Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 31st, 2010
Many people look around today and say we are perhaps going through one of the most corrupt times in the history of the world. Government spending is out of control, rights seem to going by the waste side and human liberties are forgotten in travesties of justice. But what they don't know is that many years ago, life was cheap and rulers often gained absolute power by the most despicable of methods. However, what some people forget, the History Channel does remember Ancients Behaving Badly.
Ancients Behaving Badly is a documentary series on the History Channel that chooses an infamous leader from ancient history and goes into great detail about their rule. Let's take for example, Caligula, the first leader presented and a fairly easy target to spend time on. Caligula, the third Roman emperor who despite living only a shade under four years in power broke all the rules and was famous for debauchery and murder on the grandest scale.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2010
"This is Fairfax County in the state of Virginia. I was born here. It's peaceful, beautiful, and a long long way from Wyoming; beautiful, too in its special way. Vast, proud and lonely; it's my country now, Wyoming. But not exactly a peaceful one."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 28th, 2010
One of the most basic pleasures in my soul is received from a great stand-up comedian. I grew up with the likes of Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Robin Williams. As a result, I listen to many stand-up specialists whenever I can, some are funny, some are not so funny and some I don't know if I'm listening to comedy or amateur hour at 1 in the morning. Today's special is David Cross, experienced to the stand-up scene in a brand new special. Let's see how it goes.
A little bit of history on David Cross, he's 46 and even though you might struggle to remember what he has been in, most likely you have seen his face before. He's been in the Ben Stiller Show, Arrested Development, and Mr. Show. More recently, he has been a part of the Alvin and the Chipmunk movies and even did voices for a few video games. In his personal life, he's a proclaimed atheist and is dating Amber Tamblyn who is well smoking hot and about twenty years younger.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2010
In June of 1982 I was fishing in a secluded mountaintop lake with my friend Willie Nelson. No, he wasn't the country singer. He was a State College, Pennsylvania DJ. He is a giant kind of fella who stands about 11 feet tall in his socks. It was a Sunday night, June 20th, the night before my birthday, and we decided to spend an all-nighter at the lake fishing. The place was in the middle of a wooded area, and there was nothing around for miles. Just before midnight and my birthday, we both saw something I'm sure we will never forget. I've since lost track of Willie. Last I heard he was living on a boat in L.A. So if you're out there, buddy, drop me a line. What we saw was a series of bright lights in the sky. They were flying extraordinarily close to the ground and moving quite slowly across the sky. What impressed both of us most of all was that they never made a sound. At first we suspected they were individual objects. I remember thinking they might be missiles of some kind. But as they flew overhead, the space between them blocked out the stars. It was a solid object. We went immediately back to the radio station and phoned the FAA, local airport, and whomever else we could think of. It was a hell of a thing. I still don't know what we saw that night, but it still appears vividly to me if I close my eyes. I wrote down the experience as a song for my Invented Memories album, which I will include at the end of the review should you be interested in hearing it.
We're not alone. I don't mean in an extraterrestrial sense. I mean as witnesses to an unidentified flying objects. There have been millions of such reports over the decades. Often these sightings are dismissed as coming from crackpots or just someone desperate for attention. The government has waged a long campaign to discount these sightings as either unreliable or something more explainable like weather balloons or flares. But there have been some very credible witnesses over the years, people you would be hard-pressed to lump into any of the categories I've named. We're talking trained observers with sterling reputations. Together many of us reject these government claims of what we might have witnessed. To those claims we join in unanimously: I Know What I Saw.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 26th, 2010
I've seen a lot of shows come and go on Comedy Central over the years. The network really found gold when it began to air the crude animated adventures of Eric Cartman and his pals of South Park. It appears that ever since that day, the network has been searching high and low, mostly low, to catch that kind of lightening in a bottle again. Let's face it. The South Park boys aren't going to last forever. Comedy Central must certainly understand that someday they'll need another solid anchor for their network. One of the most recent attempts has been the Jeff Dunham Show. From what I've seen of this release, Comedy Central had best keep on looking. Of course, the ratings and the audience have already convinced them of that fact. The show is already gone after only 7 episodes. You can find them all on this single disc release.
From the description, it actually sounded like a pretty good idea. It's certainly an original one. The idea of having a ventriloquist act as the centerpiece for a comedy show really sounded like a great idea. I hadn't really heard of Jeff Dunham before this, so I had no idea what kind of show to expect. I only know I expected to laugh. After the first couple of episodes, I hadn't laughed yet. That's okay. I just have to warm up to the unique series. Give the guy time to settle into the format. Now I've watched all 7 episodes, and I'm still waiting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 26th, 2010
In this line of work, you have a tendency to see a lot of copycat television shows. These shows emulate a popular type or specific series and are usually content with mediocre ratings. However, out of the fire of the various copycat shows, we sometimes get a diamond in the rough. This is a diamond that people will shrug off and proclaim as anything but worthwhile television viewing. But once they actually sit down and watch a few episodes, they’ll be hooked for good.
When we left season one of Flashpoint, the Strategic Response Unit wasn’t one hundred percent. Jules (played by Amy Jo Johnson) had been shot and her secret boyfriend, Sam Braddock (played by David Paetkau) realizes that Jules might break up with him. The reason for this is that she thinks the relationship is putting a strain on the team which she has put first.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 25th, 2010
"On Robben Island, in Pollsmoor Prison, all of my jailers were Afrikaners. For 27 years I studied them. I learned their language. Read their books, their poetry. I had to know my enemy before I could prevail against them. And we did prevail, did we not?"
Leave it to Clint Eastwood to make even rugby look interesting. Of course, Eastwood himself would correct me and observe that Invictus isn't really about rugby. As the words of Nelson Mandela above suggest, this movie wasn't really about rugby at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 25th, 2010
"Evil Is Among Us."
You've got to love a horror film directed and written by a guy named Kevorkian. Johnny Kevorkian is a young director still finding his chops with only a handful of credits to his name thus far. The young talent does have vision, and doesn't go for the obvious. While the film does tend to be a bit heavy on the British sensibilities, you can expect such a thing from an independent low-budget horror film from England. The Disappeared is absolutely derivative of at least 20 films I've seen recently and appears to be substantially influenced by the Asian ghost invasion. Still, there is a style here that might not be terribly original, but it is pretty dang effective, at least on this movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 24th, 2010
Mel Brooks has often been called the Master of Comedy. The moniker might be a bit too grandiose, but he was certainly the master of the parody. In recent years that has become more evident than ever. Too often I've been forced to sit through something called a comedy. Not only can I do so without ever actually laughing, but there are far too many titles of late that don't even give me the chance to crack a smile. It's not that I've seen so much that it's hard to find anything original. I can still laugh like crazy when I watch a Sanford and Son episode I've seen at least 50 times or an Abbott & Costello routine that was old before they even got their hands on the material. There is a famous quote that states, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Then why does Mel Brooks make it look so dang easy?
While we're on the subject of masters, you really can't avoid the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps no one understood his audience more than Hitch did. He's influenced a great many of today's filmmaking geniuses. He's been admired by almost anyone who has ever really studied film. Mel Brooks can be counted among his students. On more than one occasion I have seen an interview where Brooks can't say enough flattering things about Alfred Hitchcock. It would have only been a matter of time before Brooks turned his creative mind to one of his own idols. The result is enough to give anyone High Anxiety.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 24th, 2010
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 1960s 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 a couple annual greats and a few that I don’t really remember so much. Now we get into the second volume of the 1970’s specials. The two discs include the following Peanuts specials:
![Invictus [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/invictus-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![High Anxiety [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/high-anxiety-blu-ray-large.jpg)
