Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2011
"Give me a stage where this here bull can rage."
Under normal circumstances and certainly under less skillful hands the story of Jake La Motta would not be one worth telling. His life is a story without heroes. It's a life of abusive behavior and an almost unredeemable personality. The only way he was ever capable of expressing himself was in the boxing ring. Even there he was doomed to feel inadequate most of his life.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 9th, 2010
"The hills are alive with the sound of music..."
Maria von Trapp wrote down the story of her singing von Trapp family in a 1948 autobiography. She continued to write about the family right up to the time of her death in 1987. The subject became the basis for a film called The Trapp Family in 1956. While the film received some modest attention for the events of the real family, it disappeared into obscurity until the musical writing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein created the songs for the Broadway production
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 25th, 2010
We are in the mid-60s, when, during the glory days of the Stones, the Who, and other colossi of British rock, the BBC allows almost no airplay of said music. To the rescue comes a group of commercial pirate radio stations, broadcasting from ships off the coast. Priggish minister Kenneth Branagh is determined to shut them down, and our focus is on one particular ship, run by Bill Nighy, and boasting such luminaries as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Nick Frost as DJs. Onto this ship of counter-culture rebels comes a young Tom Sturridge, and this wet-behind-the-ears youth becomes the eyes through which we watch the various eccentric goings-on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Christmas, 1914. In the trenches, we see the Scots, French and Germans beginning to celebrate in their own way. Singing in one trench inspires more in the opposing one, and before long, an unauthorized truce has broken out, and the enemy combatants are marking Christmas together. The film concentrates on a handful of characters who play a pivotal role in the truce in this particular section of the trenches, in particular the local commanding officers.
This was one of the most start...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 5th, 2002
Synopsis
In eighteenth-century France, a mysterious beast is terrorizing the countryside. Sent toinvestigate is naturalist Gregoire de Fronsac, who arrives with Mani, his Native Americansidekick (who is a dab hand at martial arts, among other useful skills). The film is completelynuts and completely silly, and its racial politics are a postcolonial theorist’s wet dream, but it isalso hugely entertaining.
Audio
Absolutely flabbergasting. At the level of volum...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2002
There have been so many “buddy cop” films that it has become its own genre of sorts. Still, no pairing has yet matched the chemistry of Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon franchise. Even with four films now under their belts, the duo is capable of delivering a relationship that is worn and comfortable while still remaining fresh and exciting. Some of the franchise’s running gags begin in this first film, like Riggs and his dislocated shoulder and Murtaugh’s familiar “I’m getting to old for this shit.”
![Pirate Radio [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/pirate-radio-blu-ray-large.jpg)
