Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Grips with both hands on the wheel

Drive confidently swerves around pigeonholes. Pink scripted credits, seemingly plucked from an 80s billboard, burn over opening shots of the LA skyline, right before plunging into a tense getaway that would make Michael Mann grin from ear to ear. The protagonist — whose proper name is never revealed throughout the entire flick — barely speaks [...]

The whole Bondchilada

MGM has announced the mother of all boxed sets in celebration of 50 years of James Bond wooing women, breaking gadgets, and thwarting global disaster on the silver screen. Never before have all 22 films been available in high definition Blu-ray and compiled into one epic collectors item that’s truly a must have for any [...]

Boxed-Up Box Office

Newbies in the display game rarely succeed given the variety of entrenched brands already doing well in the space. BryteWerks hopes to become an exception with their soon to be released Model One Cube, which takes a slightly more literal approach to the concept of a home theater in a box. Inside the sleek black [...]

The wrong kind of touchy-feely

Contagion is a germophobe’s worst nightmare. Director Steven Soderbergh and his usual team tackle a well-worn niche, ploughed by titles like Outbreak, to create a pandemic horror story that will leave most viewers running to stockpile Purell and hesitant to enter airports. Much of its success comes from a grounded depiction of how the world’s [...]

Back in time with no DeLorean in sight

Midnight in Paris features plenty of Woody Allen trademarks, while avoiding many of the quirks that have irritated us about his work in the past. “Pair-eee” has rarely looked so good in a film and leaves viewers pining to hop a plane to de Gaulle as soon as the credits roll. The cast boasts a [...]

A foreign masterpiece in 1080p

When it comes to Brazilian cinema, it doesn’t get any bigger than City of God. After its release in 2002, the outstanding film based on true events quickly stormed the international film community, grabbing four academy award nominations in the process thanks to its raw depiction of life in the slums of the notorious Rio [...]

Home sweet home theater

As rabid movie, music fans and gamers, we’re always on the hunt for gear that can push our home entertainment experience to 11 (much to our better half’s chagrin). This roundup includes some of our favorite home theater products out today that we’d love to host in our living room. Continues after the jump.

What's Cookin'

GEAR PATROL SPONSORED POST After covering the HP Touch Smart’s talents as a bedroom media center, we next put the capable machine to the test in the center of our home, a.k.a. the kitchen. We know –- having a computer there sounds strange, but as we discovered, having a touch-enabled digital communication center that the [...]

Date-approved, yet still enjoyable

Despite what the posters say, Our Idiot Brother is less of a roll-on-the-floor-comedy, and more of a feel-good-indie. That doesn’t mean you won’t laugh out loud while watching though (the parole officer conversations and an attempted threesome are particularly rich moments). Loaded with generation X stars including Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Rashida Jones [...]

Small town sci-fi with plenty of laughs

While Steven Spielberg has been busy wearing in his boots as the bankroller of nearly every mega-budget Sci-Fi production over the last few years, we’ve personally missed him behind the camera. Thankfully, J.J. Abrams has been methodically honing his Spielberg impersonation skills with each passing film he’s directed. Super 8 was certainly his best outing [...]

All-in-fun

GEAR PATROL SPONSORED POST If the explosion of smartphones and tablets has revealed any universal truth about technology, it’s that touch screens are far more pleasant to work with for most activities compared to mashing buttons. So, how can a touchscreen change the role of the desktop in your home? That’s a question we set [...]

Love Hurts

Bellflower is the debut film by Evan Glodell, who in many ways exhibits hints of both a young James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino. Like “the king of the world”, Glodell has a love for the mechanical — he built his own specialized camera to film Bellflower, as well as many of the movie’s ridiculous anarchist [...]

There's epic miniseries, and then there's this

Two epic miniseries, in 1080p, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, in one limited edition box set. That about sums up the Band of Brothers & Pacific Blu-ray Box Set ($135) which is slated to hit shelves on November 8th. Whether you’ve caught the occasional re-run on the History Channel, or missed these series [...]

Boxed-In

When you get the money, then you get the $700 limited edition Scarface Blu-ray. Then, when you get the power and Blu-ray, then you get the women. That’s probably not the exact curriculum of the Tony Montana life coaching system, but we’re pretty sure he’d still splurge on this ridiculous version of Brian De Palma’s [...]

Getting the Most Out of Those $20 Pieces of Plastic

You may be through with the whole disc-based movie thing at this point, but anyone who demands the best in video quality will value the firepower of Onkyo’s newly announced BD-SP809 Blu-ray player ($599). It’s THX certified, and sports Marvell’s Qdeo processing for top notch DVD 1080p upscaling and Blu-ray video quality. Home theater geeks [...]