Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 11th, 2011
Musically, I've been told before that I'm not that broad. I primarily like my hard rock and it doesn’t matter whether it is a flashy piece from the 80's or a grungy alternative piece from the 90's. But there is something that a lot of the music I listen to has in common with each other. A great guitar track. From the brilliance of an Andy Timmons to the soothing energetic sound of a Tom Cochrane. It is only fitting that a blu-ray capturing the guitar god simply known as Jeff Beck graces my door step. Furthermore, he is having a party honoring the late Les Paul. This ought to be a treat.
There is a concert inside the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City tonight. Let’s see who is playing. Well, there is Darrel Higham on guitar and vocals. He’s been a lead guitar with rockabilly bands since the late 80’s. Then there is Darrel’s wife: Imelda May, a fairly established Irish singer who has sang with many greats and loved the world over. Then there is Al Gare on bass who has often played with the husband and wife combination.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 11th, 2011
"Did you ever notice how you let a Mexican into your home just because he's got gardening tools? I mean, no questions asked. You just let him right in. He could have, you know, a chainsaw or a machete."
The last year has been a hot year for the illegal immigration debate, between the Arizona law and the various politicians to the vigilante groups that volunteer to arm up and patrol the borders. As the debate rages on and the violence increases, it was only a matter of time before someone exploited it all for your entertainment pleasure. Who better than Robert Rodriquez and his usual cast of suspects?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2011
Written by Diane Tillis
24 is a political-thriller television series that spans eight seasons. The show focuses on Jack Bauer, a prominent and controversial agent within the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer using the real-time method of narration. The episodes are marked by the hour with onscreen digital clocks. For instance, episode one of Season 8 relates to 4:00 P.M. through 5:00 P.M. of that day. The show also uses the split-screen technique. The screen will display multiple images that coordinate with the different story lines that occur throughout the season. This technique is used when the opening credits are rolling, before-and-after cuts for commercial breaks, or before the concluding scene. At the conclusion of its eighth and final season, 24 became the longest-running espionage-themed television drama ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2011
Written by Diane Tillis
24 is a political-thriller television series that spans eight seasons. The show focuses on Jack Bauer, a prominent and controversial agent within the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer using the real-time method of narration. The episodes are marked by the hour with onscreen digital clocks. For instance, episode one of Season 8 relates to 4:00 P.M. through 5:00 P.M. of that day. The show also uses the split-screen technique. The screen will display multiple images that coordinate with the different story lines that occur throughout the season. This technique is used when the opening credits are rolling, before-and-after cuts for commercial breaks, or before the concluding scene. At the conclusion of its eighth and final season, 24 became the longest-running espionage-themed television drama ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 11th, 2011
The Graves:
When you first look at the title for this entry in After Dark’s 4th annual 8 Films To Die For, you probably have summoned up images of a dank and foreboding cemetery where unspeakable horrors rise from their resting places to torment the, albeit temporarily, living. This is definitely a little bit of a case of false advertising and the misleading use of a title. These Graves are sisters, Megan (Grant) and Abby (Murray), to be exact. They’re the kind of sisters who do everything together. You know the type. They almost speak in a secret language and appear to be soul mates. But Megan is a bit more outgoing and has gotten herself a job in New York, far away from the sisters’ home in Arizona. Abby is a bit more introverted and is having a hard time dealing with the inevitable loss of her sister. So the two decide to have one more blast together. It’s time for a road trip to visit the world’s largest thermometer. Oh boy. Any horror fan worth his remote knows that the girls are likely not going to make it to see the big thermometer, and they’d be correct. They get sidetracked in a small town called Unity where they are encouraged to visit the abandoned gold mine called Skull City Mine.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 11th, 2011
Paul Rudd is desperate for a promotion. Moving from the drudgery of the sixth floor to the executive seventh will, he feels, cement his financial status and convince his girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) to marry him. Opportunity knocks, but also has a price: he must find an idiot to bring to boss Bruce Greenwood’s dinner party, where these unfortunates will be ridiculed. Rudd doesn’t like the idea, but then he (literally) runs into Steve Carrell, a man of such transcendent idiocy that Rudd can’t resist the siren call he represents. But before they can make it to the dinner, Carrell’s well-meaning stupidity threatens to completely derail Rudd’s life.
This is a remake of 1998’s The Dinner Game (Le diner des cons). Francis Veber’s farce clocked in at 80 minutes. Jay Roach’s bloated retread is half again as long, and only half as funny. The Paul Rudd character in the original, played by Thierry Lhermitte, was a superior, cruel SOB who deserved to have his life taken apart. Furthermore, the characters never actually make it to the dinner of the title. The remake, of course, finds it necessary to stick literally to its title, and gives us the dinner, thus inviting us to engage in precisely the form of cruel laughter it pretends to condemn. It also tries to make Rudd sympathetic, and having his character be a nice guy runs counter to the very premise of the film. End result: a film that tries much too hard to be funny, laboriously working every last predictable gag until those horses are fit for nothing more than the glue factory. There are some amusing moments, but this is, by and large, a gigantic, time-consuming waste of the talent involved.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 10th, 2011
My dislike of romantic comedies has been well documented on this site time and time again. At times, I even try to enlist the help of my loving wife who doesn’t really care for them either but is willing to lend a hand. Unfortunately, my next three reviews will all involve the curse of the romantic comedy. So let’s take a look inside and see if we can last through this trilogy of terror.
Lane Daniels (played by Hilary Duff) is a fashion journalist in New York City in search of a guy. Scared yet? I mean it is Hilary Duff. I heard she once bit the head of an eyeliner pencil off and swallowed it whole. Lane’s best friend, Joanna (played by Amanda Walsh) tries to help but the main problem is that Lane has this insane checklist.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 10th, 2011
Countless documentaries and dramas chronicle the life of John Lennon. They make each film unique from all the others by taking different approaches, use different archival materials, or new first-hand interviews. LENNON NYC explores a time in Lennon’s life that is rarely exposed. It focuses on Lennon’s life in New York City from 1971 to his death in 1980.
In 1971, after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono moved to New York City. The nine years Lennon spent in the city was a time for him to focus on family. While he did create some of the most acclaimed songs and albums of his career, Lennon wanted to be a proper father to his young son, Sean. A strong icon in the count-culture movement, Lennon was very active in anti-war protests and other political causes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 6th, 2011
"If you're going to face the fires of Hell, you need to be prepared."
And that's exactly what someone should have told the folks behind the horror thriller Case 39. This has been one of those cursed films from the very beginning. The film appears to have begun production way back in 2006. It appears the film was done, at least in one form, by 2007, but there were reshoots and pick-ups for so long that it's going to be hard to imagine what the film might have originally been intended to look like. A fire on the set destroyed quite a bit of the set; fortunately no one was badly injured. The movie took so long to make that the life changes are quite noticeable in the characters. When the film did finally reach the box office on October 1st in 2010, the numbers were very disappointing. The film only took in $13 million with a budget that is listed at $26 million but was likely considerably more than that when you put it all together.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 6th, 2011
In one of Stephen King's most popular stories, at least of those translated into films, a prison inmate sits in his cell and dreams of escape. His fantasy is to escape into the welcoming arms of Rita Hayworth. While that particular element wasn't to be found in the film, it was important enough in the original story to warrant mention in the original title, which was Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption. It was a nod to the pin-up status that the actress had in early younger days. In my generation it was Farrah, but for most adolescent boys and World War II soldiers it was the red-headed come-hither smile of Rita Hayworth.
Hayworth first trained as a dancer. The instruction would certainly pay off in her film career where she would trade steps with some of the great dancers in cinema history including Fred Astaire. She was just a young teenager when she managed to be cast in Dante's Inferno and five other films that year. She left films at the peak of her popularity in a Grace Kelly-like marriage to foreign royalty. She wedded the Prince Aly Kahn, who would also die in a car accident, much as Kelly did. Fortunately for the movie-going public, Hayworth had divorced the prince 7 years earlier in 1953 and returned to the silver screen.
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