Disc Audio

"Cursed (kur'sid) adj. To be afflicted with, suffer from the calling down of calamity on someone by a spirit, deity, demon, or one of the dead, esp. from a desire for revenge, resulting in an evil, malevolent being."

I'm well aware of the popularity of the Twilight series. I have to admit that I've pretty much avoided the films, mostly because after 7 years of teaching high school I've had more than my fair share of teenage angst. Let's face it. These films are not really for the die-hard vampire, werewolf, or horror fans. They're genre chick flicks full of all of that overflowing romance and adolescent hormones.

Some of my longtime readers might remember my review of The Game Season One. I found it to be rather slow at first but once they fleshed out the characters, it became a likeable show with decent characters. But unfortunately, I was not able to review the second season and was a little surprised that the third season showed up on my doorstep. Hopefully, I would be able to jump right back in and still enjoy the show. As long as it still has the qualities I enjoyed before.

"The Earth has immense power, and yet that's rarely mentioned in our history books. I'm here to change all that."

The BBC has a reputation of putting out some very high quality documentaries, particularly recently in the high-definition age. Planet Earth became an award winning series lauded all over the globe for its stunning photography and epic tales. Most recently I watched and reviewed their Life series. Once again the series was dominated by startling images, many never before captured on film, all in wonderful high definition. Now I have a chance to visit yet another recent BBC project:

Most people associate the book, War and Peace in the same respects as they do torture. A one thousand, two hundred and twenty five page book that is regarded as one of the most brilliant pieces of historical fiction is a nightmare to most advanced high school and college kids. However, perhaps more fascinating than any single piece of work by Leo Tolstoy is the life in which he lead. Last Station attempts to give us the last few years of the Count’s life in film form.

Bob (Bryan Callen) and Cheryl (Alexie Gilmore) are about to be married. Bob already can't win with his in-laws-to-be, and his latest mistake is to forget to arrange for pre-marriage counseling, which must be undergone or the church won't allow the ceremony to take place. There is only one couple available at the last minute, and it turns out to be the massively dysfunctional set of overbearingly enthusiastic Dick (Matt Servitto) and cynical and rapacious Nora (Jane Lynch). The counseling sessions become a series of disasters.

There is a “Convenience Store Killer” running amok in Los Angeles, killing patrons and shop owners and stealing the security camera footage for his own collection. Our heroes are a misfit band of workers who are having a poker night while locked inside their damaged store (the damage being on the door...so they are stuck until morning...see what they did there?) and soon the killer targets them.

Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) is an angry young man. His boss treats him badly, he can't get good service at the local coffee shop, and his parents are trying, none too subtly or smartly, to get him to move out. He hangs out with a friend who talks a big talk about changing the world, but does nothing. Bill, by contrast, is about to do something: gearing up with so much body armor he becomes a walking tank, he begins a gigantic massacre in town, beginning by blowing up a police station, and going on to gun down anyone who crosses his path. There is, however, rather more method to his madness than might appear.

Whenever there is a disaster, there are always the inevitable questions that follow. Where did it all begin? Could it have been avoided? What can we learn from this? No, I'm not talking about the oil leak in the Gulf.  Hollywood is no exception. You have your disaster movies like Earthquake, and you have your movies that are disasters like Waterworld. Of course there are even disaster movies that are also disasters like the recent 2012. Some disasters you never see coming. But, many such events could have been predicted and possibly avoided if only the right folks had been paying attention. This is the story of one such event: Showgirls.

The Griffins, residents of Quahog, Rhode Island, aren’t the standard sitcom familial unit. The patriarch, Peter, a thick-necked, thicker-accented simpleton, has a wonderful grip on eighties television shows and bad musical groups, but lacks in social graces (soiling oneself at a neighbor’s funeral?). His wife, the animated-hot and ever-loving Lois, seems hell-bent on keeping some semblance of normalcy in the household, even if it means burying her feelings and ignoring reality a bit. Their oldest child, Meg, is the very definition of unpopular, but trying. Chris, her thirteen-year-old brother, is a dense lug who fears the evil monkey only he can see.

Hey everybody. Baby, back again to bring you yet another dog movie from a dog's point of view, which is the floor, in case anybody out there really wants to know. You see, Gino won't let me on the furniture in the theater. He says that just because the seats look like chew toys, and smell like chew toys, doesn't mean they actually are chew toys. I mean, really, people. You wanna talk about your special effects, which reminds me of something else I'm not supposed to do in the theater, but let's not talk about that right now.