Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) is on the job again with anotherpolitically charged case. In this instance, a skeleton is dug up that might be that of a young blackwoman. Her disappearance six years ago was badly handled by the police, to the point thatcharges might be laid. The investigation is not only explosive racially, but the way it plays outcould help or destroy careers, Tennison's among others.
As ever, the Prime Suspect series delves r...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
DCI Tennison can’t ever get a nice, straightforward case that won’t destroy anyone who goesnear it. This time the murder of a young boy is just the first link in a chain that leads to explosiverevelations of child prostitution and police connections. Tennison’s life is made even morecomplicated by the fact that she has to knock heads again with her old enemy St. Bill Otley.
One could be forgiven for detecting a pattern, or even a formula, emerging in this series.Eac...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 26th, 2004
For years different TV shows and movies have speculated not as too whether there is life on other planets but, what are they doing on earth. Some shows like the X-files play out that the powers that be have sold us down the river to ensure their survival with a hostile alien race, or like in ID-4 and the Alien series are here to kill everyone and use the planet for their own will.
Director Steven Spielberg has looked at aliens and their involvement with the human race in a number of his films and with the...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2004
Homicide: Life On The Street began when Baltimore reporter David Simon spent an entire year with the day shift of Baltimore’s Homicide Squad. His subsequent book was a New York Times Best Seller and drew tremendous critical acclaim. Barry Levinson, Paul Attansio and Tom Fontana took the spirit of that book and created the NBC series. The first two seasons were spotty and featured only a handful of episodes each year. Season 3 marks the first full season of this remarkable show. Simon’s book detailed the psychology of...
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 David Annandale on February 22nd, 2004
Synopsis
Here are three more cases involving the gambling-addicted, cantankerous, infuriating yet stilloddly likeable criminal psychologist Fitz (Robbie Coltrane). “To Be a Somebody” has him upagainst a dangerous skinhead (Robert Carlyle). In “The Big Crunch,” the menace is a dangerousreligious cult. And “Men Should Weep” has a serial rapist who graduates to murder, indirectlybecause of Coltrane.
Of course, the actual murder investigations are only part of the story here, an...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2004
The third season of South Park was a bittersweet one. It seemed that season 2 had floundered just a little. Most of us wondered if the talents of Stone and Parker had already run out of gas. Season 3 turned out to be one of the funniest yet. This was also the year that Mary Kay Bergman committed suicide. Mary Kay had provided ALL of the female voices for the show. This left the crew in a scramble to deliver episodes before they could find a replacement. This unfortunate turn did produce some memorable episodes, howev...
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 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...
