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Douglas Pratt

The Ultimate DVD Geek By Douglas PrattPratt@moviecitynews.com

The Informant!

By Douglas Pratt - Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

An appealing bait-and-switch tale, pretty much based upon true events, Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, has been released by Warner Home Video. Channeling William H. Macy, Matt Damonstars as an executive in a large food conglomerate who confesses to the FBI that he has been involved in a worldwide price fixing scam when he is called in on the…

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Paris, Texas

By Douglas Pratt - Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Wim Wenders relaxed and off-center 1984 road movie, Paris, Texas, has been released in a two-platter set by the Criterion Collection. The transfer is outstanding. The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The image is vividly crisp and colors are precise…

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 Sunday, May 19 2013 12:52:48

“Two hours in the labyrinth of Paramount’s Avarice…. It was my first–and my last–IMAX venture. Haven’t been to a 3-D movie in years, and it’s bye-bye to THAT scathing visual transgression for the remainder of MY lifetime… It was an unceasing, unrelenting, take-no-audience-prisoners audial and visual back-alley mugging for two hours… I have been beaten up many times; I know what it feels like: this was a two-hour assault. I weep, as Jesus wept, for the generations that will grow up thinking this is what it means to “go to the movies.” I am near-on 79, and I [understand] that this is a generational opinion, but I do not think any sensible person not of a tot age where videogame… overkill is pro forma, could confuse the IMAX “experience” with a Saturday matinee outing. The term “author” as regards Summer Blockbuster movies, is not only moot, it is Urdu. Mountains heave mightily, and give birth to volcanic ant-hills.”
~ Harlan Ellison Takes In Star Trek: Into Darkness

“One of the things I wish I could do in my life would be to watch this film through somebody else’s eyes. I just can’t. I still see it as just a giant mess, and other people are seeing that it has a shape. That’s really exciting, because I still have a hard time seeing it clearly.”
~ Sarah Polley’s Greatest Wish About Stories We Tell