Archive for the ‘Digital Copy’ Category
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 10th, 2010
“Okay, first of all, let me get something straight. This is a journal, not a diary. Yeah, I know what it says on the cover. But, when my mom went out to buy this thing, I specifically told her not to buy one that said ‘diary’ on it. This just proves that Mom doesn’t understand anything about kids my age.”
I guess I missed out on the phenomenon. Apparently in 2007 a guy named Jeff Kinney created a sort of crude comic book. The figures are little better than stick men, and the wit is something from the sixth grade.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 4th, 2010
“This is James Henry Trotter. He lived with his mother and father in a cozy little house by the sea. It was a wonderful life. They had each other, and they had their dreams. Then, one day a terrible thing happened. An angry rhinoceros appeared out of nowhere and gobbled up his poor mother and father…”
Pretty bizarre for a kiddie flick, wouldn’t you say? Not when Roald Dahl is penning the story. Roald Dahl was no stranger to children’s movies. Some of the most beloved classics in that genre were once just a thought in Dahl’s rather eccentric and delightfully twisted head
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2010
“I always wondered why nobody did it before me. I mean, all those comic books, movies, and TV shows. You’d think that one eccentric loner would have made himself a costume. I mean, is everyday life really so exciting? Are schools and offices so thrilling that I’m the only one who ever fantasized about this? Come on. Be honest with yourself. At some point in our lives, we all wanted to be a superhero. Who am I? I’m Kick Ass.”
You have to give the folks at Lionsgate some serious credit for the way they promoted Kick Ass. The film was generating a lot of buzz almost a year before it actually came out.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 27th, 2010
I get this terrible knot in the pit of my stomach whenever I discover that I have to review a Kevin Smith film. I know there are a core of solid fans out there who appear to get the inside joke. It’s long been my belief that he must have the best blackmail file in the industry to keep getting studio deals to release films. It’s not like any of his films have broken any box office records. Still, he keeps getting work. So, it was with that admitted prejudice and knot with which I approached my viewing of Cop Out. My shoulder had developed this nasty twitch as the disc menu took forever to load.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 19th, 2010
In an attempt to win over more of the male viewers into their audiences, filmmakers of the romantic comedy genre have tried many tactics. To date, very few of them have worked to any great extent. The problem appears to be getting the mixture just right. Too much of the guy stuff and you’ll turn away your core “chick” audience. Too little and you’re really not reeling in too many guys. Of course, we go anyway to please the ladies in our lives.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 15th, 2010
The name says it all. With just those four words, you can pretty much figure out everything you need to know about Hot Tub Time Machine. This is very much a party film in the tradition of the Saturday Night Live alumni movies of the 70’s and 80’s. With the release of this movie, you no longer need to travel back in time to 1986 to watch a film that relies almost entirely on sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll for most of its situational comedy. The rest gets filled in with your standard toilet humor. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, or who exactly I should blame
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2010
Mention the name of George A. Romero to anyone even remotely familiar with horror movies, and the first thing they’re going to think of is zombies. Why shouldn’t they? It was Romero who made what might be the first little film that could. Long before Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Romero set out with his trusty 16 mm camera and a crew of pretty much local Pittsburgh friends, to make Night Of The Living Dead. With this film and the ongoing “Dead” franchise, Romero has pretty much written the rule book on zombies. He is no doubt the zombie king.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 7th, 2010
“I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.”
To be perfectly honest with you, I have never read either of the two Lewis Carroll books on which this film has been based. Under ordinary circumstances, that would put me at a decided disadvantage
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 25th, 2010
“On Robben Island, in Pollsmoor Prison, all of my jailers were Afrikaners. For 27 years I studied them. I learned their language. Read their books, their poetry. I had to know my enemy before I could prevail against them. And we did prevail, did we not?”
Leave it to Clint Eastwood to make even rugby look interesting. Of course, Eastwood himself would correct me and observe that Invictus isn’t really about rugby. As the words of Nelson Mandela above suggest, this movie wasn’t really about rugby at all.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 19th, 2010
“It doesn’t look like they have chicken tenders here.”
How can you not like Jackie Chan? If there has been a more versatile action or martial arts star, I haven’t heard from him. The man made a name for himself in China’s film industry as a remarkable martial arts performer. For decades he’s been the closest thing the film industry has seen to Bruce Lee. But, unlike Lee, Chan wasn’t content with being the best in a single genre. When he finally came to Hollywood, he decided it was a good idea to work a bit more lightheartedness into his films,
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 18th, 2010
“You, sir, are guilty of disseminating disbelief. Killing dreams. Committing first-degree murder of fantasy, which by Fairy Law, in order to pay your debt to humanity, you are hereby ordered to serve time as a Tooth Fairy. The normal sentence is one week, but because you have the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to actually call yourself a Tooth Fairy, thus making a mockery of everything we stand for, I’m sentencing you to two weeks Tooth Fairy duty.”
Dwayne (once The Rock) Johnson has made a bit of a new career move over the last few years.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 17th, 2010
For most of this last decade Mel Gibson might as well have vanished from the face of the planet. The once extremely popular actor had charmed the world. Women found his childish grin to be irresistibly sexy, and men bought into the “kick ass and crack a joke” style that made the Lethal Weapon films such a romp of fun. But lately, you expect him to be the subject of a “Where Are They Now” segment from a late show on television. It’s no secret why Gibson climbed so quickly out of the public eye. I’m sure everyone still remembers the drunk-driving arrest where Gibson compounded his already serious case of bad judgment with even worse judgment.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 4th, 2010
These last couple of years have seen a resurgence of a particular kind of character study. For me I think it started with The Wrestler. For Mickey Rourke, it was a powerful comeback and led to an example of grand theft at that year’s Oscar celebration. Now, I wouldn’t exactly say that Jeff Bridges was in any particular need of a comeback. He’s had some pretty steady work over the years. Still, you just can’t watch Crazy Heart and not be reminded of The Wrestler. These characters could not be more different in a lot of ways. But they are also cut from the same cloth.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 26th, 2010
“You’re not in Kansas any more. You’re on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day. If there is a Hell, you might want to go there for some R&R after a tour on Pandora. Out there beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for Jujubes…”
I don’t really have to tell you what Avatar is. If you haven’t heard of it by now, I have only one question to ask of you: How was that coma?
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 14th, 2010
“Imagine a world of incredible color and beauty. Of crabs wearing jellyfish for hats. Of fish disguised as frogs, stones, and shag carpets. Of a kaleidoscope of underwater life. Now go explore it.”
Jim Carrey narrates this IMAX experience that takes you deep under the ocean. The film focuses on five particular locations: New Britain and Milne Bay (both in New Guinea), South Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, and Indonesia. Because this was filmed with IMAX equipment and presented here in high definition, you can expect a pretty spectacular ride on this one.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 7th, 2010
“We’re back…”
The Chipmunks began life oddly enough as a singing group, of sorts. They were the brainchild of struggling songwriter Ross Bagdasarian and were named after the three chief executives at Liberty records. His own alter ego David Seville’s name came from his World War II Army station in Spain. The Chipmunks first appeared in a 1958 record called The Witch Doctor, but wouldn’t officially become The Chipmunks until later that year when The Chipmunks Christmas Song was released. It is for that Christmas music that I most remember the group
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 2nd, 2010
“Boggis, and Bunce and Bean. One fat, one short, and one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were none the less equally mean.”
Roald Dahl was one of the more eccentric writers to come upon the scene. While he often wrote for children, his work is most decidedly dark and often quite sinister. He’s most known for such tales as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. His work has not been adapted to film as often as you might suspect given his popularity. The most famous was certainly Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, which was far brighter and more cheerful than the original work.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2010
“More of this is true than you would believe.”
What was intended as a somewhat thought-provoking quirky comedy looks a lot like something you would expect to see on a late night rerun of The X-Files. All of the subject matter has been covered there, just not quite in this way. It all started with a non-fiction book written by Jon Ronson. He claimed to have researched various government studies in human behavior that entered into the world of the paranormal. It was part of an ideology of waging non-lethal war. It was a strange combination of 1980’s new age mysticism and actual studies that showed that soldiers in World War II were, in fact, quite reluctant to kill
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 30th, 2010
In the long run what was more important to Pixar and its relationship with Disney wasn’t the milestone that Toy Story provided being the first computer animated feature. Movies are, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, a business. In the end, a film has to make some money. Toy Story was like a private printing press for the two companies bringing in nearly $200 million at the box office. Add another nearly $200 million in foreign receipts, and this prototype of a movie pulled in nearly a half billion dollars before the first DVD was released. That’s huge for what was basically a children’s cartoon. The second Pixar film would be A Bug’s Life, and it would bring in nearly the same kind of jingle.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 30th, 2010
It’s hard to believe it, but Toy Story was the very first computer generated animated feature film. CG graphics had already appeared as parts of films starting with the “Genesis proposition video” from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. It was a rather fitting movie for this Hollywood and technological first to occur. The piece was rather short and not as breathtaking as we’ve come to expect today, but, it did herald the beginning of a new era in filmmaking, to be sure. What better place for such an historical technological breakthrough than in Star Trek?
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 28th, 2010
Around Thanksgiving of last year, I started to see trailers of a particular movie that quite literally made me laugh out loud. The reason behind it is because I knew with the title of the movie and the obvious plot, there was no way I was not going to review it when it came to dvd & blu-ray. I have a reputation for certain movies, I guess you could say. That movie was Ninja Assassin. Several months later, I am reviewing it for a mass audience. Funny how that works.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 19th, 2010
“Nature did not intend for you to survive out here. But here you are, and here I am to teach you how not to die…”
Whiteout has taken about as long and hard a road getting made as the characters in the film find themselves on stuck in the Antarctic. It began life as a crude graphic novel written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. It developed a rather loyal cult following and was conceived as a film at around 2002. At one point it was intended as the launching point for a franchise featuring the federal marshal played by Kate Beckinsale
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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 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 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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