Tag: Alicia Vikande

Disney/Dreamworks Pictures’ THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS on Digital HD Blu-ray DVD and On-Demand Jan 24th

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The sweeping romantic film, Disney/Dreamworks Pictures’  The Light Between Oceans, arrives on Digital HD, Blu-ray™, DVD and On-Demand on Jan. 24th. This beautiful romance stars two-time Academy Award® nominee Michael Fassbender (Best Actor, Steve Jobs), Oscar® winner Alicia Vikander (Best Supporting Actress, The Danish Girl), and Oscar and Golden Globe® winner Rachel Weisz (Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener).

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The timeless tale of love, relationships, and impossible choices is a must for any of lush, beautiful romantic movies. This  release includes never-before-seen bonus features, including a documentary which reveals director Derek Cianfrance’s unique approach that allowed the all-star cast to embody their characters and examine the power of love; a historical look at New Zealand’s Cape Campbell Lighthouse that serves as Janus Rock, a key element in Stedman’s novel; and insightful and in-depth audio commentary led by Cianfrance.

DreamWorks Pictures’ “The Light Between Oceans,” a lush, classical romance, starring two-time Academy Award® nominee Michael Fassbender (Best Actor, Steve Jobs), Oscar® winner Alicia Vikander (Best Supporting Actress, The Danish Girl), and Oscar and Golden Globe® winner Rachel Weisz (Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener), arrives home on Digital HD, Blu-ray™, DVD and On-Demand. The mesmerizingly beautiful film is based on the 2012 best-selling novel by M.L. Stedman, which swept readers away with its transporting story of fate, love, moral dilemmas and the lengths one couple will go to see their hard-fought dreams realized.

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The in-home release of “The Light Between Oceans” will carry audiences even deeper into this timeless tale of love and impossible choices through never-before-seen bonus features, including a documentary which reveals director Derek Cianfrance’s unique approach that allowed the all-star cast to embody their characters and examine the power of love; a historical look at New Zealand’s Cape Campbell Lighthouse that serves as Janus Rock, a key element in Stedman’s novel; and insightful and in-depth audio commentary led by Cianfrance.

Cianfrance was transfixed by M.L. Stedman’s writing and remained faithful to her book, explaining, “The most meaningful compliment on the film I’ve received so far was from Stedman herself, who said she spent the day weeping after attending a screening … weeping because she felt that she was understood.” According to Stedman, “The result is an exquisitely beautiful and emotionally authentic film that stays true to the spirit of my novel, yet also embodies the deeply personal interpretation of the director and his actors. It’s been a great privilege to watch it come into being.”

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DreamWorks Pictures’ “The Light Between Oceans” stars Michael Fassbender as Tom Sherbourne, a young combat veteran and lighthouse keeper on a remote island off the coast of Western Australia; Alicia Vikander as Isabel Graysmark, the beautiful and spirited daughter of the school headmaster on the mainland of Partageuse; Rachel Weisz as Hannah Roennfeld, a resident of Partageuse who is desperately hoping to find her husband and baby lost at sea; Bryan Brown as Septimus Potts, Hannah’s wealthy, influential father; and Jack Thompson as Ralph, a salty, sea-faring skipper. The film is written for the screen and directed by Derek Cianfrance based on the novel by M.L. Stedman and produced by Oscar-nominee David Heyman, p.g.a. and Jeffrey Clifford, p.g.a. The executive producers are Tom Karnowski, Rosie Alison, Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King.

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Bonus features include*:

BLU-RAY & DIGITAL HD:

  • Bringing The Light to Life – For weeks, the cast and crew of “The Light Between Oceans” lived in trailers on Cape Campbell, an isolated region of New Zealand, to film the movie adaptation of the best-selling novel.  This documentary chronicles the unique approach and shooting style of director Derek Cianfrance and the production journey that inspired Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz to fully embody their characters and explore the power and depths of love.
  • Audio Commentary – View the film accompanied by an in-depth and thoughtful conversation between director Derek Cianfrance and his film studies professor Phil Solomon.
  • Lighthouse Keeper – The filmmakers, cast and Cape Campbell Lighthouse inspector/maintainer Rob Sword share the history of the lighthouse and explain the typical duties a lighthouse keeper like Tom Sherbourne would have during an assignment on Janus Island.

 DVD:

  • Audio Commentary

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EX MACHINA – The Review

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It’s hard to find smart, thought-provoking science fiction stories these days, with current trends dictating  bigger is better. Writer-Director Alex Garland’s EX MACHINA is small-scale, slow-paced, and breaks no new ground in terms of ideas. Yet thanks to a terrific script, exceptional characterizations, and one super-sexy robot, it’s the best new science fiction film I’ve seen since UNDER THE SKIN. Like Garland’s earlier scripts, which gave us fresh takes on the zombie genre (28 DAYS LATER) and the space-flight-to-save-the-earth genre (SUNSHINE), EX MACHINA takes a familiar sci-fi concept, in this case the replication of human presence via artificial means, and makes it new.

EX MACHINA tells the story of Caleb (geeky Domhnall Gleeson from UNBREAKABLE), a low-ranking worker bee at Bluebook, the world’s “biggest internet search engine”. The film opens with him winning an in-company competition for the opportunity to spend a week at the remote Bond-lairish estate of reclusive Bluebook founder Nathan. Once he’s arrived by helicopter, Caleb hesitantly agrees to sign “the mother of all non-disclosure agreements” and is put up in a basement room with no windows or handles on the door. Nathan had written the Bluebook code when he was just 13 and now twenty years later he’s a disco-dancing, weight-lifting weirdo, nicely played by Oscar Isaac as a childishly brooding drunk. “Have you heard of the Turing test?” Nathan asks Caleb, for what he really wants his employee to do is to spend time with his newest invention, the gorgeous robot Ava (Alicia Vikander) and to test her true intelligence. Pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing created a test in 1950 to examine a machine’s ability to present behavior indistinguishable from a human’s. Nathan wants Caleb to apply this test to Ava, who looks and acts like a real human being (except her midsection and forearms which are clearly robotic) and who seems to despise her maker. Aware she’s constantly monitored by Nathan’s cameras, Ava causes power outages to steal a few moments between polite small talk with Caleb about childhood memories to warn the lowly programmer not to trust the boss. Ava’s questions about the earlier versions of herself – whose sculpted, life masks line the walls of Nathan’s highly secured house – lead Caleb to suspect that she may soon be headed for the recycling bin. The more time he spends with Ava – who begins to express romantic feelings for Caleb – the more he becomes determined to rescue her from her mad inventor, especially after discovering Nathan’s disturbing collection of sexually fetishized robot corpses. Things get creepy when Nathan informs Caleb that Ava’s capable of sex – after all, he’s got his own foxy Asian paramour (Sonoya Mizuno) who he may or may not have created somewhere in his lab. It soon turns out that there’s an disturbing reason why the lowly programmer finds himself falling for Miss robot.

EX MACHINA is a classy slice of cerebral sci-fi with a literary-cinematic heritage stretching back through BLADE RUNNER and METROPOLIS to FRANKENSTEIN. Garland makes an impressive debut behind camera, effectively directing with remote, minimal style. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander excels in the film’s most important role as the sleek, sexy robot who struggles to come to terms with her humanity (or lack of it), giving a performance that’s more about intuition and gesture than dialogue. The only real special effect in the film is the presentation of Ava with a human face, but mostly composed of wires and a partly transparent body, and it’s seamless. An electro soundtrack by Geoff Barrow adds to the retro sci-fi air of EX MACHINA, a terrific film that is highly recommended.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

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