There has to be something wrong with anyone who doesn’t have at least a small soft spot in their hearts for Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas. The film will assuredly earn its rightful place as a classic as more years roll by. The film just works on so many levels. Danny Elfman deserves as much credit as Burton here for the wickedly wonderful tunes and songs that accentuate the deviously detailed world of Halloweentown. He also provides the singing voice for Jack, reminding us a bit of his early pop roots with the modestly successful Oingo Boingo.
I don’t remember that much about Diva growing up; it was a film that I heard about as a kid, and a lot of people liked it, but that was the first time I can honestly say I was exposed to the arthouse film, and that it was something that I wanted to find out more about. Through the years, I’ve seen many a foreign or independent film, however the one that started all of it off for me I hadn’t seen, until now.
Meerkat Manor is back for a third season on DVD. You’re invited back into the South African desert with the famous Whiskers Clan. Animal Planet has themselves a relatively big hit here with Meerkat Manor. OK, so, it’s not exactly The Sopranos or The Shield, but it does have a modestly dedicated audience. Seems that folks just can’t get enough of these fur balls. They’ve set up blogs and websites dedicated to the antics of the celebrated Whiskers. If you, like them and are dying to see what these lil’ guys are up to next, wait no longer.
The voices aren’t the same. The animation has lost that classic charm. The story is completely contrived. What remains is a dim reflection of a few beloved characters from a bygone year of vintage Disney magic. This sequel of the classic Disney telling of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book looks more like a direct to video knockoff. I was actually quite amazed to note the film did have a box office run.
Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin were the “it” couple in France during the late 60s and early 70s. This is the film that brought them together, their To Have and Have Not, if you will. Musician Gainsbourg (who, for the uninitiated, had a singing style that was a cross between Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits) plays a married director of successful TV commercials. He begins an affair with an 18-year-old (Birkin). Their relationship hits most of the predictable moments of such movie romances from that period.
12 Angry Men is one of those rare films that appears to defy all the Hollywood constants and yet become one of the best films of its kind ever made. The setting is entirely too claustrophobic. With the exception of two bookend scenes the entire film takes place in the tight quarters of a jury deliberation room. The story had only a couple of years earlier been the subject of a live television drama, so the story was far from a fresh idea. The director was a complete unknown who had not at that point directed a major picture.
World War II has just ended, and the recently discharged Robert De Niro hits New York on the prowl for sex. He runs up against WAC Liza Minnelli, and the more she resists his advances, the more determined he becomes. There is more: he is a saxophonist, and she (of course) is a singer). So begins a tempestuous relationship between two artists whose enormous talents and equally enormous personalities mean they can neither live with nor without each other.
When MI-5 first hit American shores, Alias was in full swing, and the comparisons were inevitable. After all, both were sy shows set in a post September 11 world, and both were slick, fun thrillers. Fast forward to 2006, however, and the landscape has changed dramatically. Alias is now off the air, having crashed in spectacular fashion, yet MI-5 is still going strong. In fact, the show just seems to keep getting better and better.
Very few of us know A Clockwork Orange as the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess, instead we know it as the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation. Not only did Kubrick direct this cult classic, he also wrote the adapted screenplay and produced it. There’s no doubt that Kubrick put a lot into this movie, and by now we all know the results. A Clockwork Orange is a perfect example of Kubrick’s career, highly controversial. After the cult hit 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was crucial for Kubrick to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and what better way to do that than adapt A Clockwork Orange. There are those who would call this movie trash, and of course there are those who absolutely love it, then of course there’s everyone in between. Well A Clockwork Orange isn’t new news to me, it’s release on HD DVD already looks to impress.
Mario Bianchi’s film is a 1982 remake of the recently reviewed Malabimba. The spirit of a newly deceased woman possesses her daughter, and proceeds to wreak havoc in the gothic castle that is the family’s domicile. Of course, given that the father is a murderous drug-addict, there isn’t that much for the possessed teen to do, as far as the plot itself is concerned. Curiously, this effort is less lurid than its predecessor (barring a couple of insanely OTT performances), with less nudity and taboo-busting, and also a rather less interesting deconstruction of respectable society. Plotting and motivation are haphazard at best. Still, it’s a not-unentertaining late-period Italian gothic, blessed with handsome sets.
Like it or not, Everybody Loves Raymond has earned its spot alongside TV’s most successful sitcoms, including The Cosby Show, Roseanne and Seinfeld. These shows not only ran a long time, but they also shared a common origin — all were based on the persona of the popular stand-up comics who starred in the series. This method may have produced hits in these cases, but it’s no guarantee. To really beat the odds, there has to be something more.
In the case of Everybody Loves Raymond, the largely American audience saw themselves in the on-screen families. Fans have been sitting down each week, for more than 200 episodes, to a funnier, wackier version of their own families. As this ninth and final season hits DVD, it’s time to ask, did the show end too soon, too late or right on time?
This HBO comedy series throws down a huge gauntlet, then flails its limbs around maniacally in a futile attempt to live up to the challenge. Bad Boys of Comedy is billed as an evolution of black comedy that builds on the revolution led by the likes of Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy. P. Diddy, executive producer and host, promises young, edgy and unique comics, untapped virtuosos who will push the boundaries of humor and entertainment. What a crock.
I came to the second season of The Closer with an interesting piece of baggage: I hadn’t seen the first season. And still haven’t. Seeing as I’m a bit of a completionist, this was initially driving me nuts. That said, by the time I finally gave the show a chance, I felt like I’d been in it my whole life.
The show’s premise is simple. Every police department hopes for one thing when working cases, and that’s a confession. To get one, you need somebody you can elicit it from a suspect, usually in an interview, and close the case before it ever goes to a courtroom.
I am both the perfect person to be reviewing Babylon 5 and exactly the wrong person. Being an irrationally devoted fan of the series, it’s difficult for me to be objective about it. And it is therefore with this unique perspective that I sat down to watch this newest B5 release.
I expected to absolutely enjoy it. In my mind, if it was really great, than it was good … and if it was really mediocre, it would still be good on account of the fact that it had been so long since the last B5 movie. As it turns out, it was impossible for me to be as universally pleased as I’d anticipated.
Mads Mikkelsen, whom we last saw taking a rope to James Bond’s family jewels, is here up to a far more praiseworthy activity: helping run a school for orphans in an impoverished region of India. The school is struggling to survive, and when a Danish businessman expresses an interest in providing stable funding, but only if Mikkelsen comes to Denmark for a meeting, the latter is reluctantly persuaded to leave India for the encounter. At said meeting, the tycoon (Rolf Lassgard) casually (it seems) invites Mikkelsen to his daughter’s wedding. Mikkelsen accepts, and at that wedding receives quite a shock. Lassgard, it turns out, has a very personal secret agenda at work.
There isn’t a lot that connects these films, other than the fact that they are all budget-conscious SF and were released in 1958. All are joys for fans of the genre, however.
The Giant Behemoth was director Eugene Lourié’s second giant-dinosaur-on-the-loose film, after The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and before Gorgo (1960). It is also the weakest of the three, but not without its charms. Signs of an intensely radioactive being are proliferating on the Eng…
Cord (Jeff Cooper) is a martial arts expert in a mythical land who competes for the right to go on a quest to confront a legendary master (Christopher Lee) who protects a mystical book. Cord cheats and is disqualified, but heads out on the quest all the same. Along the way he encounters various threats (all played by David Carradine) and a supernaturally talented blind man (also Carradine), not to mention oddities such as Eli Wallach sitting in a barrel of oil as part of long-term project to…
Produced under the auspices of the Imperial War Museum, Stuart Cooper’s unusual film tells the story of a young private (Brian Stirner) undergoing basic training and experiencing premonitions of his death in the days and weeks leading up to the D-Day invasion. This narrative is intercut with extensive archival war footage.
In the “Mining the Archive” featurette, the remark is made that the film is an excellent showcase for the museum’s collection. This is very true, and is both the…
Drug addiction is scary. It can take an otherwise decent person and turn them in a messy pool of hate, disgust and worthlessness. When the drug you are addicted to is heroin; amplify that by ten. Enter Paul (played by Harry Eden(Oliver Twist)), a ten year old trying to take care of his younger brother Lee (played by Vinnie Hunter) and his heroin addicted mother Mel (played by Molly Parker(Wicker Man, Deadwood)). The father of th…
Midnight Cowboy (Awards Series) is a previous DVD version re-released with a cardboard slipcover.
“I’m walking here! I’m walking here!” Smart money says you’re familiar with that quote whether you’ve seen this film or not. Midnight Cowboy was a hit back in 1969, and it’s been referenced plenty of times in pop culture since.
John Schlesinger’s film, which took home Oscars for best picture, director and adapted screenplay, was also controversial back in ‘69, as it received an X-rating.
Cupt Epics here presents five films identified as “underground” (a fluid term at the best of times). Certainly, they are all deliberately transgressive, though not all are equally successful. Two are by Nico B. - the perviously released “Pig” and “Hollywood Babylon.” The former has been reviewed here before, but briefly, its catalogue of murder and S&M horrors, working out a killer’s fantasies, is rather too self-conscious about its own transgression. The latter is a 4-minute tribute to Kenneth Anger, taking in exhibits at the Museum of Death.
By Ryan Keefer on February-11-2007 in
Disc Reviews
Well, after the worldwide success of Dr. No, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman went back to figure out what to do about a sequel, and following a nod to the series by then-President Kennedy, From Russia With Love was the next candidate in line to be given the Bond treatment from the library of Ian Fleming novels.
In this film, Bond (the returning Sean Connery) has recently vanquished Dr. No, and the organization that he worked for, SPECTRE, decides to try to eliminate Bond, using two things that will lure any well-respecting secret agent, a decoding machine that the Russian government currently is in possession of, and a Russian defector that wants to turn it over to James specifically.
A twisted twist on the zombie genre. Dellamorte (Everett) is a watchman of sorts over a small village cemetery. The problem is not so much with folks breaking in as with the dead breaking out. In this neck of the woods the dead arise within 7 days of their death. A simple shot in the head solves the rather pesky problem; however, it requires a certain amount of vigilance. Now so far none of this is terribly original at all. Things begin to change when Dellamorte becomes infatuated with a mourning widow. Their escapades at her husband’s grave literally wake the dead.
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