CliqueClack

Game of Thrones and Blood & Chrome come to home video this week

As fans anxiously await the third season of HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, relive (or catch up on) the second season with the new DVD and Blu-ray released on February 19. Also coming that day is the proposed prequel, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, that Syfy has not been very generous with. There are a lot of kid-friendly DVDs this week with another American Girl movie, a Dr. Seuss collection, Alvin & the Chipminks, Thomas the Tank Engine, Dora the Explorer and more. And classic TV fans can pick up new season releases of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. To see what else is coming this week, have a look at our handy shopper’s guide and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase.

Continue reading 'Game of Thrones and Blood & Chrome come to home video this week' »

Best Picture nominee Argo leads the February 19 video releases

It’s almost Oscar Night, and if you have yet to see one of this year’s front runners for Best Picture, now is your chance to see Argo before the big night (almost certain now to beat Lincoln in the Best Picture category because of director Ben Affleck’s Oscar snub). It is well worth your time. Re-released this week are two favorites: Top Gun and Monsters Inc., both newly converted to 3D! And somehow, beyond anyone’s expectations, there really is an Atlas Shrugged, Part II. Some great classic titles coming to Blu-ray for the first time include On the Waterfront, Easter Parade, and Best in Show, with cult classics The Nest, The Running Man and The Monster Squad getting new DVD/Blu-ray editions. The delightful Bagdad Cafe finally comes back to DVD, and you knew it wouldn’t be long before someone made Bath Salt Zombies. All of these and more are coming to home video on February 19th, so have a look at our shopper’s guide to see what other titles are coming for your video collection.

Continue reading 'Best Picture nominee Argo leads the February 19 video releases' »

Arguably the best American Idol audition ever … yes, ever

“There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.”

No. I’m not talking about the contestants on American Idol.

I’m talking about the naysayers who continually *pooh-pooh* (and worse) the show. You have to kiss a few frogs before you get to the good stuff, you know.

If you’ve read over the years what I’ve had to say about Idol and its hopefuls, you know intimately how I feel about the auditions. There has got to be pain before there is pleasure … be patient, it will all be worth it … you never know what’s going to happen … ad nauseum. Still, I get heaps of ruination from hordes of folks out there — face to face, on the internet, more — about what a joke the show is. Convincing someone to watch the auditions is like trying to shoulder a mule from its backside to the work fields. It’s near impossible. (Those of you in the know know who I’m talkin’ ’bout, Willis.)

But you know what? Last night’s show came through. There was payoff. All my huffing and puffing was rewarded … and, arguably, with some of the best auditions the show has ever seen.

Continue reading 'Arguably the best American Idol audition ever … yes, ever' »

Beautiful Creatures may hold you in its spell

With the success of the Twilight franchise and The Hunger Games, it’s not surprising that studios are looking for more YA novel series to bring to the big screen. With a built-in fan base and ready-made sequels, it’s hard to argue with that reasoning … at least on a monetary basis. The question is: which novels will make a successful series of films, both artistically and financially? Looming on the horizon is the first film in Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s proposed trilogy, The Host.

Until then, YA fans should be lining up to see Beautiful Creatures, the first film based on the first of four novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The story focuses on the perhaps doomed relationship of Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), a small town (very small town) southern high schooler, and Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), the new girl in town whose uncle has a reputation for being … reclusive in his creepy old plantation home. The town of Gatlin, South Carolina can best be described as ultra-conservative, a town that has more books banned from the library than they have on the shelves. Ethan, the rebel, likes to read all of those forbidden books and dreams of a way out of his sleepy, Civil War re-enacting town.

Continue reading 'Beautiful Creatures may hold you in its spell' »

Every woman deserves her very own Safe Haven

There was a time when I was really into Nicholas Sparks movie adaptations. I’ll admit the first time I saw A Walk to Remember I got teary-eyed when Mandy Moore revealed she was dying. My first viewing of The Notebook also made me cry. However, I was a lot younger when both of those came out. In recent years, I’ve found myself less enthused by the sappy romantic movies Sparks is best known for. I think my waning enthusiasm for his work developed about the same time I saw the less-than-stellar Nights in Rodanthe. Is it just me or do all of his movies have basically the same plot and the same locale?

However, when asked if I wanted to review his latest novel-turned-film, Safe Haven, I jumped on the chance because it not only stars Julianne Hough from Dancing with the Stars fame, but it also looked like something a little different from the usual Sparks drivel. The teasers said it was more of a romantic thriller, and my curiosity was piqued.

Continue reading 'Every woman deserves her very own Safe Haven' »

It’s only a marginally Good Day to Die Hard

The original Die Hard is indisputably one of the greatest action movies ever made. It placed an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, using all of his wiles as a police officer to save his wife and others being held hostage in a skyscraper by Eurotrash terrorists. It was brilliantly executed by director John McTiernan, and made stars out of the relatively unknown Alan Rickman and TV heartthrob Bruce Willis.

Of course, the film’s success bred a series of sequels with the second film basically aping the plot of the first, but putting Mrs. McClane on a plane, then transplanting John McClane to New York in the third film, and Baltimore/D.C. in the fourth. While each film was a financial success, they strayed from the original concept and turned McClane into a superman who could withstand any amount of pain and injury to take down the bad guys while the effects crews got to plan and execute bigger and bigger action sequences.

Which brings us to A Good Day to Die Hard.

Continue reading 'It’s only a marginally Good Day to Die Hard' »

Is Community back?

Julia: I’m not sure what I expected from Community, but all the months of waiting and drama I feel like I wanted more than what I got from that first episode back. Is it just me?

Katie: About two days before the show aired, I started getting nervous that it really was going to be bad. So I had actually mentally prepared myself to be disappointed. Thanks to being a pessimist, I was mostly OK with the episode … even though there were some missteps.

Julia: See, I’m an optimist, so that could be my problem. I just felt like it was a little bit of a directionless episode, like there were some good ideas but not a lot of cohesion.

Katie: I agree. There were a lot of funny jokes (“Why does this feel good?” made me laugh on the way to work the next day) and I appreciated how they wrote Jeff to really care about his friends — that he’s at the point where his loyalty to them is a given. But it did feel like too many storylines and not enough of them together.

That being said … Community Muppet Babies? Amazing.

Continue reading 'Is Community back?' »

Get your free passes for the Maryland advance screening of Snitch

**All passes for this offer have been claimed. Please check back again for future movie pass giveaways.**

Would you like two free passes to an advance screening of the new movie Snitch? CliqueClack has them! We’ve partnered with Summit Entertainment and Allied Integrated Marketing to offer our readers up to two Admit One passes* to the advance screening of Snitch starring Dwayne Johnson and Susan Sarandon. The screening will take place on Tuesday, February 19, 7:30 PM, at the Cinemark Egyptian theaters at Arundel Mills in Hanover, MD. We have a very limited number of passes, so we will offer them on a first come, first served basis. All you need to do is leave a comment on this post. Be sure to let us know if you need one or two passes! You will receive your passes by email which you will need to print and take to the theater. Please note: passes do not guarantee you a seat as screenings are overbooked to ensure a full house. Plan to arrive early. CliqueClack has no control over the number of passes allotted to us or seating arrangements at the theater. Have a look at the trailer for the movie, and leave us a comment if you’d like to see Snitch before anyone else!

Snitch is rated PG-13 for drug content and sequences of violence.

*Per IP address, to prevent abuse of the system.

Those were the boys on American Idol this week … right?

A friend of mine, Gloria Thompson, said something that defined the first round of Hollywood Week on American Idol:

“I must have been watching the wrong channel … it was supposed to be boys night and I didn’t see any … geeeesh …”

Yep. That pretty much nailed it.

Have you ever seen such drama? The tear buckets were overflowing. The infighting within the guys’ groups reached fever pitch at times. The abundance of performers forgetting their words was infectious. Much of the singing was so atrocious you wondered how the hell some of them even got as far as they did.

Granted, it is Hollywood Week, commonly referred to as “Hell Week” on Idol. 24 or so hours of torture to learn a song with a predetermined group, work out all the intricacies and ply it on stage in record time. It separates a lot of the men from the boys, so to speak. But there were quite a number of examples where that wasn’t the case. Regardless, there were still some man-boys who made it through. (“Squeaked through” might be the more appropriate term.)

Continue reading 'Those were the boys on American Idol this week … right?' »

Gossip Girl, Weeds, Nurse Jackie and more TV on DVD releases

After six seasons, The CW’s Gossip Girl took its final bow (and not a moment too soon), and now you can own the final season or the complete series on DVD February 12. Also on home video this week are the final season of Weeds and last season’s Nurse Jackie. More reality shows hitting DVD include Storage Wars and Toddlers & Tiaras, and classic TV like The Hardy Boys, Bonanza, Matlock and Family Matters. For the kids, we’ve got Duck Dodgers, Big Bad Beetleborgs, Babar and more! Have a look at our shopper’s guide for these and more, and click on a link to make a purchase or to get more information.

Continue reading 'Gossip Girl, Weeds, Nurse Jackie and more TV on DVD releases' »