CliqueClack

Skyfall and more Bond movies headline this week’s home video releases

If you need your fill of James Bond movies, then February 12 will be a big day for you with the release of the latest installment in the 50-year-old franchise, Skyfall. In addition, a collection of single edition Bond films previously available only in the 50th anniversary collection will be out as individual Blu-ray releases, and there are two DVD collections featuring the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan films. If Bond isn’t your bag, there are more recent theatrical releases coming to home video (all reviewed here at CliqueClack) including The Perks of Being aWallflower, The Sessions, Anna Karenina, and more. There are more offbeat films, classic horror and a collection of Warner Brothers musicals to choose from as well! Have a look at our shopper’s guide, and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase at Amazon.com. Any purchase you make will help support our efforts here, and for that we thank you very much.

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How to get free sound effects for amateur movie making: Spotify

I’ve been making movies for fun since the first time my parents got a “portable” VHS camcorder many years ago. My brother and our friends made some hilarious (at least for us, at the time) videos using various amateur techniques, including dubbing over the videos later with our own foley sound effects and voiceovers. Our sound effects were what we were able to do with our hands and what tools we had around. These days, amateur movie making is sinfully easy, and even adding simple special effects is literally child’s play. However, if you want to extend beyond what iMovie or some other app can give you in terms of sound effects, your choices are limited. Well, not anymore.

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Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Best Pictures – DVD review

Even huge fans of award-winning films don’t have every one of them on their DVD shelf. Sure, you may have one or two of the BIG ones, but there could be a few you’ve always been meaning to get but never got around to. Then there are those like me, who don’t own ANY of them but always had it on their list to get around to someday.

Enter Warner Bros.’ latest box set of films: Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Best Pictures. At first it might not be clear what you’re getting here: are these what WB thinks are its best pictures, or are they actually award winners themselves? You’ll be happy to know it’s the latter, and it’s rather complete. The only omissions I could find with some quick research were My Fair Lady and Slumdog Millionaire. Probably Warner Bros. wanted to stick with a nice even 20 films for the set and not squeeze in two more.

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Disney’s Paperman: Love is in the air

Admission: Even I get my heartstrings tugged during the (occasional) viewing of a romantic comedy. It isn’t often. Because it isn’t often I watch one.

But there are a few I have enjoyed. Notting Hill. When Harry Met Sally. Leaving Las Vegas. (And yes. That one is a romantic comedy, albeit a supremely tragic one.)

With (the unofficial month of love) February upon us, and since I’m in the mood to jaw about them, I thought now was as good a time as any to pull a few out my sleeve for you to consider.

The first is a Disney short nominated this year for an Academy Award (and the only one readily available for viewing on YouTube): Paperman. There’s been quite the go-around with technical conversations concerning this little ditty (here’s one), but I’m not here to pose questions as to its formulation (not much, anyway); I want to talk about it as a love story. Because that’s what it is. It’s love … practically at first sight.

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Identity Thief is a boring, boring movie

It’s an interesting world we live in, with modern conveniences and dangers alike. We can use credit cards nearly anywhere in the country, and when we can’t, cash still works. It’s easy to apply for as many credit cards as our credit allows — but it’s easy for someone to take advantage of the naive and gullible. Sometimes you might think “why can’t the real jerks get taken down?” — those titans of industry that screw up and get bailed out — and then you realize “oh, because that would be too satisfying.” Instead, decent and relatively normal people are the victims because the script can’t be as daring as it so desperately wants to be.

Identify Thief, from director Seth Gordon (of Horrible Bosses), takes a legitimately awful thing that happens to people and makes a bad movie out of it. Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is an important, if not fancy, cog in the machine of a financial company in Denver. He gets the chance to leave his company and awful boss (Jon Favreau, making a welcome but very brief appearance) to work with others (led by John Cho) tired of not getting recognition. I bet Sandy’s beautiful wife (Amanda Peet) and ridiculously adorable children (real life sisters Mary-Charles and Maggie Elizabeth Jones) are pleased as punch that they don’t have to scrape for every dime any more! You see, the movie goes out of its way to present this setup — a very decent, if mildly ambitious and talented family man that finally gets a break. So when Sandy’s identity is stolen by Diana (Melissa McCarthy) because Sandy is just too gullible (sadly plausible), you can really despise Diana.

Sure hope she gets her just desserts for that!

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So is Top Chef just trying to annoy us now?

Okay, let me be clear here — I don’t think this is a bad season of Top Chef. Although that’s really entirely due to the legitimate talent and interesting conchefstants, despite the nonsense. The nonsense, I say! What do I mean? As per usual, the season started slow, although there were a few interesting people right off the bat, some of whom are still around. We also had the little twist of three returning chefs, who had … different ways they affected the show.

But for a while, Top Chef seemed so dead set on replicating the magic of last season’s Paul vs That Lady I Forget the Name Of by finding a villain in the group. By which I mean that there was a conchefstant I really didn’t want to win. But the closest we came were the incompetent and abrasive Josie and the arrogantly overconfident Stefan, both “coincidentally” involved with Kristen, the “Eliminated Too Early” chef. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of drama, but on this show I expect the most talented chef to actually get to the end.

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It’s time to give Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams her props

Alright, old school Destiny’s Child fans. This one is for you.

Say what you will about Michelle Williams, but I think that the chick is awesome. I’ve always had a thing for Williams. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always seen her as a bit of the underdog of the group. Oh, how I remember when she was brought on way back in the early 2000’s as one of the replacements for two of the group’s original members. If anyone can remember correctly, it was Beyonce who was doing all of the singing back then. Williams didn’t really get a chance to shine until she was given the opportunity to display her vocal talents — usually being tasked with singing the bridge of such hits as “Survivor” and my personal favorite, “Bootylicious.”

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Robin Sparkles’ latest song: P.S. I Love You

Say what you will about the perceived decline of How I Met Your Mother in recent years — and we have had that conversation several times around the halls of CliqueClack HQ — we can all get behind a Robin Sparkles appearance. We first found out about Robin’s alter ego way back in Season Two’s “Slap Bet” and has several appearances since … though we are all trying to forget “Sandcastles in the Sand” ever happened.

Each time ol’ Sparkles comes to town, we get a look into what the Canadian 90s pop music scene was like, and this week was no exception. It looks like Robin Sparkles went all Alanis Morissette, rebranding herself Robin Daggers, and releasing the song “P.S. I Love You:”

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Catch up with the Ewings on DVD with Dallas: Season One

When it was announced that TNT was bringing the granddaddy of prime time soaps back to TV after more than twenty years, fans of the original Dallas wondered whether this new version — which was to focus more on the younger Ewings, cousins John Ross (Josh Henderson) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe) — would live up to its legacy or just be a bad re-do. I think we were all taken by surprise by just how good the new Dallas turned out to be. While the new version does focus more on the younger Ewings trying to make their own names in the oil and alternative energy industries, the producers and writers have wisely let the original cast members — Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray, Ken Kercheval and the great Larry Hagman — be more than just supporting characters. Bobby and JR are still fighting over their beloved Southfork Ranch, and all of the double and triple-crosses in the first season really kept viewers on their toes.

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Sitcom Superlatives – Makeouts, Meta, and More

Best Kiss – Nick and Jess, New Girl

Of course Nick has thought about kissing Jess. He’s probably spent the last two years on and off thinking about it and cycling through self-loathing and reasons why not to … why it was never the right time, what the right time would be … and so to see him kiss Jess wasn’t just good because it was a great kiss (and it was a great kiss), but because we finally got to see Nick get over himself enough to make that move he’s been waiting to make for a long time. And Nick’s move was perfectly timed and placed; wait longer and it becomes unbelievable that Nick and Jess wouldn’t have hooked up sometime, or that when they did Jess wouldn’t cite their friendship as a reason not to continue. Do it earlier and there isn’t enough of a friendship foundation to make them hooking up high stakes. But have them kiss now, two years in, and the timing is just right.

Also, it was a really great kiss. Have I mentioned that yet?
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