Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 12th, 2005
“It’s been a long time getting from there to here.” 35 years to be exact. Enterprise is the fourth spin-off from the original 1960’s hopeful series. Rick Berman decided to set this series about 100 years before the days of Kirk and Spock. Enterprise has certainly taken a ton of heat since its debuted just 4 years ago. While much of the whining by the “get a life” fans can be delegated to the “Nitpicker’s Guides,” much of it is well deserved.
The most egregious infraction is the liberty the show has taken with established timeline of Star Trek.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 10th, 2005
Synopsis
A demented sculptor kills his girlfriend (Romi Koch) and turns her into a mannequin. At last,he has his perfect woman. But he still imagines her taunting him, and her beauty inspires oneman after another to kill to possess the now haunted doll. The tone is meant to be blacklyhumorous, some effort has gone into the camera work, and there is a subtext here about maleobjectification of women. But Koch’s line readings are so inept, and the storytelling so elliptical,that the ef...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 8th, 2005
Farscape is an acquired taste. Honestly, it took me a few viewings to get hooked. It is unlike any sci-fi show ever produced, with stories that are often too complicated to follow with a casual viewing. It requires your full attention or you can become hopelessly lost. The characters are never cut and dried good or evil, and the stories do not always end on a happy note and seldom with all of the loose ends brought together. The Henson creature creations are the most outstanding examples of puppetry I’ve ever seen in television or the big screen.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 7th, 2005
Bill Maher - Be More Cynical is a recording of a 2000 performance in San Fransico. Now, the jokes are a bit dated. Monica Lewinsky and George W. Bush, back then, were still prime fodder (in fact Bush still is, but that's beside the point.) This performance lasts just over and hour and is an excellent introduction to Maher's work. He's one of those "edgy" comedians. He rants a lot about religion, drugs, and sex. But Maher's rants are well phrased and his comic timing is well polished. The guy knows how t...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2005
Starting way back with The Simpsons, working up to King of the Hill, growing into Futurama & Family Guy, and now spawning American Dad, Fox sure does know the market of primetime animated TV; and the driving force behind the huge popularity of these shows comes down to DVD releases such as this. Not only have more fans come out of the woodwork since the incarnation of TV on DVD releases, these fans have also driven Fox to push forward with this genre of programming.
K...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2005
Very few sitcoms have the endurance to last nine seasons. Everybody Loves Raymond shares their long-running tenure with comedy heavyweight shows such as Friends, Frasier, & Cheers. Not even Seinfeld lasted nine seasons… it fell short, ending after eight. That says a lot for this show; I guess everyone does love Raymond.
All 26-episodes of the complete third season of Everybody Loves Raymond are included in this set. The episodes are all very entertaining; from “The Invitation” all the way to “How They Met”.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2005
E. B. E. was a first season X-Files episode. For the most part it was very much like any other episode in the early years of the hit series, except it wasn’t. The story introduced us to three of Mulder’s friends/contacts, The Lone Gunmen. Basically Frohike, Langly, and Byers were your typical 80’s dot com geeks who used their computer skills to seek out government conspiracies instead of striking it rich. They self-published a tabloid paper that revealed all to a small conspiracy obsessed following. The appearance was always intended as a one time deal.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 1st, 2005
As I always say when I review HBO television sets… you gotta love HBO. Entourage cannot be placed in the same family as Six Feet Under or The Sopranos, but it still can hold its own against the offerings from other networks. Not only do you get a good show, but you also get the benefits of a cable broadcast… adult language and nudity. Who could ask for more from a TV show?
Produced by “Marky” Mark Wahlberg, this is the story of a guy from Jersey who make his way to Hollywood to make ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 27th, 2005
Synopsis
Directed by Gordon (Them!) Douglas, these three crime thrillers have Frank Sinatra doing his best hard boiled as he unravels complicated (and not always entirely comprehensible) mysteries.
Tony Rome (1967) has Sinatra in Miami Beach as the titular PI, a former cop who still has plenty of connections. A simple task -- returning a drunk young woman to her rich father -- leads to a web of murder and blackmail as all sorts of interested parties chasing around, beating up ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 26th, 2005
Synopsis
The life and career of Peter Sellers (Geoffrey Rush) is chronicled here, from the height of the Goon Show’s popularity to his penultimate, Oscar-nominated role in Being There. Along the way, we see the collapse of his first marriage to Anne (Emily Watson), his second to Britt Ekland (Charlize Theron), and his fractious working relationships with such directors as Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Tucci) and Blake Edwards (John Lithgow).
There’s an interesting conceit at work here: th...
