Archive for the ‘Blu-ray’ Category
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2010
“Have you ever felt like you were a little bit different. Like you had something unique to offer to the world, if only you could just get people to see it? Then you know exactly how it felt to be me.”
The title is taken from a very short children’s book written by Judi and Ron Barrett. I say the title and not the story because this movie takes only the most basic concept from the book to create the movie. Most of the characters are brand new creations, and the plot of the entire film deals with events not covered in the book.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2010
“… It is a dark time for the rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the Galaxy. But, you know this story…”
Know this story, you do. It’s the opening of the second, or actually the 5th in sequence, but it is the second one made, unless you count… Never mind. This is the prologue to The Empire Strikes Back, more commonly referred to the 2 hour trailer for Return Of The Jedi. Not so long ago in this Galaxy, Family Guy took a shot across the bow of those Imperial Cruisers with its extremely funny and on the spot spoof of the first Star Wars film
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 11th, 2010
“Every day I get letters. I think I get more letters than Santa Claus, Zac Efron, and Dr. Phil combined. I’m kinda the shit. Sometimes the letters are from people who say they are praying for me. They tell me everything will be OK if I just accept Jesus Christ into my heart. I say the words, but nothing ever happens. Nobody comes back. Nobody gets off the cross.”
There hasn’t been this much hype for a mainstream horror film in quite a long time that I can recollect. Certainly, quite a few have created more buzz after their release and subsequent box office power
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 11th, 2010
If you are looking for some kind of logical sequel to the WWE film The Marine which starred wrestler John Cena, you will be greatly disappointed. The film doesn’t even feature the same character. There is absolutely nothing about this film that connects it to the original beyond the name. The WWE doesn’t even use one of its bigger names in this film. While I have heard of Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase, Jr., I was not aware that he had a son who has followed his footsteps into the wrestling arena. I would suspect that Ted DiBiase, Jr. is a name only known to the fans who follow the WWE.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 7th, 2010
High school was a nightmare for me, I try to forget most of it. For me, there was no 10 year high school reunion and I was glad I never went. Speaking of ten & high school, this is the 10th year anniversary of 10 Things I Hate About You, a Gil Junger comedy that helped launch quite a few careers. As such, they made the leap to Blu-Ray with a well-done anniversary edition. But how does the movie hold up?
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 5th, 2010
For five years now, Lost has taken us through mystery after mystery. I’m beginning to think that the show’s title is more a mission statement for where they want to take the viewers. Each time Abrams appears to answer a question and move on, closer examination proves that nothing has actually been revealed. The series has become the poster child for misdirection and script sleight of hand. When I examine the 13 episodes from season 4, I’m left with the inescapable, pun intended, feeling that nothing significant has really happened here at all. But at the same time it’s the most significant event of the series. All the while I find myself compelled to watch episode after episode.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 5th, 2010
“To everyone’s surprise, the ship didn’t come to a stop over Manhattan or Washington or Chicago, but instead coasted to a halt directly over the city of Johannesburg. The doors didn’t open for months. Nobody could get in. They eventually decided, after much deliberation, that the best thing to do would be to physically cut their way in. We were on the verge of first contact. The whole world was watching, expecting, I don’t know, music from Heaven and bright shining lights…”
It all started when Peter Jackson’s long anticipated Halo project went belly up.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 29th, 2009
By day, this reviewer is not just a writer but a glorified cubicle jockey. For lack of a detailed job description, I am a computer software administrator. So as many cubicle jockeys, I’ve watched Office Space. To be honest, I’m not in love with it. I did find it mildly funny and there were a few “I’ve been in that situation before” moments. But interestingly enough, I was pretty excited to see Extract (Mike Judge had directed both). Perhaps it was my infatuation with Mila Kunis or seeing how Jason Bateman has progressed in comedic films or maybe I just wanted to see Ben Affleck in a full grown beard.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 15th, 2009
“For years, we’ve been putting a secret into the heart of every member of the Saberling Family. Be it the cryogenic refrigerator or the microwave heated coffee maker. A Secret which is at the core of any successful family: Communication.”
When director Hoyt Yeatman’s son Hoyt, Junior, got a pet guinea pig, he began to put soldier-like gear on the unfortunate animal and imagine stories that the rodent was part of a secret spy ring. He would imagine all kinds of missions for the little guy. Thus was born the idea for G Force.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 15th, 2009
“Space…The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!”
Paramount was bold indeed when they undertook the remaster project of the original series. Not only did they clean up the prints, but they took the decidedly risky option of redoing most of the f/x shots from the original prints. We all know just how cheesy the old work looked when compared to today’s computer abilities. You could see a box around spacecraft that allowed the obvious cutout to maneuver through a cardboard star field.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2009
“When the lights go off the battle is on.”
Sequels are a dangerous business. They’ve gotten the best of some of the biggest heroes. Just ask Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, or Neo. Expectations are always going to be high. You’ve already shown us what you can do. We assume you did your best on the original film, now go and do better. Often filmmakers interpret this mandate to just make it bigger. More explosions and hard hitting action and special effects. They tend to remember everything but the story. I’m happy to say that Night At The Museum refused to fall into that trap.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 3rd, 2009
Just in time for the holidays, the Buddies are back for more cute puppy action. All of the retriever Buddies are back for this one. You are introduced to the “Buddies” right at the start, so it doesn’t really matter if you saw any of their other films. There’s Bud-Ha (Cate), a wise meditational pup. Next up is Mud-Bud (Panitz), an always dirty pup with a fondness for rolling in the dirt. The female Buddy is Rose-Bud (Mumy), who is the girly part of the team all decked out in a bow. Bud-Derball (Flitter) is the normal one of the bunch, followed by the rappin’ pup, B-Dawg (Gisondo).
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 1st, 2009
I went to my player, the one that’s on top. I turned on the TV I bought at the shop. Then I opened my Blu-ray, took it right from its case, and then there on the tray I put it in place. I pushed one or two buttons to bring it up fast. Soon an FBI warning, then my feature at last. I sat the whole time crouched alone in my chair, watching fanciful images that came to me there. I was certain at once that I’d seen this before, but something was different; it was brighter, I’m sure. The Grinch was the same, he hadn’t changed, not a bit. But the image was clearer now, I had to admit.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 1st, 2009
I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 30th, 2009
Believe it or not, Robert Langdon did not make his debut in the Da Vinci Code novel. He was actually introduced in an earlier, but far less known novel, Angels & Demons. When Hollywood came a knockin’ they weren’t interested in that earlier work. The Da Vinci Code was tearing up the literary world, and Hollywood wanted a piece of that overstuffed pie. That meant a strange series of circumstances for Dan Brown and Robert Langdon. In print, The Da Vinci Code is the sequel to Angels & Demons, but in the cinema Angels & Demons is now the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. You might consider it a trivial point, but it’s not.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 30th, 2009
“On the 15th of May, in the jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool. He was splashing enjoying the jungle’s great joys, when Horton, the Elephant, heard a small noise. Then he heard it again, just a very faint yelp, as if some tiny person were calling for help…”
If you’re like me, you remember the Dr. Seuss specials from the 1960’s. At this time of the year, The Grinch comes first to mind. In that wonderful span of cartoon specials was the story of the elephant Horton, who hears voices coming from a speck he carries around on a flower.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 30th, 2009
The day that most of us in the home video review business has been dreading has finally arrived. Anchor Bay has sent me my first Blu-ray screener. For those who might not know, a screener is a disc given to guys like me to write a review of the given film or television series. Unlike what we call Final Product, the disc often comes in a sleeve with no case or box art. The disc itself is usually does not include graphics, containing merely the name of the film and possibly the studio. The contents might or might not reflect what you, the consumer will get should you decide to purchase the disc. DVD screeners have often been single layer DVD-R copies, which look far worse than what the Final Product might look and sound like.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 24th, 2009
“You got everything money can buy, except what it can’t. It’s pride. Pride is what got you here. Losing is what brung you back. But, people like you, they need to be tested. They need a challenge.”
There have been a ton of boxing films. They’ve been popular going back to the Silent Era. Most of them have many of the same themes. But there was always something about Rocky that stood out above all of the rest. That “something” can’t really be described or defined. As the Supreme Court once said about the definition of obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” That’s all you can say about Rocky. Some might call it heart. That’s about as good a word for it as anything else.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 24th, 2009
Do you know what’s worse than watching a bad movie? It has to be watching three bad movies. Worse than that is watching three bad movies where it’s obvious to everyone involved in the films that they know they’re bad movies. It doesn’t take long until you begin to think that you’re the one everyone is really laughing about. You can picture a couple members of the cast sitting with the director all laughing their rear ends off at the poor rube who actually spends good money, and more importantly, their time, watching the piece of crap you just dropped into their DVD or Blu-ray player. It’ll take forever to get that stink out of my home theater.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 19th, 2009
When we left J.D., Turk, and the rest of the staff of Sacred Heart Hospital at the end of their seventh season, there were good reasons to believe we had seen the last of Scrubs:
1) The show had suffered the lowest ratings in its history.
2) It was widely considered to be the show’s least funny season, at times treading perilously close to levels of cloying sentimentality not seen since the last few seasons of M*A*S*H*.
3) NBC had announced that they would not be renewing the show.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 19th, 2009
“It’s almost Christmas. Get into the spirit.”
Ever wonder what the kids of South Park might be like if they ever made it to adulthood? While I’ve not seen that many episodes of the FX series It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, that was the first observation that came to mind. These are the South Park kids all grown up. They’re crude, raunchy, mean, and most importantly, they are as politically incorrect as ever. If you need an example, I can offer one right from this episode.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 18th, 2009
“Sometime in the 23rd Century the survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch. Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carousel.”
Logan’s Run started life as a pretty successful novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The source material was really quite dark and more like Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner than the 1976 film based on the work.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 13th, 2009
Jeff Daniels plays Arlen Faber, author of the mega-bestselling Me and God, a book of self-help spirituality that comes across as an aphoristic mix of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Purpose-Driven Life. The book is coming up for its twentieth anniversary, and Arlen hasn’t written anything since. He is now a cynical recluse, but begins crawling out of his shell when he encounters a struggling single-mother chiropractor (Lauren Graham) and an alcoholic used bookstore owner (Lou Taylor Pucci). They are looking to him for wisdom, though he doesn’t really believe he has any to give. In turn, they are teaching him how to live again.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 11th, 2009
“The future is bright at Monsters Incorporated. We power your car. We warm your home. We light your city. Carefuly matching every child to their ideal monster to produce superior scream. Refined into clean, dependable energy. Every time you turn something on, Monsters Incorporated is there. We know the challenge. The window of innocence is shrinking. Human kids are harder to scare. Of course, Monsters Incorporated is prepared for the future. With the top scarers, the best refineries, and research into new energy technologies. We’re working for a better tomorrow, today. We’re Monster’s Incorporated. We scare because we care.”
When you do this job you get asked the same question a lot.You get it from friends, family and people who just met you. They all ask the same thing. “What is your favorite movie of all time?”
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 11th, 2009
“The perpetrator is an expert marksman. He’s an expert in explosives and tactics. Gentlemen, play this one by the numbers. Maintain your fields of fire… We’re blind and he’s seeing in 20/20… We have not contained him. He’s contained himself.”
“He” is Samuel L Jackson in the 1998 action thriller The Negotiator. Jackson stars as Danny Roman. He’s a Chicago Metro hostage negotiator. As the film opens we get to see him in action saving a little girl from a tight hostage situation. He’s obviously good at his job and he has the respect and admiration of his fellow officers and commanders.
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