery is Walter Bishop (John Noble), a once brilliant scientist who has spent the last 17 years in an insane asylum. To help bring him out of his shell, Agent Dunham enlists the help of Walter’s estranged, sardonic son, Peter (Joshua Jackson). They soon find out that this case fits other cases of strange phenomena dubbed “The Pattern,” all of which seem to have ties to mega-corporation Massive Dynamic which is run by the enigmatic William Bell, who just so happens to be a former colleague of Walter’s. Conspiracy much?
There is a lot of crazy crap that happens in FRINGE (created by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind Alias and this year’s Star Trek redux), much of it of the icky Cronenbergian variety. If I told you the two-hour pilot has at least one jaw-dropping moment, you can take that both figuratively and literally. There’s also gigantic bugs, people who drink spinal fluid, teleportation, parallel universes, sensory deprivation tanks, genetic mutations, a weird bald guy, and a cow named Gene. Special effects are top-notch for a TV show. In addition to all the viscera and conspiracy theories, the show is pretty funny too. Walter doesn’t have all his faculties and here’s a typical exchange between him and his son:
Peter: It’s an omelet.
Walter: It’s not an omelet!
Peter: Oh, my…ugh! Walter, why is there an ear in the omelet?
Walter: It was an experiment. It was a protein-rich incubator. It was growing.
Peter: It was growing? That’s perfect.
Walter: No, it’s not perfect. You just ruined it.
John Noble is pretty great as the Mad Scientist whose non sequiturs steal the show. Early in the season, they almost threaten to become formulaic, but then we begin to learn more about his character and he becomes a bit more haunted and tragic. The show definitely picks up with the introduction of Mr. Jones, who plays heavily into the rest of the season. (Jones is played by awesome character actor Jared Harris, who is now on the current season of Mad Men.) It all leads to a spectacular season finale that will definitely have you coming back for season two.
FRINGE Season One is out today on DVD, and I think with its complex storyline it plays much better at home when you don’t have to wait a week for the next episode. We’ve got Fringe on Blu-ray too. As we are located in Williamsburg, it should be noted that much of Season One of Fringe was filmed in the neighborhood — you may recognize the above still as being shot on Broadway and Bedford, mere blocks from our store!
The trailer is here! Yes! The movie that will define the next Willennium has arrived! Bathe in its majesticness and feel as if you have been healed by the splendors of fractal light created by the most magnificent of pixels ever to be splayed upon your face from your sad little computer screen! Attempt not to cry and scream for your ancestors and, for the love of all that is holy, do not be chopping broccoli while you watch because you will most def’ lose a finger!
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Hannah and Her Sisters
Home for the Holidays
Pieces of April
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Ice Storm
