Posts by Gino Sassani

"It's a different world out there." 

Ray Donovan: The Complete Series is out from CBS Home Entertainment, and it includes all 82 episodes and the television movie that was released to make up for the sudden cancelation without a proper sendoff for the Donovan clan. You get 29 DVD's, and the set includes all of the extras from the individual season releases. You do have to deal with those large overlapped spindles, so I suggest you create another environment to store them.

Next year we hope to return to our usual 31 Nights Of Terror. This year we are going to offer you some Halloween Spotlight titles that would be a great idea to pick up for the scary season. So... we're still your October Night Mayor and here's a great idea for Halloween from our friends at Film Detective. 

"That's just the wind banging the door, pay no attention to it. Listen to this."

Next year we hope to return to our usual 31 Nights Of Terror. This year we are going to offer you some Halloween Spotlight titles that would be a great idea to pick up for the scary season. So... we're still your October Night Mayor and here's a great idea for Halloween from our friends at Paramount/CBS/Showtime. 

“Tonight’s the night, and it’s going to happen again and again. It has to happen …”

Next year we hope to return to our usual 31 Nights Of Terror. This year we are going to offer you some Halloween Spotlight titles that would be a great idea to pick up for the scary season. So... we're still your October Night Mayor and here's a great idea for Halloween from our friends at Paramount/CBS/Showtime. 

"You're traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of the mind. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And it lies between the pit of one's fears and the summit of one's knowledge. You are now traveling through a dimension of imagination. You've just crossed over into The Twilight Zone."

"For more than two decades, families across America gathered around the television every Sunday night to watch The Ed Sullivan Show. Both the country and its music underwent an enormous evolution over the course of those years, and the show not only kept up with the times, it informed them. The long and winding road of music history is full of forks, but from the 1950's through the early 70's, one stop was essential: The Ed Sullivan Show."

You can say that again. Ed Sullivan's Sunday night variety show first aired June 20th, 1948 and left the air March 28^th, 1971. Three years after the show ended, Ed Sullivan passed away, and with him one of the most iconic faces of the entertainment industry. Think about how much America and music changed throughout those years. When Sullivan first started, the music industry was dominated by big bands like those of Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. The songs were sung by the crooners like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. When the show left the airwaves, the top songs were performed by Elton John, Rod Stewart, and The Rolling Stones. Along the way we picked up the likes of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. And Ed Sullivan was there to catch all of it live from his television stage every Sunday night for 1,068 shows. Ed Sullivan didn't just present acts that were popular. He introduced unknowns to the world, and appearing on Ed's show meant you were going places. He presented stars, but he made stars.

"I realize that much of your extravagant behavior is done purely for effect. You're an artist. The public expects you to be different. But you're no longer an ascetic young poet just down from Oxford. You're a highly successful playwright at the peak of your career. You dine with royalty. You mix in the highest social circles. You're walking along a precipice. Just as long as you continue to play court jester, society will accept it. But tax their tolerance too far and they'll send you crashing from the heights to the depths of obscurity. A halo doesn't have to fall very far to become a noose."

That's the kind of advice we might expect to go out to some of our more, shall we say, eccentric celebrities of the day. In modern society we still revel in the odd choices and actions of our actors, musicians, and athletes. But sometimes they cross a line, and there's a backlash. Just take a look at the careers of Ezra Miller or Armie Hammer. There are still sacred cows, and they often change from year to year, decade to decade, and century to century. In the times of iconic playwright Oscar Wilde, it was homosexuality. In fact it took the United Kingdom to the 1960's to reverse laws prohibiting the lifestyle. But even in Oscar Wilde's time there was a certain ability to look the other way when one was so entertaining. But Wilde made the mistake of having his cake while eating it too, and it led to the downfall of one of the best playwrights in modern history.

"We came up here to get lucky."

What do you get when you combine Predator with The Twilight Zone and throw in an 80's television star and do a movie of the week? You get High Desert Kill and a preview of the kind of thing that would start appearing on Sy-Fy in a few decades. Universal was actually the king of these kinds of films throughout the late 70's and 80's, and director Harry Falk was one of television’s steady directors of the time. There's real experience here that allows this film to at times rise above its limited budget and offer a few compelling moments. There was actually a time the film was considered for theatrical release and did find a few box office dates in Europe. That was the dilemma in the 80's. Made-for-television would eventually give way to direct-to-video, and today, of course, it is streaming that provides the same kind of outlet. Thanks to Kino-Lorber you get a chance to decide for yourself as High Desert Kill arrives on Blu-ray, albeit with no real restoration. It's pretty much as it was when it was released on television in 1989.