Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2009
“You know those shows that say don’t try this at home? This is one of those.”
Scare Tactics is really nothing new. In 1948 one of the very first television shows to air on network television was a converted radio program originally called Candid Microphone and renamed Candid Camera for television. It was the brain child of Allen Funt, who began the idea while in the armed services, secretly recording fellow servicemen in awkward positions for his Armed Forces Radio program.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 29th, 2009
Few television situational comedies have produced the stable of A-list stars that this one did. Every one of these cast members were relatively unknown at the time that Taxi was taking fares on our television sets each week. Not so today. The cast was so remarkable that it is here that I decided to spend much of my review. The episodes were often funny, even more often hilarious. But after all of these years, it is the characters that are most remembered by the fans. Yeah, we all have our favorite moments. Many of them in this release. And, I’ll get to those moments, but first:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 22nd, 2009
Written By Matthew Wiley
Good Dick follows a poor guy (Jason Ritter) living out of his car and working at a video store who takes a liking to one of the store’s customers, a lonely coffee shop girl who is not interested (Marianna Palka). One night after renting/recommending the girl some erotica, he decides to follow her home; he even parks his car across the street and sleeps outside of her apartment. He finally buzzes her apartment saying that he is with UPS to get into her building, later saying that his great aunt lives in her building. She is not a fan of his advances, but after a while and many attempts by him, the two develop a quirky relationship.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 15th, 2009
“Attention: Tonight’s movie has been M*A*S*H. Follow the zany antics of our combat surgeons as they stitch their way along the front lines operating as bombs and bullets burst around them, snatching laughs and love between amputations and penicillin, as they put our boys back together again.”
M*A*S*H began life as a novel written by an actual Korean War Army surgeon under the pen name Richard Hooker. He based the character of Hawkeye on himself and most of the other characters on actual personnel that were stationed with him at a real M*A*S*H unit.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on September 14th, 2009
My senior year in high school was just the same as my junior year: stranger in a strange land. When looking back at the time that was spent, I spent more time with my nose in books and running from jocks. The reason why the jocks were upset at me more often than not? I was looking at their girls. In an attempt to find myself, I would pretend to be solving a Calculus problem (which eventually explained why I had to retake it in college) and instead fantasize about what it would be like to be with Miss Popular. I would eventually stop caring, the bruises would heal but I often thought what would have happened?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 13th, 2009
Originally titled, The Marconi Brothers,it has been retitled in what looks to be an attempt to leech off of the success of Wedding Crashers years after the fact (the DVD case even sports the tagline “The Original Crashers.” Whatever the title truly is, this film is about a pair of brothers who stumble from the mediocrity of being heirs to an independent, family-run carpet installing business to the mediocrity of video-taping weddings for a living. Such low ambitions in our protagonists breed boring results in this clunky comedy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 8th, 2009
If someone told you there was a movie out there starring David Carradine, Bruce Dern, and Rip Torn as three retired sea captains sharing a house together, what would your expectations be? I personally would expect a raucous production with colorful characters and a whole lot of the kind of scenery-chewing that those three guys are known for. However, set it at the turn of the century, fill it with unmemorable supporting actors, and change its title from Chatham (not a great title I admit) to the far more generic The Golden Boys, and it doesn’t take a perch in the crow’s nest to see that this schooner is close-hauled and tacking into the wind. See what I did there? I cleverly used nautical terminology to illustrate the disappointing quality of a movie about sailors. Now I feel like a big-time reviewer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 6th, 2009
When we left J.D., Turk, and the rest of the staff of Sacred Heart Hospital at the end of their seventh season, there were good reasons to believe we had seen the last of Scrubs:
1) The show had suffered the lowest ratings in its history.
2) It was widely considered to be the show’s least funny season, at times treading perilously close to levels of cloying sentimentality not seen since the last few seasons of M*A*S*H*.
3) NBC had announced that they would not be renewing the show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 27th, 2009
The longest running show in prime time doesn’t feature cops, doctors, or lawyers. It’s hard to believe that The Simpsons have existed as long as the Fox network. While the series didn’t really begin until Fox’s second year, the characters were part of The Tracey Ullman Show, which did start the first year of Fox. Who could have guessed that an animated short from an otherwise horrible and doomed variety show would explode into such a phenomenon. The Simpsons have not only dominated the pop culture; they have placed…everything else into context with their show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 27th, 2009
Charlie Sheen is an unlikely actor to star in a television sit-com. Even after watching the show, I’m not sure how anyone came up with the idea in the first place. He has little to no comedic timing, and he’s about as funny as a funeral. The thing that works here, however, is that he really doesn’t need to be all that funny to make this show work. Sheen pretty much deadpans his entire performance, which generously enough works rather well teamed with the more manic comedy of Jon Cryer. Throw into the mix a rather extraordinary young child actor in Angus T. Jones
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