Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 27th, 2003
Steven Bochco is no stranger to innovative television. Hill Street Blues is arguably the best cop show ever made. Even his failures are praised for their innovativeness and freshness. Remember Cop Rock? NYPD Blue didn’t just push the prime time envelope. It tore the envelope to pieces and blew it away with hurricane force winds. George Carlin made a career out of his “7 words you can’t say on television”. Along comes NYPD Blue and Carlin just might need a new act. Language and nudity made this the first R-Rated primetime program. The pilot arrived with a flutter of controversy. Morality groups were vocal and sponsors were scarce. Twenty percent of ABC’s affiliates refused to show the pilot at all. When you watch these DVDs it’s hard to understand what all the noise was about. Today this stuff is the norm, and once again Bochco changed TV forever.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 27th, 2003
Jerry Bruckheimer becomes yet another A-List film producer to take a shot at the television drama. I have to admit that I never gave this show a prayer of success when I first saw it three years ago. It’s not that I thought it wasn’t good. I loved it. I thought it would be too cerebral for the normal Joe six-pack audience. Boy was I wrong. CSI has become the hottest drama in prime time, and like Law and Order before it has begun to spin off into another incarnation with CSI: Miami. The characters are engaging and it seems we’re all obsessed with some morbid fascination of murder. You’ll get a hefty fix with this box.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 25th, 2003
How do you spoof something that is already a spoof itself? That’s easy. You mix a reality show concept with a contrived Hollywood script. You hire the worst actors you can find and you call it The Real World Movie: The Lost Season. Even if you’re a fan of the MTV reality series, you won’t find anything remotely entertaining here. If you don’t even like the TV show, then my advice is to run. Now we have bad actors pretending to be people who are pretending to be spontaneous.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 8th, 2003
I’ve got a confession. I just don’t get it. The Real World lays claim to being one of the first “reality” shows, dating back almost ten years. If you get off on watching a group of 7 twenty-somethings pretending to be spontaneous while basically either making out or grossing out, then this DVD is for you. This particular version is a season that was deemed too “hot” for broadcast TV so never appeared on MTV.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 6th, 2003
This set contains all episodes of season 3 from M*A*S*H in broadcast order. This season of M*A*S*H from a critical standpoint was probably one of the best of the 11 seasons, this was the year that the show won the Peabody award, the highest award you can receive in television, and co-producer gene Reynolds won an Emmy award for directing the episode, "O.R." which is seen here uncut and unedited. Also on this disc are the episodes The General Flipped at Dawn, Officer of the Day, Check-up, and Rainbow Bridge, Iron gut... Kelly, Springtime and Life with Father.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 2nd, 2003
Film
“In the criminal justice system the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders …” Law and Order is an example of a bygone day in network television. In the 1990-1991 season this first year program ranked 62nd of all television programs. In addition to its poor performance, NBC lost revenue from countless sponsors pulling their advertisements because of the controversial nature of t...e subject matter. (AIDS, abortion…) The pilot, filmed in 16mm for a gritty documentary style, was deemed not up to broadcast standards. Today any one of these black marks would doom a fledgling program before even one season was finished. NBC showed rare patience and renewed Law and Order. Now there are 3 hours of Law and Order programming each week. It is the longest running drama currently on prime-time. Law and Order has captured one of the largest Emmy collections in TV history. Recently NBC renewed the show for an additional record 5 years.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 19th, 2003
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 4th, 2002
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2002
Band of Brothers, as should be expected from multiple emmy award winner, is an amazing miniseries. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have collaborated on creating a memorable and poignant story that can be appreciate by all.
”Based on Stephen E. Ambrose's nonfiction bestseller, BAND OF BROTHERS tells the story of Easy Company, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army. Starting with their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942, it recounts the achievements of the elite rifle company fr...m D-Day to the fall of Nazi Germany and the surrender of Japan. Drawn from hours of interviews with survivors, as well as soldiers' journals and letters, BAND OF BROTHERS chronicles a unit that took 150 percent casualties and whose lives became legend.” - HBO
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 5th, 2002
Synopsis
