SARAH JESSICA PARKER   DENNIS QUAID   CHRISTINE LAHTI

THOMAS HADEN CHURCH   and   ELLIOT PAGE      

and   

STEPHEN BALDWIN   AMY PRICE-FRANCIS   JOHN RALSTON

DIRK BENEDICT   and   MATT GORDON

and

FABRICE LUCHINI   ROMAIN DURIS   JOFFREY PLATEL

JULIETTE BINOCHE   and   AUDREY MARNAY

star in

SMART PEOPLE   and   EARTHSTORM

and   PARIS ( French language with English sub-titles)

** NOTE: Property of Icon Film Distribution - Not For Sale or Rental is super-imposed on screen **

2 x DVD - R 4 - PAL - LIKE NEW - FEATURES 3-complete FILMS on the 2-DVD - Video Dealer Preview - M-rated -  95-minutes and 90-minutes and 130-minutes - Colour - 2008 / 2006 and 2008-release - DVD sleeve - see photo

SMART PEOPLE

Lawrence Wetherhold is miserable and misanthropic: he's a widower, a pompous professor at Carnegie Mellon, an indifferent father to a college student and a high-school senior, and the reluctant brother of a ne'er-do-well who's come to town. 

A seizure and a fall send Lawrence to the emergency room where the physician, a former student of his, ends up going on a date with him. 

His daughter, Vanessa, lonely and friendless, who's been bonding with his brother, tries to sabotage dad and the doctor's relationship, but Lawrence is good at that without help. 

Is there any way these smart people can get a life? Can happiness be pursued beneath layers of irony?

Smart People had a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's far better than that. 

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennie Quaid) is a "holier than thou" widowed professor you unfortunately meet once in awhile. He's the sort who's deeply invested in his subject but can neither make it accessible nor allow the students any time to discuss it. He's a brilliant asshole essentially.

 He meets a physician in a hospital after a head injury and begins to re-evaluate his life and his happiness. He has a dead-beat brother-in-law (Thomas Haden Church who steals every scene he's in), a daughter (Ellen Page) who is a young Ann Coulter in the making, and a son (Ashton Holmes) to whom he never talks.

This film is quite funny! 

Page and Church were definitely the stand-outs, but I appreciated Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker, two actors who I rarely ever have liked. 

It deals with a couple familiar rom-com problems (pregnancy, the "other woman" thing), but the film never feels overly sentimental or cliché. 

It's satisfying watching Quaid's character get some richly deserved socks to the stomach once in awhile, but you're with him anyway by the end. 

The humor is a little on the biting cold side, which goes well with my tastes, maybe not with some. 

Smart People overstays it's welcome a bit near the end, but a good movie overall.

EARTHSTORM

An asteroid hits the Moon, causing fissures in its crust and sends a chunk hurtling toward Earth. 

Even worse is the threat that larger pieces will break off which could obliterate whole cities on impact. 

With the Moon out of sync, strange weather and huge tidal waves are threatening the population. 

Scientists conclude the only solution is to set nuclear charges on the Moon to implode it and keep it whole. 

The man for the job is demolitions expert, John Redding. Can he succeed in placing the charges correctly before an even larger piece threatens civilization?

This is what I get for being bored on a Monday night. I mean how bad can it be, Steve Baldwin, Dirk Benedict (Starbuck, where ya been). I at least hope they were able to pay their rent for the month after this.

The movie is basically Armagedon but instead of an asteroid we are in peril due to the moon and a fault line which has opened up on its surface. 

The Ed Wood reference is because everything else in the film makes me think that if Ed was still alive and had even the slightest budget this is what he would be making. 

The shuttle set kept making me remember the plane cockpit from Plan 9, except no curtain for a door this time. 

All of the effects have a Nintendo 64 look to them (even a PS2 would be better) or a rip from a Discovery channel special on space travel.

Of the acting I can't really complain, nothing great but nothing overly bad. I was excited at the beginning to see Dirk Benedict acting again but he seems to just come in and out of the film.

In the end I think I laughed more then anything, not something to get worked up about for sure.

Also, not to my country's credit, this is a Canadian film not an American one as the IMDb site states. At the end of the credits it clearly states that it is a Ontario-Quebec co-production (so sad).

PARIS

French language - English sub-titles

Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. 

While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment. 

When Elise, his sister with three kids and no husband, moves in to his place to care for him, Pierre does not change his new habits. 

And instead of dancing himself, it is Paris and the Parisians who dance before his eyes

A wonderfully complex study of both the city, and it's people on a wonderfully complex group of characters. 

Every one was as interesting as any other, regardless of the stature of the actor playing them, and you were invested in them all because of it. 

Juliette Binoche and Albert Dupontel were the most familiar names to me, but their characters were not allowed to dominate the story.

All along the way you were taken on journeys that were un-signposted and shocking, in some cases, because of it.

A quite extraordinary tale that deserves a far wider audience than it is likely to get. Overall the film was a shining example, in my opinion, of what makes French cinema the best in the world.