Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 5th, 2007
The main quote on this disc's cover reads, "if you liked Bend it Like Beckham, you'll love Gracie." Baloney. OK! Magazine's Karen Berg got me all excited with this raving tidbit, because I did like Bend it. A lot. Unfortunately for me and anyone else who pays attention to such quotes, Bergie either never watched Gracie or just doesn't know movies and why people like them.
Here's my new quote for the DVD case: "If you still like after-school specials, you'll be delighted with Gracie, a half-baked TV movie in the guise of something more."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 5th, 2007
The CSI phenomenon has been going strong for 8 years now, and CBS has ridden that wave to become the top network these past couple of years. It all started with the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigator. This
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 4th, 2007
Scientists Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Coombs) successfully construct a machine (dubbed the “Resonator”) that links our world with another, hostile dimension. Pretorious gets his head bitten off by something summoned by the machine, while Tillinghast is incarcerated in an asylum. Psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) believes Tillinghast’s story when she discovers his pineal gland is growing enormously, and she has him released into her custody to recreate the experiment. Baaad idea.
Director Stuart Gordon’s follow-up to Re-Animator ups the gore and mutated flesh aspect, and in this uncut version, we at last get to see Coombs sucking Carolyn Purdy-Gordon’s brain out of her eye-socket, among other gruesome delights. There are plenty of distorted monstrosities on display, too, and the film certainly benefits from an enthusiastic commitment to its material. But Gordon, despite his great love for Lovecraft’s material, has always struck me as not quite having the right temperament to really capture Lovecraft’s spirit. He comes close in Dagon, but there, as here, he coaches performances that are pitched far too broadly, and gets carried away, not just with the sex and gore (which isn’t necessarily a problem), but with the equally broad humour such that the movie never really captures the true cosmic terror of Lovecraft’s tales. (In the Mouth of Madness is much more successful in this regard.) So, while this film doesn’t quite work, it is still huge fun.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 4th, 2007
"Find out what happens when cartoon characters stop being polite...and start making out in hot tubs". The legendary kiss between Clara and Foxxy highlighted Season 1 and with the recent release of Season 2 on dvd, the Drawn Together cast is back for more adult fun. Drawn Together is the cartoon show that parodies reality shows by using parodies of classic cartoon characters. There are characters like Captain Hero who is a parody of Superman and many other super hero types. Or Ling-Ling who is a spoof of Pikachu from Pokemon. But these aren't normal; they are very perverse, stereotypical, and deviant characters. For example; Xandir (a parody of Link from Legend of Zelda) is the very gay and effeminate one while Princess Clara (spoof of various Disney princess characters) has a multi-tentacled monster in place of her...ummm...ho-ho...(I just said ho-ho in the middle of a review; yup my career is over)
The show is flat out hilarious as it sounds. As long as you aren't offended by the explicit nature of what is going on; you will have a good time with the 22 minute episodes. The show's episodes as expected often have a gay or bisexual theme. However, once in a while (okay usually once per episode); they have a tendency of going too far. They make no apologies about crossing ethical or racist lines or even having common sense. It's basically about causing a ruckus for as long as possible and somehow come up with a plausible ending by the 20 minute mark. The cast of voice actors from Tara Strong (Toot Braunstein & Princess Clara) to Adam Carolla (Spanky Ham)to Jess Harnell (Captain Hero) and more represent a very elite group of vocalists.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 3rd, 2007
Family Ties is likely remembered most as the series that launched the career of Michael J. Fox. There’s no question that he owes a great debt to Alex Keaton. It’s almost a bit awkward now to watch him as this young, extremely conservative teenager after Fox has spent so much of his life as a liberal poster boy in the last couple of elections. Politics aside, it’s hard not to credit his performances in Family Ties and the Back To The Future films for launching him into a well deserved lucrative career. The Michael J. Fox issue, however, might hide some of the other assets the show had going for it in its time. For one of the first times parents were portrayed as humanly flawed, and families were not the perfectly functional institutions most of these shows described. Up until Family Ties, these households were either perfect little examples of American ideal or they were so dysfunctional that they could hardly be considered families at all. This show obviously went for a bit of realism.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 2nd, 2007
Until not very long ago this set was being billed as
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 1st, 2007
There are two very distinctive schools of thought about Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. There are the Kipling fanatics who have never forgiven Disney for taking a story considered sacred in literary circles and creating something that honestly bears (pardon the pun) little resemblance to the original work. These folks rightfully point out that the story contains almost nothing recognizable about the story and characters from Kipling’s beloved classic. I have often condemned projects that take names like The Night Stalker and Battlestar Galactica and create a vision incompatible with the traditions I associate with them. Therefore this review might seem a bit hypocritical when I tell you I side with the other camp that considers this film to be a milestone, not only in Disney animation, but in animation history itself. The characters might be distantly removed remote ancestors to Kipling’s creatures, but they are truly classic creations in their own right. What better definition of a classic can there be than the influence that Jungle Book still has 40 years later, not only on our pop culture but on the careers and lives of today’s artists. I venture to say that more people are familiar with Disney’s renderings of these characters than Kipling’s I agree the caparison isn’t exactly fair, but it is accurate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 1st, 2007
The death of Superman was a tremendous event for comic fans and media circuits around the world. Sure, it had been teased a hundred times in the past but if they did it legitimately and made people believe that he was really gone; they would create a landmark achievement and bring comics back to a worldwide stage. With the release of Superman #75, they did just that. Newspapers, television shows; circuits that never showed a comic book in their life were showing the black bag and the tattered image on the front cover. Superman had died and the world mourned. In the months that followed, the story went in four different directions and eventually he was brought back.
Years pass and somebody at DC & Warner Bros thought this would make a great dvd feature movie. Following in the tradition of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker Uncut; they also decided to make it racier by giving it a PG-13 rating. Then they found some good voice actors (Adam Baldwin & Anne Heche) and have it produced by one of the greats in Bruce Timm . They would have to change up the story a little bit too. Superman would still die while fighting Doomsday and he would still be brought back. However, certain elements would have to be dropped (e.g. the idea of four supermen) and other elements would have to be added (e.g. Lex Luthor being more of a central point to the plot of the story).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 30th, 2007
Sometimes films sport an ensemble cast with intertwining storylines that have large aspirations. The films wind up being acclaimed on several different levels and are memorable in the long term. In previous outings, this technique is usually mastered by the late Robert Altman, but when it’s not remotely successful, it becomes self-indulgent and overly pretentious.
Take the case of Even Money. Written by Robert Tannen in his screenwriting debut and directed by Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond), the film covers the lives of several different people. Carol (Kim Basinger, L.A. Confidential) is married to Tom (Ray Liotta, Goodfellas). She’s a writer suffering through a block while Tom works as a teacher. Clyde (Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland) works hard as a plumber while his younger brother Godfrey is a star basketball player (Nick Cannon in a “one of these things is not like the other” role). Walter (Danny DeVito, Hoffa) is an aspiring magician who tries to get closer to an old mysterious businessman named Ivan, but only gets as far as a man named Victor (Tim Roth, Pulp Fiction). There’s even a doctor (Carla Gugino, Sin City) who is dating the muscle for a bookie. I give the last part of this away a little bit, as all the characters and their storylines involve gambling in one form or another.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 29th, 2007
Dirty Sanchez, the Welsh Jackass, or at least it’s something like it. Like Jackass, this little British show started on TV and has since made its way to the big screen, that of course is not where the similarities end. Dirty Sanchez, ‘They make Jackass look like the Royal Shakespeare Company.’ Well that’s what the say anyways, I disagree but they are definitely just as careless and insane as the Jackass crew. Dirty Sanchez features three buddies, Pritchard, Dainton, and Pancho as they completely disregard their health in any which way they can think. This film features several of these outrageous stunts in an uncut manner which boasts a lot of language, male nudity, and vomit. If you’re not interested in any of that you might as well stop reading here, but for those of you that can’t get enough out of watching people make an ass of themselves, please read on.
Right off the start I have to say that Dirty Sanchez contained a bit more talking than I would have liked, but some of the stunts were pretty outrageous. Well some of them like snorting wasabi, getting shot with paintballs, and Thai boxing have been done before by the likes of Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, Ryan Dunn and crew there are a few here you wont want to miss. To start, have you ever wondered what it would look like to get liposuction without anesthetic? Well, I hope you haven’t taken the time to think about that, but you’re going to find out what it looks like anyways. How about having your good buddy drink the resulting ooze? These are just a few things that will be sure to captivate a younger audience and outrage the old timers.
