Gran Torino (Widescreen) : DVD released on June 9, 2009

Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, a modest photo shot during a post-production on his extensive rock period piece Change Ling was quiet out on Christmas 2008, after which they proceeded to blow away all the Oscar-bait giants at the Box Office and win its 78-year-old star of the best reviews of his acting career. Both films and performances are consummately cunning - stand up with deceptive simplicity, only to evolve into something complex, powerful and surprisingly tender. Like Unforgiven was a tragic reflection on Eastwood's legacy in the Western genre Gran Torino caps and eloquent criticism of the urban heritage of Dirty Harry and his violent brothers. And on top of that, the movie is a savvy meditation on America in a particular historical moment, racially, economically, spiritually. Call it a "state of the Union message. But call it with a lopsided grin.

The new Dirty Harry is a sullen Walt: Walt Kowalski (Eastwood playing his own age), a widower, Korean War veteran, retired auto worker, and the last white resident of Detroit street. It is difficult to say who irks him - his blood relatives (a pretty lame bunch) or Hmong families who are his new neighbors. Kowalski is a racist, because it never occurred to him he should not be. Besides, this is the Flip Side of mutual ethnic baiting that serves as the currency of affection for him and his working-class buddies. Circumstances - and the two young people next door, the feisty Sue (Ahney Her) and her brother in battle Thao (Bee Vang) - Walt contrive to involve a new community, and anoint him as a hero after he turns his big guns some ruffians. The range of this may surprise you - several times over. Eastwood film chosen for economic misery Detroit - a shrewd decision, but its mapping of Walt's world that the classical style that really counts. Each corner of occasional lawn, terrace and cellar to matter - and by all means the workshop / garage that houses the mint condition Gran Torino sign that Walt helped build a more prosperous era. This is a remarkable film.

• Actors: Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley, Christopher Carley, Geraldine Hughes
• Directors: Clint Eastwood
• Format: Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: June 9, 2009
• Run Time: 116 minutes

Check out Gran Torino related media

Changeling DVD : released on Feb.17, 2009

Clint Eastwood's mastery as a director, published in the last decade and a half with Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and others continue to work with Changeling, from 2008, based on a shocking, but all too true story about child abduction and corruption of police in Los Angeles the 1920th Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie, excellent in a role with some limited parameters) you will find 9-year-old son, Walter, missing when she returned home from work one day. Files a report with the Los Angeles Police Department, an outfit that is wildly unpopular at the time (in his regular radio show, a crusading priest played by John Malkovich Decries the force as "violent and corrupt," and added that "our brutalizers are our protector "). When a child is about Walter matching description in Illinois five months later, the LAPD, his intention to salvage tattered reputation, is only too happy to say that he Collins' child is missing. Small things, that he is three centimeters shorter circumcised (Walter was not), and not to patterns with Walter Dentist, teachers and others, the police, especially the despicable Captain JJ Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), insist that the error Christine is not her. What follows is almost too nightmarish to think - unless it really happened. Unnerved by Collins' further claim that "Walter" is a fraud, they trot a doctor to the bogus ID, explain it unsuitable as a parent, and finally they have to a local psychopathic Ward. Through it all, Collins, assisted by the pastor and thousands of outraged Angelenos, refuses to sign a document which exempts the police for their serious mistakes. What Walter, it is only when the LAPD's apparently only honest Detective (Michael Kelly) the matters into his own hands, that the secret of the cruel fate of a child begins to dissolve. That would be a good place for the film to close on. Unfortunately, it is more than half an hour, with many false endings to add that nothing in the story and could just as well have been combined with a few sentences before the final credits. These errors aside (and it is important), Changeling is a powerful film, with a realistic period feel, a wonderful atmosphere and subdued color palette and a result of the understatement Eastwood. - Sam Graham

• Actors: Angelina Jolie, Colm Feore, Amy Ryan, Gattlin Griffith, Michelle Martin
• Directors: Clint Eastwood
• Writers: J. Michael Straczynski
• Producers: Clint Eastwood, Brian Grazer, Geyer Kosinski, James Whitaker, Robert Lorenz
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating:
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: February 17, 2009
• Run Time: 141 minutes