Smokin' Aces (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD] dvd movie.|
Smokin' Aces (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD] buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $39.98 Our Price: $19.95 You Save: $20.03 Features • Anamorphic • Color • Dolby • Subtitled • Widescreen In Theaters : 26 January, 2007 DVD Release : 17 April, 2007 |
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Smokin' Aces (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD] description A frantic and frequently amusing cocktail of Tarantino cool and Hong Kong bullet ballet, Joe (Narc) Carnahan's Smokin' Aces delivers some inspired moments of action and dark comedy in its dizzying-comic book plot about a rogue's gallery of killers on the hunt for a mob informer. At the core of Carnahan's bloody shaggy-dog tale is Buddy Israel (Jeremy Piven, offering a more desperate take on his standard hustler persona), a Vegas magician who's turned informant against the mobsters who have treated him as their personal entertainment. Wishing to close Buddy's overactive mouth permanently, the mob capo puts a bounty on the two-bit showman's head, and a horde of hitmen descends on Buddy's digs to claim the prize. The unholy crew of gunmen offer the movie's most inspired (and outlandish) moments, with R&B singer Alicia Keys (as a cool, Foxy Brown-esque assassin), Nestor Carbonell (as a torture-minded sadist), Ben Affleck and Peter Berg (low-key bail bondsmen) and Chris Pine (the leader of a trio of semi-savage brothers) among the more memorable villains. Ryan Reynolds, Ray Liotta, and Andy Garcia represent the other side of the coin as FBI agents determined to get to Buddy before the legion of doom, and the clashes between both factions produce some eye-popping gunplay. If there's any complaint to be made about Smokin' Aces, it's that the tone shifts between action-drama and hipster comedy feel forced (Carnahan struck a firmer balance between the two in his 1998 indie effort, Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane), but the performances and shootout set pieces, as well as Carnahan's hyperactive camera work, do much to make those transitions palatable. Eagle-eyed audience members will note the presence veteran scene stealers Curtis Armstrong (Ray), David Proval (The Sopranos), and Alex Rocco (The Godfather's Moe Green) in supporting roles. -- Paul Gaita |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Smokin' Hot |
| In Sum: Smokin' Hot
Should you Buy? Yes Smokin' Aces is the second most appropriately violent movie, next to Clockwork Orange. Written and Directed by Joe Carnahan, Smokin' Aces is the complicated story of a second-rate magician with a large bounty apparently on his head for selling out his crime lord friends to the FBI. The cast is great, Jeremy Piven, Andy Garcia and the brutally sexy Alicia Keys - who by the way has some great legs (I did not know this). It is an entertaining movie you will think in some respects was directed by Quenten Tarantino - but wasn't. It falls just short of Resservoir Dogs and Fight Club in terms of script and direction, but fits perfectly next to those movies on your shelf, if organized by Genre and then quality. Maybe you go alpha, I don't know, my system is kind of random ... like this post. As for the HD quality - It looks like this film was made for an HD picture. The shots were great and when necessary, large in scope. Jeremy Piven's character gets put through the wringer in this movie and the close-ups of his face truly revealed how stressed this character was. Adding to the effect was the detail that HD allows. I cannot see this deatil in an SD format. Similarly, Alicia Keys' thighs looked really good in HD - rawr. Ultimately, Being a bloodbath, this movie needed the details that a high resolution picture allows. At certain times my wife had to turn her head away from the carnage. I have never seen her do that before, and I doubt an SD picture would have the same effect. Ultimately, this was one of the best non-effects based HD DVDs I think I have ever seen. That said, as I watch more and more HD DVD, I find myself looking for effects based movies. Regardless, this picture is great - thank goodness its a Universal HD DVD. As for the audio: spot on as our friends across the pond would say. Seriously spot on. Crime dramas can be very effectively mastered in HD audio, like Smokin' Aces and Miami Vice. The audio mix added to the environment and was very well mastered. Amazingly, this HD DVD had a very cool menu animation and employed U-Control. U-Control is Universal's use of HDi to display extra film information in a Picture-in-Picture format - a feature that is lacking on Pre-Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players. So far the implementation has been spotty. I can, however, attest that the U-Control feature in this HD DVD is awesome, providing information otherwise found by using IMDB and the internets'. After experiencing this U-control HD DVD, I re-watched Miami Vice paying special attention to the U-Control features. It really is a new movie experience; one exclusive to HD DVD. Enjoy. |
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