Happy New Year (2014) BluRay 1080p ((NEW))
Bernarda Zahra
Ann arrives at Ginny's house the following morning and finds Ginny taking a shower. In the shower, Ginny has a flashback of her mother's death: Her mother, a newly inducted socialite, invites the Top Ten to Ginny's birthday celebration four years earlier and is concerned when no guests have arrived. After being questioned by her mother, Ginny tearfully mentions the group are attending a party Ann is having instead. Humiliated, her mother drives drunk to the Thomasons' house with Ginny, where she is denied entry by Mr. Thomason's gatekeeper. Enraged and upset, she attempts to drive across a raising drawbridge, causing their car to fall into the water. Pinned beneath the steering wheel, Ginny's mother drowns. Ginny, however, manages to swim to safety.
Happy Birthday to Me began shooting in early July 1980 with British director J. Lee Thompson, famous for the classic Cape Fear (1962).[8] Thompson had also been a dialogue coach to Alfred Hitchcock years before. Thompson had actively been looking to direct a thriller, and became attached to Happy Birthday to Me. In the press material for the film, he stated: "What attracted me to this script was that the young people stood out as vivid, individual characters. The difference between a good chiller and exploitative junk, at least in my opinion, is whether or not you care about the victims".[3]
Columbia Pictures acquired Happy Birthday to Me for $3.5 million, following Paramount Pictures' lead with buying Friday the 13th the year before. Columbia reportedly put as much money into promoting the film as it cost to make. The promotional materials for the film boasted its numerous unusual death sequences as "six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see".[2] The theatrical poster featured sub-taglines reading: "John will never eat shish kebab again" and "Steven will never ride a motorcycle again", despite the fact that there is no character named "John" in the film, while Steven is the character who dies by a shish kekab; Etienne is the character who suffers a death via a motorcycle.[2][3]
In a 2022 retrospective assessment for Bloody Disgusting, Paul Lê described the film as "one of the strangest and best 80s slashers to come out of the decade."[11] The same year, Tyler Doupe of Dread Central assessed the film, citing it as a "giallo masquerading as a slasher," noting its use of various plot twists, red herrings, and violent murders, which are common tropes in giallo films.[25]
The main extra on the disc is commentary track with co-screenwriter Timothy Bond moderated by filmmaker/historian Daniel Kremer. They cover the slasher and horror movie boom that took place in Canada around the time that this movie was made, what Thompson was like as a director but not spending much time on set during the making of the movie, working with co-writer Peter Jobin, having to make changes to the ending of the movie, where parts of the movie resemble a giallo picture, details on the cast and crew including Melissa Sue Anderson and Glenn Ford, other projects that Bond has worked on over the years and quite a bit more. This sounds like it was recorded via conferencing software and unfortunately the audio quality on Bond's side of things is less than ideal, but it is an interesting track regardless.
Happy New Year! What are you most looking forward to this year in the home video category? Finally seeing The Abyss and the original Avatar on 4K BD100 Dolby Vision disc? Getting that new OLED and/or Atmos setup? Ten-Gig fiber internet so you can reliably stream 4K?
In 2005, March of the Penguins identified a real appetite among moviegoers for flightless waterfowl. (As movie characters, mind you, not menu items.) The next year, Happy Feet drove that phenomenon over the top, grossing just shy of 200 million dollars on its way to upsetting perennial favorite Pixar for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. The victory was an upset not just because Pixar's Cars was better than expected, but also because Happy Feet isn't as good as the numbers suggest. George Miller's film does benefit from a delightful concept. According to Happy Feet, the mating ritual made famous by March is actually a matter of mutual serenade, with penguins finding their soul mates to the strains of modern pop music. But Happy Feet gets kind of stuck in this concept phase, never blossoming into an involving narrative. Mumble, voiced by Elijah Wood, is your standard outsider -- insert your favorite ugly duckling metaphor here. But his supposed deficiency is that he dances rather than sings -- a complementary skill, one would think, whose uniqueness should elevate him, rather than ostracizing him toward a mission of heroic redemption. This mission allows for some strong set pieces and breathtaking images of the Antarctic landscape and fauna, but it also brings audiences into contact with two super-annoying Robin Williams characters, both voiced as politically incorrect racial stereotypes. By the time it's finished, Mumble's journey has gone places that stretch even the minimal logic required for a kid's movie. Perhaps that gets at the shortcomings of the entire film. While it's infectious enough to slot right in as a new classic for young children, and visually advanced enough to wow audiences of any age, it's also flawed enough that adults won't want to join in on their kids' inevitable repeat viewings.
A terrified young baby-sitter...an incessantly ringing phone...and whispered threats set the stage for one of the most suspenseful thrillers ever filmed. Carol Kane stars as the baby-sitter who is tormented by a series of ominous phone calls until a compulsive cop (Charles Durning) is brought on the scene to apprehend the psychotic killer. Seven years later, however, the nightmare begins again when the madman returns to mercilessly haunt Kane, now a wife and mother. No longer a naive girl, though still terrified, but prepared, she moves boldly to thwart the maniac s attack in scenes that culminate in a nerve shattering conclusion.
SYNOPSIS: For years, 18-year-old Sora and his 11-year-old stepsister Shiro have lived as shut-ins, rarely leaving their house, unable to be separated without panic attacks, and playing videogames as an escape from reality. On the internet, however, they're known as the legendary videogame tag-team BLANK, where their unrivaled skill inexplicably leads to them finally getting out of the house in the most extreme way possible - pulled over into another world to defend humanity in the most insane and deadly competition ever imagined! But hey, no pressure. If they fail it will only mean death for them, and slavery or destruction for the rest of the human race. Can two misfits who can barely cross the street defeat a horde of otherworldly champions and save our planet? The ultimate battle has begun in No Game, No Life!
MOMMY. A feisty widowed single mom finds herself burdened with the full-time custody of her unpredictable 15-year-old ADHD son. As they struggle to make ends meet, Kyla, the peculiar new neighbor across the street, offers her help. Together, they find a new sense of balance, and hope is regained. Stars include Antoine-Olivier Pilon, Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement, Patrick Huard and Alexandre Goyette.
The Blu-ray Disc Association is most of the way done defining a version of its optical disc technology that can handle high-resolution 4K imagery, the group said Friday at the IFA electronics trade show here. It will start licensing the technology in the spring or summer of 2015, and the first 4K Blu-ray players should arrive by the holiday-shopping season of that year, said Victor Matsuda, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association global promotions committee.
In 2017, Happy Death Day became an unexpected hit at the box office, thanks to its clever blend of humor and horror, going on to earn more than $125 million on a reported budget of $5 million, and scoring 72 percent positive reviews according to aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The slasher's success led to this year's Happy Death Day 2U, further exploring the adventures of a college student who gets killed over and over, using each new life to uncover the secret of who wanted her dead. The sequel is headed to home video on Digital HD on April 30th and on Blu-ray and DVD on May 14th (pre-orders are live on Amazon now).
Happy Birthday To Me comes to Blu-Ray with a 1080p transfer in its original 1.85:1 that is quite pleasing from Kino Classics. This film previously made appearances on the format over the years from Mill Creek. While I have never seen any of these particular discs, reports from that indicate it is one of the better efforts from that inconsistent company, so we are going to assume this is derived from the same master only presented with a better encode with less compression artifacts. This transfer holds up as a solid representation of the film which shows minimal signs of damage or digital tinkering. You will still see very slight nicks and scratches, but this held up better than we expected.
The home entertainment industry also posted its first positive quarter since the start of the 2008 global economic meltdown, with consumer spending in the third quarter of 2011 actually up from the comparable year-ago period.
After several tough years, the home entertainment industry also has learned to manage its expectations. The gaga days of DVD are over, and Blu-ray Disc, which turned 5 in 2011, never had quite the same impact. But fault lies not with the format, but with a misinterpretation of consumer habits. The glory years of DVD had everyone convinced a nation of renters had become a nation of buyers, and once Blu-ray Disc took hold everyone would buy their libraries all over again.
Netflix continued to make headlines in 2011. As the year began, the once-frosty relationship between the studios and Netflix had thawed to one of grudging acceptance, with most studios holding back new releases in return for lower prices. But while the studios may have holstered their guns, Netflix took a big hit when Starz Entertainment ended content license renegotiations, losing access to movies from Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures Entertainment once the current deal expires next February. A short time later came a self-inflicted wound: an ill-fated attempt to spin off the disc rental segment of its business, which sent its stock price spiraling downward.
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