Kamis, 17 November 2011

The Bourne Identity: A Novel

Black Dynamite [Blu-ray]

  • Condition: New
  • Format: Blu-ray
  • AC-3; Color; Dolby; Subtitled; Widescreen
An all-star cast led by Michael Jai White is featured in this 1970's-style blaxploitation action fiilm about the legendary super crime fighter "Black Dynamite." The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky HouseWhen drug dealers take out his kid brother, ex-CIA agent Black Dynamite (Spawn's Michael Jai White) makes like a karate-chopping dynamo to track them down. Armed with a .44 Magnum, a set of nunchucks, and a sexy 'stache, Big D starts out in the City of Angels, where ! his buddies Cream Corn (In Living Color's Tommy Davidson), a hustler, and Bullhorn (co-writer Byron Minns), a club owner, offer to lend a hand. The deeper Dynamite digs, the more endangered his life becomes as he uncovers a conspiracy to keep the black man down by flooding the streets with malt liquor and filling the country's orphanages with smack. Since the smooth operator has a way with the ladies, he also enlists Gloria (I Am Legend's Salli Richardson-Whitfield), a socially-conscious soul sister, to aid in his clean-up campaign. Director Scott Sanders and White, who co-wrote the script, collaborated on 1998's Thick as Thieves, and their chemistry shines through. If the supporting cast can be a little wooden, White gives Shaft's Richard Roundtree a run for the money with his cool-cat charisma. Set in 1972, Black Dynamite doesn't just act like a movie from the Superfly era, it looks and sounds like one, too, courtesy Adrian Younge! 's old-school funk score, Shawn Maurer's 16mm cinematography, ! a cartoo n credit sequence, and some carefully choreographed boom mic appearances. And dig those crazy cameos: Arsenio Hall as Tasty Freeze, Brian McKnight as Sweet Meat, and NBA veteran John Salley as Kotex. --Kathleen C. Fennessy



Stills from Black Dynamite (Click for larger image)











An all-star cast led by ! Michael Jai White is featured in this 1970's-style blaxploitat! ion acti on fiilm about the legendary super crime fighter "Black Dynamite." The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House.When drug dealers take out his kid brother, ex-CIA agent Black Dynamite (Spawn's Michael Jai White) makes like a karate-chopping dynamo to track them down. Armed with a .44 Magnum, a set of nunchucks, and a sexy 'stache, Big D starts out in the City of Angels, where his buddies Cream Corn (In Living Color's Tommy Davidson), a hustler, and Bullhorn (co-writer Byron Minns), a club owner, offer to lend a hand. The deeper Dynamite digs, the more endangered his life becomes as he uncovers a conspiracy to keep the black man down by flooding the streets with malt liquor and filling the country's orphanages with smack. Since the smooth op! erator has a way with the ladies, he also enlists Gloria (I Am Legend's Salli Richardson-Whitfield), a socially-conscious soul sister, to aid in his clean-up campaign. Director Scott Sanders and White, who co-wrote the script, collaborated on 1998's Thick as Thieves, and their chemistry shines through. If the supporting cast can be a little wooden, White gives Shaft's Richard Roundtree a run for the money with his cool-cat charisma. Set in 1972, Black Dynamite doesn't just act like a movie from the Superfly era, it looks and sounds like one, too, courtesy Adrian Younge's old-school funk score, Shawn Maurer's 16mm cinematography, a cartoon credit sequence, and some carefully choreographed boom mic appearances. And dig those crazy cameos: Arsenio Hall as Tasty Freeze, Brian McKnight as Sweet Meat, and NBA veteran John Salley as Kotex. --Kathleen C. Fennessy



Stills from Black Dynamite ! (Click for larger image)












Bronson (Widescreen Edition)

  • In 1974, a misguided 19 year old named Michael Peterson decided he wanted to make a name for himself and so, with a homemade sawn-off shotgun and a head full of dreams he attempted to rob a post office. Swiftly apprehended and originally sentenced to 7 years in jail, Peterson has subsequently been behind bars for 34 years, 30 of which have been spent in solitary confinement. With an intelligent, p
BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF ONE OF THE WORLD S MOST VIOLENT PRISONERS
In 1974, a misguided 19-year-old named Michael Peterson decided he wanted to make a name for himself, and so with a homemade sawn-off shotgun and a head full of dreams, he attempted to rob a post office. Swiftly apprehended and originally sentenced to seven years in jail, Peterson has subsequently been behind bars for 34 years, 30 of which have been spent in solitary confinement. Provocative and stylized, BRONSON follows the met! amorphosis of Mickey Peterson, who gave himself the nickname Charles Bronson, from a petty thief into Britain's most dangerous prisoner.Tom Hardy's performance in the lead role burns right through Bronson, the somewhat true tale of a real guy who, once the movie finishes, you'll be very glad is still locked up in an English jail. There's no obvious reason why Michael Peterson became what he proudly calls "Britain's most violent prisoner." His upbringing was normal, his parents meek but loving; he was even married with a child when, in 1974, he attempted a robbery that landed him in the slammer for the first time. Peterson saw this as "an opportunity to sharpen my tools" and make a name for himself; and that he did, eagerly taking on half a dozen guards at once and regularly spending time in solitary confinement (at one point for 69 straight days). A stint in "the loony bin," where he killed another patient, followed, as did incarceration in a hospital for the crimina! lly insane, a brief period on the outside (having been "certif! ied sane ," he went to live in an uncle's whorehouse, found work as a prizefighter, and fell in love), and then a permanent return to prison, where he decided to change his name to Charlie Bronson (after the American actor) and, improbably, became a pretty decent painter (a climactic scene with his art teacher perversely invokes the Belgian artist René Magritte). Not all of this really happened, but director and cowriter Nicolas Winding Refn's film is hardly a documentary; with its saturated color palette, surreal framing devices (Bronson tells some of his tale to a rapt audience in a large theater), and frequent use of black humor, this is a highly stylized and often strange piece of work. Hardy, who has also been seen in Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla and will be in George Miller's fourth Road Warrior epic, delivers an extreme performance; sporting a shaved head and a John L. Sullivan handlebar mustache, he is a credible if occasionally cartoonish presence, a leering, prof! ane, joyously violent cockney madman. Extras include interviews, a making-of documentary, and a featurette detailing the extremely buff Hardy's training for the role. --Sam Graham

The City of Ember (Books of Ember)

  • ISBN13: 9780385736282
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
NOW A MAJOR motion picture starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, Saoirse Ronan, and Harry Treadaway! This tie-in edition of The City of Ember features a movie-art cover and an 8-page photo insert. Jeanne DuPrau’s instant classic tells the story of the great, underground city of Ember, designed as a last refuge for the human race. But when the storerooms run out of food and the lights begin to fail, it’s up to two teens, Lina and Doon, to decipher the fragments of an ancient parchment and find a way out of Ember.It is always night in the city of Ember. But there is no moon, no stars. The only light during the regular twelve hours of "day" comes from floodlamps that cast a yellowis! h glow over the streets of the city. Beyond are the pitch-black Unknown Regions, which no one has ever explored because an understanding of fire and electricity has been lost, and with it the idea of a Moveable Light. "Besides," they tell each other, "there is nowhere but here" Among the many other things the people of Ember have forgotten is their past and a direction for their future. For 250 years they have lived pleasantly, because there has been plenty of everything in the vast storerooms. But now there are more and more empty shelves--and more and more times when the lights flicker and go out, leaving them in terrifying blackness for long minutes. What will happen when the generator finally fails?

Twelve-year-old Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet seem to be the only people who are worried. They have just been assigned their life jobs--Lina as a messenger, which leads her to knowledge of some unsettling secrets, and Doon as a Pipeworker, repairing the plumbing in th! e tunnels under the city where a river roars through the darkn! ess. But when Lina finds a very old paper with enigmatic "Instructions for Egress," they use the advantages of their jobs to begin to puzzle out the frightening and dangerous way to the city of light of which Lina has dreamed. As they set out on their mission, the haunting setting and breathless action of this stunning first novel will have teens clamoring for a sequel. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell

City of Ember is now a major motion picture (releasing in October 2008) starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, and many more. Enjoy these images from the film, and click the thumbnails to see a larger image in a new browser window.




The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery

  • ISBN13: 9781890085025
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authorâ€" "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)â! €"offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.

A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even asâ€"simply becauseâ€"it goes on being written every day! . As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as ! the fath er of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme playedâ€"on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new keyâ€"by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.

At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

"Astonishing . . . Moving . . . One of the best books ever written about a sport."
*Walter Clemons
Newsweek

"A PENETRATING, FASCINATING AND REMARKABLY SUSPENSEFUL NARRATIVE."
*David Guy
Chicago Tribune
In The Amateurs, David Halberstam once again displays the unique brand of reportage, both penetrating and supple, that distinguished his bestselling The Best and the Brightest and October 1964. This time he has taken for his subject the dramatic and special world of amateur ! rowing. While other athletes are earning fortunes in salaries and-or endorsements, the oarsmen gain fame only with each other and strive without any hope of financial reward.
What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? In answering these questions, David Halberstam takes as his focus the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton. The man who wins will gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad; the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it.
Informative and compelling, The Amateurs combines the vividness of superb sportswriting with the narrative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent.
! "RIVETING."
*Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
The New York Ti! mes
" [A] MASTERFUL JOB . . . Maintains the suspense to the very last stroke . . . Halberstam makes us care about the four men, their disappointments and the brutal testing of their friendships."
*Dan Levin
Sports IllustratedTitle: The Amateur Cracksman.

Publisher: British Library, Historical Print Editions

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.

The GENERAL HISTORICAL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This varied collection includes material that gives readers a 19th century view of the world. Topics! include health, education, economics, agriculture, environment, technology, culture, politics, labour and industry, mining, penal policy, and social order.

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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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British Library
Hornung, E. W.;
1899.
290 p. ; 8º.
012622.f.15.
This book takes the student on a journey through his own mind and returns him to the chess board with a wealth of new-found knowledge and the promise of a significant gain in strength. Most amateurs possess erroneous thinking processes that remain with them throughout their chess lives. These flaws in their mental armour result in stinging defeats and painful reversals. Books can be boug! ht and studied, lessons can be taken -- but in the end, these ! elusive problems always prove to be extremely difficult to eradicate. Seeking a solution to this dilemma, the author wrote down the thoughts of his students while they played actual games, analysed them, and catalogued the most common misconceptions that arose. This second edition greatly expands on the information contained in the popular first edition.

A Haunting in Connecticut

  • The day Karen and  Ed Parker move into their dream home, ominous clues of its chilling funeral parlor past greet them: crucifixes on doors, toe tags and coffin keys in the basement. Soon, the house is plagued by dark forces that torment the entire family, forcing Edward and Lorraine Warren - investigators of the Amityville haunting - to be called in. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR
Based on a chilling true story, Lionsgate's THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT charts one family's terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. When the Campbell family moves to upstate Connecticut, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home has a disturbing history: not only was the house a transformed funeral parlor where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner's clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to cross over. Now, u! nspeakable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with the dead, returns to unleash a new kind of horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family.Based on a chilling true story, Lionsgate's The Haunting in Connecticut charts one family's terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. When the Campbell family moves to upstate Connecticut, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home has a disturbing history: not only was the house a transformed funeral parlor where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner's clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to cross over. Now, unspeakable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with the dead, returns to unleash a new kind of horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family.

Based on a chilling true story, Lionsgate's THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT charts one family's terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. When the Campbell family moves to upstate Connecticut, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home ha! s a disturbing history: not only was the house a transformed funeral parlor where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner's clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to cross over. Now, unspeakable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with the dead, returns to unleash a new kind of horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family.Based on a chilling true story, Lionsgate's The Haunting in Connecticut charts one family's terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. When the Campbell family moves to upstate Connecticut, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home has a disturbing history: not only was the house a transformed funeral parlor where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner's clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to cross over. Now, unspea! kable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with ! the dead , returns to unleash a new kind of horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family.

As Seen On The Discovery Cha! nnel
The day Karen and Ed Parker move into their dream home, ominous clues of its chilling funeral parlor past greet them: crucifixes on doors, toe tags and coffin keys in the basement. Their 14-year-old son, Paul, claims he sees apparitions and hears voices. Soon, the house is plagued by dark forces that torment the entire family, and it will take a desperate call to Edward and Lorraine Warren--investigators of the Amityville haunting--to offer any hope of relief.

Dark Water (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

  • Far more terrifying than what was seen in theaters, this special unrated version of DARK WATER is a thoroughly absorbing, suspense-filled thriller starring Jennifer Connelly. Dahlia Williams (Connelly) and her 5-year-old daughter are ready to begin a new life together. But their new apartment dilapidated and worn suddenly seems to take on a life of its own. Mysterious noises, persistent leaks of d
No one loses their mind instantly â€" Sanity seeps away one drop at a time. Yoshimi simply wanted a better life â€" for both herself and her daughter Ikuko. Unfortunately, such wishes may sometimes be hard to come by. The custody battle has grown embittered and hurtful, her new job is less than desirable, and Ikuko’s schoolwork has taken a turn for the worse. But, Yoshimi has something bigger to worry about. Something upstairs. Something cold and dank. Something that should have never been.Dar! k Water is Japanese horror auteur Hideo Nakata's return to the genre after his Ring cycle made you too scared to watch television ever again. Where Ringu dealt with a supernatural force wreaking revenge via technology, this film is a much more traditional ghost story. After winning a custody battle for her daughter, single mother Yoshimi moves into what she thinks is the perfect apartment with her daughter Hitomi. No sooner have they unpacked than strange things begin to disturb their new life. A water leak from the supposedly abandoned apartment above gets bigger and bigger, a child's satchel reappears even though Yoshimi throws it away several times, and she is haunted by the image of a child wearing a yellow mackintosh who bears a striking resemblance to a young girl who disappeared several years before. The conventional narrative follows Yoshimi's increasingly desperate attempts to discover who or what force is haunting her daughter, but the story's ex! ecution is far from predictable. Nakata is the master of under! stated s uspense: there's always a feeling of motiveless malignancy that runs like an undercurrent through his films--far more frightening than out and out shocks--and here he also practically drowns his audience in water imagery. The film is saturated; the relentless dripping in the apartment, the constant rain outside and the deliberately washed-out photography make any color, such as the yellow coat, seem incongruous and unsettling. Nakata also clears the film of unnecessary characters--this is an almost deserted Tokyo--preferring to concentrate the action on Yoshimi's rising hysteria as she struggles to understand what is happening and how to save her daughter. Granted, the special effects are somewhat unconvincing and the ending confused, but even so the result is a stylish and disquieting chiller that will do for bathtubs what his Ring films did for video recorders. --Kristen BowditchFar more terrifying than what was seen in theaters, this special unrated version ! of DARK WATER is a thoroughly absorbing, suspense-filled thriller starring Jennifer Connelly. Dahlia Williams (Connelly) and her 5-year-old daughter are ready to begin a new life together. But their new apartment â€" dilapidated and worn â€" suddenly seems to take on a life of its own. Mysterious noises, persistent leaks of dark water, and other strange happenings in the deserted apartment above send Dahlia on a haunting and mystifying pursuit â€" one that unleashes a torrent of living nightmares.In many ways Dark Water improves upon the memorable Japanese film it's based on. The earlier version was directed by Hideo Nakata (whose excellent shocker Ringu was remade in America as The Ring), but in the hands of director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) and screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, this psychological horror story gets an intelligent and more chillingly effective overhaul. The story is rooted in themes of love and loss that Yglesias simila! rly explored in his excellent screenplay for Peter Weir's F! earless< /i>, here focusing on young mother Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) as she endures difficult divorce proceedings and settles into a low-rent apartment in New York's cramped Roosevelt Island community, near Manhattan, with her young daughter Cecilia (Ariel Gade). Amidst seemingly endless rainfall, Dahlia's world slowly unravels, and Connelly is superb as a woman seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Or is she? Could it be that Cecilia's imaginary friend, and the apartment's persistent leaks of dark, dripping water, are the ghostly manifestations of a young girl who had been abandoned by the previous tenant? Creepy atmosphere and high anxiety are expertly maintained by Salles, and supporting roles for Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and especially Pete Postlethwaite give the film an added edge of mystery. The tension builds slowly (gore-mongers and action fans may be disappointed), but the cumulative effect is palpably unnerving, inviting favorable comparison to Rosemary's Baby! . Unlike some other remakes of Japanese horror hits, Dark Water doesn't feel redundant; it stands on its own thanks to the impressive work of everyone involved. --Jeff Shannon
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