Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 12th, 2009
Nature’s Grave looks like it could have been a made for television movie for The Animal Planet or one of those learning channels. If they were ever thinking of branching out a bit into the nature gone mad type of show, wait a minute. They already have. This one attempts to be a thriller/horror film but doesn’t ever come close to either definition. The wild animals never amount to anything more than an attacking bird or a dead manatee. I’m not sure what a fan of this movie was looking for when he or she came here, but I suspect whatever it was, it was very hard not to be disappointed.
Peter (Caviezel) and Carla (Karvan) are married couple who get on each other’s nerves most of the time. Peter imagines that a long weekend of camping might be just the ticket to get their relationship back on solid footing. He buys about 10 grand of equipment, which only gets his unhappy wife even more angry at him. They pile into the car and head for a remote stretch of beach. In the middle of the night they have trouble finding the place, and if that shouldn’t have been enough to get them to a comfy hotel at least for the night, the sudden attacks by nature should have done the trick. The animal mishaps escalate, and before long they couple aren’t worried so much about their marriage surviving. They have to try and survive with their lives intact.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2009
Billy Bob Thornton got himself a well deserved Oscar for the film Sling Blade. If you’ve ever seen the film, or anything else by the man, there’s no surprise that he took home one of the coveted statues. What is a bit surprising is that he took the Oscar home for the screenplay for Sling Blade and not for the masterful performance. Now don’t get me wrong. The screenplay is a brilliant one. He certainly deserved that award, but there hasn’t been a performance as riveting as his portrayal of Karl Childers in a decade or more. It was this performance that made Thornton the household name he became. It’s doubtful many of the other opportunities he did get would have come his way without such a landmark role. The character has become an icon in American pop culture and is imitated frequently in films, television shows, and skits. There have been plenty of imitations, but there’s only one Sling Blade.
It’s almost hard to imagine that this baby is almost singlehandedly the product of Billy Bob Thornton. He wrote the story, directed the film, and played the lead character. It just doesn’t happen this way very often. You’ve seen enough of my reviews here to know what I tend to think of these, often egotistical, one man shows. Most of the time they are self serving crap that passes for high art or entertainment. This is certainly one of those exceptions that, as they say, proves the rule. Of course I never did understand that phrase all that much. Still, it fits about as perfectly as you please here. Every aspect of this film is near perfect. The story is a compelling one to be sure, but I don’t think it would have been nearly as good without such sweet direction and acting. The award might have been deserved; probably was, as Karl would say. But it was the other two elements that really made this film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2009
The Soloist is based on a book written by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. The book was based on a series of columns the writer assembled involving his relationship with a street musician he happened upon while searching for material. Lopez was touched by the musician, Nathaniel Ayers, who was playing a violin with only two remaining strings. Still he was able to produce music that made the writer do a double take and begin to wonder what he was doing out on the street. Ayers’ ramblings made it immediately obvious that the man was suffering from mental illness. Their first contact revealed that the street performer was once a student at Juilliard. Lopez took a personal interest in the story, resulting in a series of columns that got him a bit of attention and a personal relationship with Nathaniel Ayers. When he finds out that Ayers was a classically trained cellist, his column ends up providing a nice cello for the musician to play. Lopez attempts to use the instrument as a way to coax Ayers inside and off the street. He exposes him to music instructors in the hopes of cultivating his talent more completely. Together they grow, in a way.
There really isn’t much more of a story than that. Credit director Joe Wright for not attempting to add the usual Hollywood flares in an attempt to make the film more of a commercial success. The story is very true to the real life events and never attempts the usual over the top approach that has become trendy in Hollywood today. Unfortunately, while the decision might have been an honorable one, it might not have been the right one for the film. It did rather poorly at the box office, pulling in a little over $30 million, which didn’t even cover the budgets costs. You have to look at this one strictly as a character study, because you won’t find a satisfying enough story in the film. It just kind of sits there and never really develops into any kind of cohesive form. It’s obviously the product of a series of loosely related pieces of work. We get the idea that Lopez is moved by this man and that he decides at some sacrifice to get involved, but where is the whole thing going? Again, they decide to forego the warm and fuzzy Hollywood ending that wraps things up in a nice tidy bow for everybody. Most of the story hasn’t been told; the relationship is, apparently, ongoing. Perhaps the story needed a proper ending before making its way to a movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2009
Why does every Adam Sandler character seem to be Happy Gilmore? I don’t know if there’s an actor out there, comedian or otherwise, who has made so many movies essentially playing the same character. If it seems at times like I really hate Sandler, believe it or not, I don’t. The guy has a charm and natural ability that can, when he works at it, come off as a very entertaining couple of hours at the movies. Unfortunately, he’s not willing to work at it, and so continues to bombard us with new versions of the same character and story.
You’ve seen it all before. Young guy with some kind of a mental problem or at least simplemindedness ends up overcoming his self esteem issues and becomes a hero. It’s no different here. This time the guy is Bobby Boucher (Sandler) who takes his waterboy duties with the local college football team a little too seriously. Taste testing the water and making sure the serving temperature is just right are just a couple of ways that Bobby looks like an idiot to the team’s players and coaches. He’s picked on, and for good reason. Finally the coach considers him too much of a distraction and fires the kid. Bobby’s thrown into a deep depression and no one seems to understand him. That goes doubly for the moviegoers caught paying out good money for the movie. He ends up getting another, non-paying gig at SCLSU, the losingest school in the state. Once again he’s picked on. This time the frustration builds, and Bobby ends up tackling one of his tormentors on the team. When Coach Klein (Winkler) sees the amazing tackle he decides to give Bobby a shot to make the team. Predictably, Bobby becomes a star, elevating the crappy team into the championship. Of course, just as easy to predict, you know what team they face in the big game. Yes, it’s Bobby’s old team. It just so happens the coaches are old rivals, and so it’s personal all around. The rival coach tries to get Bobby disqualified for the big game, but of course we have to have that moment when Bobby realizes everybody is counting on him and that he’s a hero. Again, the operative word here is predictable.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 8th, 2009
Welcome to the first of what I hope to be many hardware reviews. When I first heard that Oppo Digital was breaking into the Blu-ray player market with their new model BDP-83 I was immediately intrigued. The company had almost singlehandedly set the standard for upconvert DVD players just a short time ago. To say I was eager to get my hands on one of these units was an understatement.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
Who doesn’t remember the original Witch Mountain films from Disney back in the 1970’s. They were clever family films. They were camp, to be sure. But, most of us remember them fondly, if not as particularly outstanding films. While Disney’s reimagining of the franchise doesn’t have a great deal in common with those earlier films, you can pretty much describe the reaction as being spot on. Race To Witch Mountain isn’t going to be breaking any box office records, but it is the kind of film you get a pretty warm feeling for, and like its predecessors, you’ll end up remembering it with fondness.
A flying saucer crashes in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. The crash just so happens to coincide with the arrival of a huge UFO convention in Sin City. The Defense Department has secured the crash site. They quickly discover that the ship’s passengers have slipped through their perimeter. Now it’s a race to find the extraterrestrials before they can hatch whatever nefarious plan has brought them to our planet. The investigation is spearheaded by Henry Burke (Hinds). Meanwhile Vegas cabdriver Jack Bruno (Johnson) is busy ferrying the “nut jobs” to the UFO convention. Bruno was once a gifted race car driver as well as excelling in demotion derby driving. He had once worked a stint as a mob driver and has gotten out of the business. But, as we all know by now, you don’t just retire from the mob. So, there are some goons after him to “persuade” him to return to the job. All of a sudden a pair of teens appears in his car loaded with a huge wad of cash and a mysterious electronic device. The teens request to be taken to a remote location that appears to be being directed by the unknown gizmo. When his cab is assaulted by a convoy of black SUV’s, Bruno thinks it’s his old mob heavies, but it’s Burke and his ET hunters after the kids, who happen to be the escaped aliens. For the rest of the film Bruno and his unusual passengers, Sara (Robb) and Seth (Ludwig) try to locate a device that contains information that will stop an impending attack on the Earth. The kids must find the device, get their ship out of Burke’s hands, and return to their own planet before an all out invasion is launched at our planet. All the while the group is being pursued by the mob, Burke’s boys, and an alien bounty hunter with a ton of weapons at its disposal. They have two weapons of their own. First, the kids have some remarkable powers. Sara can move objects with her mind and talk to animals, and Seth can manipulate the density of his molecular structure, thus enabling him to pass through solid objects or withstand a head-on collision by an oil tanker. The second weapon is Dr. Alex Friedman (Gugino), an attractive scientist who speaks at these UFO conventions for a living, who happened to be one of Bruno’s earlier “nut jobs”. Together they race against time to save the planet, interacting with some peculiar characters along the way.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
An ancient facility beneath Antarctica becomes the launching platform to the lost city of Atlantis. Atlantis is buried beneath an ocean in another galaxy and can only be reached with an additional symbol on the Stargate. Because of power limitations this trip, at least for the time being, is a one-way adventure. A crew of scientists and military officers from many countries assemble to explore the Pegasus Galaxy from the Atlantis gate. Led by scientist Dr. Weir (Higginson) and Maj. John Sheppard (Flanigan) they take over the Atlantian command center and begin to explore. In their initial investigations they accidentally awaken the area’s top bad guys, The Wraith. These vampire-like beings suck the life-force out of humans.
When Stargate SG-1 was about to enter its ninth year, there was speculation that after season 8 the series would bow out gracefully with the anticipated exit of Richard Dean Anderson. With that plan in mind, the folks at Stargate Command decided it was time to spin off the franchise, and so was born Atlantis. Stargate Atlantis boasts pretty much the same production team as SG-1. The quality of the production and tight storytelling have translated well to this sister series. Stargate Atlantis took a little getting used to. I wasn’t sure the characters had enough chemistry or were even dynamic enough to carry the high expectations for a Stargate series. Those concerns eventually evaporated by the time Atlantis began to live without the SG-1 companion series. These characters really took off, and they’ve developed into nearly as strong a group as SG-1 ever was. Now with the very first Atlantis content available on high definition Blu-ray, you’ll have the chance to explore where the show began and ended. This single disc contains the first and last episodes of the 5 year journey that was Atlantis.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
“Now this might be the room of any small boy, but it happens to belong to a boy named Christopher Robin, and like most small boys, Christopher Robin had toy animals to play with. And together they had many remarkable adventures in an enchanted place called The Hundred Acre Wood. But out of all of his animal friends, Christopher Robin’s very best friend was a bear called Winnie The Pooh.”
“Oh Bother”A.A. Milne was quite an eclectic writer. He wrote murder mysteries that even appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. From that fertile mind would also come a place known as the Hundred Acre Wood. In that select place some of literature’s finest characters had the greatest adventures any boy could imagine. And adventures are certainly no fun on your own. Young Christopher Robin was joined by Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore, and, of course, Winnie-The-Pooh. Who didn’t fall in love with that silly old bear… Winnie-The-Pooh. OK, so maybe Dahmer or Bundy might have been exceptions. Still, anyone growing up in the last 30-40 years who isn’t a psychopath has had a love affair with Winnie-The-Pooh, all stuffed with fluff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
“In a time before many can remember, our planet faced its greatest challenge. A warlord named Piccolo came from beyond the stars, bringing darkness and chaos to our once peaceful world. Aided by his disciple Oozaru, the evil pair brought the human race to the brink of annihilation. Cities and countries crumbled beneath them. Countless lives were lost, but finally a group of brave warriors created the Ma Fu Ba, a powerful enchantment that imprisoned Piccolo deep with in the Earth. With his master captured, Oozaru disappeared and balance was slowly restored to our world. And so it has remained for thousands of years…until now.”
Let me begin by stating that I have not had more than a passing exposure to the hugely popular Dragonball anime works. I suspect that this film bears little resemblance to that material, again from what little I had seen of it. That likely means there are more than a few angry fans out there. I won’t be offering any comparisons. I will merely review this film as a standalone production, as it was apparently intended to be, which in itself might have been a mistake.
Posted in: Random Fun by Gino Sassani on August 6th, 2009
On July 28th, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a conference call with Monk's Tony Shalhoub. Below is the transcript of that interview. I'll be posting the audio portion of my question shortly:
Final Transcript
![Sling Blade [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/sling-blade-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Soloist [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-soloist-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Waterboy [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-waterboy-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Race to Witch Mountain (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/race-to-witch-mountain-blu-raydvd-large.jpg)
![Stargate Atlantis: Fans' Choice [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/stargate-atlantis-fans-choice-bl-large.jpg)
![Dragonball: Evolution [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/dragonball-evolution-blu-ray-large.jpg)
