Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 3rd, 2011
Capadocia: Un Lugar Sin Perdon is an HBO Latin America Original that showcases both the political and social angles of an experimental penitentiary in Mexico City. The penitentiary exploits the inmates as a form of cheap labor for the government. A riot begins that uncovers the violent truths behind the experimental prison and viewers are thrust into the lives of these female inmates. This series depicts the complexities of prison life as well as the political posturing that takes place. There is plenty of emotion in this series and it is executed at a very high
level.
The performances in this series are brilliant. Much like the HBO original series Oz, there is a proliferation of important characters. With a series such as this, each character needs to be both written and performed exceptionally well. Oz achieved transcendence as a series because it had its share of memorable characters. This series uses a similar template by engaging its audience with a range of interesting personalities. For example, Lorena Guerra (Ana De La Reguera) is a common housewife that commits a crime of passion when she walks in on her husband with her best friend. Once she enters the prison, her performance becomes exceptional as she reacts to the brutality of the violence. A character comparison to Oz would be Tobias Beecher. Guerra and Beecher both are introduced as wide eyed optimists and the system chews them into tougher individuals.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 1st, 2011
And now we enter the final year of The Medium. The final season has several bright spots. On Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, Paulie Walnuts, Tony Sirico, plays a mob guy ghost that keeps haunting Allison. It's a rather nice episode, and Sirico gets to provide some wonderful moments that remind us of his days with The Sopranos. Scanlon gets to be a ghost, for a short time. Allison has a vision of the future. John Glover even gets to play a devilish character that reminds us of his short-lived days on Brimstone. The final episode is a fitting send-off for the series.
Medium was based on a real person with alleged psychic powers who apparently has helped out various law enforcement agencies in some actual cases. If you’ve seen the series, you might find that hard to believe, and the episodes are obviously fictional adventures and not based on the real Allison Dubois’s experiences. At first glance it might be easy to lump Medium in with Ghost Whisperer or The Dead Zone. Actually, there are almost no similarities to any of those shows. Allison does not gain any understanding through touching, and while she does see ghosts at times, that aspect of the show has been made to play in only a small percentage of the episodes. Allison accesses her powers through dreams. These nightmares are usually vague and often provide additional clues with each recurring dream. The formula for the show is that she must interpret these images and signs in time to do whatever it is she needs to do. Now that her secret is out, she’s not able to continue her work at the DA’s office. Joe’s career is also in jeopardy, so the show is going through some changes here. The strike likely did some damage, so we may never know exactly what was in store.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 20th, 2011
"There was a time in baseball when there were only eight teams in each major league. They played an orderly balanced schedule visiting each city four times. A trip out West meant St. Louis or Chicago. There was a comfortable rhythm to the season... That time is gone now."
I might be from the last generation who understands exactly what that means. Some of the best memories of my life were of the lazy afternoons I spent with my grandfather at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Philadelphia. Over the course of a decade or so we must have attended a hundred games. Mike Schmidt became my idol, outside of my grandfather, of course, who made it all possible. In those days players didn't get into a ton of legal troubles. It would have shocked my young life to hear that one of my Philly players had been arrested for beating his wife or carrying a gun into a nightclub. Players didn't argue about contracts, at least not publicly. It was the 1970's, perhaps the end of that era when baseball really was a game. I treasure those memories. My grandfather is gone now, but he gave me something that will always be a part of who I am. And while this HBO series deals with the years before 1970, I can relate to those earlier generations who felt the same way about their sport and their heroes. Obviously, my grandfather was a part of those generations. And now HBO brings to high-definition Blu-ray a safe place to store those memories.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 20th, 2011
"The mission of the FBI is to protect the innocent and to identify the enemies of the government of the United States."
In 1965 ABC would launch the long-running series based on the cases of the FBI. The series starred Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Chief Inspector Lewis Erskine. He was a seasoned veteran with a keen instinct for tracking down some of the nation's most elusive criminals. He received his instructions and cases from Arthur Ward, played by Philip Abbott. Ward answered directly to the director himself. He usually gave Erskine a free hand, but was responsible for getting results from his best investigator. Erskine's partner was Special Agent Jim Rhodes, in the first few seasons played by Stephen Brooks. In these early episodes, the family life of Erskine was also part of the story. He had a daughter played by Lynn Loring, and she was in love with his partner. His wife had been killed by a bullet that was meant for him. After a couple of years the family stories disappeared completely, and the show remained focused on the cases.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2011
"Some say I don't play well with others. I was a damn good detective in Chicago until a disagreement with my boss encouraged me to pack it up and make a change. So I put The Windy City in my rearview and headed to the Sunshine State. Kick back. Play some golf. Work on my tan. Maybe write the occasional speeding ticket. Yeah... Well... that didn't work out."
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2011
"Look sharp, act sharp, be sharp. These guys coming out of prison? They're buff, been on drugs. You do what they teach you in the academy, you will die. Knucklehead wants to take your gun. So if it's you or some 300-pound naked guy on PCP, you take his ass down any way you can. You ride with me, you back your badge."
There probably isn't a group of people who have been profiled more than the men and women serving in the LAPD. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. It's a large city with an incredibly diverse population. Oh, and it doesn't hurt any that Hollywood's a part of this particular asphalt jungle. So we get to see a lot of L.A. or New York cops on television. Even long before Jack Webb was asking for the facts and only the facts, the cops of L.A. have had more than their fair share of screen time in film and television. With that in mind, it is awfully difficult to do anything new with the LAPD.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 14th, 2011
If you are a fan of the original Kolchak: The Night Stalker, you were more than likely disappointed in the remake a couple of years ago on ABC. Your hope is now once again restored. Supernatural is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to The Night Stalker. Like Kolchak, the Winchester brothers are faced with weekly incarnations of evil. They’re forced to research these legends and figure out a way to stop them. As Kolchak discovered, it’s a thankless job. Sure, Supernatural is populated with all sorts of beasties and nasties, but it also manages to hold on to a sense of humor that rounds out these adventures to make this one of the most entertaining shows around. When UPN and WB merged, I was a little worried about Supernatural. You do the math (that was another review). Two networks worth of shows, one network worth of programming time. Half of the shows needed to vanish, and I was concerned Supernatural would be one, if history of respect for genre shows was any indication. Fortunately for us, the show has not only survived, but it has thrived, looking to be around for quite a while yet.
In season 1 Sam Winchester (Padalecki) was in college. His fiancée was attacked by a creature that had once also taken his mother. Enter brother Dean (Ackles) who arrives to take the mourning Sam on a cross-country search for their missing father. It turns out that Daddy Winchester has been on a self-imposed crusade to find the monster that took his wife and any other demon or creature he might be able to hunt along the way. We also find out he’s trained the boys to be quite capable monster hunters themselves. Most of the first year dealt with the brothers fighting their way to their dad. It ended in a hell of a cliffhanger. Season 2 didn’t waste anytime picking up the action. The action picks up the moment we were left waiting last May. If the first year gave the boys their mission, the second is about consequences. All of the expected monsters are there for the hunt, and year two turned out twice as good as the first. If you didn’t think that was possible, check out this second-year DVD set.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 14th, 2011
For ten years we watched Jack O'Neil, Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the Jaff'a Tealc' enter the Stargate. Others would join the team over the years. Each week we would follow their adventures, first on Showtime and finally on the Sci-Fi (now Sy Fy) Channel. We watched with awe as they stepped through a portal that was in reality a wormhole transporting them instantly to another world, brought online by dialing the device like an old-fashioned telephone. For another five years we traveled not only to another planet, but to the Pegasus Galaxy itself to the Atlantis Base, a bright floating city left behind by the ancients, the people who created the Stargate system millions of years before. On this show we met new friends, new bad guys, and had new adventures. The location might have changed. The faces might have, at first, been unfamiliar, but the missions and the entertainment value didn't let us down. For 15 seasons we enjoyed a spectacular tale to rival the myths of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
I'm told that all good things must come to an end. When Atlantis was finally cancelled, I was made almost immediately aware of the plans to continue the franchise. First reports started coming out that the show was going to be called Stargate Universe. Soon my inside contacts started giving me tidbits about the story. Details began to emerge about the Destiny, an ancient ship abandoned in another universe far away. The ship was on some kind of predetermined course and would sport an unsuspecting crew of humans that would be left stranded on the ship for an indeterminate amount of time. It was starting to sound a lot like Star Trek: Voyager to me. Of course, this is Stargate, so there has to be some gate travel, one would assume. The ship would come with a gate, and the vessel would come out of faster-than-light travel from time to time and dial up a local planet for exploration. The ship was ancient not only in its origin but in its duration in space. There were going to be a lot of system failures, as the equipment was long past its expiration date. The ship itself would know what resources it needed to continue to operate. Searching its vast planetary database, the ship would locate planets with the essential resources, allowing away teams to get such vital raw materials. Unfortunately, the ship didn't always give a good indication of what to find or where on the planet it might happen to be. Oh, and did I mention the countdown? The ship would decide how much time it would allot for each mission, instituting a countdown. When the clock reaches zero, the ship goes back to FTL, and whoever's not back in time gets left behind.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 14th, 2011
“Corporations… They have all the money. They have all the power, and they use it to make people like you go away. Right now you’re suffering under an enormous weight. We provide the Leverage.”
The series centers on Nathan Ford (Hutton), an ex-insurance investigator. His life was turned around when the very insurance company he recovered millions for turned down his child for treatment to keep her alive. He quits his lucrative job and forms a team to help people who are backed against the wall by large corporations. Cases include: a soldier looking to get medical care, a family ripped off by a mob boss, a company that has allowed dangerous chemicals to harm children, and a real estate mogul trying to take a church away from its congregation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 4th, 2011
The other day, I was taking a look at my past reviews and I realized that I have been reviewing on this site for over six years. If you have been reading my reviews for that long and you aren’t married to me, bless you for sticking it out that long. Heck, I’ve only known my wife for almost 4 of those years. Anyhow, I have reviewed a plethora of subjects. One of the hardest things to do is to review a dvd season in the middle of its run. It becomes even harder when that show is True Blood
Before we go anywhere with Season 3, we need to take a step back in time and analyze the last couple of episodes of Season 2.
![When it Was a Game: The Complete Collection [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/when-it-was-a-game-the-complete-co-large.jpg)
![Supernatural: The Complete Second Season [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/supernatural-the-complete-second-s-large.jpg)
