Blu-ray Reviews: All That Jazz, ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!), and Locke

by Tony Dayoub

The year's best home releases usually fill that gap between the theatrical blockbuster season and that of awards hopefuls. Here are three worth your time.

TV Review: Houdini (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Houdini begins with master escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody) in chains, plunging into a frozen river from St. Louis's Eads Bridge. It's a representative flashpoint the miniseries will go back to at the end of its first half and at the start of its second. In between, Uli Edel's miniseries scrutinizes the enigmatic Houdini's personal life more than previous projects. Using the framework of a relatively obscure book, Houdini: A Mind in Chains - A Psychoanalytic Portrait, it tries to explain some of what actually motivated the man.

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Richard Attenborough

by Tony Dayoub

...the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie. And these huge blockbusters that you see have tens and hundreds of millions of pounds and dollars spent promoting them. And if you don't have something which they believe will reach an enormous audience, then they won't go for it.

- Sir Richard Attenborough, actor-director and a potent behind-the-scenes force in bringing less marketable British films to the forefront

As expected, Variety has posted a couple of nice tributes to Sir Richard Attenborough, an important British film industry figure. But for those Americans who only know him as POW leader Roger Bartlett in The Great Escape, kind old industrialist John Hammond of the Jurassic Park films, or the director of 1982's Gandhi, let me offer a couple of suggestions that might enlarge your appreciation of the actor-director.

Courtesy of SLIFR: Professor Dewey Finn's Ostentatiously Odd, Scholastically Scattershot Back-to-School (of Rock?) Movie Quiz

by Tony Dayoub

And now for another elucidating exam by that spectacular cinephile, Dennis Cozzalio, up since August 15th at his wonderful blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Visit his site to post your answers. My answers appear after the jump.