Lost in Thailand (Blu-ray Review)
March 15th, 2014 by Gerard Iribe
Smashing every box office record to date, LOST IN THAILAND is the highest-grossing film in China’s history. Two rival businessmen (Xu Zheng and Huang Bo) must track down their boss at a Buddhist temple to secure a patent on a revolutionary new fuel additive. Xu catches the first plane to Bangkok, where his plans are delayed by the happy-go-lucky Wang (Wang Baoqiang), an unexpected travel companion who will open his eyes to life’s true priorities. Continue reading ‘Lost in Thailand (Blu-ray Review)’
Coming in late last year, with some small hopes at awards possibilities was Scott Cooper’s Out Of The Furnace. The Crazy Heart director followed up his Oscar winning film with a gloom and doom tale regarding a family of mill workers in North Braddock and an underground illegal gambling fight scene. The film surprisingly (in this day and age) had an opening weekend all to itself upon release. However, it was caught during a juggernaut run of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen dominating the box office and barely made a spark. And come awards time it received no recognition. Although, I’ll argue below, that Christian Bale was far better here than he was in the film he was actually nominated for in the Best Actor category of the Oscars. 
At last, after months of waiting since last Christmas, I was able to view my favorite movie of last year, Wolf of Wall Street, in the privacy of my own home. As expected, once again, it did not let me down. I re-experienced 3 hours of pure enjoyment. That’s right, I said 3 hours of enjoyment once again!!! Even without popcorn and an Icee! Martin Scorsese has truly outdone himself with this film. Clocking in at an impressive 179 minutes, Wolf of Wall Street has set a record as Mr. Scorsese’s longest fictional film by beating out Casino by a mere one minute. Wolf is, in my opinion, by far the director’s most exciting film in years. Second runner up would be The Departed, but that’s a different story and review all together. Looking back, how this film did not get a NC-17 rating is beyond me as Scorsese has pushed the boundaries of the R-rating to the absolute limits with a combination of drugs, strippers, sex, depravity and oh so much more. 
You may have heard about In Fear just a tad if you’ve been a loyal Why So Blu? reader. It’s a unique take on the home invasion subgenre of horror, that was a pretty big hit over at Sundance. Anchor Bay has been pretty excited to be the home distributor for the film and has been pumping the hype machine for quite some time. Now, its finally here and we can see what all this hub bub is about. I liked what I was reading from the early pressers, so I wanted to go in blind as possible. I know I had been posting clip after clip, but I had no idea what I was posting as I didn’t want a single bit of it spoiled for me upon my viewing. So now we get to the nitty gritty and I finally get to share with you my experience with In Fear. Did it hold up or live up to its hype? Read on to see if how I went with this motorized tale of terror. 
In 2010, Easy Money or Snabba Cash released and became a pretty solid success. It got the attention of people for actor Joel Kinnaman, who had a terrific attention-getting performance of ‘JW’ in the first film. JW was a college kid who was taxi driving/drug dealing his way through school while schmoozing rich kids to try and be accepting by doing their papers and homework. The film was filled with suspense, some crazy intensity and plenty of doublecross. It had some wonderfully realized characters and focused on 3 very different characters that you both loved and couldn’t trust the whole time. It took some surprising turns and always kept you at attention. So, it was with great pleasure to see what they did to continue this series as its now become a trilogy. Today we check out the second installment, Easy Money: Hard To Kill or the much more fun to say title – Snabba Cash II. 
Disney animation made a sweeping return to form and comeback in 2013 with Frozen. The film is now the winner of 2 Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature (the other for Best Original Song for “Let It Go”). Not only did the film receive high praise and reviews from critics, but it was a sensation globally. Just last weekend the film crossed the 1 billion dollar mark at the global box office (and the film still hasn’t opened in Japan yet). That leaves only Toy Story 3 ahead of it in terms of animated films all time box office (without adjusting for inflation), making it then the highest grossing animated non sequel of all time. So yeah, this movie was pretty huge. And I’m pretty honored to be covering it for Why So Blu? today! 
Once upon a time there was a boy, who in the early nineties became infatuated with the world of martial arts. As a small, skinny and frail boy, who grew up in a culture with heroes like Chuck Norris and even Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid films with bullies abound, he wanted nothing more than to protect himself and most importantly, be respected. His whole world changed when a meat butcher at his part time grocery store job asked him if he ever saw Bloodsport. Being the naive and gullible kid he was, constantly protected by his parents, of course the kid’s immediate answer to that question was no, what is Bloodsport? Well thankfully, Billy (R.I.P.) let him borrow his copy on VHS and history was written as the boy went onto to fight in tournaments and earn belts in Kenpo karate, kick priests in tae kwon do and flip college students in aikido, which by far was my favorite one to practice. 
While Scream Factory likes to boast “Rate R For Retro” as a tagline, once in a while they do offer up a piece of modern horror to shake things up. This year, so far, they already have four of them slated for release, three of those leading up to summer. The first of the these 2014 modern outputs is Larry Fassenden’s Beneath. I had heard a pretty solid buzz about this one from horror circles around the web, but it didn’t play anywhere near me (it’s a very small film), so I was patiently awaiting it on the home format somehow. I kind of kept in the dark, aside from knowing it was a giant fish movie. To my pleasant surprise, Scream Factory got their paws on it and made it a part of their 2014 slate. Scream Factory and I tend to have a lot of the same tastes, so when they select a modern title for release it instantly grabs my attention and has me pretty excited to check the title out. 
After seeing the trailer a couple months back I will admit that I was really looking forward to this one. I mean who doesn’t like space exploration movies, right? I am a huge fan of those myself. When I found out The Last Days on Mars was on the front doorstep today I couldn’t wait to get home and watch it. My boyfriend, however, did not share my same level of excitement for the movie after he read so many negative reviews. In fact, that is to put it mildly. He was down right upset about having to sit through it, but of course he would sacrifice 90 minutes for me. So with that being said I should have known from the moment the Blu-ray jammed up our PS4 for the first time ever before we even hit play, causing him to have to reboot the whole system, that this was going to be a disaster. I guess I am not very good subtle hints, huh? However, I didn’t let that little mishap damper my spirits. As of late I have been trying to be a cup half full kinda person. Okay, lets get into it shall we? 
The second film in Marvel’s “Phase 2”, Thor: The Dark World, is coming your way on Blu-ray. I was a bigger fan than most on the original Thor, and I really think that film was a good set up with the characters and introduction to the Thor-verse to take it to another level with this second film. Those who may not have taken kindly to the first film or felt it wasn’t what they wanted might be more pleasantly surprised with this second visit to Asgard. And that they did this second time around. Everybody returns to gives us a solid, fun sci-fi/fantasy adventure complete with that wonderful Hemsworth smile. Cool enough too, it also gives us our first little sneak peak at the upcoming Guardians Of Galaxy as Thor’s world is the most natural gateway into that. 
