Elektra

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Elektra (Widescreen Edition)
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List Price: $14.98
Amazon Price: $1.94

Description
FROM THE FORCES THAT BROUGHT YOU X-MEN AND DAREDEVIL?Superstar Jennifer Garner proves that looks can kill as the sexiest action hero ever to burst from the pages of Marvel Comics. Restored to life after sustaining mortal wounds in Daredevil, an icy, solitary Elektra (Garner) now lives only for death as the world?s most lethal assassin. Using her bone-crunching martial arts skills and Kimagure?the ability to see into the future?Elektra is on a collision course with darkness? until her latest assignment forces her to make a choice that will lead either to her redemption or destruction in the ultimate battle between good and evil!

Elektra - The Director's Cut (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
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While 2003's Daredevil was a conventional superhero movie, the 2005 spinoff, Elektra, is more of a wuxia-styled martial arts/fantasy flick. Elektra (Jennifer Garner) has returned to her life as a hired assassin, but she balks at an assignment to kill a single father (Goran Visnjic, ER) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout). That makes her the target of the Hand, an organization of murderous ninjas, scheming corporate types, and a band of stylish supervillains seeking to eliminate Elektra and tip the balance of power in the ongoing battle of good vs. evil.

As the star of Alias, Garner has proven that she can kick butt with the best of them, and some of the visual effects are impressive, but the action sequences tend to be anticlimactic, and there's not much to the story. Fans will notice numerous references to Frank Miller's comic books, but there's very little resemblance to Miller's cold-blooded killer (Elektra with an agent? Elektra referring to herself as a "soccer mom"?).

Is Elektra better than Daredevil? Not really, even with the distinct advantage of having all Garner and no Ben Affleck. That could be the spinoff's greatest disappointment: after Spider-Man 2 raised the bar for comic-book movies, Elektra lowered it back to Daredevil's level. Directed by Rob Bowman (the X-Files movie), and featuring Terence Stamp as the mysterious mentor Stick, Will Yun Lee (Die Another Day) as the chief villain, and NFL-player-turned-mixed-martial-arts-champion Bob Sapp as the immovable Stone. --David Horiuchi

Elektra (Full Screen Edition)
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List Price: $14.98
Amazon Price: $2.25

Description
FROM THE FORCES THAT BROUGHT YOU X-MEN AND DAREDEVIL?Superstar Jennifer Garner proves that looks can kill as the sexiest action hero ever to burst from the pages of Marvel Comics. Restored to life after sustaining mortal wounds in Daredevil, an icy, solitary Elektra (Garner) now lives only for death as the world?s most lethal assassin. Using her bone-crunching martial arts skills and Kimagure?the ability to see into the future?Elektra is on a collision course with darkness? until her latest assignment forces her to make a choice that will lead either to her redemption or destruction in the ultimate battle between good and evil!

R. Strauss - Elektra
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CUSTOMER REVIEW:
Terrible
I have seen Elektra many times (15-20, mostly with Birgit Nilsson, (but also many others) and I understand that it is a difficult opera to put on stage. But you should always let the music speak (I love it!) and it is not necessary always to exaggerate the darker musical happenings within the staging. This is a film I do not want to see more than once. It is terribly ugly, dirt grey althrough - and with very much overacting. There is BEAUTY in the score, you can see nothing of it in this scenery and direction. As for Ms. Rysanek, I do think that an artist who has not tried out her role in the opera house never should try it on film only. Varnay is grotesque in her overacting (yes I know that she has a grotesque role, but not like this, please), Only Catarina Ligendza gives some comfort. I think I must mention here that I greatly admire all these artists, Varnay - I just adore her - in Wagner, Ligendza (in Wagner), and Rysanek, in amonger other fields, Wagner and Strauss/Empress.

Strauss - Elektra
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It's hard to imagine confirmed Straussians not wanting this starry Metropolitan Opera performance of Elektra. Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, transformed Sophocles' take on Homer's tale into a harrowing opera noir. Elektra lives for one reason, to kill her mother, Klytämnestra, and her stepfather, Aegisth, the murderers of her father, Agamemnon. In contrast to Elektra's vengeful obsession, her sister Chrysothemis desires to get on with life. When their long-missing brother, Orestes, returns to do the deed, Elektra celebrates with a dance of death and, her sole purpose in life fulfilled, dies. Strauss joined the hermetic plot to music of the utmost opulence, violent and yearning by turns, evoking the cardinal principles of Greek tragedy - pity and terror.

This Met performance from February 1980 is notable for the playing of the orchestra, itself a major factor in any performance of Elektra, and for the three female leads. James Levine's conducting is full of passion, lyrical when it needs to be, but crushingly powerful in the big moments. Strauss' orchestration sometimes becomes chamber music-delicate, eloquently done by the orchestra. Birgitt Nilsson and Leonie Rysanek were the leading Elektra and Chrysothemis of the day. Nilsson was in her 62nd year, still singing well, even in such a demanding role that taxes singers half her age. But despite small signs that she's husbanding her vocal resources and hints of wavering pitch that indicate tiring, she gives an overwhelmingly intense performance. The booklet notes say that Rysanek was ill with a 102 degree fever, but there's no indication of it in either her singing or her passionate acting as. Mezzo Mignon Dunn, the Klytämnestra, was a Met mainstay for 35 years, and if she lacked the superstar status of Nilsson and Rysanek she more than holds her own here, virtually dominating the stage in her scenes and fully capturing the character's pain and frustration. If the men are not quite up to these three formidable ladies, that's par for the Elektra course.

The single set is of the dimly lit palace courtyard, identifiable as a place where bad things will happen. Herbert Graf's production and Paul Mills' stage direction are conventional, unimpeded by directorial novelty or conceptual misfires. Brian Large's video direction is not as effective or polished as his other Met productions; some moments obscured by darkness, others subverted by too-tight close-ups. The sound is also below the best that could be achieved in 1980, but good enough to do justice to the singing and the orchestra. --Dan Davis

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