December 4, 2007

The World's End

Keeping the DVDs flowing from the "Summer of Sequels," the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy has just arrived at Reckless Video-- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End picks up where Dead Man's Chest left off, rescuing Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp: Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride) from Davey Jones' Locker and striking out to save freewheeling pirate-kind from the encroaching forces of law and order. The original cast and director are all back to round out the story, including the return of Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush: Shine, Munich) from the first film, the introduction of Sao Feng (Chow Yun Fat: Hard Boiled, Tragic Hero), and a much publicized cameo by Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Apatow Productions follows up their release of Knocked Up with the high school coming-of-age comedy Superbad. Michael Cera (Arrested Development's George Michael) and Jonah Hill (Evan Almighty, Accepted) gear up for their last high school party before going off to separate colleges, and all of the girls and supplies that go with it. If they can survive a pair of juvenile police officers and a fake I.D. renaming their friend "McLovin," they might have the best party of their high school experience. Scarlett Johansson (The Prestige, In Good Company) plays a college graduate working as a nanny to an upper class family in The Nanny Diaries, where she gets a servants-eye view of the upper crust, as led by matriarch Laura Linney (The Squid and the Whale, Breach).

Monica Bellucci (The Matrix: Revolutions, Tears of the Sun) and Gerard Depardieu (City of Ghosts, Vatel) star in the bawdy French sex comedy How Much Do You Love Me?, where an office worker tells a high-dollar call girl that he's won the lottery. Ethan Hawke (Tape, Hamlet) directs The Hottest State, a romance about a young actor who becomes enamored of a beautiful singer-songwriter. Vanessa Redgrave (A Man for All Seasons, Venus) stars in Fever as priveleged woman who has her eyes opened to the trials of the less fortunate.

Johnny To's (The Heroic Trio, Help!!!) newest action picture, Exiled, is a kinetic bullet ballet, reviewed by some to be the most exciting picture since John Woo's heyday; a pair of guardians, a pair of hitmen, and their target/charge all team up for a career defining heist. Shira, The Vampire Samurai takes on a B-picture mirror to the Blade films, with action, swords, and day-walking nosferatu.

New in Reckless' TV New Releases is the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Razor, giving backstory to the Battlestar Pegasus. Jack Bauer is in for another rough day, as 24 releases its sixth season on DVD, the cops and robbers show The Wire is up to season four, and the seventh season of the procedural CSI is also new this week. The fourth volumes of continuing anime series Fullmetal Alchemist and Trigun round out our new television entries.