Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 22nd, 2014
Billy Crystal has built a legendary career as one of the most multi-faceted entertainers in all of showbiz. He's a successful actor, comedian, writer, producer and director. At various points, Crystal has been a major star on television, on stage, and at the movies. He's entertained everyone from musicians to movie stars, thanks to his gigs as a three-time Grammy host and nine-time Academy Awards emcee. But what works best about his return to the stage in 700 Sundays — Crystal's Tony-winning one-man show — is how it illustrates the idea that virtually every entertainer gets his or her first round of applause in the family living room.
Crystal originally brought the autobiographical 700 Sundays to Broadway in the mid-2000s. A year ago, he reprised the role he was born to play for a limited two-month engagement at the Imperial Theatre. One of those performances was filmed and aired as an HBO special earlier this year.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 21st, 2014
“Kings are made, not born.”
It’s a provocative thesis for any story, especially since the same debate about kings has played out over centuries’ worth of world history. Unfortunately, filmmaker Lu Chuan largely decided to take a “tell, don’t show” approach with The Last Supper, which depicts the last gasp of China’s Qin dynasty and the rise of the Han dynasty and its commoner-turned-emperor.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 20th, 2014
For fans of many of the ghost-hunting shows, Preston Castle is a location many will already be familiar with. Once a former reform school for boys that opened in 1894 and finally shut down in the 1960’s, it was a location rumored to hold many atrocities against its young occupants. Whether you are a believer in the supernatural or not, Preston Castle is a location that upon appearance is beautiful as well as foreboding, and is the perfect location for a haunted house film. Of course the film boasts that it is inspired by true events, but I don’t think anyone should exactly hold the filmmakers up to a fact-checking examination, but instead just simply sit back and enjoy the ride.
Liz (Mackenzie Firgens) is a young and brokenhearted college student who has returned home. Thankfully for Liz, her best friend Ashley (Heather Tocquigny) is waiting for her back home and is eager and to do what she can to cheer up her best friend. From the start what works well for this film is the onscreen chemistry we see between the two actresses. Independent films usually suffer from poor casting decisions, but this is a case where the two work well playing off one another. It is very believable that these two could be best of friends, and this benefits the film later once things start to go sour.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 18th, 2014
Unless you have been living under a rock, I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the Ebola scare that is headlining the airwaves. The release of Chemical Peel couldn’t be timelier to effectively feed off the fears of the American public that is glued to their television screens, waiting for the announcement of the newly infected. This is the kind of free marketing even the big-budget films wish they could get. Unfortunately what is missing from the film are characters for us to care about and root for, and that is never a good sign.
A group of friends skip the fun of having a bachelorette party in Vegas and decide instead to have the party at Rae’s (Natalie Victoria) grandfather’s home. Sure, this means no male strippers or cheap buffet bars, but for the girls it becomes their one last party together before Angela (Arielle Brachfeld) gets married. The odd thing about this is Angela has never been able to forgive her friend Rae for an accident that occurred that killed Angela’s sister. Sure, Rae may have the best intentions of patching up their friendship, but Angela is just filled with too much rage to be letting go of this grudge any time soon. The mending of the friendship between Rae and Angela may at first seem like a movie-of-the-week notion, but it’s a more believable direction than we see here.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2014
By John Delia
If you are looking for a comedy with horror on DVD for a get-together with friends on Halloween, check out Witching & Bitching. It’s very raunchy, gross and gory, but if you like rude, crude and unglued, then this film’s perfect for an adult party. The film plays out in Spanish with English subtitles, but don’t let that bother you. The visuals are so funny and wacky, it’s worth a little reading while you watch.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2014
By John Delia
If you are looking for a comedy with horror on DVD for a get-together with friends on Halloween, check out Witching & Bitching. It’s very raunchy, gross and gory, but if you like rude, crude and unglued, then this film’s perfect for an adult party. The film plays out in Spanish with English subtitles, but don’t let that bother you. The visuals are so funny and wacky, it’s worth a little reading while you watch.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 16th, 2014
The creator of Dawson’s Creek and The Vampire Diaries, Kevin Williams, delivers a thriller that is a bold new entry in the crime drama for television. Season one of The Following was 15 episodes of nail-biting bliss that kept the viewer guessing and riveted long after its gut-wrenching cliffhanger. For a while I was beginning to wonder if Williamson had lost his touch with the Scream series, but what you’ll discover in the Fox series is that Williamson may just be the king of creating and penning one of the darkest serial killers on the small screen. Season one of The Following had us in the back seat as Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon), a liaison with the FBI, pursues Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) a charismatic serial killer with a devoted cult following.
Season two picks up right where season one left off with Hardy and Claire (Natalie Zea) stabbed and left for dead. Ryan manages to recover; Claire isn’t so fortunate. We jump ahead a year later, and Ryan has taken the loss of Claire badly. Not only is he battling alcoholism, he’s roped his niece Max (Jessica Stroup) into continuing his investigation into Carroll…”Wait, I thought he was dead.”, you may be thinking, but that is the beauty of television; writers can always find a way to resurrect that fallen villain from the dead just so our hero can hunt them down once again.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 15th, 2014
If you've ever asked someone, “What kind of music do you listen to?”, chances are you've heard the phrase, “I like everything...except country.” By that logic, a significant portion of TV viewers automatically dismissed ABC's Nashville when it premiered two years ago. The flawed, entertaining musical drama has deservedly made it to a third season, which kicked off a few weeks ago. However, I think it's useful to revisit Nashville's sophomore season. This set of episodes significantly re-calibrated the series — not always for the better — and marked the start of a shift toward the version of the show that is currently on the air.
Nashville was originally presented as the tale of dueling divas Rayna James (Connie Britton) and Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere). Rayna was the established superstar struggling to stay relevant in a shifting musical landscape, while Juliette was the brash, bitchy (but insecure) flavor of the moment who was burning up the charts. But it was a different pair — Clare Bowen's fragile, ethereal Scarlett O'Connor, and Sam Palladio's affable Gunnar Scott — who arguably swiped the spotlight during the series premiere with their stunning “If I Didn't Know Better” duet.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 14th, 2014
Everyone on TV has nicer clothes and a bigger home than you do. And I’m not just talking about fictional doctors or lawyers. Even small-screen characters with relatively modest incomes manage to live in palatial apartments. Need proof? The 2 Broke Girls in CBS’s hit sitcom have an apartment that is literally big enough to fit a horse. (Hi, Chestnut.) Season 3 brings a new pet (Ep. 3/“And the Kitty Kitty Spank Spank”) and briefly threatens to remove Max and Caroline from their home (Ep. 22/“And the New Lease on Life”). I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying things work out in the end. By now, the show's crass predictability has become oddly comforting.
Max Black (Kat Dennings) and Caroline Channing (Beth Behrs) are best friends, despite the fact that they appear to be polar opposites. Caroline — the disgraced daughter of a jailed Ponzi schemer — is blonde, skinny and chipper. Max — the street smart survivor who seems to have a million jokes about her deadbeat mom and unidentified dad — is dark haired, busty and sour. The two are surrounded by their wacky, warped surrogate family at the Williamsburg Diner in Brooklyn.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 13th, 2014
With the month of October in full swing, it comes as no surprise to see Halloween-themed episodes popping up. With the new DVD of Ben 10: Galactic Monsters, sure, it’s a cash grab for the holiday season, but thankfully on this release we get a set of fun episodes that are a bit of a departure from the average episodes. It’s not that I dislike Ben 10, but it’s a show I enjoy in small doses; after all, too much of anything can always be a bad thing. But thankfully, with the average five-episode release we get on the DVD from Cartoon Network, it has just the right amount of episodes to please everyone.
With the opening episode Rad Monster Party, the stage is set for this three-episode arc we have on the DVD where Ben and his fellow Plumbers (basically a term for their secret group of alien fighters) crash on Inner Transyl, a planet filled with monsters. Old-school monster fans will have fun with these episodes where we get the Cartoon Network version of some of the classic Universal monsters. This is first episode works as an introduction to the main villain we will follow for this three episode arc, The Scare. It’s fun seeing Ben have to do battle up against a supernatural figure rather than the run-of-the-mill alien we are used to seeing, but unfortunately the episode still follows the same formula we see in just about every Ben 10 episode.
