Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 22nd, 2024
"I hope he fails miserably. See, my ex-husband truly loved only one thing his entire life: this club. And Ted Lasso is gonna help me burn it to the ground. I want to torture Rupert. I want him to feel like he's being fucked in the ass with a splintered cricket bat, just in and out, over and over in a constant loop.
It likely started with Saturday Night Live. The show was roaring in the 1970's, and along the way some ideas that made great 3-minute skits got appropriated for movies and even television shows. A few of them have become classics. The Blues Brothers is one fine example. Most have retreated into obscurity. I can only think of a two examples where something like that became a dominant force for years to come. In the 1950's, Jackie Gleason was hosting his own variety show called The Jackie Gleason Show. One of the skits was about a bus driver named Ralph Kramden.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 16th, 2024
Mark Harmon as Gibbs was the soul of the NCIS franchise. When he finally called it quits after nearly 20 years, I have to admit I wasn't sure how much longer the show could go on. I mean, there has to be a reason for this kind of longevity. All of the spin-offs have now come and gone. NCIS: Hawaii has now ended. NCIS: New Orleans shuttered it's doors three years ago now after a mere seven years. The longest-running of the spin-offs was L.A., but even they have gone now after only 10 years. I say "only" 10 years. For most shows a 10-year run is rarefied air. So how about 21 years? Only Dick Wolf's Law & Order franchise has accomplished more. Yes, Harmon might have been the franchise's soul. But Gary Cole came in and has taken up that slack far better than anyone could have imagined. Now CBS is releasing NCIS The Complete 21st Season on DVD, and that short run of episodes puts the franchise passed the 1000 episode mark. It's an unbelievable run, and it doesn't look like it's close to ending now.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2024
"India. Once a faraway and mysterious place of Ghandi and nonviolence. And ancient traditions of spiritual enlightenment. What happens when a young 23-year-old westerner realizes he needs to change, goes there in search of himself, and he finds that The Beatles are there, too? Four of the most loved and famous people in the world, and they're there to meditate and to write music. They also want to find out who they are on a new and deeper level."
The Beatles. As a musician I fully appreciate the fact that the band literally changed rock music as much as any other act before or since. The music was truly transcending, which is a great place to start when talking about Meeting The Beatles In India. Just as the Fab Four were nearing the end of their time together, they took six weeks to travel to India, where they met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
"Welcome to the MCU. You're joining at a bit of a low point."
When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, the Marvel fanbase was instantly overflowing with questions. Of course, Fox held the film rights to a ton of Marvel characters and stories. So we were immediately trying to figure out how The MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) was going to integrate these characters into the one big beautiful world. The first bit of news concerned The Fantastic Four. We had a couple of pretty good films, but the last one was absolutely horrible. Now we have a cast and release date, so we're all eager to see how that's going to come together. What other Marvel staples will be included? The same is true of The X-Men and to a lesser extent characters like Blade, which so far looks like a huge mess in the making. For me the biggest question was, what about Deadpool?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
“You got everything money can buy, except what it can’t. It’s pride. Pride is what got you here. Losing is what brung you back. But people like you, they need to be tested. They need a challenge.”
There have been a ton of boxing films. They’ve been popular going back to the silent era. Most of them have many of the same themes. But there was always something about Rocky that stood out above all of the rest. That “something” can’t really be described or defined. As the Supreme Court once said about the definition of obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” That’s all you can say about Rocky. Some might call it heart. That’s about as good a word for it as anything else. Rocky himself would call it “stuff in the basement”. It almost demeans it to put a word on it at all. Whatever you call it, you don’t necessarily see it in Rocky … you feel it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
"This is the story of one of America's great unsung heroes. I mean, you've seen him, but you never knew who he was. You've cheered for him and cried for him, and women have wanted to die for him. But did he ever get any credit, or the girl? No! He's what we call the "stuntman", and the reason I'm talking so fondly about him is, well, because it's me, Colt Seavers. Anyway, picture work isn't wall-to-wall employment, so maybe you wonder how a guy keeps his head together. Well, one way is to wait by the phone ... and wait, and wait. The other is to take an occasional job with the court system of the United States of America, where a man is considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, sometimes a lot of these people get out of jail on what we call bail, and they'd run like hell ... and that's where I come in. I sometimes pick up rent money trying to find them and bring them back to justice." - Television series open.
Lee Majors performed a pretty solid television hat trick in his television career.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 19th, 2024
"We made a film - the one I'm going to show you now. Actually, Jason was the one who wanted to make it. Like that cameraman from Channel 10, he wanted to upload it so that people, you, could be told the truth. The film was shot with a Panasonic HDX-900 and an HBX-200. I did the final cut on Jason's laptop. I've added music occasionally for effect, hoping to scare you. You see, in addition to trying to tell you the truth, I am hoping to scare you so that maybe you'll wake up. Maybe you won't make any of the same mistakes that we made. Anyway, here it is, Jason Creed's The Death of Death."
It’s ironic that 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake (which was originally a George Romero film), have jump-started Romero’s long-running “Dead” series that started in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Since 28 Days Later and the Dawn remake were released, Romero has released two new installments: Land of the Dead in 2005 and now Diary of the Dead in 2007.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2024
"Change of plans. Now that we know the whole world will be watching, we need a backup plan."
I went into Fly Me To The Moon expecting something like Capricorn One, and I ended up seeing a film that reminded me more of Wag The Dog. The Woody Harrelson role might have been the clincher here. The change was actually a fortuitous one, and in spite of my relative loathing for rom-com syrup, I ended up having a pretty good time and liking the sleeper film more than I had any right to expect. It's not perfect, and I don't expect that it will climb on anyone's classic lists in the next decade or so. But the mishmash film presentation ends up having a pretty wide appeal, and you could do worse than spend a couple of hours here amid what's been an overall rather disappointing slate of films for 2024. There's a little something for everyone here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 2nd, 2024
The films of the 1960's and 1970's began an era of what have been called exploitation films. There are many examples of films that pushed the R to X boundaries and have been referred to as Sexploitation films. Today we might call them soft porn, and examples of those early films includes Daughter Of The Sun (1963) and The Twilight Girls (1961). There were also films that took advantage of a certain aspect of black culture in the 70's and made to appeal to the young, "hip" blacks of the decade but also became quite popular with the mainstream audiences. Films from that genre include iconic movies like the Shaft and Dolemite franchises. There's another of these kinds of films that hasn't gotten quite the attention and aren't as well remembered. That group of films from mainly the 60's were called Hicksploitation. These films provided heavy stereotyping like the Blacksploitation films did
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 25th, 2024
"Somebody went to a lot of trouble here, and I want to find out, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I'm not the one who's supposed to be caught with his pants down."
The word "classic" gets thrown around a lot. Everybody has their own list. I get that. Whenever someone starts listing films from the last year or so, I just smile and take it with a grain of salt. Because I know they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know how many years it takes to be a classic. Is it 10 ... 20 … or even 30 years? Well, how about 50 for a nice round number? The film has certainly stood the test of time. That's one of those things you can't say about a film under a decade or two old.
