Disc Reviews

“Queen Ginnarra rules the Kingdom of Aberon with an iron fist. To her devout followers, she is the prophet of the abyss, a master of unfathomable power, commanding forces that lie beyond the grasp of mortal understanding. They believe that through evil deeds, they may win her unearthly blessings. She led a rebellion against us and murdered my father. I fled to the deadlands in exile. But there is a truth that chills the blood within my veins. Queen Ginnarra is not only ruler of our kingdom, she is my sister.” 

Crown Of Shadows sells itself as Game Of Thrones Meets 300. There is a reason even small budget filmmakers want to do something akin to Game Of Thrones. It’s been immensely popular and has made a mint for HBO and the author of the books, George RR Martin. But there is also a reason why budget filmmakers should stay away from such material.
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“In the beginning there was blood.”

Dexter Morgan is a forensic lab rat for the Miami-Dade Police. He really knows blood splatter. He should, because he moonlights as a killer. It seems that poor old Dex just can’t help himself. His parents were criminals, and he witnessed his mother’s brutal slashing by a chainsaw gang when he was just a young boy. He was adopted by Harry Morgan, a police officer. Harry saw the killer instinct in Dexter and taught him how to channel the urges for the sake of good. Dexter adopted Harry’s Code, which means he only kills others that he’s able to prove were killers themselves. Working for the police with his officer sister, Debra, Dexter is constantly just on the verge of getting caught.
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“141 years ago, my father was told of this valley, and here’s where we stayed. Seven generations. My father was told they would come for this land, and he promised to return it. Nowhere was this promise written. It faded with my father’s death but somehow lived in the spirit of this place. Man cannot truly own wild land. To own land you must blanket it in concrete, cover it with buildings, stack it with houses so thick people can smell each other’s supper. You must rape it to sell it. Raw land. Wild land. Free land can never be owned. But some men will pay dearly for the privilege of its stewardship. They will suffer and sacrifice to live off it and live with it and hopefully teach the next generation to do the same. And if they falter, find another way to keep the promise.” 

Yellowstone began with a lot of that there promise five years ago. Taylor Sheridan pretty much built his television empire on the foundation that was Yellowstone. It was a grand design, but something happened along the way.
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“The oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit, generates over $4.3 trillion a year in revenue. It’s the fourth largest industry in the world, ranked ahead of food production, automobile production, and at $1.4 trillion the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t even crash the top 10. The industries ranked ahead of oil production are all completely dependent on oil and gas. The more they grow, the more we grow. That’s the scale. That’s the size of this thing, and it’s only getting bigger…” 

If Taylor Sheridan does not own a big chunk of stock at Paramount+, then he should be a major shareholder, because he’s bringing in more bucks than everything else combined except for Star Trek. I’ve enjoyed every one of his shows to date some more than others. I think that Landman has to be the best of them yet. Yellowstone has been the great amber-captured jewel of the kingdom for over five years, but his split with Costner brings all of that to an early end, with the exception of spin-offs. I think I’ve found the new champ,
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“Space… the funniest frontier?”

Star Trek: The Animated Series first aired in September of 1973, four years after the three seasons of what is now referred to Star Trek: The Original Series. It was a straight sequel that continued the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise. All of the original cast lent their voices to the characters they played in the live-action series, with the notable exception of Walter Koenig. Chekov was replaced with an alien that had three arms and legs named Arex, who was voiced by James Doohan, as were many of the other guest characters throughout the two years the series ran.
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“Nothing resolves conflict like a good smack in the chops.” 

Sylvester Stallone plays mob guy Dwight “The General” Manfredi. It’s his first television role, and he couldn’t have chosen better than to appear in a Taylor Sheridan show on Paramount+. Sheridan pretty much owns the streaming service, all of it except maybe the Star Trek shows. He knows how to create characters and to then put the right actor in that role. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times now, from Yellowstone to Mayor of Kingstown and a couple of Yellowstone spin-offs. The part appears made just for Sly, and he makes it worth everything he has, all the while making it look effortless. That’s Sheridan’s magic, of course. Create and cast well, and no one has to really work at all. Yeah, that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it sure looks that way, doesn’t it? Dwight finally got out of prison last season.
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“I have seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb! We are not so enlightened as we are blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the Devil as Jacob wrestled the Angel in Penuel, and I tell you that if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists!”

In 1922 during the final decade of the Silent Era director F.W. Murnau conspired with screenwriter Henrik Galeen to do a film based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The problem was that the work was copyrighted and a protected work. They decided to change the name of the vampire to Count Orlok and do the film anyway as Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror. The case ended up in court when the Stoker estate sued the filmmakers for copyright infringement. The court agreed and ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed.
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“You know, we’ve got a lot to be thankful for. And looking around this table, I gotta say I couldn’t be more proud or grateful.” 

It’s the end of a tour of duty for the cast and crew of Blue Bloods. On Friday, December 13^th, the show aired its last episode. It’s time to say goodbye to the Reagans … maybe not forever, but for now. After 14 years and 293 episodes, the show comes to an end. It wasn’t because ratings had dropped. They most certainly have not. The show was actually still growing after 14 years. It wasn’t because the actors wanted out. Not a single cast member wanted out. More on my thoughts later. For now Paramount is releasing Blue Bloods: The Final Season on DVD so you can complete your collection. 
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“Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been 40 years since my last confession. I had a drinking problem, and that became a drug problem, and I ruined my life … There’s this thing that has come up. It’s a job, and it’s coming to me off the back of someone else’s tragedy. But maybe work will be good for me, you know? Give me a sense of purpose. Make me stronger. Maybe make my daughter proud of me.”

It’s the confession of a desperate man, and that’s the center of The Exorcism. This year there’s a new Gladiator film out, but Russell Crowe isn’t going to be fighting again in the arenas of ancient Rome any time soon. Instead he has been spending some time lately doing battle with Satan himself and some of his minions. The Exorcism was actually his first tour of duty in the genre. That film actually wrapped in 2019 but took nearly five years to make it to the box office, were it came and went with little more than a whimper. Later Crowe also starred in The Pope’s Exorcist, where he played the top exorcism man in the Vatican.
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“Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.”

When it comes to The Killer’s Game, there’s a lot to hate and just not enough to love. I happen to like Dave Bautista. He has the physical skills to play incredibly intimidating roles, and he actually has a good bit of comedic timing. The Guardians Of The Galaxy films gave him the perfect place to put all of that on display. He’s an entertaining part of an ensemble cast, and he more than pulls his weight in a crowd. He’s been showing up in some very important films of late, but up until this point none of these roles required him to step out of the comfortable settings where he can pretty much be him and it works on multiple levels. So we already had a pretty good idea where Dave Bautista’s strengths were to be found. It had to happen sooner or later. It’s obvious the wrestler-turned-actor has been having a good time in this actor’s game, and it was only a matter of time before he might want to see just how far his chops could take him.
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“My, what big teeth you have.”

Werewolf stories go back to Little Red Riding Hood, and likely even farther than that. Lon Chaney, Jr.’s performance as Larry Talbot, the haunted soul who bears the burden of The Wolfman, is the version that still remains the standard. Before that Werewolf Of London in 1935 started Universal’s dip into the Lycanthrope waters, and there have been a few classic retellings of the plights of these men plagued by the sight of the full moon. John Landis was the first to use modern technology to give us a most horrifying transformation in his iconic An American Werewolf In London back in 1981. The Underworld films have been my most recent favorites, and the Universal film is about to hit the box office with a remake of The Wolfman from the team that brought us the clever reimagining of The Invisible Man. Warren Zevon sang about them, and soon you’ll be able to ride a Wolfman roller-coaster at Universal’s new Orlando theme park, Epic Universe,
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