Tue, 15 August 2006 at 12:00 am

3 dvd giveaway

…if you win this contest!

Lots of contests lately. Up for grabs are 3 compelling DVD titles, all released August 8th, that touch upon and invade our notions of social norms in everyday life.

C.S.A.: Confederate States of America

Bold, satirical and wildly funny, the film poses the question: What would have happened if the South had won the Civil War? Played as a straight-faced Ken Burns-style documentary with uncanny parallels to our current society, CSA presents an alternative modern day America as a land in which slavery is alive and well throughout the 50 states, other non-whites and non-Christians are relegated to reservations, the country is in an ongoing Cold War with Canada and a Slave Shopping Network plays on TV. In the words of Spike Lee, an Executive Producer, the film is "eye opening and jaw dropping."

Sorry, Haters

Sorry, Haters is a psychological thriller with political and social undertones set in today’s New York. It’s a story of anger, revenge and retribution so timely it could be true. It begins when Ashade, a Muslim cab driver (Abdellatif Kechiche), picks up Phoebe (Robin Wright Penn) a well-heeled professional woman. Although Ashade and Phoebe have nothing in common, each holds troubling urges and hidden motivations. When Phoebe takes an interest in exonerating Ashade’s brother, a series of events are set in motion resulting in the revelation of a devastating hidden truth. Sorry, Haters is that rare film that dares to capture the anxiety of a city on edge. With powerful performances by Robin Wright Penn, Abdellatif Kechiche, Sandra Oh and Josh Hamilton, it has the courage to ask the most forbidden questions about who we are, and suggest some surprising answers.

Manderlay

This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father had left the township of Dogville behind them. Grace’s father and his army of villains had spent the entire winter seeking out new hunting grounds in vain, and now they were heading south in one last attempt to find a favourable location in which to take up residence. By chance their cars stop in the state of Alabama in front of a large iron gate bearing a thick chain and a padlock. Beside the gate, a dead oak tree towers over a heavy boulder with Manderlay hewn in monumental letters into the granite. Just as Grace, her father and his men are about to leave after a short break and a quick lunch, a young black woman runs up to the car. She knocks on Grace’s window. She hammers at the glass in despair. Ignoring her father’s advice to leave others to their own affairs, Grace follows the girl through the gates of Manderlay and there, she finds a group of people living as if slavery had not been abolished seventy years earlier, with white masters and black slaves… Grace believes that she has a duty to make it up to the slaves for injustices they have suffered at the hands of her kind: ‘we brought them here, we abused them and made them what they are’, as she argues to her father; and she decides that having liberated Manderlay, she will remain at the plantation until she has seen them through their first harvest. Her father grudgingly leaves her with four henchmen and a lawyer, warning Grace that he won’t be there to pick up the pieces when her plans for the resurrection of Manderlay fall apart…

HOW TO WIN ALL 3 DVDS :: Leave a wonderful comment in this post along with a valid email address (won’t be published) and a winner will be chosen randomly. One entry per person. This contest is for all 3 DVD titles mentioned above. Contest ends promptly on Tuesday, August 22 @ 7PM EST. Good luck!

- Doobybrain