Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 7th, 2008
If you read my recent review of Bender's Big Score, you'll know I wasn't exactly thrilled by Futurama's first dvd movie. But like many things (such as relationships and less than average presidents), you always want to give it a second chance. Bender, Fry, Leela & others are fantastic characters and perhaps with the first film, they just had a bump in the road. We, as viewers know they can do better. They just have to steer clear of disgusting & annoying villains as well as confusing plots. Let's hope that it holds together for the solid ninety minutes and see what pans out.
After the paradox correction of a million Benders creates a rip in the fabric of space, life has tried to return to normal. Fry is in a new relationship with a girl named Colleen. Amy and Kif (Zapp Brannigan's side kick) get married. In a very funny bit, "Deathball" is used to win the right of exploring the anomaly. Upon reaching the rip in space, the Planet Express crew sends Bender out to investigate the situation. However, they quickly realize that electrical beings such as robots get zapped when trying to touch the anomaly but living beings are unaffected and can pass through.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 6th, 2008
Futurama is one of my favorite cartoon shows. When it was cancelled a few years back, I went ahead and collected the four fine dvd season sets and proceeded to watch them whenever I had time. Truth is, if you are a nerd like me, Futurama is much funnier than the Simpsons and deserved much more than seventy two episodes. Somebody listened. The people at Fox decided there was more life to Futurama and ordered up four straight to dvd movies which will be cut up among sixteen episodes for a fifth season. The first one is titled: Bender's Big Score. Here is hoping that the plot isn't Bender getting involved with a larger female robot (I think he already did that in a previous episode).
The story starts out where the series kinda left off. It's been two years since the executives at the Box Network have cancelled Planet Express's contract. The executives who made the decision were fired and hence Planet Express was back in business. After a short party where Hermes is decapitated (his head is naturally placed in a jar while his body gets repaired), the crew embarks on a mission to a nude beach planet. The crew decides to take a break and participate in some sun-bathing (au natural of course). There they meet three scammer aliens who convince the crew to sign some petitions and get their email addresses.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 23rd, 2008
Spoof movies have been wearing on me for the last few years. Complete travesties such as Date Movie & Epic Movie have soured my look on a favorite genre of mine. Where were the Mel Brooks classics or the Scary Movie series that I remember so well? Smart comedy and well done jokes about movies we have come to love. So, I'll admit when I saw the Comebacks on DVD, all I could see was red and think the torture that was Epic Movie. I wanted to believe it could be as smart and zany as Blazing Saddles or at least in the same league as Scary Movie 3 or 4. I would hope that director Tom Brady would restore my faith in this once awesome genre.
Freddie Wiseman (played by Carl Weathers) visits the long forgotten Lambeau Fields (played by David Koechner), a coach whose only attribute is losing when it counts. Freddie convinces Lambeau to coach the Heartland State football team. Once Lambeau gets there, he struggles to put together a winning team. The team consists of various characters and stereotypes such as Trotter (played by Jackie Long) the pompous Terrell Owens wannabe, Lance Truman (played by Matthew Lawrence), the baseball pitcher turned quarterback, and Jizminder Featherfoot (played by Noureen DeWulf), the female kicker who should be in Bend It Like Beckham.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2008
Katherine Heigl gets her Juila Roberts on in the romantic comedy 27 Dresses as Jane, a friendly woman who can't say no to planning weddings for the many people she knows. Ever since she was young she's loved weddings, even though she doesn't seem to have the time to find a future groom of her own. She's in love with her boss, George (Edward Burns), but when Jane's sister Tess (Malin Akerman) drops in for a visit, Tess and George fall in love and before Jane knows it, they're engaged to be married and she's planning their wedding. Let the cliched rom-com hijinks begin!
Along the way Jane meets Kevin (James Marsden), a cynical, anti-marriage commitments writer for the fictional New York Journal and the two begin a bickering love/hate relationship. Chances are you know how it'll turn out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2008
I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the process of moviemaking, but when a film is not up to studio expectation and takes a long time to finally arrive to theaters after filming has wrapped, the result is sometimes due to financial issues with the studio. But most of the time it’s due to the fact that the studio has seen the final product, and it’s so abhorrent and without any value, redeeming, comic or otherwise, that it will be released as quietly and without recognition as possible. Now I don’t know if there were any financial issues surrounding Strange Wilderness, but I will say this: the film was shooting as far back as December 2005 and was released in February 2008, and at this point on rottentomatoes.com, there is not one positive review from the three dozen that are on the site. I’ll leave it to you to decide what the reasons why are.
Strange Wilderness was written by Peter Gaulke and co-written (and directed) by Fred Wolf. Both of whom were writers on Saturday Night Live. Wolf, in fact, is the head writer for the show to this day. The film is based on a series of shorts the pair would put together, and in the feature, Peter (Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn) is the son of a nature reporter and enthusiast, and does a show extolling nature, but things aren’t going his way. So, after an unproductive meeting with his network executive (Jeff Garlin, Curb Your Enthusiasm), he decides to go on an expedition for well-known wilderness legend Bigfoot. So he packs up his crew, which include Cooker (Jonah Hill, Superbad), Junior (Justin Long, Walk Hard), Fred (Allen Covert, Little Nicky) and Danny (Peter Dante, Big Daddy), and they all head out into the woods to find Bigfoot. Peter’s crew is a couple of cans short of a six pack, so wacky hijinks ensue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 11th, 2008
What time is it? That’s right, Home Improvement fans, it’s once again Tool Time. Unfortunately for the show’s followers, Season 8 would be its last outing. It’s always nice to see shows go out on their own terms and in their own time. Home Improvement is one of those series. It leaves a void. This was one of those rare shows that didn’t rely on sex and innuendo for cheap laughs. Don’t get me wrong, who can forget Debbe Dunning as Tool Time girl Heidi, but there was never any attempt to debase the character. We all knew she was there mainly for her looks, but it fit the theme of the cable tool show. No, most of the laughs came from Tim’s over the top manly man humor. As much as we were laughing at Tim, we were really laughing at ourselves.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 10th, 2008
Felix and Oscar return for a fourth year of laughs in The Odd Couple. Not much has changed in the world of Oscar and Felix, but isn’t that what you were hoping to hear? What I found interesting in this somewhat weaker season is that even when the actors were beginning to realize that the show was slipping, the pair never missed a beat in their own chemistry. Often it seems they lacked interest in the material when their characters were apart, but something always happened when they were together. I get the impression they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. It’s the saving grace in season four.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 10th, 2008
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, and suddenly a show that looks terrible on paper turns out to be pretty dang funny. We’re not talking Fred Sanford funny, but I caught myself laughing far more often than I expected to. I had only caught the show before in bits and pieces and was never all that fond of what I saw. Watching these DVD episodes from the third season shed some new light on the show for me.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2008
When last we left the fine folks of Weeds, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker, Saved!) and her herb-growing buddy Conrad (Romany Malco, Blades of Glory) were being held at the mercy of two rival drug groups, both of which were very interested in Nancy’s stash and her cash, but it was taken by her son Silas (Hunter Parrish, Freedom Writers), who was arrested by Nancy’s friend Celia (Elizabeth Perkins, 28 Days). I’m not even close to discussing how things got to this point, and needless to say, the twists and turns sound a little soap operatic at times, but when you’re invested into the characters’ fates as you are, they provide for some memorable experiences.
One of the things that Weeds does is push things to the edge of the envelope, and I‘m fine with that. What I’m not fine with, and what my wife and I get into debates about from time to time, is that in Season Three, Nancy’s transformation from widowed mother in a upper/middle class suburban neighborhood to full-fledged marijuana dealer becomes full and complete. In the previous two seasons, Nancy mixed her Caucasian naivete rather well with her cold and precise drug dealing livelihood. In Season Three, she becomes much more cold and precise, particularly around people she knows and calls friends. She takes care of her feelings first, particularly in one episode where she sleeps with her boss (played by Matthew Modine of Vision Quest lore), despite Celia’s urge to be with him. Her rendezvous with Conrad, one the show had been waiting for for almost three seasons, was more for her convenience than anyone else’s. She becomes much more distasteful than in previous seasons, and all the sweetness of sucking on an iced coffee straw isn’t going to help things.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2008
Honestly, I don’t know what the bigger tragedy is, the fact that John C. Reilly has been a funny performer for years, or the fact that it’s taken guys like Judd Apatow and Adam McKay a chance to show off his comedic talent. For those who don’t know, Reilly was in a hilarious ten-minute blooper reel in Boogie Nights which showed that he could improvise with the best of them. The guy also played Bigfoot in an episode of the Tenacious D show that aired on HBO in the mid ‘90s. But sure, put him in Chicago where he was nominated for an Oscar or in ensemble films directed by some of film’s greatest voices. His true love, that which gives him much joy and pleasure, appears to be when he’s goofing around, like he does in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Walk Hard was co-written by Judd Apatow, whom you might have heard of. Any R-rated comedy that has been released in the last 18 months to any sort of popular appeal has had some sort of involvement by the writer-producer-director. Jake Kasdan (Orange County) was the other writer and directed the film, where Reilly plays Dewey. He grew up in the shadow of his brother, who died after a tragic machete incident. Dewey grew up and had a hit early in his life, but then went through the usual period of drugs and substance abuse before his career went through a rebirth of sorts. If it sounds like the usual biopic treatment of a musical icon, that’s what it is, and what Apatow and Kasdan manage to do is stick a thumb in the collective eye of films like Ray and Walk the Line, as those films possess a slight precociousness that deserves lampooning of some sort. Reilly plays Dewey as a fifteen-year-old. The guy is over 40, OK? So yeah, that’s funny. When Dewey’s drummer Sam (Tim Meadows, Semi-Pro) shows him what drugs are like, it’s done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Dewey’s various relationship issues are shown, starting from his first wife Edith (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live) who seems to be pregnant in every scene as she puts down Dewey, to his second wife Edith (Jenna Fischer, The Office), who is a born-again Christian and hopes to get Dewey the same way. Every girl, boy, rock and stick in between is shown too.
