Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2004
Stargate SG-1 suffered a little in its switch to the Sci-Fi Channel. The loss of Michael Shanks was very deeply felt. Jonas wasn’t really a bad character, but it took me a while to get used to him. The guest appearances of Daniel Jackson helped a bit with a couple of pretty good episodes. I felt there might have been too many Earthbound episodes in an obvious effort to curtail the budget. Through most of this season, Anderson had been talking about spending more time back in L.A. with his family. (The show is shot in...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 3rd, 2004
Synopsis
The title has two meanings. It works as both the common expression, meaning that peopleare strange (which the show certainly demonstrates). But it also presents the “queer” as “folk”:i.e. gay characters are, for once, realistic, ordinary human beings. This aspect goes a long waytoward explaining the series’ popularity. In this season, the continuing threads include apregnancy for Melanie and Lindsay, and the nasty politics surrounding the campaign of thecontroversial Mayor ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 27th, 2004
Star Trek Voyager was the third spin-off from the original Star Trek following the Superior Next Generation and the inferior Deep Space Nine. While the idea was quite an original premise, the cast never seemed to gel. The obvious attempt at political correctness gives us the most diverse cast yet on Star Trek, including the first female captain. Kate Mulgrew is the weakest captain to date on Star Trek. (I know I’ll catch heat for this.) The reason is not her gender but such a lack of strength. She never walks but see...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 27th, 2004
If you’re passing through the video store and see a movie on a shelf that looks like the cover of Motley Crue’s album “Too Fast for Love”…you’ll be disappointed…or relieved (depending on how you feel about the Crue). The movie is James Cox’s Wonderland. Wonderland is a film about the porn star John C. Holmes (Val Kilmer) at the end of his tether. Towards the end of his life, Holmes, famously, got involved in a series of crimes known as the Wonderland Murders, which are dramatized in this movie. I wo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 26th, 2004
For years different TV shows and movies have speculated not as too whether there is life on other planets but, what are they doing on earth. Some shows like the X-files play out that the powers that be have sold us down the river to ensure their survival with a hostile alien race, or like in ID-4 and the Alien series are here to kill everyone and use the planet for their own will.
Director Steven Spielberg has looked at aliens and their involvement with the human race in a number of his films and with the...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) is on the job again with anotherpolitically charged case. In this instance, a skeleton is dug up that might be that of a young blackwoman. Her disappearance six years ago was badly handled by the police, to the point thatcharges might be laid. The investigation is not only explosive racially, but the way it plays outcould help or destroy careers, Tennison's among others.
As ever, the Prime Suspect series delves r...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
DCI Tennison can’t ever get a nice, straightforward case that won’t destroy anyone who goesnear it. This time the murder of a young boy is just the first link in a chain that leads to explosiverevelations of child prostitution and police connections. Tennison’s life is made even morecomplicated by the fact that she has to knock heads again with her old enemy St. Bill Otley.
One could be forgiven for detecting a pattern, or even a formula, emerging in this series.Eac...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2004
Homicide: Life On The Street began when Baltimore reporter David Simon spent an entire year with the day shift of Baltimore’s Homicide Squad. His subsequent book was a New York Times Best Seller and drew tremendous critical acclaim. Barry Levinson, Paul Attansio and Tom Fontana took the spirit of that book and created the NBC series. The first two seasons were spotty and featured only a handful of episodes each year. Season 3 marks the first full season of this remarkable show. Simon’s book detailed the psychology of...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 22nd, 2004
Season three sees Futurama cooking on gas. This is THE SIMPSONS on some mind-altering substance. For the uninitiated (and if you have never watched the series before - watch seasons 1 and 2 first…duhhh!) pizza delivery boy Fry has awoken from cryogenic suspension and finds himself in the year 3000. Here he teams up with the girl of his dreams, one-eyed space captain Leela, the hard-drinking, wallet-lifting robot Bender (he bends things for a living), the frankly barmy Professor Farnsworth and an assorted bunch of ge...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2004
The third season of South Park was a bittersweet one. It seemed that season 2 had floundered just a little. Most of us wondered if the talents of Stone and Parker had already run out of gas. Season 3 turned out to be one of the funniest yet. This was also the year that Mary Kay Bergman committed suicide. Mary Kay had provided ALL of the female voices for the show. This left the crew in a scramble to deliver episodes before they could find a replacement. This unfortunate turn did produce some memorable episodes, howev...
