Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a visual experience that immerses people in the video, music and photography of the film. Through these pages, written passages from the original novel are brought to life and complimented by imagery and video to create a seamless blend of book and film.

We held our giveaway and have picked our winner — April Brenay.  April says, “Love this movie.”

The story is about growing up in 19th century China, Lily (Bingbing Li, The Forbidden Kingdom) and Snow Flower (Gianna Jun, My Sassy Girl) are brought together in a Laotong friendship—a lifelong bond between two women who rely on each other for companionship and comfort. Amid the civil unrest and gender discrimination of the era, the pair deals with life’s hardships together until they are separated by marriage and childbirth. As sworn sisters, however, the women continue to communicate through the secret Chinese language of nushu, hiding their stories and messages within the folds of delicate silk fans.

In present day Shanghai, the Laotong’s descendants Nina (also played by Li) and Sophia (also played by Jun) struggle to maintain the intimacy of their own childhood friendship in the face of demanding careers and complicated love lives. Drawing on lessons of the past, the two modern women must understand the story of their ancestral connection or risk losing one another forever. What unfolds are two stories, generations apart, but everlasting in the notion of love, hope and friendship.

Screenhead finished up its Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 giveaway and our winner is Mildred. Mildred played the quiz game hard and got 3 out of 5 quesitions right.

It always a great time joining up with Warner Bros. to help promote the a movie or giveaway. The release of the final Harry Potter movie still includes this Harry Potter Widget without the contest.

The final face-off between good and evil is finally upon us as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is now available, just in time for the holidays! Join Harry, Ron and Hermione as they do battle against Voldemort in the epic conclusion to the film series!

Screenhead has a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to giveaway. We will be having more giveaways.

Well folks, we’ve got a doozy for you this weekend, as our weekly multi-review tackles a three pack from a wholly different source. Today we turn to the folks from Synapse Cinema, who sent out a sweet set of three Japanese horror titles: Horrors of Malformed Men, Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay, and The World Sinks Except Japan.

Horrors of Malformed Men follows a man who may be going insane…or he may have just experienced something too horrifying to be regarded as anything but the ravings of a lunatic. He’ll chase down his own lookalike in a bid to find out why he even exists, but along the way, he’ll find terrifying things, including a man who takes human beings and turns them into the titular malformed men.

Considering we start out in what looks like an insane asylum where a woman is trying to stab a guy while topless women jump around the attempted murder scene, you know we’re in for a real doozy right here. And when you further consider that this is a work by no less than Japanese monster of horror Teruo Ishii (and right now, Japanese horror buffs are either clapping their hands in glee or groaning in resignation at what we’re about to see), you can figure this will be no less than a serious piece of work. Ishii’s work has always been a little on the weird side, even for Japanese horror, and this one will be no exception. Plenty of things won’t make sense, and more will horrify you beyond all reason, but if you want some serious splatter and you don’t mind being bored for large chunks of a movie (or a couple unusual laughs, strange beyond words for an Ishii title), you’ll have all you need and more right here.

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay is pretty much exactly what the box says, as a meteor lands in Japan and forms a shield of fog around the island, as well as raising the dead on the island. Now a host of zombies is roaming the country, and about to be used for world domination by a corrupt general. But only K-ko, a special agent armed with a bladed, bulletproof leather suit, can shut down the operation and bring life back to Tokyo.

This is one of those great bizarre action / horror hybrids that Japan seems particularly enamored with. Basically, if you liked Junk or Assault Girls, you should find a welcome home right here. If you like your movies to make sense, meanwhile, you may just want to keep right on moving. This is going to strain logic almost gleefully, so take care not to get too deep over your head.

The World Sinks Except Japan gives us an unusual premise–basically, the world has become Waterworld…except now, Dry Land is Japan. With the bulk of the world’s land now under Japanese control, the rest of the world tries to assimilate as best they can, and refugees that fail to blend in sufficiently are arrested. But with another seismic catastrophe in the works, will Japan emerge  near as well as they did previously?

It’s bizarre to say the least–think the John Travolta film White Man’s Burden times a million–and it’s going to really make you think about the nature of geopolitics on Earth. Of course, there’s quite a bit left unexplained (what happened to the various boats out there, for one, though from the look of the destruction they might have been taken out), but what’s here is sufficient enough to spark a whole lot of beer-and-pizza night discussions. It’s weird, it’s wholly unprecedented that I can think of, and it’s something very much worth watching.

And so, there you go–a slate of three great titles from the folks at Synapse Films!

The Blu-ray/DVD release of Water for Elephants from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will hit the streets today. Screenhead has two copies of Water for Elephants to giveaway.

Take a journey back in time with the romantic tale based on Sara Gruen’s New York Times #1 Best-Seller novel of the same name, “Water for Elephants”, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Starring Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line), Robert Pattinson (Twilight series) and Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), the film presents an epic tale of forbidden love in a magical place filled with adventure, wonder and great danger.

Showcasing the decadence of a bohemian circus and the majesty of its animals against the backdrop and beauty of a bygone era, Water for Elephants makes the ideal holiday gift idea for your favorite film buff, fashionista or book-lover!

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winners* November 15, 2011.

U.S. Residents only

We have our winner for the Winne The Pooh Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. I am excited about this giveaway because it returns us to the Hundred Acre Wood for the latest adventure featuring the world’s beloved bear, Winnie The Pooh!
READ ON »

The Dog Who Saved Halloween is a true silly Halloween story released on DVD from the hit Dog Who Saved… original movie series.

Mayim Bialik of “The Big Bang Theory” and Joey Lawrence of “Melissa & Joey” share the screen as they join the film’s pack of top talent as the voices of “ruff” and tough Bernese Mountain Dog Medusa and beloved Labrador Retriever Zeus.

The DVD is now available at all retail stores nationwide. “This latest installment of the ‘Dog’ film series, featuring recognizable talent and filled with engaging magic and mystery is sure to be a hit with families for years to come,” explained Erin Carter, Executive Director of Brand Marketing for Anchor Bay Entertainment.

My daughter finds her favorite four-legged friend Zeus (voiced by Joey Lawrence) and the Bannisters as fun and entertaining as ever in The Dog Who Saved Halloween, an all-new adventure jam-packed with family-friendly thrills and chills!

When George, Belinda and their kids Kara and Ben Bannister move into a new house – just in time for Halloween! – everything seems to be fine…until they notice eerie glowing lights and strange sounds coming from their neighbor’s house where creepy Mr. Cole (Lance Henriksen) lives with his protective pooch Medusa (voiced by Mayim Bialik).

A black cat suddenly goes missing and George Bannister (Gary Valentine) insists on investigating the matter himself – and ultimately enlists an odd yet familiar pair (Dean Cain, Joey Diaz) to help. But after the trio and Belinda Bannister (Elisa Donovan) get trapped inside the spooky house, it’s once again up to Zeus to save the day!

We have pick our winner for the The Dog Who Saved Halloween giveaway.  Suzanne Denys is our winner and she says, “Both of my kids would love this movie. It looks so cute.”

Congratulations Suzanne!

The movie is actually pretty entertaining, and it is cool to see Dean Cain as a foolishly evil person.

We’ve gotten a few requests from the readership for hitting up more movies faster, and as such, we’ve set up a gigantic sort of multi-review, in which we hit up a block of three titles, a little older stuff, to give you a fast look at some of the stuff you may have missed out there. This week’s big old multi-review is brought to you entirely by Lions Gate, who shipped out copies of Dead Alive, Mimic and The Others for us to review.

Dead Alive offers up the story of a terminal momma’s boy who’s about to get a serious shot of growing up when he meets an attractive young woman and fends off a horde of zombies caused by a Sumatran rat monkey infected with some kind of crazy zombie germ.

Basically, Dead Alive is terrific stuff. Not only does it present a lot of bombastic zombie killing action (the part with the lawn mower blows me away every time), but also plenty of laughs. This is excellent stuff for most any crazy party, especially given that we’ve got Halloween coming up on us in rapid fashion.

The Others, meanwhile, managed to give us twisty ending right around the same time M. Night Shyamalan was actually doing it well, by bringing us Nicole Kidman as a prim British matriarch with two children with a wicked light allergy. She’s hired on a new staff of domestics to help out while her husband is away, but they’ve arrived in the midst of some strange things. And once we find out just what’s going on in the house, well, it’s going to really catch you off guard.

The Others, frankly, still stands as one of the great examples of paranormal suspense filmmaking there is out there today. With an ending that may not be conclusive but is a huge surprise, and plenty of good shocks throughout the movie, this is one that will really put a spark in a long, cold fall night.

Lastly, we have Mimic, a movie that will make sure you never look at roaches the same way again. Some genetic engineers, in a bid to defeat a horrible disease, have created something that just may cure it. But they may have traded one doom for another, as their creation takes on a life of its own.

Mimic is a strange sort of title, with an odd sort of light dystopia running through it. It’s interesting enough, to watch one kind of doom get traded for another, and the end result is a little confused but otherwise pretty nicely done.

So there you go, a block of three pretty sweet horror titles that will do a nice job of perking up one of those cold dark nights we’ve got coming up here. Obviously some are better than others, but still, the whole will prove to be solidly done.

I am happy to introduce to you from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Winter In Wartime, which is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. Wartime’s harsh reality encroaches on childhood innocence as Michiel confronts good and evil, courage and duplicity, and his own burden of responsibility. Based on the bestselling novel by Jan Terlouw, I have picked the winner of the one copy of the DVD.

Wayne is our winner and he says, “I have read plenty of books about resistance groups, but have not seen many movies — new Blu-ray player and flat panel. Love to have this movie.”

Flat panel and a new Blu-ray player; it can’t get any better than that!  I hope you really enjoy the movie Wayne; it does look like a good drama.

The story takes place during Nazi-occupied Holland, 1945. In a snow-covered village, thirteen-year-old Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) is drawn into the Resistance when he aids a wounded British paratrooper.

Michiel’s boyish sense of defiance and adventure soon turns to danger and desperation, as Michiel is forced to act without knowing whom to trust among the adults and townspeople around him.

Wartime’s harsh reality encroaches on childhood innocence as Michiel confronts good and evil, courage and duplicity, and his own burden of responsibility. Winter in Wartime is a great movie to watch on a Friday night.

I have three lucky winners for the Neil Young Music Box giveaway!

Vicki Dahlstrom won and she says, “I love Neil Young. I didn’t get to see him when he came to town. The tickets were just too
expensive. So, maybe, if I win, I would get to listen to him at home.”

Yup Vicki. You get to listen to him at home!

Kathy Emerick is our next winner, and she says, “OH.. brings back a lot of memories of Neil Young and the group Crosby, Still and Nash and Young. Wow I would love this.”

Our final winner is Nora Scott-Platt, who sums it up nicely, “I think I have grown old with Neil Young.”

You and me both!

Despite remaining a hugely original singer, songwriter, performer and, let’s face it, human being, across a career spanning almost fifty years, Neil Young has never been immune to the influence of others. This will be of no surprise to anyone with even a hint of interest in the man and his music, but only those who have studied their subject in depth will be aware of the enormous range of artists and genres Neil has both been affected by and drawn inspiration from, much of which, if one knows where to look, is apparent in Young’s incredible catalogue.

This film traces the astonishing musical journey of Neil Young from the day he first heard Elvis to his most recent offerings, via numerous talented artists who assisted in his creation of, arguably, the finest body of work to emerge during the rock era.

Extra features include extended interviews, digital biographies, beyond DVD and more.

Neil Young with Crosby and Nash: Party In The USA
It’s always a treat when Neil Young stops by, and this time David Crosby and Graham Nash were on hand to help him with Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party In The USA.’

Sometimes you look at something and you can’t imagine how anybody could enjoy it. Sometimes you’re convinced that something is going to be a total waste of time and perfectly good effort before you even give it a proper chance. And that’s exactly what I got with The PJs Season One, a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent on for me to review.

The PJs Season One takes us out to the Hilton-Jacobs housing project in the middle of scenic downtown Detroit (or so Amazon tells me–I don’t remember hearing mention of Detroit in the series, at least not here. Hit the comments section and tell me what episode it was in if you caught it.). And if you’ve been to Detroit lately you know how ironic it is to call downtown scenic. While it’s not quite as bad as The PJs portrayed it (or wasn’t back in 1999 when the series first emerged; it’s gotten somewhat worse since then), it still makes a good backdrop for the series. The Hilton-Jacobs project is something of an urban death trap, made worse by the apathy and semicompetence of building superintendent Thurgood “Super” Stubbs. His wife Muriel attempts to keep him on the straight and narrow with her longsuffering good nature, but finds her efforts often derailed by the preposterous cast of characters around her, such as irascible curmudgeon at-large and former thirties grifter Mrs. Avery, obese family the Hudsons (mother and father Hudson can’t actually leave their apartment due to their girth, and son Juicy seems well on his way to joining them), a Haitian vodouisant named Mambo Garcelle (more often simply called “Haiti Lady”) and more besides.

It surprised me how often I laughed at the various bizarre situations and events here. The residents of the Hilton-Jacobs found themselves in some strange positions, yet nothing that was out of the realm of at least believability. One episode, for instance, revolved around a penthouse apartment in the building that was nicer, and much larger, than the others. The residents each vied for the apartment themselves, but eventually found a different, and better, solution to their dilemma. They started a rooftop garden, a neighborhood watch, and attempted to save a ruined movie theater in the neighborhood, but at most every turn, something outlandish happened during their efforts and most of what happened was negated and often never discussed again in the grandest sitcom style.

Oh, and the whole thing’s filmed in Claymation. That just makes things even more surreal.

The end result is a surprisingly comic excursion that deals a few good chuckles, but not a whole lot of big laughs. I’m still laughing over the joke: “What’s behind every strong black man? Don King taking 90 percent.” That’s a quote, by the way–save your flames for the people who wrote it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the reasonably funny experience that is The PJs Season One a seven out of ten. It’s got some good laughs, and though some may be offended (see the above example), many more may find some chuckles out of it. Some may even get both.