March 13, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES II, III & IV • Page 21 New releases include visually stunning 3D adventure by Dennis Seuling “Life of Pi” (20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment) is the most beautiful-looking film of 2012. Director Ang Lee took on the tough task of adapting the Yann Martel novel when other directors felt it was not filmable. Not only did he succeed, he created a cinematic masterpiece. Following a shipwreck, a young Indian named Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) finds himself sharing a lifeboat with several animals, including a huge Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, that his parents were taking to Canada to open a zoo. Lee has some spectacular scenes at the beginning of the movie to show first Pi’s search for spirituality by sampling different religions and then the shipwreck in all its terror as wild animals struggle amid the crashing waves and sinking freighter, but it is the sequences on board the lifeboat that give the film its distinction. Much has been written about the mostly computer-generated tiger, which deserves the accolades, since it is completely believable and terrifying. But Sharma, who plays the primary human character, has not been given his due as an actor. He is quite amazing as his Pi wages a daily battle of survival with a beast whose sole desire is to kill and eat him. Pi builds a raft, which he tethers to the lifeboat to distance himself from the tiger, but both are faced with hunger, seasickness, unforgiving sun, and desperation as they must acclimate themselves to an unpleasant reality. The story is bookended by scenes in modern-day Canada featuring a middleaged Pi (Irrfan Khan) telling his story to a Canadian author (Rafe Spall). Viewers know Pi will survive his ordeal crossing the Pacific. We just don’t know how bad things will get. The three-disc Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray 2D/DVD edition is packed with extras, including three making-of documentaries, deleted scenes, original art and storyboards, a digital copy, and a featurette on the huge water tank used for many of the film’s most dramatic scenes. There are also two-disc Blu-ray and single-disc DVD editions available. “Tristana” (Cohen Media Group) is based on a novel by Benito Perez Galdos, 19th-century Spain’s leading novelist and playwright. After the death of her mother, beautiful young Tristana (Catherine Deneuve, “Belle de Jour,” “Repulsion”) goes to live with Don Lope Garrido (Fernando Rey, “The French Connection”). Her new guardian is an impoverished, freethinking nobleman who may have also been an old flame of Tristana’s mother. Whatever paternal feelings he may have for the poor girl are no match for his lust. He makes her his lover but, as she grows older, Tristana begins to assert her independence and demands to study music, art, and other subjects. She falls in love with young artist Horacio (Franco Nero) and leaves Don Lope to live with him. Director Luis Bunuel began his career with the silent surrealist landmark “Un Chien Andalou,” and over the next 50 years created such classics as “Viridiana,” “The Exterminating Angel,” and “Diary of a Chambermaid.” “Tristana” was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and won numerous awards in Spain. Blu-ray features include audio commentary with Deneuve, an alternate ending, a visual essay featurette, and the original French theatrical trailer. The movie is in Spanish with Eng- A teenage boy (Suraj Sharma) and a Bengal tiger are the sole survivors of a shipwreck in ‘Life of Pi.’ lish subtitles and dubbed English options. “The Blob” (The Criterion Collection) is one of the most fondly remembered science-fiction films of the 1950s. Starring Steve McQueen before his rise to stardom on TV’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and as a big-screen leading man, the film concerns a meteorite that contains a jelly-like substance -- a living organism that survives by absorbing human beings and grows in size with each meal. The action takes place during one long night in a small Pennsylvania town, which is unusual, since ‘50s sci-fi (continued on Crossword page )