LiteOn Branded 4X SATA BD-ROM Black Retail packaging with limited software. Read more
Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera Black Read more
ASUS VH198T - Save the Earth and Shrink Your Power Bill with VH198; Mercury-free LED monitor delivers ultra-sharp images with great power savings. LED monitor, Green Power Efficiency -up to 40%, 19" Wide, 10M:1 ASUS Smart contrast Ratio, DVI, VGA, 5ms Response Time. Read more
![Planet Earth: The Complete Series [HD DVD]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v3Xvdilvv-ZNNnJ3H00Q3QGx5a21iO8SxEpwPQUhi34ixfnPeNol0aH1Mr8u8p0svEq8-Qo_O3eq6r_zaUYwps81t5v5Dq2Vx4E0gqICDopSBWZSv9-y2UUeRyPiq9UHp_N88lDw=s0-d)
With an unprecedented production budget of $25 million, and from the makers of Blue Planet: Seas of Life, comes the epic story of life on Earth. Five years in production, over 2,000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen filming across 200 locations, shot entirely in high definition, this is the ultimate portrait of our planet. A stunning television experience that captures rare action, impossible locations and intimate moments with our planet's best-loved, wildest and most elusive creatures. From the highest mountains to the deepest rivers, this blockbuster series takes you on an unforgettable journey through the daily struggle for survival in Earth's most extreme habitats. Planet Earth takes you to places you have never seen before, to experience sights and sounds you may never experience anywhere else.As of its release in early 2007, Planet Earth is quite simply the greatest nature/wildlife series ever produced. Following the similarly monumental achievement of The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this astonishing 11-part BBC series is brilliantly narrated by Sir David Attenborough and sensibly organized so that each 50-minute episode covers a specific geographical region and/or wildlife habitat (mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, seasonal forests, etc.) until the entire planet has been magnificently represented by the most astonishing sights and sounds you'll ever experience from the comforts of home. The premiere episode, "From Pole to Pole," serves as a primer for things to come, placing the entire series in proper context and giving a general overview of what to expect from each individual episode. Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming--a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact. With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New Guinea's various birds of paradise to a rare encounter with Siberia's nearly-extinct Amur Leopards, of which only 30 remain in the wild.
That's just a hint of the marvels on display. Accompanied by majestic orchestral scores by George Fenton, every episode is packed with images so beautiful or so forcefully impressive (and so perfectly photographed by the BBC's tenacious high-definition camera crews) that you'll be rendered speechless by the splendor of it all. You'll see a seal struggling to out-maneuver a Great White Shark; swimming macaques in the Ganges delta; massive flocks of snow geese numbering in the hundreds of thousands; an awesome night-vision sequence of lions attacking an elephant; the Colugo (or "flying lemur"--not really a lemur!) of the Philippines; a hunting alliance of fish and snakes on Indonesia's magnificent coral reef; the bioluminescent "vampire squid" of the deep oceans... these are just a few of countless highlights, masterfully filmed from every conceivable angle, with frequent use of super-slow-motion and amazing motion-controlled time-lapse cinematography, and narrated by Attenborough with his trademark combination of observational wit and informative authority. The result is a hugely entertaining series that doesn't flinch from the predatory realities of nature (death is a constant presence, without being off-putting).
At a time when the multiple threats of global warming should be obvious to all, let's give Sir David the last word, from the closing of Planet Earth's final episode: "We can now destroy or we can cherish--the choice is ours." --Jeff Shannon
Stills from Planet Earth (click for larger image)
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Share the music on your mobile phone with sound quality unlike any other Bluetooth speaker. The SoundLink speaker works wirelessly with your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, tablet or laptop-and goes wherever you do for music whenever the moment calls for it.Pair and play the speaker with your Bluetooth device. It's simple-and you only need to do it once. Just press and hold the Bluetooth button on the top panel, then choose the SoundLink speaker from your smartphone or other source. It's now memorized, ready to play in an instant. Nothing to connect or dock. The speaker keeps up to six Bluetooth sources in memory. Play your music files or streaming content like Pandora and Rhapsody. Read more
![Roving Mars [Blu-ray]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vXlmEj6xDQfsqvPwdyTTdIVKdzm0OyfSW9jjGTJE5lnqce9__yg9svf6gXW-N5vgTYW0ykSBTYjJFj8wsX_gCCgHRwE7ObNbERe7_EfdZn0d5ZYzUtmyt4taXOF--PNU7fhR0=s0-d)
Action. Drama. Anticipation. Exultation. Experience it all as you join the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity for an awe-inspiring journey to the surface of the mysterious red planet. Through the eyes of these two intrepid, death-defying rovers, and with NASA scientists and engineers at your side, you’ll see Mars in a way no one ever has before. You’ll feel what it is like to stand on the startling surface of the planet that’s intrigued mankind for eons. And you’ll uncover its ultimate mystery: Is there life on Mars? Roving Mars – it’s the ride of a lifetime.When you consider the odds against success, the achievements on glorious display in Roving Mars are almost miraculous. This excellent IMAX production follows the familiar IMAX format; at 40 minutes in length, it's not as wide-ranging as other documentaries might be, but in chronicling the design, launch, and successful landings of NASA's robotic Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, it offers an unprecedented level of visual splendor, highlighted by amazingly accurate computer-animated depictions of what really happened when the rovers arrived at their destination. Financed by Disney, and combining the talents of veteran IMAX director George Butler and top-ranking Hollywood producer Frank Marshall (best known for his frequent collaborations with Steven Spielberg), this celebration of science and technology begins with a raspy introduction narrated by Paul Newman (who had recently voiced the character of "Doc" in Disney/Pixar's Cars), then dives right into the formidable challenge of launching and landing the rovers on time and budget, with a looming deadline of optimal Mars/Earth orbital alignment occurring only once every 26 months.
At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, we see highly skilled engineers addressing every challenge and every possible contingency, and project leader Steve Squyers serves as our informative host and enthusiastic populist for space exploration. After launching in June and July of 2003, the rovers traveled for seven months and 300 million miles to Mars, landing on the red planet in January 2004. Every aspect of the mission is covered in concise detail, and tension escalates as touch-down (achieved with the now-familiar "bouncing balloon" landing system) draws near. What's most remarkable, even to the crew at JPL, is that Spirit and Opportunity succeeded far beyond their mission expectations, becoming one of NASA's most triumphant achievements in interplanetary exploration. The photos, chemical analyses, and other data gathered on Mars were intended to prove the past existence of water on Mars (and hence the possibility of life), and in this and many other respects, Roving Mars stands as a breathtaking tribute to the men, women, and robots who've given us a greater understanding of the planetary system we call home. --Jeff Shannon
On the Disc
Roving Mars is accompanied by two excellent bonus features. First up is "Mars: Past, Present, and Future," a 25-minute "making of" featurette that provides additional educational detail about our closest planetary neighbor, along with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with key personnel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Then comes the 50-minute featurette "Mars and Beyond," originally broadcast in 1957 as an episode of Walt Disney's popular Disneyland TV show. Typical of that series, it's a wildly imaginative, cleverly animated look at Mars and its significance in the history of mankind. Even after more than half a century, it's filled with scientific and speculative details that are sure to engage anyone's sense of wonder. --Jeff Shannon Read more
![Home [Blu-ray]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tN6SpQxrp_84I2UMPs6aD9LMu5y6TuU3GNQSa2VMaj5zNd3Mccd9W7OOj3sfAwTKN_dXtcS1vzmwj1Es0oWViugExI8DS5HYW0p_BBpdQmPRdBjP6DVPsISZW5uSolrA8KYjQ=s0-d)
Experience the wonderment of our world in a way that will enthrall, captivate and inspire you! Award-winning aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and narrator Glenn Close take you on a spectacular voyage around the world in Home, a unique film with such breathtaking imagery, you’ll want to enjoy it time and time again. "Former actor Yann Arthus-Bertrand directed this visually astonishing portrait of the Earth as seen from mesmerizing aerial views. Home is not the first documentary to survey our planet from the air, but Arthus-Bertrand brilliantly and dreamily captures the miraculous linkage within delicate eco-systems. For viewers whose eyes glaze over at descriptions of the way Earth recycles energy and matter, Home underscores the beautiful and awesome reality of that complex process. Narrated by actress Glenn Close (in this English-language version), Home begins by exploring and clarifying the natural history of water, sunlight, and the role simple life-forms such as algae played (and still play) in making the planet hospitable to more evolved, living things. As the film moves along, it also has a way of rebooting one's lazy assumptions about familiar phenomena. The Grand Canyon, for example, might be a fantastic sight to behold, but it's also a collection of billions and billions of shells compressed under Earth's oceans long ago. The carbon trapped in the Grand Canyon was drained from the atmosphere, helping--once again--oxygen-dependent life to develop.
Similarly, plant life, Home tells us, broke up the water molecule and released oxygen into the atmosphere. Everything is linked, everything is part of a grand machine--the film makes this clear in scores of ways, and not just by telling us. Arthus-Bertrand reveals the intricate, breathtaking designs and patterns of glaciers feeding rivers, of animals feeding on plant life so more plant life can grow, of Australia's great Coral Reef's role in keeping the ocean in eco-balance. Of course, a big part of the story is the impact short-sighted humans have on these systems: the way we overfish, or drain deserts of scarce fossil water, or turn non-farming lands into perverse engines for agriculture. There is much to be alarmed at watching Home, but there is much to move one as well. --Tom Keogh " Read more
University physicists Leonard and Sheldon know whether to use an integral or a differential to solve the area under a curve. But they don’t have a clue about girls. Or dating. Or clothes. Or parties. Or having fun. Or, basically, life. So when a pretty blonde named Penny moves in the apartment across the hall, the guys decide to get an education outside of the classroom. Boys, you have a lot to learn. With series creators Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men) and Bill Prady (The Gilmore Girls) concocting the right mix of logic and lunacy and stars Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) and Jim Parsons (Judging Amy) turning geekdom into Phi Beta fun, The Big Bang Theory is big on laughs. And life.The delightful sitcom The Big Bang Theory revolves around a character type rarely seen on television: The alpha geek. Physicists Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) get their lives shaken up when an attractive young woman named Penny (Kaley Cuoco) moves in to the apartment across from theirs. The key to the show, though, is not that they both fall haplessly in love--Leonard does, but Sheldon remains impermeably aloof and caustic about anything resembling romance or human relationships in general. While the push and pull of Leonard's yearning for Penny motivates much of the series' ongoing plot, the show's real drive comes from Sheldon's fantastic combination of obsessive-compulsive neurosis and grandiose obliviousness. He's a brilliant comic creation, imperious and dorky, a seamless collaboration of clever writing and an inspired performance by Parsons. Whether Sheldon loses his job for insulting his new boss, or finds his ego bruised by a child prodigy, or finds himself unable to bear being part of a lie that Leonard has told, he attacks the world with a relentless need to assert his supremacy--and the results are deeply funny.
The triumph of The Big Bang Theory is that everyone is written with genuine affection; what could have been a lifeless parade of stereotypes--Two Nerds and a Hot Chick--becomes instead a charming collision of cultures. The familiar stuff (computer games, comic books, social incompetence) has the grit of specificity; the show understands the difference between Halo and Halo 3, knows what the Bottle City of Kandor is, and grasps the infinite variety of ways in which a conversation can go terribly awry. (Penny gets less nuance, but Cuoco still gives her a distinctive personality.) Kudos as well to supporting players Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar, who bring their own variations on geekiness to the table, and to great appearances by some of Galecki's former cohorts on Roseanne--Sara Gilbert as geekette Leslie and Laurie Metcalf as Sheldon's fundamentalist mother. All in all, one of the most winning sitcoms in years. --Bret Fetzer Read more
University physicists Leonard and Sheldon know whether to use an integral or a differential to solve the area under a curve. But they don’t have a clue about girls. Or dating. Or clothes. Or parties. Or having fun. Or, basically, life. So when a pretty blonde named Penny moves in the apartment across the hall, the guys decide to get an education outside of the classroom. Boys, you have a lot to learn. With series creators Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men) and Bill Prady (The Gilmore Girls) concocting the right mix of logic and lunacy and stars Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) and Jim Parsons (Judging Amy) turning geekdom into Phi Beta fun, The Big Bang Theory is big on laughs. And life.The delightful sitcom The Big Bang Theory revolves around a character type rarely seen on television: The alpha geek. Physicists Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) get their lives shaken up when an attractive young woman named Penny (Kaley Cuoco) moves in to the apartment across from theirs. The key to the show, though, is not that they both fall haplessly in love--Leonard does, but Sheldon remains impermeably aloof and caustic about anything resembling romance or human relationships in general. While the push and pull of Leonard's yearning for Penny motivates much of the series' ongoing plot, the show's real drive comes from Sheldon's fantastic combination of obsessive-compulsive neurosis and grandiose obliviousness. He's a brilliant comic creation, imperious and dorky, a seamless collaboration of clever writing and an inspired performance by Parsons. Whether Sheldon loses his job for insulting his new boss, or finds his ego bruised by a child prodigy, or finds himself unable to bear being part of a lie that Leonard has told, he attacks the world with a relentless need to assert his supremacy--and the results are deeply funny.
The triumph of The Big Bang Theory is that everyone is written with genuine affection; what could have been a lifeless parade of stereotypes--Two Nerds and a Hot Chick--becomes instead a charming collision of cultures. The familiar stuff (computer games, comic books, social incompetence) has the grit of specificity; the show understands the difference between Halo and Halo 3, knows what the Bottle City of Kandor is, and grasps the infinite variety of ways in which a conversation can go terribly awry. (Penny gets less nuance, but Cuoco still gives her a distinctive personality.) Kudos as well to supporting players Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar, who bring their own variations on geekiness to the table, and to great appearances by some of Galecki's former cohorts on Roseanne--Sara Gilbert as geekette Leslie and Laurie Metcalf as Sheldon's fundamentalist mother. All in all, one of the most winning sitcoms in years. --Bret Fetzer Read more
![Pathfinder [Blu-ray]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u6L3E3_AhjYU5vCMMtK7Vq8-pdHeMa73_ttBZM_tFrcz2zJ9wG4SEMJFViactxv8jxyxLXewDqCoACBY-DmK4S7r8riyPEgMBf-YUCrGPpbC_ftQ1pYHOjl1zV14j4N1Ly3gM=s0-d)
The heroic story of a young Norse man raised by Native American Indians who wages a personal war against the Vikings that barbarically raided his tribe.Pathfinder is a curious, cross-genre movie with elements of horror, sword-clanging fantasy, historical fiction, and Native American mysticism. A classic story of an outsider-hero, Pathfinder is set approximately five centuries before Columbus’ arrival in the New World, a time when Vikings were claiming real estate in Greenland and eastern North America. A young Norse boy is abandoned by his disapproving, conqueror-father and adopted by an aboriginal tribe. He grows up to become Ghost (Karl Urban), almost-but-not-entirely accepted by natives, yet a fierce swordsman and defender of Indians after a terrible assault on those whom he loves best. Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption) plays the fiercest of the invaders, a merciless leader who tangles with Ghost’s inherent prowess as a fighter, and engages in a psychological as well as physical struggle with him in the film’s final third, which involves a harrowing journey through an avalanche-prone mountain path. Russell Means (The Last of the Mohicans) is a typically comforting presence as the all-wise Pathfinder, leader of a tribal nation and Ghost’s supporter, while Moon Bloodgood (Eight Below) is outstanding as a love interest with nerves of steel. Marcus Nispel (who directed the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) guides the brutal if often exhilarating action as if it were amplified history. He makes the point for a contemporary audience that Vikings were as terrifying a danger to those whom they conquered as, say, Klingons are in Star Trek--precisely by making his Vikings seem so reminiscent of Klingons. --Tom Keogh Read more
![28 Days Later [Blu-ray]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s3GXVNID-4KVbUdqPnRTGv0tQ_l6EFDlbMhoBTOmGLIWNN1kJDo0nl2ZtUKj3d4PAHZeeX1SQrelpz9b9HBW52pBofZve426iGD7DoTA5FE5ZsrccuHfAU-72H2d5vaW9Aiw=s0-d)
Hailed as the most frightening film since The Exorcist, acclaimed Director Danny Boyle's visionary take on zombie horror "isn't just scaryâ?¦it's absolutely terrifying" (Access Hollywood).
An infirmary patient awakens from a coma to an empty roomâ?¦in a vacant hospitalâ?¦in a deserted city. A powerful virus, which locks victims into a permanent state of murderous rage, has transformed the world around him into a seemingly desolate wasteland. Now a handful of survivors must fight to stay alive, unaware that the worst is yet to comeâ?¦The director/producer team that created Trainspotting turn their dynamic cinematic imaginations to the classic science fiction scenario of the last people on Earth. Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma to find London deserted--until he runs into a mob of crazed plague victims. He gradually finds other still-human survivors (including Naomie Harris), with whom he heads off across the abandoned countryside to find the source of a radio broadcast that promises salvation. 28 Days Later is basically an updated version of The Omega Man and other post-apocalyptic visions; but while the movie may lack originality, it makes up for it in vivid details and creepy paranoid atmosphere. 28 Days Later's portrait of how people behave in extreme circumstances--written by novelist Alex Garland (The Beach)--will haunt you afterward. Also featuring Brendan Gleeson (The General, Gangs of New York) and Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave, The Others). --Bret Fetzer Read more
