Black Dog Newsletter for Week Ending April 11th

So it seems that a few of you out there have been wondering what ever happened to the online catalogue portion of our website. Well, I’ll tell you what happened…way back in the day we were working towards having our entire inventory online. It was a huge undertaking (from my point of view) with having to manually add each title, year it was made, country of origin, director and a featured actor. We printed out a copy of the inventory and then took turns entering the data. We made it about half way through until one of our staff (no names mentioned here) lost the copy of the inventory. It was then that we put the kibosh on the entire affair. Enter the new site. Since we only had maybe 50% of the catalogue online, I decided to scrap that portion of the website. That said I am contemplating redoing it. I would like to find a better method than individually entering each of the 10,000 titles we have as I think I’ll probably be in my grave before it’s completed. Stay tuned.

And another reminder of our fabulous deals; Sunday to Thursday – 2 films (one old, one new or two old) for $7.00 or two New flicks for $10.00. Wednesday you can grab 5 old titles for a paltry $8.00. And don’t forget our great deal pre-paid punch cards – you get 10 films (new or old) for only $35.00! Holy hotdogs!

New Releases for Tuesday April 5th

Crime D-Amour – Sexy French corporate thriller finds sexy boss Kristen Scott Thomas making life difficult for her sexy underling Ludivine Sagnier (remember her from the sexy Swimming Pool?) French + sexy = well, you decide.

Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader – I guess this is the second film in the trilogy about a talking lion and a witch and maybe some sort of magical wardrobe? Not too sure, haven’t seen the films or read the books but if you know about this dreadfully titled ditty then have at it. Also on Blu Ray.

La Nostra Vida – Great Italian film about a family and their struggles to live in modern day Rome. When the dad discovers a body on the construction site that he works, he doesn’t report it for fear of the work coming to a halt. Complications (of course) ensue.

Little Fockers – Oh why do these things exist and why must I bring this kind of dreck into the store? Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro and the rest of the cast should be made to go to everyone’s house a give them a foot massage as penance for making this film. Actually if you want to read an interesting article written by another video store owner about this type of dilemma and just the general state of this business check out this article…http://thefilmbuff.com/grown-ups-and-little-fockers-2010
My favorite line – Little Fockers is about half as funny as Joseph Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad (1993) and twice as depressing. And no, I did not get the blu ray.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie – Whew, that’s good because I’m getting a little tired of all of the Bigfoot movies inundating the screens nowadays. Actually I can’t think of one Bigfoot film. So, in reality, I could be pleased with a typical Bigfoot movie. But I digress…While yes the is some Bigfoot hunting in this film, it’s really about the friendship forged between a couple of dudes in a small, dying Ohio steel town. Looks pretty cool. Not your typical documentary.

The Taqawacores – Interesting sounding little film about a Muslim dude growing up in Buffalo NY (poor bastard) where he meets other Muslims who are into Taqawacore – a hardcore, Muslim punk rock scene that only exists out west. Drama, hilarity, punk rock partying and such, presumably, ensue.

Tron – The new Tron subtitled Legacy or Destiny or Overindulgent or Heritage or Reckoning or Vs Predator or something. What it has going for it – it’s very cool looking with a fantastic soundtrack by Daft Punk but that’s about it. A couple of Jeff Bridges – one current – looks kinda like the dude but with nicer, more futuristic clothes, and one computer generated Jeff Bridges trying to make him look 25 years younger – he looks really creepy and waxy, star in this sequel to the mediocre sci-fi film from years gone by. I don’t really understand what these films were about and they try hard at the exposition but it’s all silly. And why do they have to fill the roles of the handsome young guy with all of these cookie-cutter jarhead type of guys that all look and act the same and everyone will forget five minutes after watching the film? Anyways that’s kinda my two cents – looks cool but evaporates from the brain as soon as the credits role. On the blu-ray as well.

Coming Next Week

• Highwater
• I Am You
• Let Him Be
• Looking for Palladin
• Re-Cut
• Summer in Genoa
• Summer Lover
• Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen
• Affaire Farewell

Recently Viewed and Recommended

• Black Swan
• La Nostra Vida
• Little Fockers – Ha! Just kidding.
• Nurse Jackie S 2
• Californication S 3
• Mad Men S 4
• Treme S 1
• Meserine
• Jackass 3
• The Fighter

Internets, Great Job!

Here’s a fine article from the Onion (of course) about their favorite scenes from films from the 80’s. Yeah, Oldboy! Are there any of your favorites that they left out? For me there’s the scene from There Will Be Blood where the oil rig explodes and has that great music from the guy from Radiohead, the getaway scene from Children of Men, the opening and actually many scenes from City of God…http://www.avclub.com/articles/our-favorite-film-scenes-of-the-00s,35888/2/

If you have and iPhone and have ever been confounded by the auto correct on the text portion of the phone you will probably find these very funny… http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

From the First Weekend Club comes some passes to check out Daydream Nation and other news about Canadian films – http://www.bigbluesafe.com/email/display.php?M=81692&C=b6cb8cd1b1f1e7648778570ec1f4d974&S=869&L=33&N=611

And speaking of bland run-of-the-mill looking dudes getting sweet roles…A film series that I’m looking forward to – The Hunger Games Trilogy – took a step forward by announcing that Jennifer Lawrence will play the lead Katniss but then took two steps backward by giving the two male leads to these dudes…http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/the-hunger-games-movie-hutcherson-hemsworth_n_844554.html

Anyways that’s it for this week. Enjoy the rain and the great movies to be found at your local video store (hope that it’s Black Dog!)

Black Dog Video