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Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005

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Yes, I dreaded this one like the plague. Call it a pure hatred for reality television. But honestly, after starting these episodes, I found myself lending a begrudging respect to it all. If you’re unfamiliar with this enormously popular program, here’s a brief education. Home interior designers Ty Pennington, Michael Moloney, Constance Ramos, Paul DiMeo, Tracy Hutson, Preston Sharp, and a slew of others, who have made appearances here and there, get together and help some needy family realize their dream home in just seven days.
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50 Cent: Refuse to Die

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005

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Posted by Kim Lee

This unauthorized biography by New Line Home Entertainment covers the life of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. The documentary describes 50 Cent’s expedition of dealing drugs at the corner of Jamaica and Queens, to boxing, to becoming a gangster rapper, and in the end a music industry icon.

I was a little disappointed to find out that 50 Cent did not participate in the making of this film as this was revealed during the introduction. The documentary is produced using a combination of still images, animation, video…
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11:14

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005

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Greg Marcks directorial debut 11:14 is a tricky little puzzle of a film. Amazingly enough, the pieces do all fit together, despite Marcks’ (who also wrote the screenplay) bewildering youth. What significance (if any) 11:14 has over other times on the clock, I don’t know. In fact, why the five stories play out as they do, I wasn’t sure until the final segment, which neatly ties all parts together. While it may not be the type of film that’s as much fun to watch the second time around, you’ll have a ball the first.
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Marksman, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Synopsis

Wesley Snipes (Major League) and straight to video really provide for several comedic moments. I don’t really know that much about Snipes, aside from some anonymous reports about just how nice he was on the set of the third Blade movie, along with the “cataract problem” he has. Nevertheless, his role in this film of the strong, silent type who is some Army special forces member provides him the chance to say a small amount of dialogue for what is presumably a lot of cash.

Th…
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Long Way Around

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Written by Clayton Self

Long Way Round is a reality show/documentary in which two actors, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, trekked 20,000 miles around the world on their motorcycles. They started in London, and headed east through Russia and other countries, caught a short flight to Alaska, continued down through Canada and all the way to New York. It was an idea originally conceived by McGregor as a best friend road trip, but turned into an international spectacle, as millions of people shared their experience via television. A…
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Far From Heaven

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Synopsis

I haven’t seen The Hours. And I haven’t seen Chicago. And while all the Oscar talk seemed to revolve around either Kidman or Zellweger, after seeing Far From Heaven, I’ve gotta think that the wrong woman got the brass ring. Or gold little guy, whatever. Julianne Moore (who was also nominated in The Hours) does an outstanding job in this movie, set in 1957 Hartford. Moore plays Kathy Whitaker, the wife of a man (Dennis Quaid, Innerspace) who she surprises at work w…
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Old Yeller 2-Movie Collection (Old Yeller/Savage Sam)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Old Yeller is a hard film to take if you’re a child. I thought the same would be true as an adult, so needless to say, revisiting this family classic for the first time through an adult’s eyes promised to be a harrowing experience. In fact, for the longest time, I hated Old Yeller and berrated its merits as a film. I realize now after years of maturity and a second visit to the Coates family ranch my belittling of this film masterpiece was a defense mechanism to build up my own sense of machismo. The re…
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Rated X: A Journey Through Porn

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Synopsis

Dag Yngvesson sets out to the San Fenando Valley to investigate the way the porn filmmaking world works. His first contact is with veteran actor Bill Marigold, who now sees himself as a sort of den father (to coin a phrase) to other performers. With help from Marigold, our documentarist lands one contact after another, some plenty disturbing, and before he knows it, he is being asked to be cameraman on a porn feature himself. The emotional climax follows returning star Jenna Fine’s struggle …
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Hondo

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Hondo is something of an oddity among John Wayne films. For starters, it was a western not directed by Howard Hawks or John Ford, but by John Farrow, a director Wayne only teamed up with one other time in his career (a WWII film called The Sea Chase). This is also a very tightly edited film, clocking in at just 83 minutes, including an intermission! Though he had certainly performed in his fair share of westerns by this time, Hondo came a couple of years before the release of the long series of w…
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Almost You

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Synopsis

On its surface, Almost You is potentially interesting. Considering the mid-‘80s production, you have Griffin Dunne, about to appear in Scorsese’s After Hours, but had already appeared in An American Werewolf in London. In this film, he is married to Brooke Adams, a.k.a. Mrs. Tony Shalhoub (Monk), but before that, had appeared in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, and had her own experiences in horror, appearing in The Dead Zone. As husband and wife, Dunne’s …
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Dawn of the Dead (1979)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005

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Synopsis

Anchor Bay, holding all (or most) of the keys in George Romero’s zombie film trilogy, released a four disc Ultimate Edition to capitalize on the theatrical release of the remake, done in grainy, handheld, 28 Days Later style by director Zack Snyder. There isn’t too much here plotwise that you need to be aware of. 4 people decide to seek shelter at an abandoned mall, a continuation of Romero’s first film Night of the Living Dead. I don’t really know of an underlying moral tale in this…
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Newsfront

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 3rd, 2005

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Phillip Noyce’s critically acclaimed Newsfront comes to DVD from Blue Underground in a quite impressive package. While not always exciting, Newsfront does manage to attract attention, and is pieced together very well. It’s also a film covering unique material I am not sure has ever been covered in the realm of cinema.

The plot centers around Len, a newsreel photographer, who manages to keep audiences apprised of world events long before the nightly news ever exists. Len shoots films of any newsworthy item his employers at Cinetone can find for him.
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Charmed – The Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 2nd, 2005

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Synopsis

Shannen Doherty, Holy Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano are three sisters who also happen to be witches. Very much in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, our heroines must battle supernatural monsters and evil cults, all the while dealing with love, heartbreak and other issues more connected with mere mortals. The season begins with Combs out of the picture, having eloped with Brian Krause. Their marriage is frowned upon by The Powers That Be, and this is one of the ongoing threads of t…
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What’s New Pussycat?

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 1st, 2005

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Synopsis

Peter Sellers turns in a performance that opens at high do and never looks back as a lunatic psychiatrist. He is treating Peter O’Toole, a man who wants to be faithful to his girlfriend (Romy Schneider) but cannot say no to the innumerable women who throw themselves at him. Into the mix comes Woody Allen, who, unsurprisingly, plays a sexual loser.

Woody Allen’s first feature script has all the characteristics of his work to come: the sexual hang-ups, the non-sequitur dialogue, the …
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Mad Hot Ballroom

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 30th, 2005

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Mad Hot Ballroom is the sort of live action family entertainment with which I can get on board. Too often, the desire for a good family film is quickly hampered by third-rate idiocy that only appeals to the youngest in the family. We the adults plod dutifully along for the good of the kids, hoping and praying it will all be over soon. And even though running times on family films are often shorter than a standard feature, it still seems like you’ve watched twice the length of that standard feature by the time …
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Frogmen, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 30th, 2005

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Synopsis

After the death of a popular commander, the stern and inflexible Richard Widmark steps in to take charge of a group of a Navy underwater demolition team. His command gets off to a rocky start, as he is seen as heartless and unwilling to take risks himself. But he eventually proves himself to his men (and old hand Dana Andrews), just in time for a particularly dangerous mission.

The disliked new commander is hardly an original concept in war films, and Twelve O’Clock High th…
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Domino

Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on November 29th, 2005

New Line Home Entertainment will release the Tony Scott film Domino (starring Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, Lucy Liu and Mena Suvari) on February 14th. This Platinum Series release will be presented in a 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen tranfser, along with English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX & DTS-ES 6.1 audio tracks. Extras will include two audio commentaries (the first with Tony Scott and writer Richard Kelly; the second with script notes and story development from director Tony Scott, execut…
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My Date with Drew

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 28th, 2005

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“If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.” – Drew Barrymore. Ever since the second grade when he first saw her in E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Brian Herzlinger has had a crush on Drew Barrymore. Now, 20 years later and much wiser, he has one goal in mind. He hates to get a date, somehow, with Drew Barrymore. There’s one small problem: She’s Drew Barrymore and he’s, well, Brian Herzlinger, a broke 27-year-old aspiring filmmaker from New Jersey. However, this doesn’t stop Mr. Herzlinger and his friends from tr…
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Madison

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 28th, 2005

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Baseball, basketball, football… boat racing. While it’s not one of the premiere sports in America, the people of Madison, Indiana sure loved boat racing during the summer of 1971. As the town of Madison was dealing with layoffs and closures, the people looked to Jim McCormick (Jim Caviezel) and their boat, the Miss Madison, to be their saving grace.

Although it’s framed as a coming of age story, seen through the eyes of McCormick’s son, Mike (Jake Lloyd), Madison is a sports film through and throu…
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Hour of the Gun

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 28th, 2005

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Synopsis

The film begins with the gunfight at the OK corral, making this something of a sequel to director John Sturges’ earlier film that ended with that famous battle. Here we see the aftermath, as the vengeful Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan, doing the Robert Ryan Villain thing) arranges for the shooting of the brothers of Wyatt Earp (James Garner). When legal means of redress prove fruitless, Earp progressively becomes more and more of a vigilante in his quest for vengeance, just as his best friend and …
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Holy Girl, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 28th, 2005

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Synopsis

Amalia, the teenaged daughter of a hotel owner, is the victim of a creepy pass in a busy street. The creep in question is Doctor Janos, who is staying at the hotel, and he doesn’t know whom he has just molested. Very much in the grip of a new religious fervour, Amalia feels she has a calling from God to save Janos from himself.

There is a lot more going on too, as we also see Amalia’s friend Josefina deal with her budding sexuality, while Amalia’s mother is seeing things on the oth…
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Satisfaction

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 26th, 2005

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Synopsis

Satisfaction is a transitional project in so many ways. This was one of the first American films of Liam Neeson, who would go on to mildly excite the world as Henry Ducard in Batman Begins. Before Mystic Pizza came out, the world was exposed to Julia Roberts as Daryle.

And what of the main attraction of the film? Well, the film was apparently intended to be a starring vehicle for Justine Bateman, whose previous claim to fame was from Family Ties, playing the do…
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City of God

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 26th, 2005

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Synopsis

The small Brazilian film City of God is a very powerful film that few have seen, but it made such an impression on critics that it was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, and with just cause, as this film makes for one of the better cinematic experiences in several years.

The story focuses on Rocket, a young boy growing up in the slums of the worldwide playground of Rio de Janeiro. Rocket and several other boys grow up in extreme poverty, and while Rocket dreams of becoming a photograp…
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Where the Sidewalk Ends

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 25th, 2005

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Synopsis

Dana Andrews is the tough cop who takes too much pleasure in roughing up the bad guys. When he hits a suspect too hard, he accidentally kills him. He covers up his crime and carries on the investigation into the murder the man was suspected of. But as if his life weren’t complicated enough, he starts to fall for his victim’s ex-wife, and then her father looks like he’s going to hang for Andrews’ crime.

This is what film noir is all about. Daylight never seems to intrude in this cit…
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Honeymooners, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 24th, 2005

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Synopsis

Cedric the Entertainer is Ralph Kramden. Mike Epps is Ed Norton. They have the get-rich-quick schemes that never work. Gabrelle Union and Regina Hall are Alice and Trixie, the long-suffering and very sensible wives who are increasingly exasperated by their numbnuts husbands. The latest scheme involves things like turning a pet greyhound into a competitive racer, all in the hopes of purchasing a duplex.

Cards on the table: I was never a fan of the TV show. Born too late, I suppose, …
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