Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Michael Durr on August 20th, 2009
Marketing is very important for a movie. Many think that star power or an impressive audio track will do the trick. Even if you crank up the special effects to eleven, it might do nothing for the film. That is unless some solid marketing executives do their best to get it out there and into the minds of the ticket buyers. Take a film called Delgo. It boasted one of the worst grossing wide releases in recent history. However, the animated movie had a solid speaking cast and the animation was very respectable. So what exactly happened? Marketing.
There are two primary types of creatures on the planet of Jhamora. There are the Lokni, which are best described as humanoid like lizards with the special gift of stone magic. The other group is known as the Nohrin. They resemble humanoid like fairies gifted with wings that enable them to fly. They were given permission to habitat the land by the Lokni. However, soon we found that various members of Nohrin wish to take over the land and away from the Lokni people.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 17th, 2009
Pixar & Dreamworks have been monsters at the game of big budget film animation for quite sometime now. Many of us have enjoyed Shrek, Toy Story and countless others. Even their duds aren’t half bad. But there was bound to come a time when others need to share in the spotlight. In 2007, Filmax Animation, a Spanish company decided to release a film about a Donkey who has aspirations of being more than just another as... Sorry kids, I lost my place. It’s a film about a donkey who wants to be a horse, of course of course.
We all know the story of Don Quixote (or Quijote) and how he recruited Sancho to be his faithful squire. They traveled the land on quests in the name of chivalry and return home to find that they are indeed famous. However, Don Quixote has more important things in mind like finding Dulcinea, his long lost love & walking the countryside in search of truth and justice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 10th, 2009
The Super Friends as a cartoon show had a long and sketchy past. It started out in the 1970’s and ran in nearly a dozen different incantations and over a hundred episodes until 1986 when it was put down for the last time. In the 1983-84 season, the series had been cancelled officially for a second time. This was due to the fact that they did not wish to compete with the syndication run of the original episodes that was already on air. Hence, the new episodes were dropped and didn’t appear until many years later. Here, the people at WB have compiled these 8 episodes (24 shorts) into a 2-disc set and dubbed them the “Lost Episodes.”
As mentioned, there are twenty-four shorts for this lost season of Super Friends. They run the gambit of subjects, villains, and heroes. In episodes such as “The Krypton Syndrome”, Superman is thrown into a time warp and has to deal with the impending doom of his home planet: Krypton. However, the decision he makes leads to some rather disturbing consequences.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
“Now this might be the room of any small boy, but it happens to belong to a boy named Christopher Robin, and like most small boys, Christopher Robin had toy animals to play with. And together they had many remarkable adventures in an enchanted place called The Hundred Acre Wood. But out of all of his animal friends, Christopher Robin’s very best friend was a bear called Winnie The Pooh.”
“Oh Bother”A.A. Milne was quite an eclectic writer. He wrote murder mysteries that even appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. From that fertile mind would also come a place known as the Hundred Acre Wood. In that select place some of literature’s finest characters had the greatest adventures any boy could imagine. And adventures are certainly no fun on your own. Young Christopher Robin was joined by Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore, and, of course, Winnie-The-Pooh. Who didn’t fall in love with that silly old bear… Winnie-The-Pooh. OK, so maybe Dahmer or Bundy might have been exceptions. Still, anyone growing up in the last 30-40 years who isn’t a psychopath has had a love affair with Winnie-The-Pooh, all stuffed with fluff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 28th, 2009
The Green Lantern character has always been one of my favorite DC comic book heroes, right after the likes of Batman and the Flash. As far as Earth-born GL’s, Hal Jordan has always been first in my heart and even though the John Stewart was shown predominantly in the cartoon series: Justice League Unlimited, it was hard wrapping my head around him as the Green Lantern. I was excited to see that due to recent success with other characters, the people at DC decided to release a direct to disc release for the Green Lantern sub-titled: First Flight.
Hal Jordan is a test pilot for the military. He’s testing one of the newest planes when suddenly his ship is enveloped in a green energy beam to a crash site. There he finds a dying Abin Sur, the current Green Lantern of sector 2814. Before he dies, he bequeaths his ring to Hal Jordan, proclaiming him the new Green Lantern. Moments later after the passing of Abin Sur, several current members of the Green Lantern corps arrive and take Hal Jordan to the headquarters where the Lanterns and Guardians of the Universe meet.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 22nd, 2009
I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life. The classics are running annually, still after nearly 50 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are the most mentioned and certainly beloved by generations of children and adults. I thought I never missed an airing.
Now Warner Home Video has brought together a special collection of the cartoon specials that started it all. It includes those annual greats and a few that I don’t really remember so much. The two discs include the following Peanuts specials:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 9th, 2009
In a mythical world, a series of apocalyptic prophecies are coming true. These events presage the awakening of a world-devouring dragon. Dragon hunters are needed more than ever, but all of the knights of yore are dead or insane. The only game in town is a couple of misfits: Lian-Chu, who still bears the trauma of the night his village was destroyed by the dragon, and his friend Gwizdo, a two-bit con artist. They are accompanied by Hector, a strange little scene-stealer who might be a rabbit or a dog. Zoe, the excitable niece of the decrepit and blind king, recruits the motley crew to defeat the evil, and off they go, journeying to the end of the world to face terrible danger.
This computer-animated effort is French, but only the English language track has been provided, and I can't help but wonder if something was lost in the translation. Forest Whitaker is top-billed as Lian-Chu, but the character has very few lines, and even less expression. Zoe and Gwizdo have the lion's share of the dialogue, and these two are overly familiar figures. The dialogue moves the story along, but doesn't particularly sparkle. What does shine, however, is the look of the film. The world is a stunningly beautiful universe of floating platforms, and the detail work is tremendous. If the story isn't anything to write home about, the eye candy most certainly is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 6th, 2009
In the 1930’s and 40’s MGM was trying to get in on the lucrative animation game. The field was dominated at the time by Warner Brothers with their Loony Tunes shorts, and of course, the iconic cast of animated characters coming out of the Walt Disney Studio. For years they had failed to find the right property to take advantage of the market. It wasn’t until the team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera approached the studio with their first project that the times did change, at least a little, for the fledgling animation department at MGM. The project was far from an original one even for the time. It was a very basic cat and mouse adventure featuring a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. There would be almost no dialog on the shorts. It certainly didn’t look like much of a hit to the studio brass, but with no better ideas on the way, they went ahead with the new shorts of Tom And Jerry. There’s a reason why the cat and mouse pair is such a classic. It’s because it works. If you can make your characters entertaining and endearing enough, you can have a hit. MGM finally entered the major leagues, and the team of Hanna and Barbera would become one of the most successful animation teams in history. They would go on to create such cherished characters as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, and, of course, Scooby Doo.
These were the days of the Golden Age in Hollywood. These shorts were not being produced for television, which hadn’t been invented when they began; rather they were intended for theater goers. In those days going to the movies was much more of an inclusive experience. You always got a cartoon short along with an adventure serial, the likes of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and The Lone Ranger. These multi-chaptered serials were the forerunners to the modern television series. It kept you coming back to the movies to see what would happen next. Each chapter ended in a cliffhanger. These early serials were the inspiration for such film franchises as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Finally you got one, sometimes two movies all for the price of a single admission.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 29th, 2009
Transformers are something near and dear to my heart. I grew up with them, watched all of the episodes, read many of the comics and watched the animated movie more times than I care to think about. When the original Rhino DVD set came out a few years back, I bought all of the volumes despite the hardship that roughly $50 a volume would cost me. Now, with the 25th anniversary of Transformers upon us, Shout Factory has gained the rights to the series and has re-released the first season to coincide with the release of the second live-action film. Is this simply an attempt to cash in on the mega movie hit of the summer? We shall see.
A civil war is ongoing on the planet of Cybertron. Fierce battles between the Autobots and the Decepticons have tore the planet apart and the energy sources at critical levels. The heroic Autobots decide to go to the planet Earth on the theory that these resources exist there for them to be able to use. However, the Decepticons decide to follow. Once in space, the Decepticons attack under the leadership of Megatron. Optimus Prime and the Autobots try to hold them off but soon both sides crash into the Earth.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2009
It’s hard to imagine that this was only Pixar’s second ever feature length CG animated release. While Toy Story was the first, this was actually Pixar’s first film as an independent company. So, for many of us it feels like their first film. There must have been a tremendous amount of pressure on the young team. Toy Story was a break out smash hit that captured the hearts of audiences of all ages. Now on their own the team led by John Lasseter was determined to prove that Toy Story was no fluke and that they could stand on their own feet and continue the tradition of excellence they established from the first frame of their first picture. The film never approached the status of Toy Story, but it would prove that these guys were for real. The film broke new ground with its realistic environments, expressive characters, and solid writing. No one was going to be surprised as the company cranked out exceptional movie after exceptional movie. A Bugs Life fit the Pixar mold perfectly.
Flik (Foley) is a rather inventive ant. He’s always coming up with new and improved ways of doing things. Unfortunately, many of these ideas just miss the mark and end up causing more harm than good. His efforts aren’t helped by the fact that he has the hots for the Princess Atta (Louis-Dreyfus). Mr. Soil (McDowall) has the ants very busy gathering food to offer up to the grasshoppers, who depend on the ants for food to keep them through the winter. Failure to deliver is not an option, at least if the ants don’t want some serious beat downs from the grasshopper gang, led by Hopper (Spacey). The last bit of food is finally gathered just as the gang is about to arrive. But at the last minute Flik inadvertently dumps the cache into the water. When Hopper’s gang arrives, there’s no food. Hopper gives the ants until the last leaf falls from the trees to deliver their winter food or he will kill the Queen (Diller). Of course, everybody blames Flik, so when he comes up with an idea that he should go out into the world in search of warrior bugs to help them defeat the Hopper gang, Princess Atta goes for the idea. She doesn’t expect him to succeed, but at least he’ll be out of the way while the ants try and gather enough food for Hopper and themselves. But Flik does succeed …almost. He encounters a troupe of circus performer bugs, and through a series of misunderstandings sets off back home with his new friends in tow. He believes they are great warriors. They think he’s taking them home to play a circus gig. The warrior/circus bugs include: Slim (Hyde Pierce) a walking stick, Heimlich (Ranft) a German caterpillar, Francis (Leary) a sexually confused “lady”bug, Manny (Harris) a preying mantis with a flair for Shakespeare, Gypsy (Kahn) a moth, Rosie (Hunt) a black widow spider, and the two identical pill bugs Tuck and Roll. When they arrive home, the ants are overjoyed with Flik’s unexpected success. That is, until they discover that the “warriors” are merely performers when their boss Mr. Flea (Ratzenberger) rolls into town looking for them. When the Hopper gang arrives, they have no choice but to put up a fight, led by baby Dot (Panettiere) and her scouts.
![Green Lantern: First Flight (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/green-lantern-first-flight-digi-large.jpg)
![A Bug's Life [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/a-bugs-life-blu-ray-large.jpg)
