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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on May 8th, 2013
The first question you have to ask: “Was Stanley Kubrick a genius?” There are those who assert his IQ was ridiculously high (200+). Kubrick himself replied that he was below average. I tend to agree with the former rather than Kubrick himself. Kubrick is a monumental legend in film history. I personally think he is the single greatest director of all time, but I say that with a little reservation. There are hundreds of directors who I admire and think are deserving of high praise, but Kubrick’s incredible mystique is what raises him above the rest.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on May 8th, 2013
I should start by saying I just re-watched the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon on Turner Classic Movies, and I fell in love all over again. Olivier was never more magnetic, naturalistic and appealing than he was as Heathcliff. I have watched it many times and Wuthering Heights has been done many times. There have been recent versions with Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception). This is not one of those versions.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on April 22nd, 2013
You need to imagine you are back in 1969. Many of you will have no idea what a different world it was back then. So many things did not exist, like computers and the internet and cable television. So much is available now that people could only fantasize about then. Now any unsupervised 10-year-old can see just about anything they want. It’s hard to imagine how big a difference that is. Hiding Playboy magazines under the mattress was about as bad as it got back then. There was a huge unfulfilled demand for adult entertainment when adults couldn’t find much that excited or titillated them.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on April 4th, 2013
Many small unheralded horror films are produced, and they easily slip through the cracks. The Frankenstein Theory is one. It has an interesting premise, though. In 2012, Professor Jonathan Venkenheim takes a film crew to the Arctic to document the attempt to prove that Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was a true story based on his great, great, great grandfather’s letters. Venkenheim is a highly educated, nervous, and nerdy academic who is obsessed with this possibility. The documentary crew and Venkenheim’s own girlfriend think his obsession is driving him a little mad, but they want the job, and Venkenheim will not be deterred.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on March 13th, 2013
The Real Vikings is a DVD collection put out by the History channel and is comprised of three separately-produced programs about the reign of the Vikings.
The last one is the best and is part of the Warriors series hosted by Green Beret Terry Schappert. Schappert delves into some of the key battles of the early Viking invasions and the methods that made them such effective warriors. In the late 8th century A.D. the Viking state is disorganized, and the easiest route to fame and glory is through conquest. Conquests then would lead to a rallying behind a leader. In 793 A.D.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on February 19th, 2013
Gossip Girl ran six years on the CW and is based on a series of books written by Cecily Von Ziegesar. It is about the very rich and young of the upper east side of New York City. The gossip girl of the title has remained secret throughout the series but is revealed in the final episode. I won’t be revealing the secret. The series is best described as glossy fun. It is a soap opera in the extreme with a heavy emphasis on fashion and all of the expensive toys of the ridiculously rich. It also deals primarily with teenagers who are “maturing” while trying to deal with the difficulties of a life that has no boundaries.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 31st, 2013
Comedy Central is the main access for exposure for most comedians today. They regularly broadcast up and coming comedy specials, and Amy Schumer seems to be one of their latest favorites. She has a new sketch comedy show coming out this spring on Comedy Central called Inside Amy Schumer. She was also featured on the celebrity roasts of Charlie Sheen and Roseanne Barr with a number of better-known performers. Her material is fairly fearless, targeting anyone and everyone.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 10th, 2013
If you were to print out all the quotes from the interviews in Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, a 116-minute documentary, you would swear that Lewis himself wrote them all. Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett, Billy Crystal, Chevy Chase, John Landis, Carl Reiner, Richard Lewis (no relation) and Alec Baldwin are all so effusive in their compliments as to almost defy belief. Woody Harrelson says if you don’t like Jerry Lewis, he doesn’t even want to hang out with you.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 4th, 2013
One of the things that HBO does best is to tackle an issue-orientated hot button topic in an adult and in-depth manner. It does this better than big-screen movies, because Hollywood is afraid to do it because it doesn’t pay. Hollywood likes to win awards and get Oscars, but it’s money first. HBO can do intelligent programs with modest budgets that appeal to their subscribers and fit their format. They know they are the best at a certain type of programing, and they know what they’re doing.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 4th, 2013
Enlightened is a new HBO series that tries to find a place in the storied and award-winning shelf of great shows from the cable giant. Many HBO series have had a strong hook to hang on like the gangster epics The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. Enlightened is a far more elusive concept. At the center of this series is Laura Dern’s character, who is a source of constant angst and confusion. Dern has already won a Golden Globe for her performance. The character is full of contradictions and internal conflicts.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on December 18th, 2012
Ken Follett has written many historical novels from many periods such as World War II and the Hundred Years War. World Without End is part of the latter. It is a sequel to Pillars of the Earth. Both have been made into mini-series. World Without End takes place 157 years after Pillars and features descendants from the first book. It was broadcast in the USA, UK and Canada and is now available on DVD.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on October 25th, 2012
Coma was a movie with Michael Douglas in the 70′s. It has now been redone as a miniseries with a running time of 160 minutes in 2012. It has a large and familiar cast including JamesWoods, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, Joe Morton, and Ellen Burstyn, but the lead is Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) who plays a surgical intern at an institute that is named after his grandfather. The institute is world famous for being the best place to care for patients in an advanced vegetative state, or in other words, coma. It is based on a novel by Robin Cook who is known for his medical thrillers.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on September 17th, 2012
The Letter is a brand new film starring Winona Ryder and James Franco, and I think Winona is a beautiful as she has ever been. She was a big A-list star when she was younger, but then she had some legal problems that seemed to derail her. She resumed worked though in high profile projects like The Black Swan, Mr. Deeds, and The Dilemma playing bad girls. James Franco is also a big name and has a high profile, even co-hosting the Oscars (though that did not work out very well)
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on September 17th, 2012
The History Channel likes to market some of its more popular shows on DVD. The series Modern Marvels had a winner in James Bond Gadgets. It certainly ties in with a James Bond movie collection. This DVD has three sections, two of them devoted to the gadgets and a third from the Biography channel on Ian Fleming which adds up to over three hours of material.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on July 3rd, 2012
The opening scene of Black Limousine is highly dramatic and highly deceptive. We open on a space station beginning to explode and disintegrate in orbit as a female astronaut tries to revive a seemingly dead male crew member. The music swells as the explosions beginning to trigger and expand. The credits roll. We see David Arquette sitting in a crowded theater watching the screen. He then lingers outside the theater looking at a movie poster and trailing his fingers across the words “Music by Jack McKenzie”
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on May 23rd, 2012
How many films are lost and forgotten over the years? It would be interesting to know how many films have been made since the advent of the movie industry. It is probably in the millions, and yet most of us would probably have trouble thinking of a thousand. The Red House is probably a film that could be considered lost or forgotten. It stars Edward G. Robinson, who is someone who everyone probably knows and would consider to be a classic American actor. There use to an old expression, “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City, and this is one of them.”
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on May 8th, 2012
“The man of virtue is invincible.” - Wong Fei-Hung
This is a reference to the eternal struggle between good and evil. It is war on an extremely personal level. Hand-to-hand warfare is best shown in intensely emotional films dealing with Asian martial arts. They are full of discipline and morality. Ric Meyers wrote a book that he has turned into a movie, and it is a thorough and passionate work.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on May 2nd, 2012
Are you a very, very big fan of horror films? If you are, you are part of a small but passionate core of fans who live to gobble up anything that is gory and creepy and disgusting. Many people enjoy a good horror film from time to time, but that is not the same thing as thinking every day about what obscure monster or murder film you haven’t seen. If you read Fangoria or any number of websites or fanzines devoted to the subject, you know what I mean. There is a worldwide group of fans who have a bloodthirsty need for more and more and more horror.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on April 10th, 2012
Miramax and Lionsgate have released two film collections starring American actresses who from time to time talk with British accents, Gwyneth Paltrow and Renee Zellweger. Lionsgate is flying high now with the gigantic success of The Hunger Games shooting its stock price through the roof. It’s time to visit the vault and relive some past successes. Renee Zellweger is one of those actresses that is hard to pin down.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on April 10th, 2012
Miramax and Lionsgate have released film collections starring American actresses who from time to time talk with British accents, Gwyneth Paltrow and Renee Zellweger. Lionsgate is flying high now with the gigantic success of The Hunger Games shooting its stock price through the roof. It’s time to visit the vault and relive some past successes.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on February 27th, 2012
What takes 13.7 billion years.? The history of the world. This History Channel special takes two hours to cover everything. Of course, Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, so when we talk about the history of the world, we are really talking about the history of the universe and everything that led up to where we are now. Little things like a gigantic planetary collision which then shoots off molten debris which forms into our moon.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on February 27th, 2012
One of the great things about the movies is that it shows you things you would never see. You get to see a facsimile of people living their lives and get to experience a pertinent slice of their personal problems. We can be entertained by it and we can learn from it. It takes us out of our personal life and our personal problems. The closer to the truth a movie is the more we can identify with it. I have seen so many movies, but I know it just scratches the surface of the life stories out there.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on February 6th, 2012
It would be nice if we were to get films as good as The Graduate from time to time. That’s asking a lot, but it would be nice. Another Happy Day is no The Graduate, but nothing is. Nothing could make such a seismic hit to a generation again. At least, I don’t think so. Another Happy Day did win the Best Screenwriting award at the Sundance film festival, and it seems well deserved. The film has a great cast, and you usually only get that if you have a great script or you spend a billion dollars.
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 18th, 2012
Frozen World is a four-part History Channel mini-series about the Ice Age. The History Channel tends to have a sensationalistic bent to a lot of its programming. That’s one way of saying that they like history to come alive. This series begins with the battle between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal human cavemen 40,000 years ago in Clash of the Cavemen. It outlines the differences between these totally different kinds of humans. The Neanderthal is stronger. The Cro-Magnon is smarter
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Disc Reviews by Paul O'Callaghan on January 12th, 2012
Dirty Girl has a nice little cast because it has a nice little script. It has also been produced by the famous Weinstein Brothers, who try to have one of their picture win the Best Picture Oscar every year. Dirty Girl won’t be winning the Oscar, but it’s not bad. Dirty girl Danielle is in high school in Norman Oklahoma in 1987. She goes to the principal’s office after being to frank in sex education class. He sends her to a class for special kids called challengers. He hopes she’ll get back on track quickly.
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