Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2007
Synopsis
It’s no big secret that I enjoy Extras, and found my way to it through the first episode of the second season, which included a guest appearance by Orlando Bloom (of Pirates of the Caribbean lore). And now that I’ve seen the first season, and rabidly followed the second season on HBO, while it’s a bummer to see Extras fade away after a dozen episodes, and just like The Office, it’s not going to soon forgotten.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2007
Synopsis
Try to wrap your mind around this one. Take the guy who was the center of attention and played the role in Being John Malkovich, and have him play a role as a guy who impersonates the film auteur Stanley Kubrick, of 2001 fame in a story that may or may not be true.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 8th, 2007
Synopsis
Stephen King wrote, in Danse Macabre, back in 1981, something to the effect that horror on TV ranged in quality from the ridiculous to the workmanlike. This was, of course, before he became rather too involved with the medium himself. Things have improved since the, of course, but horror has yet to achieve the truly sublime on television, and this series certainly wasn’t that. It was, however, on the upmarket end of workmanlike, and some of these 15 episodes are pretty neat little eff...rts. The standout is, arguably, “You, Murderer.” Directed by Robert Zemeckis, its opening intro is a parody of the director’s Forrest Gump, and it then has the gall to cast Humphrey Bogart in the lead of a humorous murder tale. The whole thing is done in first-person perspective, à la Lady in the Lake, and co-stars John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Sherilynn Fenn. Everybody has fun with the piece, including the audience, and, from beyond the grave, Bogart himself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 6th, 2007
Synopsis
Robin of Locksley returns to England from the Crusades to find the home he had left behind has taken a drastic turn for the worse under the tyrannical Sheriff of Nottingham. He is forced to take up an outlaw life, fighting for justice for the common man. Marian, fending off the advances of Guy of Gisborne, is his mole in the houses of power.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 5th, 2007
Disaster films are nothing new in Hollywood. While most disaster films tend to focus too much on destroying random objects, there’re are a film good disaster films that come around every so often that actual try to explain the film instead of giving us two hours of random explosions. One such film is 1997’s Dante’s Peak.
Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) works for the US Geology Survey Team. Four years after experiencing a volcano eruption, Harry and a few other scientists are called to a town named Da...te’s Peak to research into the town’s dormant volcano. Harry immediately piques the interest of Mayor Wando (Linda Hamilton), quite possible for his looks not for his scientific merit. Most of the town and its members aren’t concerned about the volcano, simply because nothing has occurred for many years now. Obviously this doesn’t sit well with Harry. When two dead teenagers are discovered near the top of the mountain in a hot spring, Harry begins to think that this mountain is ready to explode. However, as per the typical natural disaster film, no one believes Harry (including his boss), despite numerous instances of proof (acidity levels increasing, dying animals, etc). Now Harry must race against time to prove this volcano is a ticking time bomb.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 3rd, 2007
Be afraid. Be very afraid, if you are even thinking about picking up this rather lame title. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this film. The only way that Kill House has any chance of giving you nightmares is by putting you to sleep. If only I had been so lucky. Beth Dewey was the “mastermind” behind the whole thing. She wrote, directed, and acted as the killer in this piece of crap. Dewey ought to be arrested for grand larceny if even one person paid any real money for this picture. I would tell you som...thing about the plot, but there isn’t one. If anyone can tell me what in the heck this film was about, please let me know. Near as I can figure Sunny (Dewey) is some sociopath realtor. There is no rythme or reason for anything that happens anywhere in the film. It almost looks like they were pretty much making it up as they went along. I give Dewey an F as a director, an F as a writer, and an F- as an actress. At least Dewey appears to understand the low budget concept of: if you have nothing of value to say with your film, show lots of boobs and someone will watch it.
Video
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 28th, 2007
Eddie Murphy has a ton of films under his belt. If you’re like most folks, his antics have long ago become tired and worn out. Come with me now to a time when Murphy was young and full of energy. Trading Places was really only Murphy’s second film after 48 hours. In Trading Places, we get vintage Eddie Murphy. You can tell he was still hungry. Today he simply calls too many performances in. Dan Aykroyd was also at a turning point in his own career. It hadn’t been too long since he lost his longtime partner Jim Belu...hi to a drug overdose. He was just learning to stand on his own. Put these two guys together today, and there’s not much chance you’d get the solid gold that was possible in 1983. Fortunately for us there is this DVD release of Trading Places, when both actors still felt they had something to prove. The cast was brilliant all the way around. Jamie Lee Curtis displayed her obvious assets for the first time in a film. Known mostly as a scream queen at that time, Curtis was a choice the studio was not at all happy with. The Wolf Man’s own Ralph Bellamy, along with fellow veteran actor Don Amechi, played the Duke brothers to perfection. Finally, Denholm Eliott added his own understated brilliance as Coleman, the butler.
Trading Places was originally written as a vehicle for Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. That team had had great success with a few films already, and it was felt they were the only ones capable of pulling off this kind of a film. I’m not sure how that might have worked. Certainly it still might have been a funny outing, but somehow I think everything worked out for the best. Trading places broke many conventions of the time. The black and white stereotypes were a concern, as were other elements. Having a hooker play such a pivotal role was questioned. The studio even expressed some problems with the fate of Mr. Beaks. A little gorilla love went a long way toward the poetic justice these kinds of villians often require. John Landis stood his ground the entire time, refusing to budge. Remove any of these elements, and who knows what we might have ended up with.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 28th, 2007
Synopsis
This is an eclectic mix of SpongeBob shorts, with no real common theme. So there’s a humorous safety bit about boating with SpongeBob wreaking havoc on the streets, SpongeBob and Patrick trying to find the nerve to ride a terrifying roller coaster (this is a highlight), Squidward undergoing a personality shift, and so on. All good fun, but not as many hysterical home runs as on some other collections. There are seven pieces altogether, totalling 83 minutes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 25th, 2007
Synopsis
An undersea earthquake leads to the loss of an undersea lab. There is, however, no sign of the wreckage, and so it is presumed that the lab slid deep into a trench. In the faint hope that there might be survivors, the submersible Neptune descends into the depths, where it encounters all sorts of gigantic sealife.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 25th, 2007
Perhaps Woodstock is the best known music festival, but only one has kept strong for several decades and still going - Glastonbury. A small town in the southeast of England is the host to a sizeable music festival that spans for several days and attracts in excess of 150,000 people. Like a lot of you I’m sure, I had never heard of this music festival and after watching this once I’ll probably never get wind of it again.
The first disc of Glastonbury is a documentary on the festival it is not in chron...logical order but includes footage from the 60’s all the way through to the latest festival in 2005. It interviews some of the colorful people attending the festival over the years, the staff involved, and of course the bands that play. At first I was interested in this disc thinking I would get the chance to watch these bands play live, but instead I sat through 130 minutes of hippies rolling around naked in mud, with the odd montage of performances. Really I found this to be a weak documentary, I was not interested in the people dancing like fools to bongo drums, holding up lighters and crying, getting naked and just acting totally like a junkie. The people interviewed and shown in the footage in this documentary were just utterly weird, and not interesting. The only somewhat interesting and normal parts of this documentary were the footage of the most recent festival where there was a lack of hippies. Of course I did enjoy the live and uncut performances that were shown, more specifically on disc 2. Although there are some big names and famous songs played in this documentary and subsequent extras disc but I didn’t like enough of the musicians to enjoy this disc myself. If you do however like Radiohead, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, The Killers, Foo Fighters, David Gray, The White Stripes, etc. like I’m sure a load of you do then you might enjoy the odd sequence where you get to see them play.
![Dante's Peak [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/dantes-peak-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
