Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 28th, 2007
Synopsis
This is an eclectic mix of SpongeBob shorts, with no real common theme. So there’s a humorous safety bit about boating with SpongeBob wreaking havoc on the streets, SpongeBob and Patrick trying to find the nerve to ride a terrifying roller coaster (this is a highlight), Squidward undergoing a personality shift, and so on. All good fun, but not as many hysterical home runs as on some other collections. There are seven pieces altogether, totalling 83 minutes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 27th, 2007
Mission Impossible didn’t really enter into its by now famous format until this, the second season. The IMF team was run by Daniel Briggs, played by Steven Hill. Hill was never really happy and left after the first season, citing a refusal to work on the Sabbath as his reason for leaving. While Hill was never bad in the role, his departure was our gain. Peter Graves immediately stepped up as the iconic Mr. Phelps, and Mission Impossible as we know it was born. I should add a word of caution and say this is really ...othing like the films which have become big budget vehicles for Tom Cruise over the last decade or so. This was not an explosive f/x or stunt driven show. The team managed their impossible missions with cunning and guile. The team was necessarily eclectic in nature. It featured Martin Landau in his signature role of Rollin Hand. Hand was very much akin to Martin Ross and his role in The Wild Wild West. He was a master of disguise. He could imitate almost anyone in very short order. Barney Collier was the gadget man, played by Greg Morris. Cinnamon Carter was the model and the team’s chief seductress and was played by Landau’s real life wife Barbara Bain. Finally, the muscle was supplied by Willy Armitage, played by brute Peter Lupus. Together they took on missions that the government could not be officially a part of. They were always admonished that should they be caught “the secretary would disavow any knowledge” of them. Usually they were sent somewhere to put some evil mastermind out of business. Their tactics ranged from scams to outright theft. Sometimes they were a rescue team while other times they would infiltrate a group of bad guys. There were certainly cold war elements to the whole thing.The openning segment of each episode was television history. A hidden tape recorder would give Phelps his assignment with the warning that the recording would self-destruct in 5 seconds. The tape and usually the recorder as well went up in a puff of smoke leading to the famous fuse and theme. Before we knew it we were off to save the world one week at a time.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 27th, 2007
It was the final hours of the Civil War, and incompetent Captain Parmenter (Ken Berry) gave off a sneeze and sent his men in the wrong direction. By sheer luck the enemy was there and forced to retreat, making Parmenter a hero of sorts. His reward was to be placed in command of the frontier outpost Fort Courage. And that’s the set-up for F Troop. In the first season this story was told in the opening credits, but these were cut short for season two and beyond. Westerns have not traditionally been good fodder for co...edy. F Troop is the exception. But what made F Troop funny had little to do with the setting. What gave F Troop is long standing following was the cast of characters and the actors who brilliantly portrayed them. Ken Berry had a natural wit about him that brought him long success even after F Troop. He is most likely better known today for his stint in Mama’s Family. He was originally a dancer, which gave him an uncommon grace in the physical comedy that was so much a mainstay of F Troop. When you think of Forrest Tucker, you don’t necessarily think of comedy. With his run on Gunsmoke, Tucker was best known for his tough guy roles. His intimidating stature made him a natural, and he appeared on such favorites as Wagon Train and Daniel Boone. Still, to many fans he will always be the rough and tumble Sergeant O’Rourke on F Troop. His boisterous voice was instantly recognizable to the show’s legion of fans. The trio of stars is completed with Larry Storch as the naïve Corporal Agarn. The natural chemistry between these three accounted for the vast majority of the show’s success. Let’s face it the writing here was 1940’s vaudeville slapstick translated for television audiences 20 years later.
F Troop has had its fair share of controversy over the years. Fortunately the 1960’s public was not so sensitive to stereotypes, or the show might never have been made. Much has been made of the show’s portrayal of the American Indians, of course today more politically correctly referred to as Native Americans. The characters were bumbling savages with the combined intellect of an insect. One might take offense if not that the American soldiers stationed at Fort Courage were portrayed in exactly the same way. This was never anything more than mindless comedy intended to elicit a laugh or two or thirty. That it did.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 21st, 2007
Four years ago when The O.C. came out it was a pretty big deal. I was finishing out high school back then, and like Beverly Hills 90210 did to the previous generation, The O.C. captivated the minds of the teenagers and young adults. I, like most people my age, watched the first season regularly. Back then I loved it and although some of its novelty has worn off, I can still really enjoy it. But as with most shows, as the years go on, the episodes become less entertaining - I watched much of the s...cond season, parts of the third season, and none of the fourth. Recently I had a fit of what could best be referred to as nostalgia, I rented the first three seasons of The O.C. and got back into what I loved so much back in 2003. As it stands I still really like the first season, the second season seemed lazy and predictable as with the third. Since I already know the fourth season was its last, I hope it somehow returned to its roots, regardless I am eagerly anticipating how things are going to wrap up.
If for some reason you’re reading this and have not yet seen the first three seasons of The O.C. I’ll briefly fill you in on the situation, so be prepared for spoilers. Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) was a troubled teenager living in Chino, after being busted for theft his public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) decided to adopt him giving him a new start in the posh Orange County. Before long Ryan befriends Sandy’s son Seth (Adam Brody) and the neighbor’s daughter Marissa (Mischa Barton). Of course there are love triangles, parties, fights, and other teenage matters that are dealt with throughout the show, but it mainly focuses on the relationships between Ryan and Marissa and Seth and the girl of his dreams Summer (Rachel Bilson). By the time season three wraps up Marissa has died in a car accident and Summer is heading to college out east.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 18th, 2007
Written by Evan Braun
Television today is littered with shows that burned bright but died quickly. In a time when networks are quick to cancel, it’s becoming more and more rare to see a show live out its full potential. Having just concluded its thirteenth season, with many more years on the horizon, ER has more than shown itself to be a proven commodity. It could very well be remembered as one of the most successful and longest-running series in the history of primetime television.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 6th, 2007
Right off the top, I have to admit I’m a big Scrubs fan. Obviously, this portion of the review will be influenced by that bias, but at least I’m up front about it. Now, this DVD set brings us the ingenious sitcom’s fifth season, which aired in 2006. I didn’t catch any of these 24 episodes on TV, so this release was my first time.
Season five, like all of the previous seasons, picks up at the start of a new year at Sacred Heart. This time around, J.D. (Zach Braff, The Last Kiss) and Elliot (Sar...h Chalke, Roseanne) are full-fledged, attending physicians, while Turk (Donald Faison, Uptown Girls) is vying for one of the hospital’s few surgeon positions. As viewers would expect, the usual gang is still doing its thing, with Dr. Cox ranting, Carla bossing people around, the mysterious Janitor hassling J.D. and Dr. Kelso ruling the place with a nasty fist.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 5th, 2007
What Time Is It? It’s Tool Time! Home Improvement was based on a stand-up routine that made a name for Tim Allen. In his act he would talk about his experiences with power tools and other manly misadventures. He came across as a comedic Bob Vila. Somewhere along the line it was decided this had the makings of a good sitcom for television. It was a rather inspired idea, and for many years it was one of the funnier shows on the tube. I often find myself referring to the show as Tool Time, which in reality is the cabl... handyman show Tim hosts. The reason for this almost constant confusion is simple. It is the Tool Time bits where the show was always at its best. Tim’s rapport with co-host Al Borland (Karn) is always worth a few laughs. Tim lived next door to Wilson (Hindman) who often had long winded words of wisdom when Tim found himself befuddled by life’s complications. As a running gag, we never see Wilson’s face below the nose. Most of the time the privacy fence they spoke over served to cover these areas, but often other well placed items did the job. Tim had a family. His wife, Jill (Richardson) tolerated Tim’s antics, all the while seeing him as an adolescent. The couple had three kids who were quite young as the show began. By season 6 the boys had grown, which demanded more screen and story time. Now there lives have dominated many episodes to the point that Home Improvement became almost a Brady Bunch instead of the more amusing fare it started as. There’s still plenty to laugh at here, but it’s just not as funny as it once was. Combine the older family with 6 years of the tool bits and Home Improvement was running its batteries down a bit. The show had only 2 more years left in it by this time. It might have been better to stop after 5.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 5th, 2007
Maybe it’s just not possible to do a good western on television these days. Most of the more recent attempts have come up pretty empty, and The Magnificent Seven is no exception. I'd have to say that perhaps The Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr. might be the lone standout. The Magnificent Seven certainly tries. All of the traditional clichés are there, from the Ponderosa rip-off music to the “howdys” and “reckons” in the dialogue. There’s plenty of gunplay and horses to meet the expected quotas, but it all looks way...too staged for my tastes. It felt like I was watching one of those Amusement Parks Ol’ Western Shows. The cast is relatively impressive, but whether it’s that there are too many of them for true character development or no one on the writing crew decided character was important, I can’t say for sure. It’s just not there.
Seven unlikely men join together to protect a Western town from those that might take advantage of its peace-loving citizens. The seven are pretty much ordinary folk thrust into extraordinary circumstances working for an old judge (Vaughn) for $1 a day plus room and board. Michael Biehn plays Chris Larrabee, who is pretty much the unofficial head of the seven. He usually wears black, going against the “good guys wear white” western tradition. His family had been lost to a tragic fire. Following him are: Buck Wilmington (Midkiff), JD (Kavovit), Vin Tanner (Close), Ezra Standish (Starke), Nathon Jackson (Worthy) and Josiah Sanchez (Perlman), a defrocked preacher. Perlman gets most of the best lines. In the season opening he is asking God for a sign when a nearby dog barks, signaling the return of his fellows. He looks up to Heaven and says, “I bet you thought that was funny, didn’t you?”. The second season begins with a new lawman in town who doesn’t take to the seven’s tactics in protecting the town. When he posts a long list of new laws, including no firearms in the city, the seven leave the town to its own fate. As you might expect, a few of the local tough guys take advantage of their leaving and begin to run the town ablaze. Certainly the boys return and a new season is set up. Now they have the title of “honorary” marshalls. Let the good times roll.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 3rd, 2007
Synopsis
Groundbreaking is often a word that is simply used too much. People tend to sling it around whenever they find a movie or tv show that is just simply different. However, this is not the case with the groundbreaking show: Cagney & Lacey. It was to show two women in leading roles as police officers solving crimes and getting the bad guys. The show in its first season alone would explore such controversial women's issues as date rape and burnout (which a lot of women du...ing that time experienced when faced with both being employed and a domesticated wife). The cast was centered around Christine Cagney & Mary Beth Lacey (played by Sharon Gless & Tyne Daly respectively) and plays an important part in women's television even today.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 2nd, 2007
I must really love this job. That's the only explanation as to why I keep reviewing for this site. Then I get across my desk a copy of Dante's Cove - The Complete Second Season. (I guessed I missed the first one). On the cover they show three quite buff men (in the background two women, hey that's Tracy Scoggins), all with pants being a little too low. Uh-oh. *flips to the back*; oh geez is that two men kissing, *sigh*, it is. From the here! network for openly gays and lesbians comes the guilty pleasure show; Dante's Cove, a soap opera that let's just say really pushes the envelope. The backdrop or the events to season one are as follows.
One hundred and sixty years ago, Ambrosius Vallin (played by William Gregory Lee) had been imprisioned by Grace Neville (played by Tracy Scoggins) after she found him fraternizing with a man (they were engaged to be married). Okay, they were doing it doggy style. (if I have to live with the image, so do you). So Grace gave Ambrosius advanced age and threw him in the basement. He is returned to his former self by a kiss from Kevin (played by Gregory Michael). Naturally Ambrosius becomes obsessed with Kevin who is really in love with Toby (played by Charlie David). By the way, Ambrosius and Grace use the powers of a mystical religion called "Tresum". However in order to satsify this religion and keep their youth they have to fufill certain rites and passages. It's a blend of fantasy, soap opera, and really really open gay people in a beautiful island setting (second season was shot in Hawaii).
