Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 4th, 2006
Synopsis
I have to write an open letter to those who are (deep breath) fans of teen idol used-to-bes Scott Baio and Willie Aames. What the hell is wrong with you people? Did the online petition have THAT many signatures that it had to be recognized and acted upon? Did you really need to have the theme song to Charles in Charge on DVD? I admit, it’s a little bit catchy, but if you watch all 22 episodes in one setting, you need to up your lithium dosage. I know and understand that Universal is catering...to the VH-1 “I Love the ‘80s” crowd by releasing shows like this onto disc, but let’s exercise some sort of restraint, huh?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 4th, 2006
Synopsis
I’ve gotta admit that for a long time, Four Weddings and a Funeral was in a category of movies that I had no intention or curiosity to see because of the title, the cast and the story. Hugh Grant was a significant step down towards the emasculation of man, where are start wearing large sweaters, hang out in pseudo-Starbuck coffee shops and talk about what happened on American Idol or some lame thing along those lines.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 2nd, 2006
There may have never been a more aptly-named television show in history than Jackass. For those who don't know, this show is comprised of a collection of short clips of “stunts” that push the limits of common sense and decency. While the majority of these stunts amount to little more than idiots with a camcorder, and some are just downright disgusting (do I really need to see some guy throw up a goldfish?), some of the segments honestly are quite funny. Giving your buddy a Billy Ray Cyrus haircut will always b... funny. Having two broken arms and asking total strangers to “help you out” by unzipping your fly is the stuff of classic set-up shows like Candid Camera. However, for the overwhelming majority of this disc, the clips on this disc can best be described at a lame brained attempt at humor.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Synopsis
Lie With Me is proclaimed in its trailer to be a film in the tradition of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Sex, Lies and Videotape. But at its core, it’s more along the lines of another one of director Clement Virgo’s film influences, Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. The characters in Lie With Me experience each other rather provocatively at the start of their relationship, and work their way outwards.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Synopsis
An item of secret desire for geeks like me was to get Spike Jonze’s videos on DVD. In the mid ‘90s, Jonze arguably was THE director to go to if you wanted your MTV submission to be memorable, talked about, and perhaps most importantly, spur record sales. If you remember the wacky video you saw on MTV that one time, chances are Spike directed it. Even after the critical success in Hollywood with an Oscar nomination for directing Being John Malkovich and before working on Adaptation, he...still managed to come back recently and direct a music video with a dancing Christopher Walken, proving he still has the touch.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Arnold Clasen reenters society after time away in a Nazi prison camp, and returns to Hamburg and a life of quiet solitary resistance, in the 1981 war-time drama Your Unknown Brother. Clasen immediately reconnects with his old love Renate, and embarks on a turbulent, dangerous friendship with resistance leader Walter, a man of ulterior motives, who is also in bed with the Nazi regime. Clasen starts to suspect Walter when many of his old comrades are seized by authorities. It seems everyone in the resistance, wh... comes into contact with Walter soon become property of the State, yet he remains suspiciously unscathed.
The film deals with themes of stark isolation and hopelessness, as well as an individual’s efforts in facing widespread fascism. It’s always at the top of its craft, but the action lacks that extra something to make it all seem interesting. On paper, the film will have foreign drama buffs salivating, but in execution, it fails to make its premise as intriguing as it sounds. With that said, I am hard-pressed to find any fault in the performances, and Director Ulrich Weiss really does know how to use camera, lighting, and sound effects, to his advantage. It just seems like the intangibles are missing – those unexplainable qualities, which pack all the emotional power, and allow a movie to transcend the average film within its genre.
Posted in: News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 30th, 2006
UMD looks like its on its way out, with Wal-Mart purportedly taking UMD off the shelves, studios stopping UMD production, and backlash building against proprietary formats.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
John Carpenter can be hit or miss on some of the things he’s done in his career. Vampires may be a good case in point. In his version of The Thing, remade from Howard Hawks’ 1950’s classic, he doesn’t focus on the creature as much as the relationship between the men in the camp, and how the paranoia starts to creep in the group, as they try to figure out who may or may not be infected by the creature. I might have jumped ahead of some people who haven’t seen it, but just to briefly recap for those few w...o have missed this:
An American crew working in the Arctic circle encounter a Norwegian crew who are frantically shooting at a dog that is running to the camp. The Americans defends themselves as soon as one of the men is hit, and the Norwegians are killed. The Americans take the dog in, but they also go out to the Norwegian camp to find out just what exactly spooked them so much. They find a camp littered with bodies, along with something that was thawed out by the group before they were brutally killed. From that point, various members of the group get infected and plucked off one at a time. But what made this one maybe a bit scarier than most was Carpenter’s ability to create enough of a dynamic between the men, and that most of them were fleshed out enough to the point where you understand how they work together. And the cast is very able, from older members Blair and Copper (Wilford Brimley and Richard Dysart, respectively), to younger members Childs (Keith David, Armageddon) and Palmer (David Clennon, From the Earth to the Moon), all held together by the film’s star (and frequent Carpenter leading man) Kurt Russell (Dark Blue), who plays MacReady.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
Synopsis
Growing up as the oldest son in an upper-middle class neighborhood outside of Washington, DC, I am familiar with rap as much as, or even more than, KRS One, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Public Enemy or NWA. I come from dem hard streets, where I can kill a muhvuggah! Well, maybe not exactly, and in the age where lame musicians become lame actors (or vice versa in the case of Jennifer Lopez), anyone who tries to be the entertainment “double threat” deserves to be subjected to any and all s...orn and ridicule. Surprisingly though, some of the musicians who have started appearing in movies have employed the easy strategy of appearing as themselves (or dramatically licensed clones of themselves), and some of them have surprisingly interesting stories to tell, such as Eminem in 8 Mile.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
With the original Controversial Classics Collection from Warner Brothers, the studio pulled seven films from their classic film archive that were controversial in their day. Topics included government corruption, racism, troubled youth and the wrongfully accused. Instead of following that set with more classic films based on the same themes, Warner Brothers has done something interesting and varied the focus of their theme. The films this time around, as the title suggests, deal with the role of the news media...in modern society. Instead of including seven different films, they have focused on newly re-mastered, double disc versions of three films from the 70's; Network, All the President's Men and Dog Day Afternoon. Each film is available individually, or as part of this box set.
Network is a film that rates at number 66 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films of All Time list. As fate would have it, it is also my least favorite film of the three. Each film in this set takes a different approach to examining the nature of the news media. This film is probably the most on point with the nature of modern news. In Network, the role of the news media is to make money for the broadcast networks. The story, justice and reporting the truth behind the events are all seen as tools to be manipulated to obtain ratings, and ultimately money. This is one of those films that probably seemed like sensationalism at the time, but it is certainly right on point in the new millennium.
