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(Universal Pictures)
I
n
the always rough, have-to-be tough urban jungle of Los Angeles,
there are men like Beck (THE ROCK)...well, not exactly like Beck-
a man who uses whatever means are necessary to retrieve whatever
he is paid to bring back. A marker, a late payment or a Super
Bowl ring from a quarterback with gambling debts- Beck doesn't
differentiate and simply relies on his wits, his "let's get
this over with" attitude and his devastating physical prowess
to get the job done. For him, it's a simple, multiple-choice world:
(A) Beck's way, (B) Beck's way with force, or (C)...there is no
"C."
Beck doesn't go looking for trouble, and he doesn't like making trouble for anyone, either. Unfortunately, trouble is what he's hired to clean up, and there's one final mess he's got to get out of before he can leave it all behind And this one just keeps getting more and more tangled3 like the Amazon jungle he's been sent to in The Rundown.
At the center of his current trouble is a wise-ass named Travis (SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT), a fast talking double dealer whose dad has commissioned Beck to retrieve from a lingering adventure in Brazil. Travis proves to be more of a handful than Beck expected, not only because of his mouth and his heels-dug-in reluctance to leave, but because of a couple of other complications he brings with him: Mariana (ROSARIO DAWSON), a no-nonsense local who holds the answers to some of the jungle's hidden mysteries, and Hatcher (CHRISTOPHER WALKEN), an unhinged despot who has turned the jungle and its inhabitants into his own fortune-making, gold-mining empire.
The
rundown: Beck is after a guy...who's after a fortune...and now
everybody's after them. So he's going to have to unleash everything
he's got to keep on top of his smack-talking quarry, the girl
with the secret, the crazy tyrant, the horny monkeys, the hallucinogenic
fruit, the backs-to-the-wall rebels, the perilous terrain, the
hidden traps and every other obstacle that this jungle throws
at him.
PETER BERG (Very Bad Things, television's Chicago Hope and Wonderland) directs The Rundown, a comic action-adventure with exotic locations and hard-hitting, exquisitely crafted fight sequences choreographed by Hong Kong master ANDY CHENG.
The
film is produced by KEVIN MISHER (The Scorpion King), MARC ABRAHAM
(Bring It On) and KAREN GLASSER (Felicias Journey). R.J. STEWART
(Major League Il) and JAMES VANDERBILT (Basic) wrote the screenplay
from a story by Stewart. Joining Berg and the producers behind
the camera are executive producers VINCE McMAHON (The Scorpion
King) and RIC KIDNEY (The Recnuit); director of photography TOBIAS
SCHLIESSLER i (Bait); production designer TOM DUFFIELD (The Ring);
editor RICHARD PEARSON (Men in Blackll); costume designer LOUISE
MINGENBACH (X-Men 2); and composer HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS (Spy
Game).
(DreamWorks Pictures)
Academy Award~ winners Sir Ben Kingsley ("Gandhi") and Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind") star in the drama "House of Sand and Fog," based on the acclaimed bestseller by Andre Dubus III.
Massoud Amir Behrani (Sir Ben Kingsley) is living a lie to fulfill a dream. Once a member of the Shah of Iran's elite inner circle, Massoud has brought his family to America to build a new life. Despite a pretense of continued affluence, he is barely making ends meet until he sees his opportunity in the auction of a house being sold for back taxes. It is a terrible mistake. Through a bureaucratic snafu, the house had been improperly seized from its rightful owner, Kathy Lazaro (Jennifer Connelly). The loss of her home tears away Kathy's last hope of a stable life-a life that had been nearly destroyed by addiction-and she decides to fight to recover her home...at any cost.
"House of Sand and Fog" exposes the unsettling truth that it is sometimes our hopes and not our hatreds that drive us to ruin, in a devastating exploration of the American Dream gone terribly awry. The film also stars Ron Eldard ("Black Hawk Down") as deputy sheriff Lester Burdon, who tries to take the law into his own hands to help Kathy; major Iranian film star Shohreh Aghdashloo as Behrani's wife, Nadi; and Jonathan Ahdout as their son Esamail.
"House of Sand and Fog" marks the directorial debut of Vadim Perelman. Perelman and Shawn Otto adapted the screenplay from the book by Andre Dubus III, which was an Oprah Book Club selection. The film is produced by Michael London.
DOMESTIC RELEASE: HOLIDAY 2003
(Go Fish Pictures/DreamWorks)
Leading anime artist and filmmaker Satoshi Kon ("Perfect Blue") creates a blend of fantasy and reality in his latest film "Millennium Actress."
In this unique epic adventure, the lines between the past and the present, and truth and fiction, are blurred when a documentary filmmaker fulfills his quest to find the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, and learn why she mysteriously vanished at the height of her brilliant career. When Chiyoko grants the filmmaker's request, he, in turn, presents her with a token-a key she had lost and thought was gone forever. The filmmaker could not have imagined that the key would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko's life. . .but also his own.
"Millennium Actress" reunites director Satoshi Kon and screenwriter Sadayuki Murai, who first collaborated together on Satoshi Kon's award-winning debut feature"Perfect Blue." The film is produced by Taro Maki ("Tenchi Forever"). Susumu Hirasawa composed the score, and Takeshi Honda was the editor and director of animation. Satoshi Kon and Takeshi Honda also collaborated on the character design, and MAD HOUSE ("Perfect Blue," "Vampire Hunter D" and "Metropolis") served as the animation company for the film.
Since its opening in Japan, "Millennium Actress" has been honored with numerous awards. It won the Japan Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival Grand Prize, and was also awarded the Fantasia Ground-Breaker Award for Artistic Innovation. "Millennium Actress" was also named the Best Animated Film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Canada, and it was the first-ever recipient of the 2001 International Film Festival of Catalonia's Orient Express Award spotlighting Asian genre films. In addition, the film has been an of ficial selection at some of Asia's most renowned film festivals including the Pusan International Film Festival (Korea), the Bangkok International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival.
"Millennium Actress" is the first film to be released under Go Fish Pictures, DreamWorks' new distribution arm, and will initiate with a limited run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Toronto.
Starring BASIL RATHBONE and NIGEL BRUCE on DVD and VHS OCTOBER 28, 2003.Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Digitally Restored in 35MM
Elementary, my dear Watson! The much-anticipated release of the digitally restored Sherlock Holmes films, starring Basil Rathbone, as the masterful detective and Nigel Bruce as his faithfill cohort, will begin in October 2003. Twelve of the films in the Sherlock Holmes series underwent a long and painstaking preservation process by the UCLA Film and Television Archive to bring them back to their original 35 mm theatrical condition.
The celebrated SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE VOICE OF TERROR, SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE SECRET WEAPON, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON and SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH are scheduled for release October 28th.
While the films have long been staples on television, and more recently on VHS, they have usually been seen in 16 mm prints. Grainy and washed out, these versions gave only a faint approximation of the pictorial beauty the films possessed in 35 mm. In restoring the series, UCLA had to weave together the best surviving original nitrate film elements with later acetate film copies, creating new preservation masters that duplicate the look and sound of the original films as closely as current technology permits. These restored versions include war bond tags and Universal Pictures logos that were removed from the original printing elements when Universal sold the series to an independent distributor in the 1950s.
The films are legendary, filled with ominous shadows, interesting camera angles and well edited montage sequences. Roy William Neill produced and directed all but the first entry in the series.
The four newly restored Sherlock Holmes movies will be available as individual DVD and VHS titles, and as a boxed collection, October 28, 2003 through local retailers. The collector's DVD boxed set features all four films plus photos, original movie posters and commentary from British author David Stuart Davies as bonus material. Customers can also order directly from MPI by calling 1-800-777-2223 (9am to 5pm, CST, Monday to Friday) or by logging on to www.mpihomevideo.com. Artwork, photos and review copies are available from MPI by request.
MPI Home Video is a subsidiary ofthe MPI Media Group. Formed in 1976, MPI Media Group is a leading independent producer and distributor of movies, home video and music. Other wholly owned subsidiaries of the MPI Media Group include MPI Teleproductions, which creates original documentary programming for distribution in broadcast/cable venues as well as in the home video and educational markets and the WPA Film Library, one of the largest commercial film archives in the United States.
66 Minutes DVD $19.98 VHS $16.98
