"Hey, watch your mouth you dumb friggin' Swede."
Ah, that's better.
We just got back from SD last night so I'm trying to get everything back in action. We had a nice visit with my ever-expanding family, though poor Lando was a stress-basket much of the time; he's scared to death of fireworks. Poor pup. Being around some of my nieces/nephews also wore him out!
I haven't watched all that much lately, but did manage to watch Valkyrie (2008) on BD last week. OK, so this isn't a really good movie but I was curious enough to check it out as a rental and it was worth one of my Netflix slots at least. It's really pretty well put together with the supporting cast outdoing Tom Cruise much of the time. Tom can, in the right role, pull off good performances but I just didn't really buy this one. It's not that he is bad or overdoes his performance; I just didn't get a good sense of the character.
The motivations in general seem a bit suspect to me. The film implies that von Stauffenberg and the others were motivated partly by the human rights violations being perpetrated by Hitler and co. These people were, at least the way I understand it, driven to this very risky act by the belief that Hitler was destroying their Germany with his failing military maneuvers, to the point where they felt the nation and their places in its aristocracy were directly threatened.
However, the story is told with a minimum of unneeded flourish or gratuitous action sequences. The period costumes and props seemed right, plus the film shot much of the footage on the actual locations. So, it might be worth a rent if you're interested in this sort of thing. As I expect, the BD image/sound was great. I didn't look at the bonuses.
On to this week's new stuff:
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944)
The Deep (1977) New to BD.
Grumpy Old Men New to BD, and unless you want to watch it on Laserdisc, the only way to catch it in widescreen.
Knowing (2008) Also on BD.
Lonely are the Brave (1962)
Mystery Science Theater 3000: XV
Night Train (2009) Also on BD.
Push (2009) Also on BD
The Unborn (2009) Also on BD.