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A guide to New Year's Eve...on DVD

Submitted by administrator on Thu, 12/27/2007 - 14:56

Have a meta New Year's Eve this year by watching movies of other people celebrating New Year's Eve. It's cheaper than going out, you don't have to get a baby sitter, drunks and drunken drivers won't be a problem, and you get to decide the evening's play list.Here's a guide to our favorite films on DVD with New Year's Eve scenes. Beware, there are spoilers in some of these items.-- "The Godfather, Part II" (1974): In Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant sequel to the original "The Godfather," who could forget this scene in Havana, Cuba, set against the backdrop of the Castro-led revolt against the Batista dictatorship: Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is watching a nightclub floor show on New Year's Eve when he realizes that it was his own brother Fredo (John Cazale) who set him up for assassination by rival mobsters.-- "When Harry Met Sally ..." (1989): One of the most romantic moments in Rob Reiner's romantic comedy takes place when, after years of friendship and one sexual encounter, Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) comes to the realization that he's really in love with Sally Albright (Meg Ryan). So he rushes to the New Year's Eve party she's attending dispiritedly to tell her of his feelings.-- "200 Cigarettes" (1999): New Year's Eve on New York's Lower East Side in 1981 is the setting for this story about a dozen or so folks in their 20s and their loves, lusts and relationships. The ensemble cast includes Ben and Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle, Kate Hudson, Janeane Garofalo, Christina Ricci, Courtney Love and Elvis Costello.-- "After the Thin Man" (1936): The second "Thin Man" movie, and one of the best in the series based on the stories of Dashiell Hammett, finds Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) Charles back in their hometown of San Francisco on New Year's Eve. Their plans for a festive evening are changed, however, when the husband of Nora's cousin disappears. A young James Stewart plays a friend of the family.-- "Four Rooms" (1995): Tim Roth stars as an overworked and much-abused bellboy at a once-grand but now run-down Hollywood hotel on New Year's Eve in this four-part comedy with each segment made by a different director.-- "Ocean's Eleven" (1960 and 2001): If one were planning to rob Las Vegas casinos, why not do it on perhaps the busiest night of the year, New Year's Eve? That's the premise for both the original Rat Pack caper, in which Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford knock off five Vegas casinos, and Steven Soderbergh's remake with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and others.-- "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "Poseidon" (2006): There are two lessons to learn from this disaster-on-the-high-seas adventure and its remake: 1) When your ship capsizes, the only way out is to climb up to the bottom; and 2) Never take a cruise on New Year's Eve -- that's when rogue tidal waves are most likely to hit your ship. -- "Trading Places" (1983): John Landis' wintertime comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd as a street-wise con artist and a snobby investor, respectively, whose positions in life are switched through the manipulations of two exceedingly rich brothers (Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy), reaches its thrilling climax on New Year's Eve.-- "Assault on Precinct 13" (2005): This remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film (itself a remake of sorts of Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo"), transfers the action from warm and sweaty Los Angeles to cold and stormy New York on New Year's Eve.-- "Gridlock'd" (1997): In writer-director Vondie Curtis Hall's feature film debut, it takes a New Year's Eve drug overdose by a jazz singer (Thandie Newton) to convince her friends, bandmates and fellow junkies Stretch (Tim Roth) and Spoon (Tupac Shakur) to try to get into a rehab program. It may make for a melancholy New Year's Eve if you watch this and realize that the promising Shakur was murdered four months before this film was released.(Contact Bruce Dancis at bdancis (at) sacbee.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)