Disc Type

Imagine being able to move things with your mind, no matter the size. To suddenly be able to send a car or a person flying through the air merely through the power of your thoughts. I’m sure we have all thought about having such extraordinary power. For Zach Connors, it is a reality; however, the power is more curse than a gift. The Mind’s Eye presents an engaging and intriguing look into what it would be like to possess this psychic ability. From the inability to control the power, to the isolation, to the envy and lust to obtain the ability for themselves, the movie hits on several key aspect and all the while never loses steam as it heads towards the final battle, which in itself is quite the meeting of the minds. Pun intended.

Zach Connors (Graham Skipper) is a drifter with the ability to move things with his mind. It is an ability that he cannot fully control and has forced him to leave behind everyone he ever loved, from his father to the love of his life, Rachel Meadows (Lauren Ashley Carter). Following a confrontation with police which results in him losing control and injuring the officers, he is arrested and approached by the mysterious Dr. Slovak (John Speredakos). Claiming to be an expert in the field of psychokinesis and offering to help Zach, the stranger offers him a place at his institute in order to help him gain control of his power.  Zach is hesitant until the doctor mentions Rachel, who apparently is undergoing treatment at the institute.

He's been called the King of Late-Night. Today when there are so many talk shows on at pretty much every hour of the day, that might not appear to be such a huge distinction. There were talk shows on before Johnny Carson, but there can be no doubt that he invented the modern late-night show. For 30 years Johnny Carson was like a member of the family for millions of Americans. He was a friendly face at the end of a long, stressful day. He was that dependable routine that you could set your biological clock by. You would lie back in bed and let Johnny bring the world to you. You could count on a wide assortment of entertainment experiences. Johnny would deliver a monolog that often touched on the hot topics of the day. The news programs might be depressing, but Johnny always gave you a reason to crack a smile at the worst of times. There were characters like Aunt Blabby and Carnac who became comfortable old friends. The top names in show business competed for precious minutes on his stage, and if you were very lucky you spent some time on the couch and some face time with Johnny and his faithful sidekick Ed McMahon. Johnny could make or break your career in three minutes. He brought you the best of the new comics and musicians while delivering the big stars just as well. When you made it to The Tonight Show, you really made it.

There will never be a complete season or complete series set for Johnny Carson. There are several problems that present themselves almost immediately. Johnny was on nearly every night for thirty years. Do the math and you'll realize there have been thousands of episodes. The sad fact is that many of these moments are lost forever. Footage has either been lost completely or is in such bad shape as to be almost unwatchable. There was so much variety that having a full season would be a logistic nightmare to find those favorite moments. No, there just isn't ever going to be a complete anything when it comes to Johnny Carson. But leave it to Time-Life to go into the vaults and at least bring out some gems. This is the second volume, so the discs start with # 7.

Before The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling had a fruitful career writing teleplays in the early 1950’s. One of his earliest successes, Patterns (1955), was aired on a program named Kraft Television Theatre. The popularity of the play was so enormous that a second encore performance was aired the same week of its release, and it was written as a feature film the following year. Given its impressive history and my love of Serling’s writing, I was really looking forward to watching the the film. However, I was surprised that I did not enjoy myself as much as I was expecting. While the film demonstrates a lot of great dramatic moments that Serling is known for, the simplicity of the editing and camerawork really made the piece underwhelming. Certain images had so much potential to be utilized to service the actual plot, but it ultimately felt as if director Fielder Cook relied too heavily on the story’s earlier success as a teleplay.

Patterns tells the story of Fred Staples, an engineer brought into a large industrial company Ramsey & Co. in order to bring about new ideas and policies. He immediately produces a friendship with Bill Briggs, the company’s vice president. As Staples becomes acclimated to the company, he discovers that Walter Ramsey, the company’s president, has brought him on as competition to Briggs. From here, Ramsey begins to play multiple mind games with Staples and Briggs in an effort to force Briggs into a resignation. The film’s conflict becomes a battle between corporate practices and simple human decency.

Shonda Rhimes now has a fourth series running on ABC this past season. Joining Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, and How To Get Away With Murder is the new series The Catch. The series is based on a series of novels by Kate Atkinson and was actually created by Jennifer Schuur. And while The Catch distinguishes itself rather nicely from the usual Rhimes formula, you can still expect the bed-jumping antics that Rhimes is so obsessed with. It's the one thing that all four shows have in common. It doesn't matter whether she's a writer, creator, or just a producer; there's never been an episode of a series with her name on it that doesn't have plenty of sex. In this case it's a sad distraction from what turned out to be a rather clever show.

Alice Vaughan (Enos) helps run one of L.A.'s elite private investigation and security firms. She was engaged to Christopher Hall (Krause) whom she has been with for a year. In the pilot it all comes crashing down. Christopher's real name is Ben Jones, and he's been running a con the entire year. He's gotten close to Alice in order to put himself and his partner Margot (Walger) in a position to steal from the firm and its wealthy clients. The sting backfires and the firm is saved, but that's not going to be the end of the story. Alice decides she's going to track him down and put him away for what he tried to do. But when she does track him down in the middle of another sting, he claims his feelings for her were real and tries to warn her against digging too deep.

The title might be a bit misleading. Alicia is not so "good" these days. She's tougher and more willing to make the hard choices. She's more cutthroat in court and even when it comes to asserting her position in the firm and with her cheating husband. This is not the "stand by your man" show it might have appeared to be when it began. It's evolved, and that only makes for better television. And now that it has finally come to an end, it's easy to see that Alicia is now just as calculating and manipulative as her husband ever was. If the show was going to stay on the air, there might have been need for the title to change. Of course, I always took it as ironic anyway. Fans will have all the time in the world now to debate such subjects.

The series is not really a lawyer procedural, at least not on the surface. The show was never about anything else but Alicia and the people who would come in and out of her orbit. Of course, one of the most important of these was always Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles. For the first five years the show was about their complicated relationship. For most of that time there was a back-and-forth both in Alicia's feelings and in her sometimes illogical actions. But Charles left the show in Season 5, and there has absolutely been a bit of a void in both the show and Alicia's life. She has become far more cold and calculating. It's almost as if the last bit of feeling died with Will. She's still dealing with it in the final season. Fans of Josh Charles and his character will be overjoyed to hear that he had a return for the final episode. Of course, he's just an image in Alicia's head, but fans will respond to that material. In fact, it leads to the season's best episode as Alicia daydreams about how her life would have gone with both Peter (Noth) and Will and a new player. That new player is Jason Crouse, and he's played by Supernatural Daddy Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

"My name is Brian Finch. I was your average 28-year-old screw-up until I took a pill called NZT. Suddenly I had access to every brain cell. And that's why the FBI hired me. There's just one problem. The NZT will kill you unless you have this shot."

Brian is a guy with a lot of dreams but no ambition to actually make them work. When we find him he's pushing an album that he hasn't even written the songs for. Hey, don't we all? His friends and family nod understandingly, all knowing he'll never get around to any of it. He likes to get stoned, and there goes any real ambition he might have actually had. That is until he runs into an old bandmate who used to be just like him. Now he's a power broker with money to burn. He offers to share his secret with Brian. It's a clear pill he calls NZT. The pill allows you to remember everything you've ever seen or read in your life. The problem is that the crash is bad, and when Brian goes for more, he discovers his friend is dead, and he's in the middle of murder and drugs and the FBI on his tail for both. Of course, on NZT he solves the problems for the FBI. They believe he is the only man they've ever found who is immune to the side effects of the drug which always lead to death. But Brian's not immune.