Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 22nd, 2011
By John Delia
At first look you may think that Margin Call is an extension of the film Wall Street, but as the film progresses I found a very good movie that really shows the effect of greed, contempt, lack of compassion, and survival of the fittest, no matter who gets squashed in the process. It’s like our economical climate these days; you never know when or where the next shoe will drop.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on December 22nd, 2011
“I'm just crazy about this store.”
Anyone who has worked the night crew in a grocery store, restocking shelves after the place is closed, knows how creepy it can be walking the aisles in the belly of a half-lit behemoth. Now imagine if you were being stalked while you stocked by a mutilating psychopath. This was obviously the motivation for writer/director Scott Spiegel when he created his Super-8 short film Night Crew with childhood friends Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell. After co-writing Evil Dead 2 with Sam Raimi, Spiegel chanced on an investor’s meager budget to elevate the short into a full-length feature slasher flick. The distributors didn’t care for the original title, and the film was released as Intruder.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 22nd, 2011
"How about... The Rocketeer?"
Back in 1972 Elton John pushed himself to the top of the charts atop the hit song Rocket Man, who was burning out his fuse up here alone. Well, it wasn't going to be a very long long time before Disney and company gave us a Rocket Man in their family drama/comedy The Rocketeer. It was the first day of summer in 1991 when The Rocketeer first appeared. The box office was moderate, but it had seemed like he disappeared from the scene for a long long time. He's found again, and you can now see him in high definition with this 20th anniversary Blu-ray release.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 21st, 2011
Most people if they were to look at my music collection would notice one genre more than others. That is glam rock. From the mid 80’s to early 90’s, glam rock was completely in vogue with bands like Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and Motley Crue. However, if you were to read up on your glam history, it actually started in the seventies with groups like the New York Dolls and stars such as David Bowie. Enter the movie, Velvet Goldmine, a fictional look at Brian Slade, better known as Maxwell Demon.
In 1854, at the city of Dublin it is said that aliens came down and delivered Oscar Wilde, a famous writer and poet, to a local monastery. He was quote once that he wanted to be a pop idol. On his neck, we can see a green broach that somehow found its way one hundred years later to the hands of a young Jack Fairy. Jack knew that he had been singled out for his great gift and that the whole stinking world would be theirs.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 21st, 2011
"Man, we'll die with you. Just don't ask us to do it twice."
Well... that's exactly what Sylvester Stallone is asking you to do. Many will look at this release as a simple case of a double-dip, and to a certain extent it is. But Sly isn't kidding when he tells us that it's a better film this way. At least I thought so. No question the studio wants to build buzz going into the second film, and this edition works as a sort of placeholder. It's still a tough decision, but let's look at the film again, just for argument's sake, shall we?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 21st, 2011
By John Delia
The inspiring, moving, poignant true story Dolphin Tale splashes into theaters this weekend with a family friendly theme that’s sure to touch your heart. Filmed in Florida where it happened, it’s a movie about a dolphin that receives a compassionate helping hand and a strange new lease on life.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2011
"In the farthest corner of America lies the nation's largest swamp. A hidden world where nature rules and man fights back. Welcome to the swamp."
Leave it to History to find yet another profession that they can deliver to our living rooms and home theaters so that we can be entertained by someone else's reality. When I first heard the title of Swamp People, I had something entirely different in mind than what I ended up with. I guess I was prepared for some hidden creature-folk who might be spotted between the swamp gas and the Spanish Moss Monster from an old Kolchak episode. Perhaps those are the images they intended for us to conjure, at least at first. But these swamp people are regular hard-working stiffs like the rest of us, only they make their living off of the swamp itself. It provides food, transportation, income, and entertainment. Much of their Cajun lifestyle has been handed down for centuries from generation to generation. And one of those traditions is gator hunting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 19th, 2011
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, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving 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.
The characters have shown up in quite a few areas over the years. There have been other specials and a couple of regular cartoon television shows. One of those was The Charlie Brown And Snoopy Show. It lasted only 18 episodes, and it's that final episode that is featured here. In it Charlie Brown recounts a Christmas in a letter he's writing. Lucy's putting together another play, and Sally wants to help Linus raise money for the production.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 18th, 2011
The attack on Pearl Harbor and the days leading up to that fateful event are the subject of the 1970 effort. The narrative jumps back and forth between the Japanese and American perspectives as just enough things go both wrong and right on both sides (the ascendancy of the militant army faction over the reluctant navy in Japan, crucial intelligence always arriving just a bit too late to the right people in States) to make the surprise attack inevitable.
For anyone who has had to endure the unspeakable Pearl Harbor, this is a welcome antidote. Its approach is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Michael Bay’s. There is no romance story here. In fact, there are barely any characters – top-billed Joseph Cotten has about twenty words of dialog and an equal number of seconds of screen-time, and the closest one gets to a character arc involved Admiral Yamamoto and his reluctant, despairing planning of the attack. What one has instead is a sense of people as chess pieces being moved about by a sadistic master playing solo. And rather than Bay’s ridiculous CGI, actual planes are used, with the result that even with the passage of years, the attack in this film is far more convincingly realized.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 14th, 2011
"Long ago in ancient China, the peacocks ruled over Gongmen City. They brought great joy and prosperity to the city, for they had invented fireworks. But their son, Lord Shen, saw darker power in the fireworks. What had brought color and joy could also bring darkness and destruction. Shen's troubled parents consulted a soothsayer. She foretold that if he continued down this dark path, he would be defeated by a warrior of black and white."
We all know who that warrior is, don't we?
![Margin Call [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/margin-call-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Rocketeer: 20th Anniversary Edition [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-rocketeer-20th-anniversary-edi-large.jpg)
![Velvet Goldmine [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/velvet-goldmine-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Expendables (Extended Director's Cut) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-expendables-extended-director-large.jpg)
![Tora Tora Tora [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/tora-tora-tora-blu-ray-large.jpg)
