Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 11th, 2014
Joel and Ethan Coen have been churning out hits for decades. From Raising Arizona to Fargo and No Country For Old Men as well as many cult hits in between, the Coen brothers have a unique voice that has led to their long success in the Hollywood system. With their new release, the Coens delve into the Greenwich Village Folk scene in the winter of 1961. It’s a time that most audiences (myself included) may not be very knowledgeable about. The Coens take on this niche genre of music and present an engaging tale about a struggling musician and his journey to find success in an industry that at the time had a deaf ear to Folk.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 10th, 2014
Gone With The Wind is the most popular film of all time still to this day if you talk about adjusted dollars. The Birth of a Nation was the most popular film of all time for a considerable time prior to that. Both films could be said to have a benign view of slavery and white supremacy, although it would be easy to use much stronger language than that. In most circles, both films have been considerably discredited due to this myopic view. Both films almost completely ignore or disregard the incredible cruelty of using human beings as a commodity for commerce.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 8th, 2014
Instead of featuring episodes from this season in consecutive order this DVD set takes episodes of a similar theme from each of its three seasons and bundles them together. As the title ever so subtly suggests, these episodes all feature animals. Along with sharing a theme, these episodes all follow the same formula that Bubble Guppies has had all along.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 7th, 2014
Paul Walker built his career on playing tarnished golden boys (Varsity Blues, The Skulls) before breaking out with the Fast & Furious franchise. He wasn’t as decorated as fellow recently-departed colleagues like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Peter O’Toole, James Gandolfini and Harold Ramis, but Walker was unequivocally a Hollywood success. Hours is one of the last films the actor completed before his November death in a single-car accident. The film quickly loses its way after a promising start, but Walker is easily the best thing in it. His work here is a bittersweet glimpse at the sort of roles he might’ve taken on as he progressed through his 40’s.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2014
Long before Clint Eastwood was making our day as Dirty Harry or even roaming the badlands without a name for Sergio Leone, he was working the cattle drive on Rawhide. Rawhide was created to take advantage of the huge Western film and television wave that Hollywood had been riding for nearly a decade. With huge ratings for Gunsmoke and Bonanza among others, Rawhide was a bit of an unlikely success. Here the show explored the West on an endless cattle drive to get a few thousand steer to market.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 5th, 2014
This is the third stab at making an animated series about these radical reptiles. This particular DVD set is the lfirst half of the show’s second season. We are privy to a wide array of toys…er, I mean, characters whose stories are firmly established at this point.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 5th, 2014
The key to making any good romance work is that you have to be able to root for the couple, that no matter what these characters may face, you have to be on board and believe this cinematic love affair is meant to be. In the case of Twice Born, I have to say it does such a good job at getting me to root for this couple that I want to punch the film in the face for what it puts them through. Yes, you read that correctly. This film managed to get me so wrapped up in the characters that I found myself cursing at the screen simply because what Gemma (Penelope Cruz) and Diego (Emile Hirsch) endure is heart-wrenching to the extremes
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 5th, 2014
There’s a pretty good, southern gothic tale buried somewhere in Wicked Blood. Unfortunately, writer/director Mark Young isn’t quite able to extract it. Instead, we get a somewhat overqualified cast acting out Young’s down-and-dirty story of meth, chess and bikers that is exactly as messy, baffling and oddly intriguing as that description makes it sound. The film opens with a literal bang: we see the explosion of a shabby trailer. We don’t know who is inside, but we see a young girl stoically watching the flames from the outside.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 3rd, 2014
"His name is Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald."
Before November 22, 1963, that name was an obscure one, known only to a few people in the intelligence community who had him under surveillance for his communist leanings. But by a little after noon on that date in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald was suddenly one of the most infamous names in American history. He would share the stage with the likes of John Wilkes Booth
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 3rd, 2014
“The Sistine Chapel. The masterpiece of a sculptor who did not want to paint.”
Remember when Michael Jordan quit basketball, tried his hand at baseball, and then returned to the NBA less than two years later? Well, imagine if Jordan had actually made it to the majors with the Chicago White Sox and put up a .375/50 HR/50 SB mark on his way to winning the American League Rookie of the Year/MVP awards, along with a World Series ring. The artistic equivalent of that was Michelangelo — one of the most significant figures of the Italian Renaissance, but a sculptor by trade — painting the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
