August 2015 - Black Dog Video

Black Dog Newsletter August 24 to 31 “Almost End of Summer Edition!”

August 25, 2015/0 Comments/in Newsletter/by Darren

5 sheets to the wind.

It seems that there’s a doins a transpiring over at Cambie this weekend. Drop by the hood to take in some super fun things such as games, BMX stunts, music from musicians such as these fine young gentlemen and their nifty vests, face painters, stilt-walkers, a fight club and maybe even some mime slapping (not to sure about those last two, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed). Fun for the whole family! To join in on the festivities we’re going to offer a fabulous deal – rent any two DVDs or Blu Rays and get a third (of equal or lesser value) for free! Yee-haw! Hope to see all of your lovely faces out on Saturday.

New Releases

Adult Beginners – Funny guy Nick Kroll loses his job in Manhattan so he moves in with his estranged sister and becomes their nanny. Hilarity, I presume, ensues because there’s nothing funnier than a guy trying to change a diaper and feed a baby, right?

Aloha – Cameron Crowe continues his slide into mediocrity with this comedy/drama about some good looking people with nice teeth – Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams – doing and saying things in Hawaii. Whatever happened to the guy that made Say Anything and Almost Famous?

Big Game – The President of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson) is riding along on Air Force One when it gets shot down and crashes in the woods. Luckily for him he crashes near a helpful teenager who saves him and helps him fight some bad guys. Ludicrous fun for the whole family (except children).

Boychoir – Misfit 11 year-old joins a choir full of boys (Boychoir!), for some reason, where he runs into a mean, challenging choirmaster. Sounds a little like Whiplash but with less drums.

Cub – Cool looking horror film from Belgium finds a little dude, who is constantly picked on by the kids in his scout camp, going into the woods to see if the local legend about a monster is true. What do you think, does he find it or do they just sit around the campfire eating smores and singing songs about drunken sailors?

Good Kill – Ethan Hawke is a drone pilot (I thought that they were pilotless?) who starts to have questions about the ethics of his job. What, the job of dropping bombs on folks in distant lands from the comfort of your office, or den or swimming pool?

Lila & Eve – Viola Davis and J-Lo are a couple of moms who go on a rampage of revenge after their kids are gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Think Death Wish Charles Bronson but with less moustaches and inaudible grunting.

Walking Dead Season 5 – More zombies trying to eat the brains of the boring, unlikable folks who are still alive and having relationship problems.

Coming Next Week

Mad Max: Fury Road
Portlandia Season 5
Bessie
Boulevard
Curse of Downers Grove
Dior and I
Glen Campbell: I’ll be Me
Lost After Dark
Star Wars Rebels Season 1

Black Dog Newsletter August 17th to 23rd “Dog Days Edition!”

August 18, 2015/0 Comments/in Newsletter/by Darren

Future’s so bright…

I guess that we’re into, what Shakespeare or Tolstoy or E.L. James called, the dog days of summer – endless dry and hot days bleeding into one anotherr, endless clear (when nothing is on fire) blue skies, endless sweaty body parts (you know which ones). I, for one, am looking forward to the fall and the nice crisp autumn air. And with the change in seasons comes a healthier release schedule for new films. This summer has offered a pretty blasé selection of titles. Bear with us but also remember we have lots of great older releases and the best selection of catalogue films around. Here’s a link to some recommendations if you dare…

New Releases

The Family Belier – Feely good film from France finds a family where all are deaf except for the big sister who also has a great singing voice. She is offered a chance to go to a prestigious music school but will she leave her family who depend on her to communicate with the talking world? Drama, a dash of comedy, some good-time feels and much singing and music, I presume, ensue.

The Knick Season 1 – Excellent TV fare looks at New York’s famous Knickerbocker Hospital and the lives of the nurses, doctors and patients who work and die there at the turn of the 20th century. What the heck is a Knickerbocker anyways? Let me just look that up. Just a sec…a-hah! A Knickerbocker is someone from New York. Really, that’s it? So the New York Knicks basketball team is essentially just the New York New Yorkers. Pretty lazy and unimaginative. Almost like having a football league with only eight teams and two of those teams are called Roughriders.

Lambert & Stamp – Cool-looking doc about a pair of aspiring filmmakers who came together in the 60’s to accidentally help produce (classic rock band) The Who. You may have heard of them. Word has it that this film is a gas, a groovy freak-out of a doc, man. Outta-sight!

Museum Hours – A museum guard befriends a lonely traveler and they have a swell time looking at art and shit and talking and stuff about things. Despite that in-depth description (or maybe because of it), I’ve heard that this is a very good film.

Orphan Black Season 3 – More clones! More excitement! More drama! Clones! I have to get back into this series. I’ve seen the first season and thought it was quite excellent. I love clones. If you could clone yourself, what would you do? Vacation? Start a fight club? Threesomes? The possibilities are endless.

Police Story: Lockdown – Old and weathered Jackie Chan is back to deal with some uppity hostage-taking bad guys. Isn’t he getting a tad long-in-the-tooth for this nonsense. Him and Liam Neeson and Arnold and Sly and Bruce and…

Coming Next Week

Cub
Open Grave
Aloha
Big Game
Boychoir
Good Kill
Lila & Eve
Portlandia Season 5
Walking Dead Season 5

Black Dog Newsletter August 10th to 16th “What’s Old is New Edition”

August 11, 2015/0 Comments/in Newsletter/by Darren

Hello, remember me?

Remember VHS (or even what VHS stood for)? They were those bulky, unwieldy cassettes that you had to be kind and rewind? Well it seems that they might be making a resurgence of sorts. I was working at the Commercial store last Thursday when these two hippity-hoppity blokes strut in – you know the type; baggy jeans, gold chains, stiff baseball caps worn slightly askew, the kind of guys who move their arms up and down when they talk. With smirks on their smug faces they ask if we had any VHS. “Aren’t I hilarious?!” one of them barks. My reply, “You’re the third ones today to ask for VHS so, no, you’re not hilarious”. They asked what we had on VHS. I picked up a handful of the, maybe 30, incredibly dusty tapes that we still have, “Pride and Prejudice, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (which I actually rented out the previous week) and Latcho Drom,” For some reason they weren’t all that interested. Not too sure what they were looking for, probably something with Wesley Snipes in it. Is VHS going to make a comeback similar to records? Are they popular with the punks and hipsters and such these days? Weird. What’s old is new again.

New Releases

Beyond the Lights – This film will help you with all the feels you could ever want! The pressures of fame are keeping budding superstar “Noni” down. Then she meets a buff, handsome policeman who gives her the strength and courage to follow her dreams. Is there anything cops can’t do?

The Comeback S1 and 2 – Most amazingly excellent HBO show stars Lisa Kudrow as an ex A-list celebrity attempting a comeback (see title) by going the reality TV route. This show is somewhat of a comeback itself as it aired for one season back in ’05 and then a second season aired last year. Get on this!

The Dead Lands – Action packed Maori mayhem finds the teenage son of a slain Maori chief avenging his death. Expect lots of gory, bloody, good-time revenging.

Hot Pursuit – Yawner of a comedy finds uptight Reese Witherspoon’s cop transporting freewheeling sultry Sophia Vergara’s mob boss widow somewhere for some reason while being pursued by… sorry I nodded off there a bit..pursued by some bad guys who want to…zzzzzz

A Little Chaos – Stuffy-looking romance between two landscapers who are toiling away on Louis XIV’s garden at Versailles. Kate Winslet, I believe, is one of the landscape folks. When I had a job back in my teens as a landscape guy I referred to myself as a landscape artist or technician. Just because. No romance for me in those days though. Just mosquito bites and quiet despair.

Rick and Morty Season 1 – Greatly excellent animated TV show about a brilliant scientist and his dim-bulb grandson. I assume that they many exploits and adventures. All hilarious. All the time.

Robot Overlords – Hello, best title ever! Robots have conquered the earth and anyone who goes outside gets vaporized. That would really put a crimp in the video store business. Luckily a group of plucky teenagers is on hand to save the day. From the dude who made the very entertaining Grabbers.

Schitt’s Creek S1 – After reading the first line in the synopsis “Filthy rich video store magnet, Johnny Rose…” I had to get this. Its either science fiction or absurd comedy as those words don’t really make sense to me. I’ve heard very good things about this Canadian TV show starring Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara that finds said video store baron relocating to the title town to regroup after his vast video store empire crumbles. I need to watch this to get some pointers.

Suite Francaise – Just after France is occupied by those no-goodnick Nazis, romance is in the air (bet you weren’t expecting me to say that) involving a lovely young French lass and a hunky German soldier who’s billeting at their abode. Ooh-la-la.

One Thousand Times Goodnight – War photographer Juliette Binoche (Juliette Bingo Ho according to Google translate) is at odds with her dangerous job and her beardy husband, Jamie Lannister, who wants her to give up her fingernail biting profession. What will she choose, exciting job or hairy husband?

Unfriended – Scary stuff is lurking on some teens internets on their computers (cause that’s where you find the internets these days) as a nasty spirit invades a chat room using their dead friends account. Always clear your cache is the lesson to be learned here. Supposed to actually be a pretty good little horror number.

Vic & Flo Saw a Bear – A couple of lesbian ex-cons settle in some backwater Quebec town only to find that things aren’t quite what they seem. “The bears are not what they seem”, someone might have said at some time. Winner, not un-ironically, of the Silver Bear award at the 2013 Berlin Film Fest.

Coming Next Week

Cub

Famille Belier

Lambert & Stamp

Mississippi Grind

Open Grave

Orphan Black S 3

Black Dog Newsletter for Week August 3rd to 9th

August 4, 2015/2 Comments/in Newsletter/by Darren

RIP Rowdy Roddy Piper. You’ll always Live on…

We’ve just set out scads of Blu Rays and DVDs – we only do things in scads – for sale at the Commercial Drive store for only $5 each! Whatadeal! Drop by to scoop up some fabulous films for dirt cheap. There will be more to come and we’ll be doing the same at Cambie real soon. Stay tuned. If you want to stay even better tuned, follow us on the facebook, twitter and instagram – black_dog_video (sorry about the underscore, the robot in my phone did that). We’ll be posting photos, updates and many interesting and amusing things. And keep you eyes peeled (figuratively, not literally) for our new blog. I’ll be putting it together over the next week or so. Good times await thou.

New Releases

The Affair Season 1 – McNulty is a teacher that has an affair with a waitress while staying in the Hamptons. Following the horny couple as they destroy their families and friends!

Area 51 – Another found footage horror film from the Paranormal Activity guy (I’m actually a big fan of that series) about some dudes who come across some shady doings and goings on at the famed military base in Nevada. I went there once. We stopped at a bar – A’Le’Inn – where some guys were going over a large map they had spread out on the pool table of Area 51, pointing out where they thought the aliens were housed. We had a beer and left.

Casual Vacancy – Adaptation of a JK Rowlings story (sorry no wizards to be seen here) about the shady doings and goings on in a small town after the death of a parish council member. Sounds hilariously intriguing.

Child 44 – Sweet cast – Hardy (who’s in pretty much everything these days), Oldman and Noomi Rapace (love saying that name) propel this murder mystery set in the old timey Soviet Union. Remember when it was called the USSR and they were all scary-like and then Sting sung about how they loved their children too and made everything less scary? Is there anything that Sting can’t do?

Far From The Madding Crowd – What is a madding crowd? Shouldn’t it be maddening? Is it a fancy British word or a town or something? I hate crowds as I find them quite madding. I mean maddening. Anyhoo, this latest, and quite excellent, adaptation from Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) stars the lovely and amazing Cary Mulligan as the wonderfully named Bathsheba Everdene (no relation to Katniss).

Insurgent – Part two of the three (or four, who knows?) of the “Gent” series (Divergent being the first one and Detergent, I believe, being the last) set in a dystopian future where hungry kids have to fight each other in an arena setting…wait that’s that another dystopian series where teenagers have to save the world…

The Salvation – The amazing Mads Mikkelsen stars in this violent western as a guy who must hunt down the nasty fellows who killed his family. The lovely Eva Green is also along for the ride. Don’t make Mads mad! Or madding.

True Story – James Franco and Jonah Hill star in this thriller where a killer (either Franco or Hill) takes the identity of a disgraced reporter (either Franco of Hill). Don’t know if it’s based on a “true story” or not. Sounds like (by the title only) as if it might be a combination of True Detective and Toy Story.

Wild Horses – Another western and another James Franco movie. Weird week. This one is about a detective who opens up an old missing persons case when he believes the boy to be murdered. Also stars old and crusty Robert Duvall and Josh Hartnett as a wooden cigar store Indian.

Coming Next Week!

Hot Pursuit
Police Story: Lockdown
Robot Overlords
Schitt’s Creek
Suite Franchise
Unfriended

Video Store on Commercial Drive

Memberships are here!

Where To?

Search

Archive for month: August, 2015

New Releases

Coming Next Week

Recently Viewed and Recommended

New Releases

Coming Next Week

Recently Viewed and Recommended

New Releases

Coming Next Week

Recently Viewed and Recommended

New Releases

Coming Next Week!

Recently Viewed and Recommended

Video Store on Commercial Drive

Memberships are here!

Where To?

Search