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DVD Details
- Rated: PG
- Closed captioning available
- Run Time: 1 hours, 35 minutes
- Video: Color
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: June 16, 2009
- Originally Released: 2008
- Label: 20Th Century Studios
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Starring | Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway, Tim Robbins & Bill Murray | |
Performer: | Mary Kay Place, Martin Landau & Toby Jones | |
Directed by | Gil Kenan | |
Screenwriting by | Caroline Thompson | |
Composition by | Andrew Lockington | |
Produced by | Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman & Steve Shareshian | |
Director of Photography: | Xavier Perez Grobet | |
Executive Production by | John D. Schofield & Diana Choi |
Entertainment Reviews:
3 stars out of 5 -- Ember is a dank urban jungle of crumbling redbricks, rusting lampposts and bleeding pipes, the kind of fantasy-sci-fi-retro world realised by Gilliam or Jeunet and Caro....CITY OF EMBER is full of sprightly visual thrills, and packed with delightful details...
Empire
Rating: 3/4 --
Built upon a bedrock of dazzling and richly constructed sets -- think Dr. Seuss meets Jules Verne meets Mad Max -- and complemented by rock-solid storytelling, it's an enormously enjoyable family film.
Times-Picayune
Ultimately, it didn't move me in any way.
Full Review
At the Movies
Rating: 3/4 --
Though City of Ember is a bit hurried in execution, this first live-action film by director Gil Kenan has the subterranean feel of a dream being described.
Seattle Times
Rating: 3/5 --
A shaky platform of sense but the visual genius is so great, the film must be seen.
Full Review
Cinema Signals
Rating: 2.5/4 --
A thrilling adventure tale and teen fantasy that is grounded in real concerns about who is managing the planet.
Full Review
Toronto Star
Rating: 7/10 --
A lot of thought and effort has been put into City of Ember but the whole is never more than the sum of its parts. It wants to be an adventure story and a fable and a mystery all at the same time and never quite decides what it is.
Full Review
ComingSoon.net
Product Description:
The lights are going out in the City of Ember, a time-limited underground haven created some 200 years ago by the higher-ups of humanity in a world on the brink of disaster. Meanwhile, many of its literally and figuratively in-the-dark citizens don't suspect a thing. The only wise ones are two plucky teenagers (Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway) who are devoted to finding--with or without the help of the cagey Mayor Cole (Bill Murray)--the exit from Ember. Screenwriting credit for CITY OF EMBER, a refreshing fantasy film based on the first novel in author Jeanne DuPrau's sci-fi/adventure series for young adults, belongs to none other than Caroline Thompson. She's a silver screen veteran of family-friendly otherworldliness who's collaborated on many of Tim Burton's most definitive projects, and indeed she's brought to this live-action sophomore effort from enthusiastic movie-geek director Gil Kenan (MONSTER HOUSE) a miniaturist sensibility reminiscent of the condensed and simply plotted eccentricity of CORPSE BRIDE and A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. In stark contrast to some of the more epically turgid fantasy films released in the wake of Harry Potter's first outing, EMBER harks back to the modestly scaled ethos of cinematic spectacle typically embodied by the whimsical adventure movies made for children in the 1980s. When the film's farfetched premise meets its unadorned storytelling to unfold in a neatly contained, nearly real-time episode, it renders the image of ordinary children traversing an architectural phantasmagoria with the kind of paradoxical patina of fluffy-yet-provocative fantasy that can stimulate the imaginations of both kids and adults. The movie's neon-filamented aesthetic, a post-apocalyptic pastiche of industrialization, is sometimes evocative of German expressionism. Still, including cinematographer Xavier Perez Grobiet's kinetic tracking shots, Kenan's film is not without its 21st-century elements.
Description by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:
A heart-thumping, edge-of-your-seat adventure comes to light in this exhilarating family film based on the best-selling novel by Jeanne Duprau. For centuries, the residents of the underground City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights and quiet contentment. But when the City's massive power generator begins to fail, the street lamps start to fade - along with the hopes and dreams of the townspeople. Now it's up to two courageous teenagers to follow a trail of clues left by the ancient Builders and find a way out of Ember before their world is plunged into darkness forever!
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Product Info
- UPC: 024543563396
- Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
- International Shipping: 1 item