Disc Reviews

Walt Disney was a dreamer. Some of his dreams were realized. Some were not. Disney built a kingdom. He built more than one, in fact. One of Walt's dreams that was not realized was the experimental prototype community of tomorrow (EPCOT). He did incorporate some of the ideas of EPCOT into the Disney World theme park, but it was a mere shadow of the original dream. One of the essential elements of EPCOT was, and is, Tomorrowland.  Disney was widely admired in the 1960's by urban planners for his visionary views about the possibilities of the future.
Unfortunately, Disney died in 1966, and the board of directors severely cut back Walt's original vision. Of course, Disney World wound up on 27,258 acres that is a short drive from NASA's main launch site, Cape Canaveral.

In the film Tomorrowland, Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is the daughter of Eddie (Tim McGraw), who is an engineer at NASA. Unfortunately, NASA is not what it used to be, and Eddie is being phased out. In a separate storyline, years earlier in 1964, a young inventor shows up at the New York World's Fair (the time and place that Disney introduced many innovations) with a flying jet pack. That inventor grows up and is central to the story. That young inventor grows up to be grouchy malcontent, Frank Walker (George Clooney). David Nix (Hugh Laurie) is also important to the story, because he is the inventor of Tomorrowland, and Nix first meets Walker at the 1964 World's Fair. A magical young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) is the final essential ingredient, because she is the catalyst for change throughout the story.

by Dustin P. Anderson

This DVD follows three standups, K. Douglas Tatum, Tone-X and Michael Colyer, as they perform for a live studio audience. We also follow Tommy Ford as he terrorizes the headquarters of Bossip, a gossip website. I would honestly love to tell you more in the summary of this DVD, but there is nothing more to it. A gossip website decided to release a DVD regarding comedy of some sort. This DVD was not good; entertaining such a notion that this DVD could be good should not enter any potential viewer’s mind. From the moment you play the opening credits, you can tell that this was made on a budget; more than that, it looks like it was made on a budget in the nineties. The small, unimportant things that fly by you while the names of the people responsible for this DVD come into view would not look out of place in a movie like Hackers. A lot of dated computer code graphics, a microchip (because technology?) and the sound used for almost every “computer working” moment in every TV show or bad movie (think Dexter’s Laboratory meets Ghost in the Machine). That’s just the first couple of seconds; then we are led into seeing how “The regular person feels about current events” by Tommy Ford. The interviews are overly cut with bad transitions, and lead us to one of my biggest problems with the DVD, the skits. These skits take up about half of the DVD’s run time, and none of them make me laugh or even remotely interested in the happenings at Bossip. I would say that I might not get it because I don’t frequent the Bossip site, but I was familiar with the stories talked about here just from looking at social media, and none of what they were saying was anything new or exciting.  The problem with a gossip column creating a DVD for public consumption is that I will never want to go back to it, since half of what they are talking about are things that have come and gone. It dates the material and makes this AT BEST something to rent. It’s the same problem that I have with movies like Date Movie or Meet the Spartans; the current humor used makes them a quick burn and severely limits the re-watchability.

A scary premise, but overall this quickly becomes a story about one family overcoming obstacles to find one another again. Heartwarming, granted; however, not very fear-inspiring. Earthfall features a global incident, which ultimately could mean the end of days. A meteor storm strikes the Earth, knocking it off its axis. Terrifying, right? Good foundation, but based on what I observed, clearly not the focal point of the story, which says to me that this story clearly did not have its priorities right.

Now before I receive a tongue-lashing from our family-friendly audience, allow me the opportunity to clarify. I am not suggesting that idea that the main characters’ primary focus was to locate one another was wrong; I am indicating that for that to be the focal point of the entire story results in a lackluster movie. The actual grim circumstance receives very little attention in comparison. My observation is that the catharsis achieved by being reunited will be short-lived given the dire situation. You may embrace long enough to register the end of the world.

"Death by 100 cuts."

You should know the setup by now. Here's a quick rundown: it's 97 years ago, and nuclear holocaust has made life on Earth unlivable... at least that's what most people believed. Fortunately for humanity, several countries had space stations in orbit. These various stations eventually came together to pool resources hoping for a better chance at survival. The ragtag collection eventually became the ARC. Now, nearly a century later they have created a civilization ruled by the dire necessity of their situation.

by Dustin P. Anderson

We follow Melissa, a child neglected by her parents, who argue and are consumed by their careers. Melissa meets a crab and adopts this creature as her pet, feeding it food from her father’s science experiment. Melissa loses her parents in a tragic explosion and is taken in by her uncle. Twenty years after the explosion she has become a “public menace”, shooting anyone who comes close to her property, where she keeps the now-giant crab. The crab goes unnoticed until her eggs start hatching and terrorizing people in the woods. When people start killing her babies, she goes on a rampage and starts terrorizing everyone who was unlucky enough to touch her children. Can Melissa keep her friend from destroying the town?