Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 11th, 2011
"Did you ever notice how you let a Mexican into your home just because he's got gardening tools? I mean, no questions asked. You just let him right in. He could have, you know, a chainsaw or a machete."
The last year has been a hot year for the illegal immigration debate, between the Arizona law and the various politicians to the vigilante groups that volunteer to arm up and patrol the borders. As the debate rages on and the violence increases, it was only a matter of time before someone exploited it all for your entertainment pleasure. Who better than Robert Rodriquez and his usual cast of suspects?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2011
Written by Diane Tillis
24 is a political-thriller television series that spans eight seasons. The show focuses on Jack Bauer, a prominent and controversial agent within the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer using the real-time method of narration. The episodes are marked by the hour with onscreen digital clocks. For instance, episode one of Season 8 relates to 4:00 P.M. through 5:00 P.M. of that day. The show also uses the split-screen technique. The screen will display multiple images that coordinate with the different story lines that occur throughout the season. This technique is used when the opening credits are rolling, before-and-after cuts for commercial breaks, or before the concluding scene. At the conclusion of its eighth and final season, 24 became the longest-running espionage-themed television drama ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2011
Written by Diane Tillis
24 is a political-thriller television series that spans eight seasons. The show focuses on Jack Bauer, a prominent and controversial agent within the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. Each 24-episode season covers 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer using the real-time method of narration. The episodes are marked by the hour with onscreen digital clocks. For instance, episode one of Season 8 relates to 4:00 P.M. through 5:00 P.M. of that day. The show also uses the split-screen technique. The screen will display multiple images that coordinate with the different story lines that occur throughout the season. This technique is used when the opening credits are rolling, before-and-after cuts for commercial breaks, or before the concluding scene. At the conclusion of its eighth and final season, 24 became the longest-running espionage-themed television drama ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 5th, 2011
Written by Dave Younger
Twelve (2010, Rated R, 93 min.) stars Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl) as White Mike, drug dealer to the stars of the Upper East Side’s prep schools. They’re young, rich, white, beautiful, and vapid: texting and whining are their main activities. That and scoring drugs. And then there’s Molly (Emma Roberts, Julia’s daughter (niece. Thanks Robert) who’s quite effective as the one good person here. Although they’ve been friends forever, she doesn’t know White Mike is a drug dealer. He can’t tell her for fear of losing her friendship and, because she reminds him of his mother (who passed away recently), it would be like telling your mom you’re a dealer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011
"I love it when a plan comes together."
I love it when a movie comes together that offers you some value for your entertainment dollar and manages to touch a bit on the old nostalgia strings along the way. I'm not going to try to convince you that the new A-Team film is a great movie. It's not even close. But neither was the series a great series. What I am going to try to convince you to do is go out and at least rent a copy of the A-Team movie and allow it to do exactly what it was intended to do ... take you for a little ride while jogging those old memories just enough to bring the occasional smile to your face. Think about it. Could you really ask a movie to do anything more?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011
"Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in order... But, you know this story..."
Know this story, you do. It's the opening of the third, or actually the 6th in sequence, but it is the 3rd one made, unless you count... Never mind. This is the prologue to Return Of The Jedi. Not so long ago in this Galaxy, Family Guy took a shot across the bow of those Imperial Cruisers with its extremely funny and on the spot spoof of the first Star Wars film, or actually the 4th chapter.... Star Wars: A New Hope. It was only a matter of time before Seth MacFarlane would steer his own ship back into George Lucas's universe a third time. With equal parts faithful adaptation and off-the-wall detours, he's done it again, delivering another very funny tour into the dark side.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011
Futurama was the brainchild of Simpson veterans Matt Groening and David X Cohen. With the growing popularity of their iconic cartoon, it was no surprise that Fox would tap the team to bring another show to the network. When Futurama premiered in 1999, it was a combination of The Jetsons and The Simpsons. That would be ironic for those of us who think the Simpsons theme is a direct knock off of The Jetsons. It was 1000 years in the future, and the joke was that no matter how much things changed, they hadn’t really changed at all. The space-age series would use many of the writing and art team from The Simpsons. That meant the character designs, at least the humans, would look exactly like the people in the other show. The writing would include that same subtle wit that implanted tons of references for the adults who were watching. The show never seemed to click with the kids, but it was not really meant to. The subject matter was considerably more adult in nature, and there really weren’t any cuddly characters. All of this likely led to Fox’s decision to cancel the show after four years. It wasn’t a quick and painless demise, either. The show suffered through months of purgatory. It was on, then off again. The final episodes were moved around and often rescheduled. In the end it was an uphill battle, and Futurama lost.
But the cancellation was not to be permanent. The show found new legs on cable and finally with a handful of home video movies. Interest was once again high, and Futurama was back from the grave. Now the episodes can also continue on home video. Here you'll find a collection of 13 episodes on 2 discs.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 13th, 2010
The comedy team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer should be commended for their unwavering attempt to destroy the spoof comedy entirely. Sure, they aided the Wayans brothers in creating the first Scary Movie film (which is decent spoof film) but in 2006 they started their campaign with Date Movie and continued right through Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and now Vampires Suck. Did they succeed? And did it take the recent loss of Leslie Nielsen to have us be reminded that spoofs where once a glorious and enjoyable thing.
Well, while their previous efforts (I'm cringing at the idea that any “effort” was placed into making their films) where bloated with endless pop culture references that were dated before being made, Vampires Suck mostly just runs on one, the Twilight series. Yes, there is still a parade of references made, mostly to reality TV shows such as Keeping up with the Kardashians and Jersey Shore, but they mainly stick with vampire and werewolf gags that have either been done already or are simply too weak and witless to even register as a complete joke.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 10th, 2010
A suave Tom Cruise and a flustered Cameron Diaz (wow, what a stretch for both actors) bump into each other at Wichita airport, and a few minutes later do so again. Diaz thinks she might be on to something with the charming hunk, but she is more accurately into something, and in far out of her depth, as the plain flight turns into a gun battle and forced landing. Before she knows it, she doesn't know where to turn and whom to trust: the various menacing government officials (headed up by a sinister Peter Sarsgaard), or the cheery but possibly psychotic rogue Cruise. There will be many a narrow escape and an international location visited before she knows the answer.
Tom Cruise's return to action-adventure films was almost more notable for the off-screen backstory than the on-screen action. This, of course, was the film he chose to do when he backed out of the darker-edged Salt, where he was replaced by the rather more convincing Angelina Jolie, and which proceeded to beat Knight and Day at the domestic box office. (In fairness, neither film was a giant hit, and the overall worldwide business of both was pretty close.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2010
And the George Lucas Award for the filmmaker who has mined the most out of his movie this year....the envelope please. It's James Cameron for releasing not one, not two, not three, but four different versions of Avatar in less than a year. But I'll have to give him a pass, just this once. This 3-disc collection offers enough goodies that it will tempt you to trade in your still-new version for this complete collection. Better yet ... put it at the top of your Christmas list. The film comes in three versions. One with 8 minutes added. Another with 16. What's the point of having the new version if not to see the most extensive edit?
![Machete [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/machete-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![24: Season Eight - The Complete Final Season [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/24-season-eight-the-complete-fin-large.jpg)
![Twelve [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/twelve-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The A-Team (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-a-team-digital-copy-blu-r-large.jpg)
![Family Guy: It's A Trap! [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/family-guy-its-a-trap-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Avatar (Three-Disc Extended Collector's Edition + BD-Live) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/avatar-three-disc-extended-collect-large.jpg){kind=avatar}
