Posted in: Uncategorized by Gino Sassani on July 25th, 2016
The first rule of Fight Club is you never talk about Fight Club. So it's a good thing we're talking about Fight Valley instead. I got to hang out on the phone with Rob Hawk who both wrote and directed Fight Valley and the upcoming Fight Valley 2: Lockdown and we had a lot to talk about. The New Jersey native gives us an idea of what it was like to grow up on the tough streets of Jersey. Fight Valley tells the story of one woman who enters the underground female fight game to find out how her sister died. It's lady's night at the fights. You talkin' to me? Rob Hawk did and it's all here. Bang it here to listen in on my chat with Rob Hawk.
Posted in: Uncategorized by Gino Sassani on July 25th, 2016
That's right. We're heading back to The All American Bikini Car Wash once again. Seems my car keeps getting dirty these days. This time we're talking to the guy who started it all (in the film). Tom McLaren plays Professor Dugan. He's the one who offers the extra credit if Jack can turn a profit with his car wash. Obviously, the prof. wasn't expecting this... I had the opportunity to spend some time talking with Tom. He was also involved in the marketing which has driven this little title into the top 15 in home video sales. He talks about that and his many other projects. He's got a wonderful book out with classic continuity pictures from the Fox vaults. It's co-written with Angela Cartwright. You're going to want to hear this. Bang it here to listen in on my chat with Tom McLaren
Want to learn more about Tom?
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 23rd, 2016
"Space... The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before."
Every Star Trek fan knows the words by heart. For 50 years they've heralded the promise of something special. From the television show that couldn't but did anyway to 12 feature films. Would #13 be the lucky one? The trailers left many of us worried that it would more than likely be unlucky. And we needed so much for this one to be great. Since the last film we lost Leonard Nimoy, who was most certainly the heart of the franchise on the screen.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 18th, 2016
From the very beginning one can see there was great potential here. The show was based on a collection of books that appear to be quite popular. They're called The Outworld series, written by Canadian author Kelley Armstrong. The show avoided most of the standard clichés. No full moon reference at all here. The werewolves "change" at will or when emotionally charged (“you won't like me when I'm angry”). There are no silver bullets. These guys might be stronger and harder to kill than a human, but severe body trauma or blood loss kills them just like anyone else. No pentagrams or wolfbane to be found in the show. Such potential. After three years, the ride comes to an end with all of that potential unfulfilled. The werewolves might have been hard to kill. Alas, the show was not.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2016
For years I've been hearing about how "hot" vampires were on television and in the movies. It all appeared to start with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it actually goes back a lot longer ago. Zombies, on the other hand, were the sole property of feature films, usually extreme low-budget affairs. AMC's The Walking Dead has changed all of that. Suddenly zombies are very hot and populating one of the highest rated shows on television. Add a spin-off, and the domination continues. It wasn't going to take long for someone else to join the field. Enter iZombie, and we're off and running.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2016
"They once roamed the earth by the tens of thousands. Their whistles spoke of distant places, of adventure and romance."
No, we're not talking about dinosaurs or some other extinct animal. Of course, we're talking about the steam-engine train. I'm old enough to have ridden them myself. I had a grandfather who realized in the early 1970's that these steam trains were about to disappear. He made it a point to explain this to me and made sure I appreciated my rides from Reading, Pennsylvania (literally a train city) to Philadelphia, where my Mom was sure he was a bagman for the mob and was using me as a cover.
Posted in: Contests by Gino Sassani on July 11th, 2016
Our friends at Warner Brothers have given us a copy of The 100 The Complete Third Season on DVD for one lucky winner here at Upcomingdiscs. The series stars Eliza Taylor, Bob Morley, Henry Ian Cusick and Isaiah Washington. It's the end of the world as we know it, and you can be there for all 16 episodes on DVD.
To win a copy of this prize, follow these instructions.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 9th, 2016
"Stop me if you've heard this one before."
The first thing you need to know about The Secret Lives Of Pets is that it's not terribly original. Fans of the Pixar Toy Story Franchise will find pretty much every element of this script has been lifted from one of the three Toy Story films. Of course, if you're going to lift an idea, you might as well steal from the best. Of course, there are always formulaic ideas in films, particularly animated films geared mostly toward children. And while I really did enjoy almost everything about this film, I just can't escape the fact that I've seen it all before.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 9th, 2016
When I was a kid in the 1970's there was a weekend sports show on ABC called The Wide World Of Sports. It was a catch-all for those sports that don't have the kind of national branding of football or baseball. It was the kind of show for boxing, gymnastics, or skiing. I don't remember a single episode that I saw. What I do remember along with anyone who has ever watched it is the opening sequence. We were promised the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat. With that last line we saw the image of a ski jumper taking a horrible wreck as he comes off the jump. In the 40 years since I still often wonder about the guy whose legacy will always be the very definition of unmitigated failure, and painful failure at that.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2016
"Never underestimate the impact of dramatic entrance!"
It's hard to maintain the attention of the 21st-century child. Animated movies have to combine enough elements of charm and action to keep their attention for a little under two hours. If you want to keep a franchise going, you have to rip out your sequels in reasonably tight schedules. It's been over four years since Kung Fu Panda 2, and we waited nearly that long between the first and second entry. That's a long time in a culture where we move from fad to fad almost by the hour.
