Mamma Mia! The Movie
Blu-ray
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release date: December 16, 2008

I have a confession to make that might be a bit embarrassing. I am a closet musical fan. I think it might have been my exposure to Disney cartoons as a child and my love for impromptu dance sequences that attributed to this love but I am a sucker for them. So, it was only natural that, when given the opportunity, I took the chance watch and review Mamma Mia! The Movie for Blu-ray.

Based on the extremely popular Broadway show, Mamma Mia! The Movie tells the story of Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried. Sophie is about to be married and her only wish is to be walked down the aisle by her father. The problem is, he left before she was born and her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) has never talked about him. On the eve of her wedding, Sophie decides to invite her father to the wedding in the guise of Donna. Narrowing down the potential candidates for her father based on Donna’s diary, she invites Harry (Colin Firth), Sam (Pierce Brosnan), and Bill (Stellan Sarsgard) to the wedding and knows for sure that she will know who her father is just by looking at them. Obviously Donna finds out as old feelings resurface and hilarity and singing ensue.

Rendition
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally
Rated R

Rendition is about the post-9/11 American torture practices and shocks the audience into facing the truth of what their fear created, both home and abroad. Rendition made me ashamed to be associated, even by nationality, to those people who voted for, or support the Patriot Act.

A terrorist bombing rips through a crowded market street in the morning in an attempt to kill a middle-eastern official Igal Noar (Abasi Fawal). They miss the official, but it sets in motion a series of events which leads to Anwar El-Ibrahimi being kidnapped and taken to be tortured. Personally invested and morally conflicted, CIA analyist Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is brought in to observe the “extreme interrogation techniques” approved by Corinne Whitman (Meryl Streep) and inflicted upon the detainee, who may have information on the bombing. Anwar’s wife, Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), sets out on a mission to find her husband by contacting her old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), now Senator Hawkins’s (Alan Arkin) personal aid. While Igal Noar attempts to deal with the terrorists in his country, his daughter Fatima (Zineb Qukach) starts to slip into the hands of her shady boyfriend, Khalid El-Emin (Mohammed Khquas).

The writing in Rendition takes what seems to the average American, an ethically gray area, and starts to separate the colors into a story far more black and white. Rendition asks and attempts to answer the question: What happens when the most powerful people in the world become people of convenient principle? Kelley Sane, the writer of this powerful script, asks the question so boldly and without reservation, the audience is required to face the truth of the answer.