Disc Reviews

"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.

 “Season of the equinox, the witch besets her kill; one last soul, the town to know taken against their will.”

I’m not the type that scares easy, and I’m not overly superstitious. But when it comes to urban legends, I know there are a few things I never intend to do: I never intend to say “Bloody Mary” three times in the bathroom mirror, I never intend to mix Pop Rocks and Coke, and, if there is a legend about a witch that will come after you if you break one of windows of her house, guess what? I won’t be picking up a rock.

“Texas Territory. In 1821 it was known as ‘Téxas’, and its inhabitants were known as ‘Texicans’. This is the story of their fight for freedom. This is the story of Texas.”

Texas. Just the name of our nation’s second-largest state evokes images of cowboys, gunfights, scenic vistas, and much more. Few states have the combination of history, natural beauty and colorful characters that Texas does. These factors have provided a wealth of stories, and James A. Michener’s Texas (based off Michener’s best-selling novel) recounts one of the most tumultuous times in the state’s history.

After a four-month hiatus, I have been called to assignment, a very special assignment indeed. Thankfully, the message did not self-destruct after five seconds. However, the message did have demands and required negotiation tactics. That is when I called in the SRU Unit from the show Flashpoint and they burst onto the scene. While they are handling a memo that has a notebook at gunpoint, they left me with a copy of Season Five of Flashpoint to review. Let’s take a look.

“If you have a tender soul, brace yourself.”

Sometimes I’ll get a stand-up comedy DVD and wonder how to write the review differently from other stand-up routines because there was simply little-to-no difference between the acts. Everyone just about knows — or should know — the basic formula. A guy walks out on stage and, for 45 minutes to an hour, delivers self-deprecating humor with the goal of receiving a few laughs. But then there are the comedians like Bo Burnham and Jeff Dunham, who at least try to bring something new to the stage by using music or puppets. In the case of Kristen Schaal, the mold continues to break