CliqueClack

Attend an advance DC screening of Hector and the Search for Happiness

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CliqueClack has partnered with Relativity Studios to offer readers in the DC area an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new comedic drama Hector and the Search for Happiness starring Simon Pegg, Toni Collette, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgård, Jean Reno, Christopher Plummer.

Hector (Simon Pegg) is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.

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Turn Back the Clock offers a unique glimpse in history from 1910-1933

Time travel, particularly when the main character uses it to correct past mistakes, is certainly a popular subject in literature and film. Whether part of the sci-fi, romance, action/thriller or comedy genre, it’s a subject that fascinates everyone from the very young to the very old and all those who remain young-at-heart. Thanks to the continuing efforts of the Warner Archive Collection, I recently watched Turn Back the Clock, one of the earlier films dedicated to the subject.

Released in 1933 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Turn Back the Clock stars Lee Tracy and Mae Clarke as Joe and Mary Gimlet, a husband and wife who own a small cigar store in New York. The couple makes just enough money to take care of their basic needs – they have a meager, but cozy apartment above the store, and there’s always food on their table, even if it is just beef and cabbage. They’ve managed to save up $4,000 in 15 years, which in 1933 that was a great deal more than it is now. That’s not exactly enough to retire in style, but it’s a pretty decent nest egg for a hardworking couple in their early 40s. Not to mention this was in the midst of the Great Depression, a time in which many were far less fortunate than that.

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Arrow, Sleepy Hollow, The Big Bang Theory, Grimm and more come to home video

It’s a big week for TV on home video as the new fall season starts to roll out. This week, you have the opportunity to catch up on several of last season’s shows before the new season starts, including Arrow, About a Boy, Awkward, The Big Bang Theory, Bones, Castle, Grimm, Hannibal, Hawaii Five-O, Sleepy Hollow and South Park. For those whose cable systems don’t yet carry Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey channel, the first season of From Dusk Till Dawn makes its home video debut, while streaming series Alpha House and Burning Love also get home video releases. Classic TV fans can now get The Carol Burnett Show Ultimate Edition from retailers other than Time Life, and Highway to Heaven and Tour of Duty also get new season releases. For kids and families, there’s Ben 10 Omniverse, Denver the Last Dinosaur, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel Knights, Slugterra and more. For a look at the September 16 highlights, check out our alphabetical shopper’s guide after the jump. Click on a link to make a purchase or to get more information.

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Godzilla, The Fault In Our Stars, and more come to home video

Two major titles come to home video September 16 — Godzilla and The Fault In Our Stars — along with Blu-ray releases celebrating the anniversaries of two comedy classics, Ghostbusters (30!) and The Nutty Professor (50!). Newer films getting early Digital releases include the indie hits Chef and Obvious Child, as well as summer box office giant Tranformers: Age of Extinction. Other films getting anniversary releases this week include Silent Night, Deadly Night (30) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, newly restored for its 40th anniversary. For fans of the weird, the Criterion Collection is releasing David Lynch’s Eraserhead on Blu-ray, and cult classics Avalanche, Meteor, Flesh & Blood and The Party also get some high def love. These are just a few of the titles hitting DVD, Blu-ray and Digital this week. To see more of the highlights, have a look at our alphabetical shoppers guide after the jump, and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase.

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Godzilla gets a second look on Blu-ray

When Godzilla was released theatrically I, along with many others, was stoked to see the big guy back on screen. His last US outing didn’t turn out so well, so Warner Brothers did a great job marketing the new reboot by barely showing the iconic monster. The feeling amongst the fans was that you have to have a pretty strong movie to promote it without even showing the title character.

Turns out there wasn’t a whole lot of Godzilla to be seen on screen. (Someone recently made a rather cheeky YouTube video to satisfy all the Godzilla fans who felt the film lacked Godzilla by piecing together all of the scenes in the movie that feature Godzilla. It runs less than eight minutes.) The film spends an inordinate amount of time on the other monsters, the M.U.T.O.s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects) and a collection of characters spread throughout the story with little emotional connection for the audience.

The story’s biggest misstep was (SPOILER ALERT) killing off its biggest star 40 minutes in. The early ads featured said star prominently, so I felt I had a good idea of what the movie was going to be going in to it, but past that point it turned into a meandering tale that needed (a) the star and (b) Godzilla. But now that the movie is out on home video, I decided to give it a second look to see if my feelings about it had changed knowing what the story was going to be.

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Attend an advance screening of The Equalizer in Baltimore, DC or Virginia Beach

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CliqueClack has partnered with Sony Pictures to offer readers in Baltimore, DC and Virginia Beach an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new action thriller The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour with Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo.

Denzel Washington plays McCall, a man who believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when McCall meets Teri (Moretz), a young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can’t stand idly by – he has to help her. Armed with hidden skills that allow him to serve vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.

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Hardy and Gandolfini make The Drop worth seeing

I’ve not read a book by Dennis Lehane, but I have seen several of the movies based on his books (of which he is usually the credited screenwriter). Some of those films I have enjoyed and some I have not, mainly because they all seem to have a sort of commonality to them – cold, grey, extremely bleak with nary a character you can actually root for (case in point: Mystic River). Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island were more successful, in my book, perhaps because the directors made the material interesting (and Shutter Island certainly divided audiences with its extremely ambiguous conclusion).

The latest Lehane novel to make it to the big screen is Animal Rescue, which now goes by the title The Drop. The Drop is another cold, grey, bleak story about Brooklyn. Specifically Brooklyn’s neighborhood bars and the organized crime element that uses those bars as nightly drops for all of the money collected during the day. One such bar is Cousin Marv’s, run by Marv (James Gandolfini) and his cousin Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy), but owned by the Chechen mob.

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A fond look back at the bizarre beauty of The Mystery of the Third Planet

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once observed, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” Have you ever tried to look for a needle in a haystack for the one you love? Maybe you have, but I’m betting most of you out there haven’t. We go about our daily routines toiling our lives away to achieve a piece of that poetic greatness Longfellow described, only maybe occasionally taking time out to make those we love smile.

Several months back, I was blogging about a space cartoon (Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars) and reminiscing about a title whose name had escaped me. I erroneously thought it was titled The Third Planet from the Sun and was frustrated that I couldn’t find ANY evidence of it on the Internet. I hadn’t seen this cartoon since I was maybe 12. I knew I wasn’t crazy or making it up. I’m happy to report that my boyfriend finally found it for me on the Internet – its correct title is The Mystery of the Third Planet and the entire cartoon can be found on YouTube (in English and Russian, but we’ll get to that later).

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Once brilliantly brings music and love to life on stage

In 2006, a small Irish movie made some big waves, becoming a sleeper hit and earning an Academy Award for Best Original Song. That movie was Once, the tale of an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant who meet, discover a common ground with music and begin writing songs together that express their growing relationship. While the plot may have been a bit thin, the movie succeeded on the back of the music by film’s stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, including the Oscar winning “Falling Slowly.”

The film seemed an unlikely choice to be transformed into a Broadway musical, but writer Enda Walsh and director John Carney (who also directed the film) found something magical about the music and created a show that went on to win eight Tony Awards including Best Musical. Now Once is touring the North America and has made its second stop (of thirty-three engagements) at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre.

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Relive 1980-something with The Goldbergs – The Complete First Season on DVD

One of the best, funniest new comedies to launch last season was ABC’s The Goldbergs, about a suburban family and their day-to-day adventures (or misadventures) in the 1980s. The show is based on the real life family of show creator Adam S. Goldberg who videotaped almost every waking moment of his family’s lives. Many of the show’s storylines come directly from those recordings, brought to life by a brilliant cast – Jeff Garlin as dad Murray, Sean Giambrone as Adam, Troy Gentile as older brother Barry, Hayley Orrantia as sister Erica, George Segal as grandfather Albert (aka Pops), and the brilliant Wendi McLendon-Covey as mom Beverly.

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