Disc Type

"Acting is a very face-forward type of job. It's in direct conflict to being someone who anonymously kills people. You want to have a hobby or something, you could take up painting. Hitler painted. John Wayne Gacy painted. It's a good solid hobby. Never got in the way of what they were doing. You wanna have to go out there and burn a guy and have him say 'Hey, there's the guy from the chicken commercial?' "

Not since Dexter have serial killers been so much fun. Barry Berkman isn't exactly a serial killer. He's a hit-man, but you get my meaning. The new HBO black comedy Barry is the kind of show where you find yourself laughing but then catch yourself thinking, "That's not really funny." Of course, it is funny. It amuses you. This just might be the politically-incorrect hit of the year. HBO is delivering all eight half-hour episodes on a single disc with the release of Barry: Season One on DVD.

"We gather here today to remind ourselves what happens to the enemies of Wonkru. It doesn't matter who you are, if you choose sides against us, if you divide us, if you defy us then you are not us. Before we give these traitors a second chance to be called brother, sister or seda, we pay tribute to those who have died, so that we may live."

And there have been a lot of those folks. The series title once referred to the 100 teens who were sent to the surface of Earth a hundred years after a nuclear war to find out if it was habitable once again. By the time we reach the end of Season 5, there will only be four members of the 100 remaining alive. The title might have lost its meaning by now, but this season will literally take us to a completely new world before it's finished. Fox brings you the complete fifth season of The 100, and the ride isn't quite over yet.

It seems the 80’s is the go-to gimmick nowadays. With the success of Stranger Things and It, I can’t really blame the studios for cranking out the films set in this time period.  Personally my favorite film to do this would be Summer of 84. For me it’s been the film that has best captured what it was like to grow up during that time period, but Sleep No More is definitely a film that I’m glad has climbed aboard the 80’s bandwagon.  Personally what grabbed me was how the DVD boasts that it is from the creator of Final Destination.  While the sequels fell more into the guilty pleasure category for me, the first film holds up and is great, so of course I’m curious to see what he has cooked up for Sleep No More.

A group of graduate students are working on a study to see what happens to the body after it has gone more than 200 hours without sleep.  Their theory is that once you reach this threshold you will never have to sleep again. Unfortunately their first subject that they used for the study snapped and ends up killing themselves in a rather gruesome manner.  Still confident in their research, they plan on continuing their study, only this time using themselves as the test subject.  It’s a cool little setup for a horror film; one you know can’t possibly end well for those deciding to take part in this experiment.  It’s like Flatliners meets an episode of The X-Files called “Sleepless”.  In the episode it’s soldiers being put into a sleep study that of course has nasty consequences.  So how does the film come out?

"All I know for certain is if the four Mickaelsons come together, it will signal darkness like we've never known. So many possible tipping points, but without the benefit of hindsight, how can we know if we're at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?"

We do have hindsight as Warner Brothers releases the final season of The Originals on DVD. This is the beginning of the end. It's a bit of a shame. This show always had better stories and a more compelling cast than The Vampire Diaries had on their best season. With the very notable exception of Ian Somerhalder, who is phenomenal, the rest of that casts pales like a vampire in a crypt to the outstanding cast found on The Originals. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers stopped caring so much for the spin-off once the original show exited stage left. The home releases went from Blu-ray to DVD only and the marketing all but dried up. The result of this negligence is a series dying before its time. But you can at least check out the final unlucky 13 episodes crammed on just three discs with the release of The Originals: The Final Season.

"911. What is your emergency?"

In the 1970's my family watched a lot of television together. One of the shows that we rarely missed was Emergency starring Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe, a Jack Webb show that lived in his Dragnet world. The series followed the adventures of fire station 51 and would bring us an hour of fighting fires and daring rescues. The show ran for seven seasons from 1972-1979 and was followed by a few television movies in the 1980's. While there have been many shows in that mold, there really hasn't been anything that came close to that series. Now Fox brings us 9-1-1, and it's about as close to that old favorite as I've seen to date. Emergency is quite dated when you watch it today. With modern filmmaking techniques and production values, the rescues can be so much bigger now. Emergency also brought us a good cast of characters and never lost focus on those relationships and lives. That might be just the thing that makes 9-1-1 a worthy companion. The rescues might be bigger and flashier, but we still get compelling characters who we enjoy spending time with each week. That's what just might give this series some lasting power. Now Fox has released the first season, and you can check it out, if you haven't already. And if you're old enough to remember that 1970's show, this just might be your new Emergency.