Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #50: The "Half-Centennial" Edition | August 5, 2008: Welcome to this week's home video release highlights, a column tragically focused entirely on the American market. Sorry, rest of the world. Region locks are the home video industry's way of saying they still don't understand the Internet.
Roundup by VsRobot | Posted August 7, 2008
Out This Week
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The Counterfeiters As the tide of World War II started to turn against Nazi Germany, the Nazis hatched a plot to flood the economies of their war enemies with counterfeit bills, destabilizing their markets and filling up Germany's flagging war coffers. This film is the true story of the concentration camp prisoners enlisted to create the phony bills. They faced a choice: Cooperate with the Nazis and spend their days in the camps in relative comfort, with enough food to eat and comfortable beds to sleep in, or sabotage the operation and face certain death. Based on a true story.
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Nim's Island Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) lives on an island with her father and is obsessed with a fictional Indiana Jones-like hero named Alex Rover. When her father disappears, she contacts "Alex Rover" for help, not realizing that "Alex" is actually agoraphobic author Alexandra, played by Jodie Foster. Now Alexandra must conquer her fear to help the young girl, and Abigail must hatch increasingly elaborate plans to keep a cruise ship full of fat Americans from docking on her island. Directed squarely at the kid audience, Nim's Island seems to be a fairly well-regarded family flick, so if that suits your needs have at it.
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Starship Troopers 3: Marauder It can't be as bad as Starship Troopers 2, can it? I was sure that terrible film would bury this "franchise." Based on the trailer for this one, it seems this direct-to-video sequel is looking to recapture the over-the-top, satirical patriotism of the first film, but it comes off as forced and cloying. I certainly don't want to watch two hours of bad, me-too satire interspersed with terrible CG insects.
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Speaking of the terrible second Starship Troopers, the only way to purchase it on Blu-ray is to buy the three-pack. I strongly advice against it -- the first and third movies are available individually, and really, the first is probably the only one you'd want to own anyway. Verhoeven's American films aren't for everyone (he directed Robocop, the original Starship Troopers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls) but I'm a fan. This week also sees BD releases of the BBC series Robin Hood and the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove.
Housekeeping
Cover art courtesy of Amazon. I'd buy that for a dollar! Follow me on Twitter. You can also e-mail me at vsrobot [dot] blog [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for reading!