Disc Reviews

The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy, he had a taste for bourbon and a soft heart underneath a rather gruff exterior and was always ready with free advice.

“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”

Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy Rhett-Butler-gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age.

“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”

Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy Rhett-Butler-gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age.

In 1363, the Black Plague had done its damage, leaving most infected areas uninhabitable. Escape — known in Norway as Flukt — is the story of a family that sets out into the countryside to get away from the plague and hopefully find a new place to rebuild their lives. But just as I’m thinking this is going to be a movie about sticking together and fighting to survive the elements, it shifts gears to something far darker but not all that original.

"Space... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before."

When the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation beamed into our living rooms, I was quite impressed with the quality of work that was done to bring the next generation of Star Trek into the next generation of home video.

All good things must come to an end, and for the fans of Private Practice the end has come. I'd like to think that the series deserved a little better than the final season provides. Of course, you get pretty much the kind of stories and production you've come to expect in six years, but it's a short season with only 13 episodes and a finale that, I think, might have let the fans down. The finality appears rushed and a bit too plastic and meaningless, something the series itself never was.

"This is not what you think it is."

Sometimes a movie comes along that simply has so much to say that two hours simply isn’t enough to flesh it out to its full potential.  Broken City is a film that is filled with many great characters and story threads that needed more than just the 109-minute running time to tie everything all together.

“An affair born in betrayal will end in ashes.”

And a movie starring Lindsay Lohan and Grant Bowler depicting Hollywood’s most controversial and scandalous couple will share the same fate. Liz & Dick tells the love story of two-time Academy Award winning actress Elizabeth Taylor and respected theater actor turned leading man Richard Burton, documenting from their first meeting to Burton’s death in 1984. The key element to love stories, especially biographical love stories, is casting two people that will have chemistry

Most cartoons these days seem to be carbon copies of cartoons gone past just with different settings and characters. You got the superhero cartoon, adventure cartoon, anime cartoon, the really kiddie cartoon and the adult cartoon. Today, we have a classic I want to be a Pokemon imitator cartoon. It goes by the name Monsuno. Let us take a look inside the second volume and see if this one is more than an attempt to sell action figures and trading cards.

We all know what it feels like to nod off in the middle of a film. It starts with micro-naps that last a few seconds. They’re so short, we don’t even realize we’ve fallen asleep. But when we wake up, we feel totally lost because we’ve missed a line of dialogue or scene transition. I mention this for two reasons: 1.) the confused protagonist of Tomorrow You’re Gone floats through his life in a dream-like state and 2.) watching this incomprehensible mess of a movie constantly made me feel like I’d fallen asleep and missed something. That’s a problem because I was wide awake.