Witness the Magics of “The Prestige”

A magic trick consists of three acts. In the first act, the pledge, the magician shows us something ordinary. Act two, the turn, changes the ordinary into something extraordinary. Act three, though, twists things around to where a life can hang in the balance and we are shown something we have never seen before. This final, shocking act is known as “The Prestige.”

--- Mr. Cutter

The Prestige is a 2006 period film directed by Christopher Nolan, with a screenplay adapted from the 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name by Christopher Priest. The story follows Robert Angier( Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden(Christian Bale ), rival stage magicians in fin de siècle London. Obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, they engage in competitive battle of magic tricks with tragic results.

In the late 1800's in London,when magicians are idols and celebrities of the highest order, Alfred Borden and Robert Angier are two up-and-coming magicians who are close friends until a tragic event turns them into bitter rivals. Robert Angier is a superior showman while Albert Borden is not quite the showman but appears to be the better natural magician. When it comes to magic, appearances can be deceiving. Both men become famous performers on the London theatrical circuit and spend too much time trying to sabotage each others performances, at times to the point where extreme violence ensues. Borden eventually develops a fantastic illusion called "The Transported Man" where he disappears on one side of the stage and simultaneously reappears on the other side. Angier (later known as The Great Danton) drives himself insane trying to figure out "the prestige" of The Transporter Man and even develops his own version in which he uses his superior showmanship to make his show a success. But The Great Danton is not satisfied with his accomplishments and continues to pursue the secrets of Borden, even using his beautiful assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) to seduce his rival. Angier's quest to upstage Borden takes a shocking turn when he meets Nikola Tesla. The scientist creates a device that ensures Angier will upstage Borden, but at what cost? Unfortunately for both men, their bitter rivalry takes them down a road that will only result in disaster and death.

Bale and Jackman do a good job of men aiming at each other’s throats while trying to maintain a normal family life. They were are all excellent in their roles. Jackman is given the opportunity to show both the good side and dark side of his character. The same goes for Bale. The result is a pair of very complex characters up on the screen that are neither hero nor villain.

And then when you reach the big twist, you are astonished. This is the greatest part of the film. And what happens after the big twist? Another big twist. Then another. Then when you think that you’ve got it all figured out – that you can predict how this magician of a filmmaker is pulling off his tricks – you are hit with another final blow more powerful than anything that could have preceded it.

The real magic of The Prestige is executed by its director. Nolan uses all the tools available to him here. He realizes the strongest potential of his actors -- the mask-like charms of Jackman, the bordering-on-psycho mania of Bale, and the wise and confident dignity of Michael Caine as the magicians' mentor. He combines technique, theme, and the subject of the world of magic to create a dazzling movie about very disreputable things. It's a direct, bleak story, but in Nolan's magician-like hands, The Prestige ends up being quite a show. So grab this chance and experience the magic of this movie available in DVD format. Just visit our DVD auction site at DVD.TV to get more details on how you can get this very entertaining movie of The Prestige in DVD.

Outplay the Russian Mafia in “Eastern Promises”

"Eastern Promises" is no ordinary crime thriller, just as Cronenberg is no ordinary director. Beginning with low-rent horror films in the 1970s, Cronenberg has moved film by film into the top rank of directors, and on this film he wisely reunites with Mortensen, star of their "A History of Violence" (2005). “A History of Violence” brought director David Cronenberg a massive amount of applaud, a flicker of box office might, and returned a focal point to his filmmaking.

We've seen plenty of Irish and Italian gangsters in the movies, but comparatively few Russians. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, criminal organizations centered on ex-Soviet immigrants have grown to frightening proportions, yet few motion pictures have really tackled them as a serious subject and Cronenberg's “Eastern Promises” is one of them.

Cronenberg -- the master of body horror as a path to the soul -- begin his mesmerizing power-punch of a thriller with a hemorrhage. The bloody fetus that we watch a fourteen-year-old Russian girl’s uterus struggle to expel is a child of rape. The teenage girl who hemorrhages is raced to a hospital and dies in childbirth in the arms of a midwife named Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts). Fiercely determined to protect the helpless surviving infant, Anna resolves to try to trace the baby's lineage and relatives. She uses her Russian-born mother and uncle (Sinead Cusack and Jerzy Skolimowski) to translate the dead girl's diary, and it leads her to a Trans-Siberian restaurant run by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the head of the mafia family called the Vory V Zakone that's main business is to traffic girls, drugs and other illegal materials. Anna's path leads to Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a driver and butcher for the mafia.

When Kirill gets into trouble with a rival gang, Nikolai offers his assistance and Semyon replies with an invitation to join the brotherhood. The deeper Nikolai sinks into the world of the Vory, the more Anna discovers about the baby's past, the more Nikolai helps her in his unique menacing way against the Vory V Zakone. Is Nikolai essentially good? Is he evil? It's for you to find out in the remaining part of the movie as Anna and Nikolai face up against the mafia forces and see who will ultimately end up on top and the “surprise” twist in the end that solves all the mysteries and problems.

The “Eastern Promises” is really not a movie about how and what, but rather why. So don't miss any detail in the story to fully understand and appreciate the essence the movie. The movie lasts for 1 hour and 40 minutes of thriller and crime busting series of events. MPAA rated it as “R” for strong brutal and bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and nudity. Enjoy!