Tuesday, February 26, 2008
New on DVD: 30 Days of Night, Beowulf, The Darjeeling Limited, In the Shadow of the Moon
Notable new fodder for your DVD-gulping home theater component hits the shelves (real and virtual) this week. To wit:
* 30 Days of Night finds a troop of rabid Eurotrash vampires taking over a remote town in Alaska and draining the life blood from almost everyone. (Almost: there's the rub.)
* In Robert Zemeckis' expanded cinematic retelling of the Beowulf epic (and by "expanded," we mean the scripters - including popular fantasist Neil Gaiman - used the original Olde English text as a springboard to further plot development), the slaying of Grendel is only the beginning. Think Angelina Jolie as exotic non-human seductress. O.K., stop thinking.
* The Darjeeling Limited follows the journey (spiritual and physical?) of three estranged brothers who come together for a choo-choo-based re-acquaintance episode in India. Wes Anderson: love him or not, he typically succeeds in avoiding genre stereotypes.
* In the Shadow of the Moon is my pick for the cream of this week's DVD crop, succeeding as it does in making us feel good about our identity as U.S. of A. Americans through the agency of the Saturn V booster. (Remember when we spent vast quantities of the GNP on something other than foreign wars?)
