CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Blu-Ray Review: 20th Anniversary of Powerful ‘Thelma & Louise’
CHICAGO – Can you believe that Ridley Scott’s “Thelma & Louise” is twenty years old? Me neither. Well, almost twenty. It’s really going to be two decades old in May and it’s next year’s Oscars that will mark the 20th anniversary of its win for Best Original Screenplay and other multiple nominations including Director and nods for both of its leads, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. All three lost to the wave of “The Silence of the Lambs” but it’s easy to see now that it was probably a close vote total for at least one of the two ladies.
Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
“Thelma & Louise” has held up remarkably well and is probably an even better film than you remember. The feminist revenge angle took center stage when the film went through its time in the spotlight and that’s clearly still a big part of its appeal but this is also an amazing character study brought to life by two of the best actresses of the time. And it’s a great road movie with a surreal, fantasy edge made even more prominent by the legendary original ending. However you read “Thelma & Louise” and whatever it means to you, it’s a great movie, one of the best of the early ’90s.
Thelma and Louise was released on Blu-Ray on February 8th, 2011
Photo credit: MGM
Now, the Blu-ray is another story. The transfer is high quality but the special features are all imports. There should be a law against anniversary editions that don’t offer a single new piece of bonus material. The commentaries are excellent but fans of the movie will have heard them before. Would it have been too hard to put together a retrospective featurette? Maybe for the 30th anniversary. Time flies.
Synopsis:
“Directed by action master Ridley Scott (Hannibal, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) from an Oscar-winning screenplay by Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise is an “exhilarating” (The Washington Post), full-throttle adventure hailed as one of the best road movies of all time!
Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis star as accidental outlaws on a desperate flight across the Southwest after a tragic incident at a roadside bar. With a determined detective (Harvey Keitel) on their trail, a sweet-talking hitchhiker (Brad Pitt) in their path and a string of crimes in their wake, their journey alternates between hilarious, high-speed thrill ride and empowering personal odyssey even as the law closes in.”
Special Features:
o Audio Commentary by Director Ridley Scott
o Audio Commentary by Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, and Writer Callie Khouri
o Thelma & Louise: The Last Journey
o Original Theatrical Featurette
o Extended Ending with Director’s Commentary
o Deleted and Extended Scenes
o Multi-Angle Storyboard: The Final Chase
o “Part of You, Part of Me” Music Video by Glenn Frey
By BRIAN TALLERICO |