Friends With Money

• Jennifer Aniston
• Joan Cusack
• Catherine Keener
• Frances McDormand
• Directed by Nicole Holofcener Full Screen 88 minutes

Explores the long friendship between a group of adult women and the changes in their relationships that occur as their financial situations fluctuate.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 6-NOV-2007
Media Type: DVDWith her third feature, Friends With Money, writer-director Nicole Holofcener continues to develop one of the most distinctive voices in American independent filmmaking. While not as purely satisfying as her previous films Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, Holofcener's third feature is admirably ambitious in establishing a diverse and dynamic range of relationships among long-time girlfriends, their spouses (for better and worse), and the way in wh! ich money (or lack of it) affects them all. The have-not of the group is Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), a teacher-turned pot-smoking housecleaner in the upscale neighborhoods of West Los Angeles. She's drifting, uncertain of her future both professionally and romantically, while her friends Franny (Joan Cusack), Christine (Catherine Keener), and Jane (Frances McDormand) cope with the relatively enviable problems of wealthy discontentment. They've all got personal crises to resolve, and while Olivia juggles the affections of a likable louse (Scott Caan) and a lonely slob who's secretly rich (Bob Stephenson), Holofcener taps a rich vein of humor and melancholy as these women go about their daily routines, attending benefits, chatting over meals, and doting over Olivia as the "needy one" in their closed circle of friendships. All of this is richly observed and wonderfully acted (with male costars played by Greg Germann, Jason Isaacs, and Simon McBurney), but reaction to Friends! With Money is strictly a matter of personal taste. Holofc! ener isn 't telling a story so much as examining lives in various states of disarray, and she offers no false comforts or simple resolutions. Like life, Friends With Money just continues on its way, with some friends happier than others. There's plenty of truth to be found, if you know where to look.--Jeff ShannonJennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack star in a film the New York Times hails as "a bittersweet comedy about the drama of being alive . . ." - Manohla Dargis. FRIENDS WITH MONEY - the story of four best friends whose comfortable lives are thrown off balance as the realities of early middle age set in. It paints a painfully hilarious portrait of modern life in the class-sensitive west side of Los Angeles. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing), Friends With Money was the Opening Night Selection at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and is being hailed as "Smart, witty and alert." - Peter T! ravers, Rolling Stone, "Acutely perceptive and slyly quick-witted" - Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune.

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Girl with a Pearl Earring, Deluxe Edition

• ISBN13: 9780452287020
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

A Deluxe Edition of the National Bestseller with Over 2 Million Copies Sold:
• Eight Pages of Full-Color Plates Include Every Vermeer Painting Discussed in the Book
• French Flaps
• Rough Front
• Larger Trim Size
• Premium Stock
• With a New Foreword

Celebrate Tracy Chevalier’s modern classic Girl With A Pearl Earring, featuring a gorgeous new edition illustrated with eight pages of Vermeer’s masterworks. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. The story of Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with a genius as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil, is new a! gain.With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries--and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant--and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model. Chevalier vivi! dly evokes the complex domestic tensions of the household, ru! led over by the painter's jealous, eternally pregnant wife and his taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic. Still, Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist.

Throughout, Chevalier cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style, whose exactitude is an effective homage to the painter himself. Even Griet's most humdrum duties take on a high if unobtrusive gloss:

I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical.

In assembling such quotidian particulars, the author acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study! The Embarrassment of Riches. Her novel also joins a crop of recent, painterly fictions, including Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever and Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Can novelists extract much more from the Dutch golden age? The question is an open one--but in the meantime, Girl with a Pearl Earring remains a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, and an appealingly new take on an old master. --Jerry Brotton

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Gun Shy

• Liam Neeson (STAR WARS, EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE) and Oliver Platt (BICENTENNIAL MAN) star with Sandra Bullock (HOPE FLOATS) in an outrageously offeat comedy about what happens when a busy undercover cop suddenly loses his legendary nerves of steel! The only way Charlie (Neeson), a respected D.E.A. agent traumatized by a hair-raising run-in with some ruthless gangsters, can do his job is with

Liam Neeson (STAR WARS, EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE) and Oliver Platt (BICENTENNIAL MAN) star with Sandra Bullock (HOPE FLOATS) in an outrageously offeat comedy about what happens when a busy undercover cop suddenly loses his legendary nerves of steel! The only way Charlie (Neeson), a respected D.E.A. agent traumatized by a hair-raising run-in with some ruthless gangsters, can do his job is with the embarrassing treatments of an attractive nurse (Bullock) and the questionable psychotherapy provide! d by a highly unstable support group! And since he's stuck in a deep-cover sting operation until he nabs a wisecracking, trigger-happy Mafia leader who scares him to death (Platt), Charlie can only hope to fake his tough-as-nails image long enough to make this one last bust ... and make it out alive! Loaded with huge stars and big laughs -- you can't miss with this high-caliber comedy hit!Gun Shy had the misfortune to come along after several other "killer pursues therapy" movies/TV shows (Grosse Pointe Blank, Analyze This, The Sopranos); in this case, it's a DEA agent and not a Mafioso, but that wasn't enough to keep it from getting swept aside. Liam Neeson (Schindler's List, Rob Roy) plays Charlie, a government undercover agent whose last mission got botched, resulting in his partner's death. But the DEA isn't willing to let him get out early; clinging to his fantasy of a seaside retirement home, Charlie agrees to one more mission! , even though he's convinced that the New York City gangster h! e's inve stigating will kill him. On his flight to the city, he meets a psychiatrist who encourages him to join a group therapy session. Meanwhile, it turns out that the gangster Fulvio, played by busy character actor Oliver Platt (Funny Bones, Bulworth), is equally miserable with his career. Curiously, Neeson and Platt both seem initially miscast--Neeson exudes a solid imperturbability, and Platt comes off as too soft to be really threatening--but over the course of the movie, their performances become increasingly compelling, perhaps because they are cast against type. Their neuroses, which initially seem like weak gags, start feeling genuine and sad. Gun Shy is marketed as a comedy, but its strength is in the truth of its characters. Sandra Bullock (who also produced the film) has a small role as a gastroenterologist with whom Charlie falls in love. --Bret Fetzer

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The Vampire's Assistant (Cirque du Freak, Book 2)

• ISBN13: 9780316606844
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Darren Shan was just an ordinary schoolboy until his visit to the Cirque Du Freak. Now, as he struggles with his new life as a Vampire's Assistant, he tries desperately to resist the one temptation that sickens him, the one thing that can keep him alive. But destiny is calling. The Wolf Man is waiting.What if you were an unwilling vampire? You needed to drink human blood to stay alive, but you weren't some horror-flick villain; you were you, born human--a nice person, even. Thus is the dilemma of the young narrator-protagonist, Darren Shan, in this tremendously suspenseful, oft-sickening sequel to Cirque Du Freak: The Saga of Darren Shan. In the first book, Darren becomes a va! mpire's assistant to save the life of his friend Steve. In order to do so, he has to fake his death, get buried alive, and head out--half-human, homeless, and friendless--into the world. The Vampire's Assistant chronicles his new lonely life as a half-vampire, pumped with the cursed blood of his vampire guardian, Mr. Crepsley. Darren has much to learn about his freshly supernatural state. He doesn't grow fangs, for instance, like he thought he might. And he can't change shape or fly. Garlic just gives vampires bad breath... And they eat bagels. Some of the hardest lessons of all come when he joins the traveling freak show Cirque Du Freak, the show that got him and Steve in trouble in the first place. Readers won't be disappointed by this fast-paced, gory, but strangely amiable sequel. In fact, the plot is much better paced than the first and the dialogue far more natural. Deadly pythons, a snake boy, Cormac Limbs (bite off his finger and it gr! ows back!), and an entire cast of dreadfully creepy characte! rs offer excitement beyond expectation. Along the way, we come to really like Darren, who will do absolutely anything for a friend. British author Darren Shan promises more adventures in 2002. (Ages 10 and older) --Karin Snelson

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Charlie Bartlett : Widescreen Edition

• Widescreen

The kids at Western Summit High have "issues," and newcomer Charlie Bartlett is coming to their rescue. With a briefcase full of prescription pills and a head full of pop psychology, this rebel with a cause brings hilarious help to the student body and unending grief to their neurotic principal, Mr. Gardner (Robert Downey, Jr.). Suddenly, Charlie is the hottest man on campus and he's even caught the eye of Gardner's sultry daughter. An outrageous send-up of today's Prozac generation, Charlie Bartlett has your prescription for laugh-out-loud insanity!The ghost of Ferris Bueller haunts Charlie Bartlett. In John Hughes' classic comedy, a wily principal chases a clever student all over Chicago. In editor-turned-director Jon Poll's darker-hued enterprise, the hero of the title (Huff's preternaturally poised Anton Yelchin) gets kicked out of private school for selling fake IDs, so! his heavily-medicated mother (a reliably excellent Hope Davis) transfers her son to a public institution. Looking like a junior stockbroker in navy blazer and attaché case, he turns into a bully piñata, until he joins forces with surly dealer Murphey (Walk the Line’s Tyler Hilton) to sell prescription medication and split the profits (Charlie secures the meds from an assortment of pill-pushing psychiatrists). By listening to their problems and offering well-researched advice, the unlicensed doc becomes the most popular kid on campus. He even captures the interest of self-possessed drama queen Susan (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Kat Dennings), daughter of booze-soaked Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr. in top form). Gardner doesn't trust Charlie, but lacks the evidence to confirm his suspicions--so he sets out to secure some. Once he installs surveillance cameras, the game is on. By the end, the two competitors will have both lost... and won. Aside from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Charlie Bartlett recalls! Wes And erson's Rushmore, except Poll's Gustin Nash-penned satire trades counter-cultural cool for trenchant commentary about quick-fix solutions to deep-seated dilemmas. That means fewer laughs than its forerunners, but Charlie Bartlett presents a more penetrating analysis of today’s generation gap. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Beyond Charlie Bartlett

More "School Days" Comedies

The Charlie Bartlett Soundtrack

More from MGM

!
Stills from Charlie Bartlett

Specs: Audio: English: 5.1 Dolby Surround
Language: Dubbed: English
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: Disc 1: Fullscreen 1.33:1, Disc 2 & 3: Widescreen:! 1.85:1, Disc 4: Widescreen: 2.35:1
Episodes-Bonus Featu! res:

• Disc 1 Side A: Charlie Bartlett
• Disc 1 Side B: Charlie Bartlett
• Disc 2: Back to School
• Disc 3: Home for the Holidays
• Disc 4 Side A: Richard III
• Disc 4 Side B: Richard III

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is a comedy about two people thrust together for one hilarious, sleepless night of adventure in a world of mix tapes, late-night living, and, live, loud music. Nick (Michael Cera) frequents New York's indie rock scene nursing a broken heart and a vague ability to play the bass. Norah (Kat Dennings) is questioning pretty much all of her assumptions about the world. Though they have nothing in common except for their taste in music, their chance encounter leads to an all-night quest to find a legendary band's secret show and ends up becoming the first date in a romance that could change both their lives.In the big-screen version of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's popular young adult novel, two! high-school seniors fall in love over the course of one eventful evening. A straight bass player in a queercore band, Nick (Juno's Michael Cera) has just been dumped by the two-timing Tris (Alexis Dziena). He's committed to making more self-pitying mix CDs until his bandmates convince him to help track down a top-secret rock concert. Meanwhile, Norah (Charlie Bartlett's Kat Dennings) and her hard-partying pal, Caroline (Ari Graynor), set off on the same journey. Nora had never met Nick, but she already had a crush on him (While attending the same school as Tris, she's been enjoying the mixes Nick keeps making--and Tris keeps throwing away). When the inebriated Caroline goes missing, they spend the rest of the night racing around the Lower East Side in his Yugo looking for the friend, the show, and trying to avoid Tris (Norah's ex-boyfriend, Tal (Tropic Thunder's Jay Baruchel), presents further complications). Peter Sollett's follow-up to Rais! ing Victor Vargas aims to please several audiences at onc! e. It st arts out like a less dirty-minded Superbad, morphs into a post-millennial After Hours, and ends as a Big Apple take on Before Sunset. It's sweet and funny, but could use more of its own identity, though Cera and Dennings make for an appealing couple and the supporting performers, especially Graynor and Kevin Corrigan in a wordless cameo, enhance the proceedings considerably. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Nick & Norah's Infinate Playlist (click for larger image)

More Nick & Norah's Infinate Playlist

Paperback Book

Soundtrack CD

DVD

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Cradle 2 the Grave (Widescreen Edition)

• When his daughter is kidnapped and held in exchange for diamonds, the leader of a crew of highly skilled urban thieves (DMX) forges an unlikely alliance with a Taiwanese Intelligence officer (Jet Li) to rescue her. Their race against the clock to find the precious stones ultimately unravels a plot to distribute a deadly new weapon of war.Running Time: 101 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: AC

When his daughter is kidnapped and held in exchange for diamonds, the leader of a crew of highly skilled urban thieves (DMX) forges an unlikely alliance with a Taiwanese Intelligence officer (Jet Li) to rescue her. Their race against the clock to find the precious stones ultimately unravels a plot to distribute a deadly new weapon of war.

DVD Features:
Documentaries:"Ultimate Fighting Champions": Profiles on the martial artists and how they were incorporated in the movie "Choreography of ! the Camera": includes multi-angle car chases
Featurette:"The Descender Rig": Features camera invention that was made for the movie
Music Video:DMX's "X Gon' Give It to Ya"
Other:2 Hidden Bonuses: "Time Lapse Montage" Behind-the-scenes footage and "Rear Projection" featurette on the subway sequence
Theatrical Trailer

The intriguing cross-pollination of rap and kung-fu continues with Cradle 2 the Grave, co-starring high-profile rapper DMX and Hong Kong superstar Jet Li. Master thief Fait (DMX) hits a diamond exhange but comes away with a bag of black gems of mysterious origin. When a crime kingpin steals the gems from Fait, an international arms dealer kidnaps Fait's beloved daughter--and Fait can only get her back with the help of Su (Li), a Taiwanese intelligence agent tracking the gems himself. A summary of the plot doesn't do Cradle 2 the Grave justice; while the basic story elements suggest a dozen gene! ric action flicks, the cast (including Anthony Anderson, Gabr! ielle Un ion, and Kelly Hu) has genuine charisma and the movie layers action on top of action to strong effect. All in all, a much more engaging thrill ride than you'd expect. --Bret Fetzer

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Dogville

• DVD Details: Actors: Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany
• Directors: Lars von Trier
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC. Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: August 24, 2004; Run Time: 178 minutes

DOGVILLE - DVD MovieThe latest galvanizing and controversial film from Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, The Kingdom), Dogville uses ingenious theatricality to tell the Depression-era story of Grace (Nicole Kidman, The Others), a beautiful fugitive who stumbles onto a tiny town in the Rocky Mountains. Spurred on by Tom (Paul Bettany, Master and Commander), who fancies himself the town's moral guide, the citizens of Dogville first resist Grace, then embrace her, then resent and torme! nt her--little realizing they will pay a price for their selfish brutality. The town is indicated by fragments of building and chalk outlines on a soundstage floor, stylishly pointing to the movie's roots in classic plays (particularly Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit). Several critics have stridently attacked Dogville as anti-American, but the movie's dark, compelling view applies as easily to Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East, or pretty much anywhere in the world. Also featuring Lauren Bacall, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Stellan Skarsgârd, Chloe Sevigny, and many more. --Bret Fetzer

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The Bourne Identity: A Novel

• ISBN13: 9780553593549
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
His memory is a blank. His bullet-ridden body was fished from the Mediterranean Sea. His face has been altered by plastic surgery. A frame of microfilm has been surgically implanted in his hip. Even his name is a mystery. Marked for death, he is racing for survival through a bizarre world of murderous conspiratorsâ€"led by Carlos, the world’s most dangerous assassin. Who is Jason Bourne? The answer may kill him.

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