Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009
Have you seen the Chris Farley/David Spade film Tommy Boy? If you have, then you’ve also seen Black Sheep. The circumstances might have changed, but the general idea is still there. Farley plays the mentally challenged family member, yet again. This time he’s Mike Donnelly, and his brother Al (Matheson) is running for Governor of Washington state. Spade once again plays the faithful employee who is charged with babysitting Farley’s character and trying to keep him out of trouble. Here he’s Steve Dodds, an overlooked campaign assistant who hopes to parley the assignment into a full time job on Donnelly’s staff if he’s elected. Just like in Tommy Boy, there is the rival who is using Farley to hurt the cause. This time it’s sitting Governor Tracy (Eborsole) and her slimy campaign manager Neauschwander (McGill). They set Mike up as an arsonist, among other things. Of course, the Farley and Spade team discover some voting irregularities and take a road trip to the state capital to save the day. They’re aided in their attempt by a Vietnam vet who isn’t dealing with a full deck and is played quite hilariously by Gary Busy.
There are a ton of parallels between the Chris Farley/David Spade comedy team and that of John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd. Both teams began in the Saturday Night Live arena. It was that physical big/little guy combination that has its roots with Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello. Both teams were at the height of their careers when a drug overdose would claim the wilder member of the team. Both of the deceased comedians left behind at least one successful brother to carry on the name in show business. Tommy Boy was by far the best of the films this duo made before Farley’s tragic overdose in 1997. Black Sheep is a pale imitation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. No, I’m not having a Charles Dickens flashback or reliving Star Trek II. I’m talking about the new Trek release The Best Of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It does feature one of the best Trek episodes of any of the shows, the Borg extravaganza The Best Of Both Worlds. In fact this really does contain 4 of the show’s best episodes. The problem is that there are only 4. With the fan collectives already taking up Yesterday’s Enterprise, it’s not that great a bargain for the real Trek fan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009
With the original series I see no reason at all to buy into a 4 episode release. This stuff has already appeared countless times in the last 5 years or so. The episodes appeared in double episode discs originally. Then there were the complete seasons. There was the remastered DVD season sets. Finally, the best news yet, the release of these episodes in high definition on Blu-ray. So, why is Paramount releasing these single disc DVD’s now? There’s no question that they picked 4 of the best episodes, and they are the remastered versions.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 12th, 2009
“When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. It never forgives. It never forgets. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury.”
Here we go again with the American remake of the Asian classic. To be fair, The Grudge was one of the first after the great success of The Ring. There are some significant differences between this effort and the countless remakes we’ve encountered over the last decade or so. This film retained its Japanese location, which does provide for a more exotic atmosphere. The location shoots are actually pretty well done. The film was also directed by the same man who directed the Asian original, Takashi Shimizu. He’s become quite prolific in the genre, having now directed both versions and the sequels to both versions. The Grudge also doesn’t figure into the technology aspect that many of these Asian ghost stories appear to populate. The most high tech haunt here is a stainless steel bathtub. I bet that gets cold in the winter. Sarah Michelle Gellar brings in the core American audience thirsting for more Buffy. But, if you’re turning on to this film to see Buffy kick some supernatural rear, you’re better off with the Scooby Doo films. And that’s bad.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 11th, 2009
“Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those great American writers from the classic age. In school most of us were required to read various works from the writer. For many students those works included The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. The original work is a mere 20 page short story. For the last 15 years Hollywood has made one attempt or another to bring the classic story to the screen. The closest anyone got was Ron Howard who expected to bring in John Travolta as Benjamin Button. The one reason or another these attempts never made it past screenplay drafts. Along comes one of the best and most diverse directors, David Fincher. Fincher’s work needs little introduction and spans the genre spectrum from Se7en to Fight Club. The original short story would be adapted by Eric Roth. That left many, myself included, to expect a remake of Forrest Gump. When you consider that Roth wrote both screen adaptations and that he was once again working with a character spanning many years of history, the concerns were not unfounded. Would Roth take Benjamin Button on a journey through the 20th Century that would find him present at crucial moments in history as he did with Gump? Fortunately, Roth resisted such temptations and delivered a story relatively faithful to the original work, where the main character was a silent witness only to the major events of his life. Of course, I say relatively faithful because Roth also turned that 20 page story into an epic 3 hour film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 7th, 2009
Talk about your hit show running out of steam. The Waltons is the perfect example of a show that outstayed its welcome. When it first took television audiences by storm in 1971, it became a cultural phenomenon. But by the show’s ninth and final year as a regular series it was 1980 and the country, the world, for that matter, had changed. It didn’t help matters that Richard Thomas had left the show, and his popular John Boy character, behind. The show’s core fans remained, but America’s love affair with The Waltons was clearly over. The show continued with 6 specials, often around holidays that brought the now scattered family back to Walton’s Mountain and our television screens. The last of these reunion films aired in 1997. They are not included in this final season set. I would expect they are awaiting their own release, much as the Columbo series has done.
John (Waite) and Olivia (Learned) Walton lived on the Walton land high atop Walton’s Mountain. The land had been in their family for generations. They shared their home with Grandpa (Geer) and Grandma (Corby) Walton and 8 children. At first we found the family in the heart of the Great Depression. They series had a Little House On The Prairie feel to it. The stories took place mostly in that small town where they all lived. The family would suffer one hardship or another and overcome weekly obstacles by sticking together as a family. As the years moved on, the series entered the World War II era and some of the boys would end up fighting in the conflict. By far the breakout character became John Boy, who was first played by and made famous by Richard Thomas. In the last season the character was covered as a recurring character by Robert Wrightman. It would never be the same.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2009
“Symbols are a language that helps us to understand our past. As the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words, but which words? Understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present. So, how do we sift truth from belief? How do we write our own histories, personally and culturally, and thereby define ourselves? How do we penetrate years, centuries of historical distortion to find the original truth? Tonight, that will be our quest.”
Conspiracies can be fun. We all buy into them to one degree or another. I’m not talking about the paranoid nutjob who sees a conspiracy behind every closed door, and even a few open ones. Of course, there is something to the old axiom that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you. Of course, we’re not talking about the persecution complex style conspiracy here. We’re talking about the old fashioned cover-up. It’s what made The X-Files so famous for so many years. It’s why JFK’s death is so much more interesting than anything he did in his remarkable life. There are still some crazy people out there that believe George W. Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, or at the very least was complacent in them. Everywhere from Super Bowl outcomes to manned missions to the moon, someone somewhere thinks it was all a big lie. So, you might as well cop to it now. We all love a good conspiracy theory. In his second Robert Langdon novel, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown writes about what would be the mother of all cover-ups. As one character put it so well in both the novel and film, “What if the greatest story ever told was a lie?”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2009
Two And A Half Men reached their 100th episode in the 5th year. That’s the milestone when a series becomes viable in syndication to local market stations. That’s the kind of show you see once, twice, a hundred times a day on those local stations either just before primetime or late at night. This is also the year that the writers of CSI and Two And A Half Men switched shows for an episode. It’s one of those cross-over ideas that I don’t think had been done before. I’d love to see the South Park and Family Guy staffs do something like this. That would be pay per view worthy. So, here on 3 discs is that milestone season for you to enjoy at home.
Charlie Sheen is an unlikely actor to star in a television sit-com. Even after watching the show, I’m not sure how anyone came up with the idea in the first place. He has little to no comedic timing, and he’s about as funny as a funeral. The thing that works here, however, is that he really doesn’t need to be all that funny to make this show work. Sheen pretty much deadpans his entire performance, which generously enough works rather well teamed with the more manic comedy of Jon Cryer. Throw into the mix a rather extraordinary young child actor in Angus T. Jones, and suddenly a show that looks terrible on paper turns out to be pretty dang funny. We’re not talking Fred Sanford funny, but I caught myself laughing far more often than I expected to. I had only caught the show before in bits and pieces and was never all that fond of what I saw. Watching these DVD episodes from the third season shed some new light on the show for me.
Posted in: Contests by Gino Sassani on May 5th, 2009
Genius Products has graciously given us five copies of The Last Templar on DVD to give away.
To crack the code and enter to win a copy of this Vatican Thriller, just follow these two steps...
Contest is now closed. The Winners are: Patricia Boyle, Piero Giorno, Stacey Dempsey, Robert Wise, and Cherie Michalec. Congrats!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 5th, 2009
It’s the end of the October Road for Nick and the gang. If you want to blame anyone, there’s plenty to go around here. First of all, the writers’ strike didn’t do anyone any favors by delivering only a 6 season first year. While the cast was made up of good actors, there is never any kind of chemistry between them. They look like actors thrown together because they have to be. The writing is uneven. Did anyone ever really plan out what this show was really about? There are fans; every show has some. But there was never enough to make this one fly at all. Blame me, if you like, for not being kind to the first release and repeating those same criticisms here. The truth is, it was never a good show, and a DVD release isn’t going to change that. You do get to see all of the episodes here. At last count, ABC was not necessarily planning to air all of the completed episodes. That makes it a good buy for the fans. If all 6 of you pool your money, maybe you can share one set.
Enter Nick Garrett. He’s a writer who has published a hugely successful best selling novel. It’s been made into a major film, and busty women approach him in clubs to tell him how much it has affected their lives. The audio version is read by Johnny Depp. You would think Nick has it made. The trouble is that Nick doesn’t have a clue how to begin to write his next book. His solution is to take a trip back home to the places that inspired the first book. His hope is to make a quick hit and run visit, but he ends up staying for a while. Nick soon discovers that you really can’t go home again. Everything and everyone changes, as Nick is finding out. Not everyone is happy about how they feel they might have been portrayed in the novel, and Nick might even have a son. If this is starting to sound a bit like a soap opera, then you have October Road pegged.
![Black Sheep [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/black-sheep-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Grudge [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-grudge-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button-large.jpg)
![The Da Vinci Code (Two-Disc Extended Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-da-vinci-code-two-disc-extende-large.jpg)
