Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2004
The 1980’s saw a second British entertainment invasion reach the shores of America. That’s when the BBC began to unleash its peculiar brand of humor mixed with sci-fi on PBS stations in the US. College campuses all over the land were tuned to the likes of Dr. Who and later Red Dwarf.
There’s no question that this stuff is not for everyone. Red Dwarf brought us the cheesy f/x and dry humor of Tom Baker’s Dr. Who and added a generous helping of Monty Python and Benny Hill. With the third season, however, thi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004
What happens when a maladroit lackey, an entrepreneur and his wife, a polymath, a store clerk from Kansas, a motion picture starlet, and a ship captain get stranded on a desert island? The next edition of Survivor, right. Okay…I didn’t fool you. It’s Gilligan’s Island. And the first season is on DVD, all 36 episodes (including the infamous pilot)! Is this cause for celebration? Perhaps for some…
Gilligan’s Island ran for 3 seasons, and close to 100 episodes, on CBS from 1964 to 1967. Th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004
The third and hopefully final entry in the American Pie series, American Wedding keeps with the sweet charms and gross out comedy of the first two movies, but can’t live up to the humor of the original or its sequel. Average Joe Jim, (Jason Biggs) and former band geek Michelle, (Alyson Hannigan) are now engaged to be wed and must decide whether raucous Stifler (Seann William Scott) should be invited to the wedding. Shenanigans ensue involving a night out at a gay club, a bachelor party, pleasing the in-laws, and pubi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004
Season three sees Futurama cooking on gas. This is THE SIMPSONS on some mind-altering substance. For the uninitiated (and if you have never watched the series before - watch seasons 1 and 2 first…duhhh!) pizza delivery boy Fry has awoken from cryogenic suspension and finds himself in the year 3000. Here he teams up with the girl of his dreams, one-eyed space captain Leela, the hard-drinking, wallet-lifting robot Bender (he bends things for a living), the frankly barmy Professor Farnsworth and an assorted bunch of ge...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2004
I came into this title completely blind. I almost always have some idea what I am going to be watching, but in this case, I truly had none whatsoever. I believe that I might have heard the title of this show before, but that’s about it.
Upon viewing this set, it might be a good thing that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Otherwise, I would have never taken this task on. Put simply, this is not a show that has stood the test of time. True laughs are virtually nonexistent, as almost all of...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 21st, 2004
Synopsis
David Hemmings is a jaded photographer plying his trade in Swinging Sixties’ London. Outtaking pictures in a park, he shoots a series of pictures of a couple apparently having anargument. The woman in the pictures (Vanessa Redgrave) subsequently turns up at Hemmings’studio, wanting the pictures back. Even more mysterious is a shot Hemmings took sometimelater, after the argument. Is there a body in the picture? The more he blows up the picture,seeking the answer, the grainie...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004
Synopsis
Barbarians is The History Channel’s box set of a series of four interesting documentaries. Each chronicles the rise and fall of one or another of history’s famous “Barbarian” tribes – from their generally agrarian origins, to their bloody warlike height and eventual gradual decline or precipitous fall. Four groups are covered in this box set, on two discs:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004
I can only imagine what it might have been like to be a child during the heyday of Disney’s live films division. Going to see The Parent Trap or Mary Poppins as a young girl must really have been exciting. Experiencing Pete’s Dragon or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the theater must have been a thrill for young lads.
Unfortunately, Disney has not lived up to those high standards in its later days. Part of the wonder of those films was that they were not children’s films, as much as s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 20th, 2004
Synopsis
A more unapologetic objectification of the female form would be hard to find than thiscollection. The camera all but drools over the form of Raquel Welch. For some, that’s reasonenough to check out these films. Fortunately, they are each worth seeing for other reasons too.(And in one case, worth seeing for all the WRONG reasons.)
A remake of 1940's One Million B.C., Hammer Studios’ One Million YearsB.C. (1967) gave the world what is arguably the most iconic b...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 20th, 2004
MGM keeps rolling out the Best Picture award winners. A few weeks ago it was Mutiny on the Bounty, this time it’s The Great Ziegfeld . I think Ziegfeld belongs in the category of those Best Picture winners that aren’t necessarily the best films for that year (Driving Miss Daisy?? C’mon). I actually prefer Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Gregory La Cava’s seminal screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (starring Ziegfeld’s own William Powell). The Great Ziegfeld al...
