Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 6th, 2009
When we left J.D., Turk, and the rest of the staff of Sacred Heart Hospital at the end of their seventh season, there were good reasons to believe we had seen the last of Scrubs:
1) The show had suffered the lowest ratings in its history.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 21st, 2009
In the first season of Showtime’s Californication, we were introduced to David Duchovny’s character, bitter yet upbeat writer Hank Moody. Hank, after moving to Los Angeles on the heels of his first novel - a critical darling entitled “God Hates Us All” - has recently lost his long-time love and, by extension, his daughter, to a straight-arrow bore who makes his girlfriend Karen (Natascha McElhone) feel safe.
The first season told us the story of Hank’s attempts to win Karen back and his increasingly perilous relationship with a sixteen-year-old Lolita whose inclination for combining sex with a wicked right hook leads to one of television’s all-time great novel titles. Oh yeah, and it also featured lots and lots of raunchy sex between Hank and many gorgeous women. This was a major reason for the show’s notoriety, but what really makes the show work is Duchovny’s portrayal of Hank. He imbues him with a charming kind of good-natured nihilism and, even when he is being a grade-A jackass, we still like him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 12th, 2009
“Four turtles. Four brothers genetically reborn in the sewers of New York. Named after the great Renaissance masters and trained as ninjas. They battled many creatures and foes before defeating their arch enemy, The Shredder. But, now a greater evil is poised to destroy their brotherhood. An evil born 3000 years ago.”
What started as a low budget comic has grown into quite a sensation. The Turtles are everywhere. There are cartoons, books, comics, movies, and thousands of toys. They’ve been translated into just about every language in the world. The 1980’s and 1990’s were alive with Turtle power. With yet another film now in the works, the Turtles are about to make a comeback. While the characters might not have started with the 80’s cartoon series, that’s where it made its greatest leap in popularity. The show ran for over a decade, a rare record for cartoon shows of the era. Then came the inevitable movies. Three of them in all during the live action phase. The Turtles were part actor and part animatronics Jim Henson creation ala the Disney/ABC Dinosaurs television series. The fourth was a recent (2007) CGI film. All four are collected here for the first time in high definition Blu-ray in a rather righteous collection. The case is a pizza box, and each of the four discs resemble different kinds of pizza. There’s also a bit of swag to be found in the spacious box. You get character cards featuring shots from the live action films, a signed black and white sketch, a comic book detailing events from the first film, and a “radical” beanie for your head. It may be a bit corny and somewhat impractical, but it beats those crazy eco cases that are getting way too popular in the industry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 10th, 2009
The Super Friends as a cartoon show had a long and sketchy past. It started out in the 1970’s and ran in nearly a dozen different incantations and over a hundred episodes until 1986 when it was put down for the last time. In the 1983-84 season, the series had been cancelled officially for a second time. This was due to the fact that they did not wish to compete with the syndication run of the original episodes that was already on air. Hence, the new episodes were dropped and didn’t appear until many years later. Here, the people at WB have compiled these 8 episodes (24 shorts) into a 2-disc set and dubbed them the “Lost Episodes.”
As mentioned, there are twenty-four shorts for this lost season of Super Friends. They run the gambit of subjects, villains, and heroes. In episodes such as “The Krypton Syndrome”, Superman is thrown into a time warp and has to deal with the impending doom of his home planet: Krypton. However, the decision he makes leads to some rather disturbing consequences.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 5th, 2009
I, of all people, should know that one person's cultural detritus is another's fond nostalgia, and what better example of that can there be than this release. A strange mix of athletic contest, pro-wrestling posturing and silly gimmick game show, this series (which has recently been reborn) pitted hard-bodied contestants against the even-more-hard-bodied (at least in appearance) Gladiators of the title. Some contests involve knocking each off a beam, or dodging tennis balls fired from a gun while trying to get in a shot of one's own. Or then there's swinging in on a rope in the attempt to knock the Gladiator off a pedestal. It's all pretty silly, made even more so by the straight-faced colour commentary. If the intent was to satirize sports broadcast generally, then this is quite brilliantly funny, at least at first, but the joke can't sustain itself over multiple seasons. Basically, it is what it is. If you enjoyed the show when it first ran, then perhaps you'll enjoy it again (but is there anything less intended for multiple viewings than a game show?). If you are unfamiliar with the concept, probably best to stay that way. For the benefit of the completists out there, it should be noted that this set begins halfway through Season 1.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 5th, 2009
“There’s one thing I always wanted to ask Jack back in the old days. I wanted to know about that Doctor of his, the man who appears out of nowhere and saves the world, except sometimes he doesn’t. All those times in history where there was no sign of him, I wanted to know why not. But I don’t need to ask anymore. I know the answer now. Sometimes The Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame.”
It all started some decades ago with the BBC’s immensely popular television series, Dr. Who. The show was a national phenomenon in Great Britain, but in the 1970’s PBS stations here in the States started to pick up the show. Tom Baker was the Doctor at the time, and it became a huge hit, particularly across college campuses. Eventually, like all good things, the series wound down and disappeared from the airwaves. But in 2005 the BBC decided to resurrect the Doctor once again, and lightening did indeed strike twice. The show’s new format and style appeared to pick up right where the old show left off.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2009
Running for a single season in 2008, this ABC Family production is a humorous pastiche of superheroics and Avengers-style adventure. Natalie Morales plays Wendy Watson, a struggling artist making ends meet as a temp. When she demonstrates incredible unflappability when a monster is unleashed at her current job, straight-arrow superhero the Middleman (Matt Keeslar) recruits her to join him in the fight against all sorts of bizarre menaces. A sampling of titles gives the flavour of the series: “The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation,” “The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome,” “The Flying Fish Zombification.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 29th, 2009
This was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy, and the first season is, apparently, the most highly regarded one. Here Ball is a widowed mother of two, sharing her home with best friend Vivian Vance, who is a divorced mother of one. All the other members of household are, of course, faced with the disasters triggered by Lucy. I screened this set immediately after viewing its close contemporary, Petticoat Junction, and the difference between the two was instructive. There are plenty of hoary gags and situations on The Lucy Show, but there is an enormous difference between the shows thanks to the comic genius of Lucille Ball. Her energy fills each episode, her timing is spot-on, but there is also her commitment to a type of physical comedy that to this day remains pretty much the exclusive domain of male performers. Not only does she make this style her own, she grounds it in a female reality. There is a reason she was so beloved a performer, and why her work still stands up today.
Though the image is a bit soft, with features losing definition in long shots, the picture is still looking remarkably good for television from 1962-63. The black-and-white tones are very warm, and the grain, though present, is minor. There is no edge enhancement to deal with. It is, frankly, very unlikely that these episodes have ever looked better.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 28th, 2009
Once upon a time, there was an age of TV where hit shows where women in their 20s played high school students, and an entire episode could revolve around the burning crisis of whether the dog that followed one daughter home could stay. It is from this era that Petticoat Junction hails. This series about a widowed mother and her three daughters tending the Shady Rest Hotel ran for seven years, and begat both Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies, in that characters from all three series would interact with each other.
So our principle cast here consists of mother Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet), daughters Billie Jo (the flirt, played by Jeannine Riley), Bobbie Jo (the bookworm, played by Pat Woodell, who would leave after this season), and Betty Jo (the tomboy, played by Linda Kaye Henning, daughter of series creator Paul Henning). Throwing in his two bits is lazy Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan). Joining the cast this season is Higgins the dog, who would subsequently star as Benji, and thus eclipse his human co-stars.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 22nd, 2009
I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life. The classics are running annually, still after nearly 50 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are the most mentioned and certainly beloved by generations of children and adults. I thought I never missed an airing.
Now Warner Home Video has brought together a special collection of the cartoon specials that started it all. It includes those annual greats and a few that I don’t really remember so much. The two discs include the following Peanuts specials:
![Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Film Collection (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Secret of the Ooze / Turtles in Time / TMNT) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-film-c-large.jpg)
