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Vampire Clan

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 8th, 2004

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Vampire Clan is supposedly based on a true story. The film revolves around the actions of a teenage Vampire cult in a small American town. The clan gets involved in murder and mayhem, and the movie is supposed to be all the more chilling because it’s based on real life events. Not necessarily, it still has to be scary.

Drew Fuller plays Rod, the Manson like leader of this Vampire clan. Fuller has some natural charm, but isn’t diabolic enough. Kelly Kruger is the teenage runaway Heather, and she als…
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Angels Don’t Sleep Here

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 8th, 2004

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Angels Don’t Sleep Here is the stuff of crime melodrama: long forgotten murders, revenge, twin brothers, and corrupt public officials. It’s a mild foray into the genre. The film knows the notes but not the music; but the actors, or the instruments, (if we continue the music metaphor) really save the day.

Dana Ashbrook (from Twin Peaks) plays a forensic specialist who returns to an unnamed city to start poking around about his long lost twin brother. The trail leads to a DA (Kelly Rutherford)…
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Lush

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2004

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Warning: Do not be taken in by the cover of this DVD. With iron gates, murky lighting, and a creepy stone angel, Lush has the appearance of a gothic horror film. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Lush is one of those quirky crime dramas. You know the ones I mean…eccentric characters, a unique soundtrack, off kilter comedy scenes, and a murder plot. The Coen Brothers have made an art out of this kind of film. Lush tries really hard to make inroads into the genre.

The story …
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River Cable Flexygy 6

Posted in Hardware Reviews by Archive Authors on March 3rd, 2004

Introduction

River Cables is another one of the new breed of online only, high quality lower cost cable manufacturers that have started popping up over the last few years. A huge difference between River Cables and the other guys is that they are the only company to individually certify all of their cables before they ship them out and they even include nifty “birth certificates”, pretty cool. Lets not also forget that they offer a 30 day Home Trial, if you are not happy with the product then send it…
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String Cheese Incident – Live at the Fillmore

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 3rd, 2004

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For those of you who are into bands like Phish, Dave Matthews and The Grateful Dead you probably already know who this band is. For the rest of us The String Cheese Incident is made up of a group of fairly accomplished musicians from all different genres that are prone to playing very long songs. The songs tend to journey through all different styles from country to rock to jazz to blues and more. This disc features two different performances at the famous Fillmore in Denver.

Video

The vi…
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Dawg

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 3rd, 2004

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Synopsis

Denis Leary plays Doug Munford a wheeling dealing ego maniac skirt chaser who must get the women he has betrayed to forgive him so that he can inherit a million dollars. Elizabeth Hurley plays the lawyer who must accompany him done the road to redemption and cash to ensure that he doesn’t cheat. Along the way Doug finds out that he had a daughter with one of the women who is now dead and decides that maybe he needs to change his life. Ho hum can we throw a couple of more clichés in this one,…
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Chump Change

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 3rd, 2004

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Synopsis

Stephen Burrows plays Milwaukee Steve plays a northern from Milwaukee who heads off to LA to seek fame and fortune under the bright lights. He lands his first job in a jock itch commercial and quickly becomes famous for this. Unable to land anymore work he decides what he needs to do is fake his own death and then make a miraculous return.

First he decides to go on “Wheel of Fortune” and becomes notorious when he is sued by the Merv Griffin Corp. Suddenly everyone wants him and se…
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Liability Crisis

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 1st, 2004

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Liability Crisis tells the tale of Paul, a man obsessed with Hitler and the Holocaust. This obsession threatens relationships with the women in his life. Sounds like an interesting premise. But art is all in the execution.

The leads in the film are played by Jim Helsinger and Mirjana Jokovic. Helsinger has the potential to look good on screen, but the bad lighting gives off an unnatural brown pallor to his skin. His performance fluctuates between veracious and just plain awkward. Jokovic, an ac…
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Wonderland

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 27th, 2004

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If you’re passing through the video store and see a movie on a shelf that looks like the cover of Motley Crue’s album “Too Fast for Love”…you’ll be disappointed…or relieved (depending on how you feel about the Crue). The movie is James Cox’s Wonderland. Wonderland is a film about the porn star John C. Holmes (Val Kilmer) at the end of his tether. Towards the end of his life, Holmes, famously, got involved in a series of crimes known as the Wonderland Murders, which are dramatized in this movie. I wo…
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Taken

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 26th, 2004

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For years different TV shows and movies have speculated not as too whether there is life on other planets but, what are they doing on earth. Some shows like the X-files play out that the powers that be have sold us down the river to ensure their survival with a hostile alien race, or like in ID-4 and the Alien series are here to kill everyone and use the planet for their own will.

Director Steven Spielberg has looked at aliens and their involvement with the human race in a number of his films and with the…
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Daddy & Them

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 25th, 2004

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Billy Bob Thornton is a strange ranger, even by Hollywood standards. He is a self-made man, resulting from his breakthrough role as writer/director/star of Sling Blade. With Daddy & Them, Thornton returns to his role as a triple threat, and the result is a film that is not only funny, but features more stars than a stint in rehab. The list of notables includes Thornton, Laura Dern, Dianne Ladd, Kelly Preston, Jim Varney, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Affleck, Brenda Blethyn, musician John Prine and even America…
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Sightings – Heartland Ghost

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 23rd, 2004

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Sightings: Heartland Ghost is based, apparently, on a true story. One is reminded of that other “true story” haunted house movie, The Amityville Horror. But both films have the same hokey quality in common. (no blood in the toilet in Sightings, however). Sightings starts with the “new couple moving to the neighborhood”. They slowly learn that there is something “not quite right” about their new house. Enter paranormal debunker (Beau Bridges) and his T.V crew. Bridges’ character host…
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American Wedding

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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The third and hopefully final entry in the American Pie series, American Wedding keeps with the sweet charms and gross out comedy of the first two movies, but can’t live up to the humor of the original or its sequel. Average Joe Jim, (Jason Biggs) and former band geek Michelle, (Alyson Hannigan) are now engaged to be wed and must decide whether raucous Stifler (Seann William Scott) should be invited to the wedding. Shenanigans ensue involving a night out at a gay club, a bachelor party, pleasing the in-laws, and pubi…
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Futurama, Vol. 3

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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Season three sees Futurama cooking on gas. This is THE SIMPSONS on some mind-altering substance. For the uninitiated (and if you have never watched the series before – watch seasons 1 and 2 first…duhhh!) pizza delivery boy Fry has awoken from cryogenic suspension and finds himself in the year 3000. Here he teams up with the girl of his dreams, one-eyed space captain Leela, the hard-drinking, wallet-lifting robot Bender (he bends things for a living), the frankly barmy Professor Farnsworth and an assorted bunch of ge…
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Bang, Bang, You

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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Synopsis

On the outside, Rivervale High seems like a typical suburban school, filled with a largely white, middle-class population. New student Jenny Dahlquist (Jane McGregor) quickly discovers the divisive cliques that polarize the campus when she tries to find a seat in the cafeteria. Cheerleaders, jocks, druggies, preppies, skateboarders, nerds—they’ve all staked their territory in the lunchroom, and don’t tolerate outsiders. At an empty table sits Trevor, the ultimate loner/outcast. Dubbed “The M…
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Pentagon Papers, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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In 1967, a top secret document was commissioned by the government, tracing the United States’ history with the Vietnam war. This history went as far back as the 1940’s. The result was a 7,000 page document. In 1971, a defense department official and former Rand corporation employee, Daniel Ellsberg, secretly photocopied these “Pentagon Papers” and released them to the New York Times. Then President, Richard Nixon, called Ellsberg’s act “treasonable”. FX and Paramount’s television production of The Pentagon Pa…
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Stupids, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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The Stupids are a family with, as you can guess, a below-average intelligence. I think this might be due to inbreeding. The plot is fairly simple, more a series of vignettes: the family gets into some mess because of a mistake they make, and then get out of it in some silly manner. It sort of comes together in the end, but that’s how the whole movie goes.

The Stupids is a kid’s movie, and it was made with that exact audience in mind. It’s not really there to entertain adults and…
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Gilligan’s Island – The Complete First Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004

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What happens when a maladroit lackey, an entrepreneur and his wife, a polymath, a store clerk from Kansas, a motion picture starlet, and a ship captain get stranded on a desert island? The next edition of Survivor, right. Okay…I didn’t fool you. It’s Gilligan’s Island. And the first season is on DVD, all 36 episodes (including the infamous pilot)! Is this cause for celebration? Perhaps for some…

Gilligan’s Island ran for 3 seasons, and close to 100 episodes, on CBS from 1964 to 1967. Th…
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What’s Happening!! – The Complete First Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2004

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I came into this title completely blind. I almost always have some idea what I am going to be watching, but in this case, I truly had none whatsoever. I believe that I might have heard the title of this show before, but that’s about it.

Upon viewing this set, it might be a good thing that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Otherwise, I would have never taken this task on. Put simply, this is not a show that has stood the test of time. True laughs are virtually nonexistent, as almost all of…
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Barbarians (History Channel)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004

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Synopsis

Barbarians is The History Channel’s box set of a series of four interesting documentaries. Each chronicles the rise and fall of one or another of history’s famous “Barbarian” tribes – from their generally agrarian origins, to their bloody warlike height and eventual gradual decline or precipitous fall. Four groups are covered in this box set, on two discs:

The Vikings: Who knew these fierce red-bearded horn-wearing savages ran a sophisticated trade empire extending all of the wa…
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Secondhand Lions

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004

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I can only imagine what it might have been like to be a child during the heyday of Disney’s live films division. Going to see The Parent Trap or Mary Poppins as a young girl must really have been exciting. Experiencing Pete’s Dragon or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the theater must have been a thrill for young lads.

Unfortunately, Disney has not lived up to those high standards in its later days. Part of the wonder of those films was that they were not children’s films, as much as s…
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Great Ziegfeld, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004

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MGM keeps rolling out the Best Picture award winners. A few weeks ago it was Mutiny on the Bounty, this time it’s The Great Ziegfeld . I think Ziegfeld belongs in the category of those Best Picture winners that aren’t necessarily the best films for that year (Driving Miss Daisy?? C’mon). I actually prefer Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Gregory La Cava’s seminal screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (starring Ziegfeld’s own William Powell). The Great Ziegfeld al…
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Wuthering Heights (MTV)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 18th, 2004

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MTV is getting used to productions about provocative love affairs. Just look at Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson at this year’s MTV produced Super Bowl. So in their production of a modern updating of Emily Bronte’s novel “Wuthering Heights”, MTV throws in everything but the nipple.

“Wuthering Heights” is a benchmark of Gothic Romantic literature. It tells the tale of a doomed and frenzied love between the two protagonists, Heathcliff and Cathy. “Wuthering Heights” has been adapted for film and tel…
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Consequence

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 17th, 2004

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Ah….Armand Assante…what happened to your career. You were so brilliant in Sidney Lumet’s Q & A (rent it, people). I guess things happen. You have bills to pay. A family to raise.

Consequence is a made for cable HBO film. The opening voice-over, in classic film noir tradition, sets the table for a lurid crime melodrama. Unfortunately, Assante’s awkward southern accent makes the voice over, like the film itself, a bit off putting. The story involves a dentist (Armand Assante) who decides…
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Roswell – The Complete First Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 16th, 2004

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I generally don’t care for those hour long Teen Sci-Fi Romantic Dramas that are so prevalent on the WB. They all just seem a little too “I’m 18, and I’m mad at my parents” for my tastes. While there’s no doubt that Roswell certainly has a measure of that teen angst, there is just enough X Files included, too. Most of the melodrama in this show is tied in with the sci-fi aspects of the story, which makes the show not only watchable, but a bit of a guilty pleasure.

The basic premise of this show…
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