Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010
Three-time widower Ben Cartwright (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen. Years later in syndication the series re-emerged as Ponderosa, and a handful of TV movies continued the tale into the 90’s.We never have grown tired of the genre that gave us such heroes as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.
You get the first half of the second season in this 5-disc release complete with 18 episodes. The set is highlighted by some great guest appearances. Jack Lambert, Ben Cooper, The Werewolf Of London himself Henry Hull, James Hong, Dan Duryea, Claude Atkins, Khan himself Ricardo Montalban, Bob Hopkins, Star Trek's Spock Leonard Nimoy, The Creature's favorite babe Julie Adams, and even Holy Guest Star Batman Adam West.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 24th, 2010
Omar (Omar Metwally)desperately needs to write the biography of author Jules Gund if he wants to hang on to his academic post. In order to do this, he will have to secure the cooperation of the reclusive author's surviving family: his wife (Laura Linney), his mistress (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and his brother (Anthony Hopkins). Pressured by his girlfriend to make something of himself, Omar heads off to Uruguay and essentially invites himself into the Gund residence, an isolated mansion in a state of genteel decay. Hopkins and Gansbourg are quick to agree to the project, but Linney resists, and Omar is gradually entangled in the family's complicated web of relationships, while drifting into an affair with Gainsbourg.
I haven't read Peter Cameron's novel which which the film is based, so I can't say whether this story's vision of academic life is the same as the book's, but I will say that what we have here is rather bizarre. Yes, there is some truth to the old “publish or perish” saw, but Omar's desperate career straights are ludicrous. So the film starts off with a shaky premise, and is further saddled with a distinctly callow protagonist. Though he is clearly supposed to be a rather weak figure, he is so difficult to care for that the film has a void at its centre. As for Linney, Hopkins and Gainsbourg, these are people who could make a recital of the phone book interesting, and their time on the screen is compelling, even if the film itself isn't quite.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 23rd, 2010
"I have come to tell you a story..."
Director Phillip Noyce is no stranger to the spy-and-espionage genre. His father was an intelligence officer with the Australian government, and he spent many years of his childhood listening to tales of derring-do. He often recounts in interviews how he would play spy as a young man. He would pick out some stranger he'd see while out and about. For the next several hours he would follow that person, noting their actions, all the while practicing not getting caught. He'll tell you that his nerve got the best of him or he might have very well found himself following in the footsteps of his father. Perhaps someone else would have been making films about his exploits. Instead he gravitated to the next best thing. He decided to make movies about such things. Some of those films like Clear And Present Danger and Patriot Games are solid examples of the genre. Others might not be quite so successful at the box office but are often better than their numbers might indicate. Count Salt in that category. Salt was obviously intended to start a new franchise. The ending doesn't even hide the setup for another film. But the reality is that the movie made only about $118 million on a $110 million budget. $7 million might sound like a lot of money to you or me, but in Hollywood those aren't the kinds of numbers on which solid franchises are built. Too bad, really, because Salt is a pretty entertaining film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 23rd, 2010
"And now I wish to present an entertainment which has given pleasure to many of the crowned heads of Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight for your eyes alone..."
In the 1950's and 1960's Hammer picked up where Universal had left off. They became the studio for the very best in horror films. With names like Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney finally reaching the end of their reign, Hammer offered up the likes of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. They resurrected all of the famous Universal monsters in their own image. Now we had a new cycle of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and The Mummy. While the films were somewhat low-budget and released mostly through the drive-in circuit, these films made a bloody splash with horror fans all over the world. But by the time the 1970's had begun, the studio was falling behind in the horror genre. Anthony Hinds had left the studio, and with him went some of the passion for the horror films that made Hammer famous. The studio heads became more interested in other kinds of films, and the horror department languished for a time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 23rd, 2010
Written by Diane Tillis
It is hard to talk about Inception without spoiling something. It is also hard to read any review and get a full feel for the film. Inception truly needs to be seen to understand why it is so amazing. On one level, it is an incredible action film that revolves around the heist scenario set in exotic locations such as France and Japan. On another level, the core purpose of the film is a complex discovery into dreams and the subconscious, and the consequences that come with manipulating the mind of another person. Inception is packed with inventive action, high drama, ideas and emotion. It is a masterpiece; whether it makes a billion dollars or not, it is a triumph for mainstream cinema. As the complexities of the film unravel themselves on the screen, Inception stands as a reminder that there is more to mainstream cinema than mindless entertainment. It forces the audience to think and question everything they are experiencing. If you give Inception the opportunity, I promise you will not be disappointed. In fact, you will want to talk more and more about the film once the credits roll to figure out what it all means. This is a sign of great cinema! Just for precaution, possible spoilers ahead!!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 23rd, 2010
Written by Dave Younger
This is an entertaining and informative biopic of the American icon. Starting with a $600 loan from the bank, he parlays his good fortune of coming across Marilyn Monroe pay-the-rent nudes into an I-gotta-see-this magazine. Along the way he publishes some great fiction – Ray Bradbury says nobody wanted his Fahrenheit 451, so he sells it to Hef for $400 – and non-fiction: groundbreaking interviews with Jimmy Carter, Miles Davis and John Lennon. His road was filled with battles, because America in the 50s was staunchly conservative. And racist, so imagine the shock of seeing blacks and whites mingle on his TV show Playboy’s Penthouse. (Sammy Davis Jr. is given a puppy for Christmas by the eternally suave Hef – “Oh, hi, I didn’t see you come in.”)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 23rd, 2010
Michael McDonald has been around for a very long time. In fact, with his white hair and beard McDonald makes a perfect little musical Santa. The man began his career as a backup singer for Steely Dan but made his real fame when he became part of The Doobie Brothers in the 1970's. But by 1982 it was already all over for the super-group. After about 5 years of wall-to-wall hits the group disbanded, and McDonald went out on his own. His first solo album was an almost instant hit. Unfortunately for McDonald and his many fans, he wasn't the most prolific artist and took 9 years to follow up that album. By then times had changed, and he never has quite captured the fame that started with The Doobie Brothers and continued through his early solo career.
While McDonald's solo career hasn't exactly been soaring in the last 20 years, he has found ways to stay in touch with the loyal fan base. Christmas has been kind to the rocker. He has released a couple of Christmas albums with some level of success. He also continues to do Christmas concerts, a tradition that began in his Doobie Brothers days.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 23rd, 2010
In Macao, a trio of gunmen butcher a family. Only the mother survives (barely), and her father (aging French rocker Johnny Hallyday, looking as hardboiled and grotesque as Mickey Rourke), a restaurateur who knows altogether too much about how to get by in the violent underworld, comes to town and sets out on a mission of vengeance. He hires a trio of hit men, and works with them in tracking down his enemies. They have to do so quickly, though, because Hallyday has been shot before, and the bullet lodged in his brain is gradually stealing his memory away. He wants his revenge while he can still remember why it is necessary.
Johnnie To's crime thriller is as stylized as anything John Woo did in his prime, and shows, post-Woo, that there are still new ways of choreographing violent shoot-outs. A massive showdown in a junkyard is a set-piece of such visual beauty as to be worth the price of admission in and of itself. The mix of gangster film, revenge saga, Memento, and fable will understandably be a bit rich for some palates, but taken in the right spirit, this is intense, deliriously excessive entertainment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 22nd, 2010
One man. One alien. One choice.
That’s the tag line for Hunter Prey, the latest project from Sandy Collora, idol to fanboys everywhere thanks to his 2003 short film, Batman: Dead End, believed by many to be the best fan film ever made. Well, after a long wait, he has finally made his first full-length feature film, and though it’s clearly hovering around the bottom rung of the budget ladder, there is much to admire here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2010
Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) are two cowboys in an era where their kind is becoming extinct. After a hard winter in the mountains, they discover that most of the ranches they knew have vanished, the land being bought up by Eastern corporations. They find work on the ranch once owned by Jim Davis, though he now answers to accountants back East. And though life, at first, seems all right, bit by bit they witness the end of their era, as a way of life dies, and the men who lived it are pushed to suicide, desperation, robbery and worse.
There were numerous “death of the west” movies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, films whose subjects also reflected the fact that the Western itself, as a genre, was entering a near-terminal decline from which it has never fully recovered (these days, if one Western per year comes out, that's doing pretty well, and yet there was a time when there were more Westerns pumped out than any other genre). Unlike the blaze of glory tales of Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch being the best example), Monte Walsh is more of a tone poem. There is very little plot. We watch a few seasons in Monte's life, see him at work and play, see the tentative romance between him and prostitute Jeanne Moreau, see his sadness over a vanishing world and disappearing friends. Then, an almost subterranean thread involving the increasingly desperate straights of Mitch Ryan rises to the foreground in the final act as tragedy descends.
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