Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Now you, yes you, can own a copy of the thriller Possession, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Lee Pace, on DVD. We have three copies to give away. All you have to do is follow us on Twitter and tweet the following message:

@justpressplay I want to win Possession on DVD! Give it to me NOW! Mine! Mine!

A woman’s true devotion to the one she loves is tested in the year’s most mesmerizing thriller, Possession.  Starring Golden Globe nominee Sarah Michelle Gellar (“Buffy The Vampire Slayer”), Lee Pace (“Pushing Daisies”) and Michael Landes (Lakeview Terrace), this suspenseful mystery explores the darkest secrets of love and grief for one happy couple.  Newlyweds Jess (Gellar) and Ryan (Landes) seem to have it all until a car accident renders both Ryan and his brother Roman (Pace) comatose. But things spin even more eerily out of control when Roman wakes up and tries to convince Jess that he is her husband.  Beside herself with fear and grief, Jess grapples with the one question: could the man before her actually be the man she lost…or does something far more sinister await her in his arms?  The Possession DVD features deleted and alternate scenes as well as an alternate ending.

Paul Giamatti's newest dramedy (drama - comedy) Cold Souls debuted on DVD last week, and JustPressPlay wants to give you a chance to win a copy. To win, all you have to do is two things:

Go to JustPressPlay's Facebook page and become a fan and leave a comment talking about wanting to win, you being awesome, yadda yadda. Yeah, we consider that two things.

Balancing a tightrope between deadpan humor and pathos, reality and fantasy collide in the surreal comedy Cold Souls, arriving on DVD March 2 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.  Golden Globe Award® winner and Academy Award® nominee Paul Giamatti (Sideways) stars as an actor named… Paul Giamatti. During rehearsals for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” he finds his soul growing so heavy under the weight of the material that his whole life begins to suffer.  When Giamatti hears of a doctor who extracts and stores souls, he decides to undergo the procedure.  Unburdened, Giamatti’s life becomes freewheeling, easygoing… and more intolerable than ever!  He returns to the doctor demanding his old soul back, but a little snafu involving the Russian black market leads him on a harrowing journey that gives new meaning to the term “soul searching!”

Featuring an all-star supporting cast that includes Academy Award® nominees Emily Watson (The Water Horse) and David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatum), Cold Souls is the debut feature film of Sophie Barthes who both directed and wrote the hilariously twisted comedy, which garnered her a nomination for Best First Screenplay by the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards.  The Cold Souls DVD includes the ‘Soul Extractor’ slide show featurette and nine deleted scenes.

Haven't seen Tim Burton's latest trip-out costume party yet? Don't feel like going, either from opening day fatigue or a lack of the supplemental fungi enhancement? Don't feel too bad. The beauty of Lewis Carroll's creation is that it's so seemingly random and outlandish that, over the years, many-a filmmakers have tried to re-imagine the story into their version of the bizarre. Alice always stays Alice, but with each film, we get a vision of Wonderland that becomes as weird or as cheerful as the filmmakers allow them to be.

And so, here are ten of the notable Wonderlands to seek, either for cultural relevancy or plain good entertainment.

With today marking the second anniversary of the passing of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax (he even sounds like some kind of hard as nails dwarf with an axe, doesn’t he?), JustPressPlay takes this moment to look back at a couple of the… less traditionally good examples of the sword-and-sorcery genre. In tribute to Gary we proudly dissect a pair of so-bad-they’re-brilliant fantasy films, that might not be were it not for the dreams two guys, a basement, and a small sack of ridiculously large dice.

It began with a tweet.

As only one of many Kurosawa fans excited by the Criterion Collection's announcement last year that they would soon release Ran on Blu-ray, I was shocked when @criterion, which I follow, suddenly sent out a tweet last April saying that the release had been scrapped. I can't remember if I was sipping liquid at the time or not, but rest assured that if I was, a legendary spit-take must have occurred.

At the time, I didn't know that the cancellation was due to the licensing of certain Criterion-released films being pulled by rights-owner StudioCanal, who are now putting these films out on Blu-ray under their own umbrella, distributed in the US by Lionsgate home video. The first wave of this collection is made up of three celebrated classics from three different countries: Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and the original The Ladykillers.

He may not have lived to see 100, but his films will see 1000 and beyond.

This coming 23rd of March would have been Akira Kurosawa's 100th birthday. The master died in 1998, but his films continue to fascinate and enthrall entire generations of people who may not have even heard of him until after his death. Should you find yourself realizing that you haven't seen enough from Kurosawa's filmography, you're in luck—Turner Classic Movies is planning a hell of a centennial.

You know those shows that you remember as being great, that defined your memories of years gone by, that you think would be great to revisit... but when it's actually there, you're not sure if you really want to spend hours and hours of watching again?

Here at JustPressPlay, we get a lot of solicits from independent productions announcing their latest project. A lot of them have a hard time standing out, but once in a while, there's a movie that comes across our way that's just too attractive to ignore. Yes, I'm using "attractive" liberally here—after all, the movie is called Dogshit.

Just what the hell is Dogshit? It appears to be a surreal post-apocalyptic live action-animation hybrid from director Jimmy Creamer, better known (among his subjects, I guess) as speedcore artist "ScreamerClauz." Check out the crazy synopsis of his film, then the 5-minute trailer below.

Next Tuesday, Warner Premiere releases the seventh in their line of direct-to-video DC Comics movies. Since closing shop on the shared-continuity DC Animated Universe that began with the seminal Batman: The Animated Series and ended with the can-do-no-wrong Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, the DC animation team guided by the sure hands of super-producer Bruce Timm has been busy putting out stand-alone movies based on DC superheroes.

Some are original genesis stories, not unlike how a live-action movie of the characters would be (Wonder Woman, Green Lantern: First Flight), while others are adaptations of fan-favorite graphic novels (Justice League: New Frontier, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies), both meant to attract new audiences. The latest one, I suspect, will satisfy old fans the most. While it's decidedly a separate continuity from the Justice League TV series, it is by far the closest we've got to new material from that universe.