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DVD Playhouse—November 2011

By Allen Gardner

Tree Of Life (20th Century Fox) Terrence Malick’s latest effort is both the best film of 2011 and the finest work of his (arguably) mixed, but often masterly canon. A series of vignettes, mostly set in 1950s Texas, capture the memory of a man (Sean Penn) in present-day New York who looks back on his life, and his parents’ (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain) troubled marriage, when word of his younger brother’s suicide reaches him. Almost indescribable beyond that, except to say no other film in history so perfectly evokes the magic and mystery of the human memory, which both crystalizes (and sometimes idealizes) the past. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, this is a challenging, polarizing work that you must let wash over you. If you go along for the ride, you’re in for a unique, rewarding cinematic experience. Also available on Blu-ray disc.

It'd be nice to think that a long delayed release meant that a distributor was figuring out just how to market something, but unfortunately, that's not the case with The Heart Specialist. Produced in 2006, the film is just being released now, presumably riding off star Zoe Saldana's dual 2009 hits Star Trek and Avatar and the seemingly daily increasing awareness of Wood Harris's The Wire. While the cast is certainly strong enough to produce the light-hearted sexy romantic comedy that the ads promise, they're held back by a script and direction (both from Dennis Cooper) that can't keep up.

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A big talent in a little package, singer and actress Mya has made her make in a variety of fields, from platinum albums to placing second on the ninth season of the hit show “Dancing With the Stars.” ShockYa recently had a chance to talk one-on-one to the 32-year-old multi-hyphenate, about the new-to-dvd romantic comedy “The Heart Specialist,” her thoughts on sex tapes (celebrity and otherwise), her view of changes to the music industry over the past decade, and what she’s doing with her free time. The conversation is excerpted below: ShockYa: It’s hard for me to believe that your first album was released more than a decade ago. [In that...

Fox Home Entertainment is releasing The Heart Specialist on Blu-ray and DVD October 4, which stars Zoe Saldana and Brian J. White. We have a contest running where we're giving away copies of this DVD to our readers. You know these discs will go fast, so enter this new contest today.

Winners Receive:

The Heart Specialist DVD

Here's How To Win!

Just "Like" (fan) the MovieWeb Facebook page (below) and then leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

If you already "Like" MovieWeb, just leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

Smooth-talking lothario Ray Howard (Brian J. White, Men of a Certain Age), a young Harvard Medical School graduate, arrives for his internship at a hospital in South Florida to pursue his ex-girlfriend Valerie (Grammy Award-winner Mya, Chicago) who can't forgive his womanizing ways. When his supervisor, Dr. Sidney Zachary (NAACP Image Award-nominee Wood Harris,...

Win a DVD copy of the Heartwarming Romantic Comedy Featuring an All-Star Ensemble Cast Headlined by Zoe Saldana, Wood Harris and Brian J. White

In the world of modern romance, there are players and there are experts. But when you want to trade your swagger for a sweetheart… you need a specialist. Get ready for some heart-stopping, jaw-dropping comedy when the hilarious romantic indie film The Heart Specialist drops onto Blu-ray and DVD on October 4 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Making its debut at the Boston Film Festival (“Audience Award” winner) and the Urban World Film Festival (“Best Film” winner), The Heart Specialist tickles the funny bone as it resuscitates the love lives of a sassy cast of characters.

Smooth-talking lothario Ray Howard (Brian J. White, “Men of a Certain Age”), a young Harvard Medical School graduate, arrives for his internship at a hospital in South Florida to pursue...

Win a DVD copy of the Heartwarming Romantic Comedy The Heart Specialist featuring an All-Star Ensemble Cast Headlined by Zoe Saldana,Wood Harris and Brian J. White, available on Blu-ray and DVD October 4.

In the world of modern romance, there are players and there are experts. But when you want to trade your swagger for a sweetheart. you need a specialist. Get ready for some heart-stopping, jaw-dropping comedy when the hilarious romantic indie film The Heart Specialist drops onto Blu-ray and DVD on October 4 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Making its debut at the Boston Film Festival (.Audience Award. winner) and the Urban World Film Festival (.Best Film. winner), The Heart Specialist tickles the funny bone as it resuscitates the love lives of a sassy cast of characters.

Smooth-talking lothario Ray Howard (Brian J. White, .Men of a Certain Age.), a young Harvard Medical School graduate, arrives for his...

Contest: Win The Heart Specialist DVD

Tweet We’re back for another contest and this time we have 3 DVD copies of The Heart Specialist to giveaway. For those unfamiliar with the film, check out the plot summary below. Smooth-talking lothario Ray Howard (Brian J. White, “Men of a Certain Age”), a young Harvard Medical School graduate, arrives for his internship at [...]

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Release Date: Oct. 4, 2011

Price: DVD $22.98, Blu-ray $29.99

Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Zoe Saldana and Brian J. White air out their feelings in The Heart Specialist.

The original — and more provocative — title for The Heart Specialist was Ways of the Flesh, so let your imagination fill in the rest…

The romantic comedy follows smooth-talking lothario Ray Howard (Brian J. White, TV’s Men of a Certain Age), a young Harvard Medical School graduate, as he arrives for his internship at a South Florida hospital to pursue his ex-girlfriend Valerie (Mya, Chicago), who can’t forgive his womanizing ways. When his supervisor, Dr. Sidney Zachary (Wood Harris, TV’s The Wire), discovers that Ray has put the moves on his own girlfriend, nurse Donna (Zoe Saldana, Avatar), the two conspire to teach Ray a lesson.

The film is written and directed by Dennis Cooper, a former doctor who has done some...

We have a new winner for number one! The Green Hornet! The Green Hornet drove The Black Beauty straight to the top with a whopping $33,526,876 in 3,584 theaters with the second highest per theater average of $9,355 in the first week of release from Sony. (And you will never guess which film had the highest, but you will find out.) The Green Hornet threw True Grit off the number one saddle and moved it to number three. Universal.s release of The Dilemma drove right into the number two slot putting Little Fockers into the corner in number six. Last week.s number three, Season Of The Witch, flew down to number ten in the short lived top three position. Tron:legacy is still hanging on to it.s light cycle at the number seven slot after being out for five weeks now. Films that fell out of the top ten are Tangled and Country Strong.

Presumably due to the alleged post-Avatar fame factor of Zoe Saldana, this 2006 movie has just hit selected theaters in the United States. Certainly, there can be no other reason for any distributor (in this case, Freestyle Releasing, who also brought us Dragon Wars, The Collector, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell) to invest in what plays like a student film out of Tisch by some spoiled undergrad whose parents unquestioningly paid full tuition just to keep their kid out of their basement. As such, The Heart Specialist appears to be inspired by hospital-based television dramedy, but production values are exceedingly low to the point that this crap would never even make it onto daytime television. While a bare-bones approach isn't unusual for a small-budget labor of love, this movie doesn't even bother with opening titles, so the shift from opening previews to the actual movie is rather...

By Pete Hammond

Hollywoodnews.com: Sony Pictures was trying to replicate June in January with the release of a summery-type masked superhero flick, The Green Hornet. They even spent extra bucks converting it from 2D to 3D (pointlessly) to further convince moviegoers this is really a warm weather blockbuster wearing a winter coat. With an estimate of $40 million over the four day Martin Luther King holiday weekend, the film did respectable numbers and, with a B+ got fairly high grades from Cinemascore audience surveys, predictably from those patrons under 25. This one decided to go for the jokes and features Seth Rogen in a loud, over-the-top turn as a slacker son who suddenly inherits his tycoon dad’s powerful newspaper when the old man dies after being stung by a bee. Teaming up with sidekick Kato, played by Taiwanese pop superstar Jay Chou they decide to create a bad boy persona...

As an addendum to Sergio’s weekend box office post just below this one…

The Heart Specialist – the seemingly forgotten ensemble comedy drama starring Zoe Saldana, Wood Harris, Brian J. White, Mya, Method Man, Jasmine Guy, Ed Asner, and several others – opened on Friday, and raked in around $540,000 over the 3-day weekend.

Not bad, but not very good either, if you look at the per screen average – roughly $1,280.

Worth noting… earlier last week, I posted an entry stating that the film would open on 500 screens, according to Box Office Mojo; however, today I learned that, also according to Box Office Mojo, it actually opened on 422 screens, not the previously announced 500. So, about a 16% drop.

It didn’t do as well as N-Secure did on its opening weekend – $1.1 million – and that film opened on 486 screens.

Did any of you see it? I didn’t. But I might. If you did, share...

The Heart Specialist is a likeable and sincere comedy centered around the friendship of two doctors. Arriving from Boston with a nearly-minted heartbreak and an embarrassing pin-up calendar spread, Ray “Glucose Ray” Howard (Brian White) is finishing his residency as an on-call intern at a Southern Florida Hmo run hospital that is less prestigious than his medical school, which, of course, is Harvard. He is befriended and shown the ropes by Dr. Sidney Zachary (Wood Harris), who instills a level of compassion in Ray, which he would be impossible to learn from the business model of Dr. Z’s supervisor, Dr. Graves (Scott Pauline) pushes.

This film arrives in theaters with a double dose of bad luck: January is considered a dumping ground to supplement the Oscar contenders of the previous year, still hanging around in theaters. It also doesn’t help The Heart Specialist carries a copyright date of...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

The Dilemma – Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder

The Green Hornet – Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz

The Heart Specialist – Wood Harris, Zoe Saldana, Brian J. White (limited)

Movie of the Week

The Green Hornet

The Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz

The Plot: Following the death of his father, Britt Reid (Rogen) teams up with his late father’s assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team.

The Buzz: This looks to be an off-weekend for Hollywood. The Green Hornet is the ‘Movie of the Week’ only because I’m in the mood to rant, and because I don’t want to rant about the latest Vince Vaughn romcom, and because I know absolutely zippo about The Heart Specialist.

So…

I believe The Green Hornet will likely be the ‘B.O. Bomb of the Week.’ Based on its horrible trailer,...

The Motion Picture Association of America's Classification and Ratings Administration released their weekly bulletin this afternoon, which included new ratings for Just Go With It and The Rite.Just Go With It was rated PG-13 for "frequent crude and sexual content, partial nudity, brief drug references and language." This is star Adam Sandler and director Dennis Dugan's sixth collaboration, and their five previous movies were also rated PG-13. It seems to be a pretty successful formula: Big Daddy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, You Don't Mess with the Zohan and Grown Ups each made over $100 million, and Happy Gilmore became a cult classic of sorts after its theatrical run. Just Go With It is set to open on Valentine's Day weekend (Feb. 11) against Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, The Eagle and Gnomeo and Juliet. The Rite received a PG-13 rating for "disturbing thematic material, violence, frightening images and language including sexual references.

Here’s another Zoe Saldana project that begun development since 2008, was seemingly completed early last year, and is now getting a theatrical release. Recall my post about a week ago, announcing the release of another project revival starring Saldana, titled, The Heart Specialist, which had been in limbo since 2006, and will be getting a theatrical release, debuting this Friday, the 14th. Read that post Here if you need to.

Anywho… this other film is titled Burning Palms, which, IMDb states, was actually made in 2008, and will be released theatrically courtesy of a company I’m not familiar with called New Films Cinema – the U.S. distribution arm of a worldwide full-service production and distribution company called New Films International. And, as chance would have it, Burning Palms will also debut in theaters this Friday, the 14th; so 2 different Zoe Saldana-starring projects will be competing for eyeballs. She certainly doesn’t carry either film; however,...

Here’s a movie I profiled earlier this week – made in 2006, but is only now being released.

It’s titled The Heart Specialist, and its synopsis reads: A modern comedy about the everyday perils of first year medical residents at a shabby south Florida hospital.

Directed by Dennis Cooper, the film stars Zoe Saldana, Wood Harris, Brian J. White, Mya, Method Man, Jasmine Guy, Ed Asner, and several others.

As noted in my earlier post, the producers of the film teamed up with Freestyle Releasing in a service deal, to distribute the film in theatres, beginning on January 14th, when it opens in limited release.

At the time, I didn’t know how many theaters it would open in; however, thanks to a recent post from Box Office Mojo, I now know! The Heart Specialist will debut on 500 screens across the USA next week Friday. That’s 14 more than that...

Monthly Movie Preview – January 2011

Fresh off the holiday headache of in-laws and frantic last minute holiday shopping, January promises a fresh start for most people. It’s a brand new year and most of us have fooled ourselves into thinking that somehow this year’s gonna be different. We’re really gonna work off that holiday weight or we’re really gonna take the time to give back.

Unfortunately, the movie line up is about as fresh and original as most people’s New year’s resolutions. Then again, if it ain’t broke, why bother trying to fix it? January plays host to a number of different films. They range from comedies to the unlikely January action flick. No matter how you slice it, January’s line up gives us all a glimpse as to what 2011 might have to offer movie-goers this year. Check it out.

View Poll January...

Talk about resurrecting the dead…

So, there I was researching the list of films scheduled to open in theaters this month, and I find this, a film I’ve never heard of, that was actually made in 2006, but is only now being released. Why? Who knows! It could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the fact that it stars Zoe Saldana (who’s certainly a much bigger star now than she was when the film was made, 4 years ago), has something to do with it.

The movie is titled The Heart Specialist, as the poster on the left says, and its synopsis reads: A modern comedy about the everyday perils of first year medical residents at a shabby south Florida hospital.

Sounds intriguing enough… directed by Dennis Cooper, the film stars, in addition to Zoe Saldana, Wood Harris, Brian J. White, Mya, Method Man, Jasmine Guy, Ed Asner, and several others.

This flick was originally entitled Ways of the Flesh. And as we know, the way of all flesh is toward rotting putrescence... which may be why the title was changed, because the film now dubbed The Heart Specialist has been sitting on a shelf since 2006, and probably ain’t so fresh anymore. The trailer looks like a bad parody from a particularly depressing episode of Saturday Night Live. (Ed Asner?) I’m guessing it’s only Zoe Saldana’s new fame that is securing it any kind of theatrical release at all. The Heart Specialist opens in the U.S. and Canada on January 14, 2011; no U.K. release date has been announced.

Queen Latifah will serve as the honorary chair of 2008 Urbanworld Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 10-14 in New York City. She stars in "The Secret Life of Bees," which will play as the closing night film, followed by a Q&A with writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood, Latifah and Sophie Okonedo.

The fest, which focusses on mainstream cinema by and about people of color, will screen 85 films at the AMC Loews 34th Street Theaters.

Receiving spotlight screenings are Gerald Barclay's "Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan" and Aaron Woodley's "Tennessee."

The narrative film line-up includes Brin Hill's "Ball Don't Lie"; Lance Hammer's "Ballast"; Daniel Williams' "Cigarettes for Breakfast"; Mark Harris' "I Used to Love Her"; Lindsey Christian's "Jazz in the Diamond District"; Robert Townsend's "Pantom Punch"; Mark Andrews "Seal Team"; Iris Huey's "Second Chance"; Kent Faulcon's "Sister's Keeper"; Leon Lozano...