Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 1st, 2010
"Earth: a unique planet. Restless and dynamic. Continents shift and clash. Volcanoes erupt. Glaciers grow and recede. Titanic forces that are constantly at work, leaving a trail of geological mysteries behind."
I saw a bumper sticker recently that read; "Geologists dig classic rock". I should have taken it as an omen that I would be spending some quality time with a few geologists over these last couple of weeks. It started with the excellent BBC mini-series How The Earth Changed History and culminated with the 13 episodes of the first season of How The Earth Was Made. It might be easy to confuse these titles in your video store. But, make no mistake about it. They are very different shows down to their core, pun intended.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 1st, 2010
WELCOME! TO THE MOULIN ROUGE! *tips her purple satin top hat with an amethyst topped cane* Come in, come in! Take off your cloaks and have a drink of Absinthe! So many lonely women here tonight that need a partner... to dance with of course! Hope you brought lots of cash, your dancing shows, and perhaps a nice big diamond for one of our infamous Diamond Dogs! What's that? Oh! Yes of course! I know, you came to see a show, and of course to see our lovely Satine! Well take a look see, here she comes! *cues "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" and the curtains pull open!*
The year is 1899, meet Christian (Ewan McGregor)a young, handsome, man who intends to be a writer. He moves from England to the Montmartre district in France to write about love. One problem, he has never been in love before, so how can he write about something he has never experienced? -crash!- A man falls through the ceiling of his room (Jacek Koman) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) comes in through the door. A few heads pop around the hole in the floor, and they are discussing what to do about their narcoleptic friend who can't stay awake during the rehearsal for a play they are working on. Oh how they need a replacement, but where oh where are they going to find one? Christian is upstairs rehearsing with the group, and he comes up with some lines that blow their minds. They talk about introducing him to Satine, but decide that will wait till after they have some Absinthe!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 1st, 2010
Two young boys start a rivalry that is forged into a friendship by way of helping an ailing dog. As one boy's caregiver passes away, the other boy's family takes him on as one of their own. This family struggles through tough times on their farm as well as tensions from bigoted neighbours because the boy they took into their home happens to be black. Such is the “family bond” thesis of this highly sentimental Xmas film, co-authored by Country superstar Kenny Rogers, and starring country star turned famous dad, Billy Ray Cyrus.
Presented by the Hallmark Channel, it certainly spends much of its time trying to construct those type of “Hallmark Moments” that tug at your heart. The first act (the initial 'unlikely friends' tale) is a bit too cornball for my tastes but darned if it didn't manage to bring in a more interesting story involving a black civil rights meeting, and a racist protest gone violent and nearly deadly. This lead to some interesting choices for the central characters at the climax, which play a slightly unexpected angle on what seemed to be a 'family sticks together no matter' what sort of story. I appreciate it managing to bring me back into the film as it was steering way too steadily into the territory of overly sentimental antics of an impossibly upbeat family...that and Billy Ray's character doesn't seem to visually age despite MANY years going by in the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 31st, 2010
For most people in high school, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is required reading. Sometimes more than once. Somehow, whenever it came time to read aloud in class, I always ended up with the part of Romeo. It certainly wasn’t for my striking good looks but apparently for my charming voice. As a result, I remember most of Romeo’s part to this very day. But would I be able to enjoy a fairly recent adaptation of Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann? We shall see.
Somewhere in Verona Beach there are two families who struggling for power, the Montagues and the Capulets. The blood feud has continued for years between Ted Montague (played by Brian Dennehy) and Fulgencio Capulet (played by Paul Sorvino). But everybody from their wives, Caroline Montague and Gloria Capulet (played by Christina Pickles and Diane Venora respectively) to their families have felt the impact.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 31st, 2010
Classic Albums is a television series that airs on VH1. Each episode is basically a short documentary chronicling the genesis and creation of a, you guessed it, classic album. These stories are told through archival footage, video clips, and interviews with the band members, production people, along with fans and notables in the industry. This episode highlights two seminal albums by Canadian prog-rock legends Rush: 2112 and Moving Pictures.
The first part of the disc covers the early career of the band, going over their initial success and their first few albums. After their concept album Caress of Steel fizzled with critics and fans, Rush was given one last chance by their label, Mercury Records, to create an album that had mass appeal. The band, outraged and defiant, wrote 2112, a treatise on conformity featuring a dystopian world where individuality and music have been smothered out by a fascist religious order. Though the album’s influence and acknowledgement to Ayn Rand’s Anthem was the source of some controversy, its themes of non-conformity and individualism, along with the fact that the music itself had pushed conventional boundaries and was, to put it simply, awesome, ignited fans all over the world. 2112 is described on the disc as the first time the group sounded like Rush. It is the album that defined their sound and truly set up their careers for everything that would come after.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 30th, 2010
Written by Diane Tillis
Lake Placid (1999) was a humorous film which played on our fears of animal attacks. It depicted a gigantic man-eating crocodile living in a lake near a rural town in Maine. The idea of crocodiles in Maine was a creative parallel to the alien-invasion scenario. The humans (park rangers, anthropologists, and wildlife experts) had to defeat the murderous alien (giant crocodile) before it destroyed the world (Maine). This concept continued in two direct-to-DVD films, Lake Placid 2 and Lake Placid 3.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 29th, 2010
Nicky Henson plays Tom, the leader of a hellraising biker gang known as the Living Dead. His goal is to make that moniker absolutely literal, and it helps that his mother (Beryl Reid) is a medium who has made some sort of Satanic pact, and the butler (George Sanders, in his final role just before his suicide) might well be an infernal power himself (his precise nature is never made clear). At any rate, all it takes to come back from the dead, apparently, is to kill oneself while firmly believing that one will return. Tom proves this formula to be correct, and soon almost all the other gang members follow suit. The one member who might hold out is his girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin). Meanwhile, as the Living Dead embark on a reign of terror, will anyone be able to stop them?
This is a pretty odd duck of a film, and quite delightful for precisely that reason. In the first place, the Living Dead are hardly the most threatening biker gang ever to grace the silver screen, and though they do rack up quite the body count of policemen and civilians, many of their other bits of misbehaviour are not so much atrocities, but more in the line of shenanigans (as a fellow viewer aptly put it, the gang don't become flesh-eating zombies, only unkillable twits). The precise nature of Reid's motivation is never made clear, Abby is so whiny and callow that one is hard-pressed to feel any sympathy for her, and there's this strange preoccupation with the idea of the frog as an embodiment of evil. But these very oddities contribute to, rather than detract from, the film's off-kilter entertainment value. There's a wealth of incident, so the viewer is never bored, there are some very fun chase scenes, and (which is a good thing) there is a rather knowing sense of humour about the whole affair. Definitely one of the odder horror films to emerge from England in the 1970s, and an engaging rediscovery.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2010
Anyone who is looking for a direct sequel to the 2008 sleeper hit with Kiefer Sutherland or even a connection to the original Asian ghost film might tend to be disappointed in the direct-to-video Mirrors 2. This is absolutely one of those films where the name is used merely because of its franchise value, and the film's associations are mostly just a few familiar names. Add the same basic idea of a haunted mirror at the center of it all, and you pretty much have all of the connections this movie makes to either of the original projects. With that said, there is a bit more to like about Mirrors 2 than you might suspect on the surface.
This time it's Nick Stahl who plays a down-on-his-luck security guard at another branch of the Mayflower Department Store. He is Max, who has been dealing with a great deal of guilt of late. His fiancée was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver. But Max was driving and wasn't paying attention to the road. He was playing a game of "find the ring" with his girlfriend when the tragedy occurred. As it turns out, Max's father (Katt) is the owner of the Mayflower Department Store, which is about to reopen its doors in New Orleans. The previous night watchman cut himself quite severely and quit his job, apparently going crazy during a night shift. Of course, we saw what really happened. It was an image in the main mirror that caused his injuries. The grand opening has been plagued with mishaps. Eleanor Reigns (Honore) has been missing for several weeks. Max discovers her spirit in the store mirror on his first night on the job. He also sees a vision of the store's executive buyer, Jenna (Romano) lose her head, literally. Later that night, he discovers that the woman really was decapitated by a shower door. He begins to see other prophetic images and decides something is seriously wrong here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2010
"So come up to the lab and see what's on the slab."
It was 1975. Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa goes missing. South Vietnam falls. The Superdome opens in New Orleans. Elizabeth Seton becomes the first American saint. Patty Hearst ends her fugitive run. George Carlin hosts the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Phil Collins replaces Peter Gabriel as the lead in Genesis. And The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens to absolutely terrible box office numbers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2010
A Joss Whedon universe is always a strange and fantastical place to visit. It doesn’t matter if it’s populated by vampires and demons or space cowboys. If Whedon’s name appears anywhere on the credits, you know you’re going to be in for one hell of a ride. It’s been a little while since Whedon’s been back in the saddle. His most recent series, Firefly, was fraught with problems with the network. It was very badly handled, and the show died an undeserved swift death after just a few episodes. Whedon appeared somewhat bitter after all of that and disappeared from the television radar for a few years. They say you can’t keep a good man down, and now Whedon is back with his latest mythology-heavy series, Dollhouse.
For a lot of fans, it looked like Dollhouse was heading down the same black hole that Firefly flew into. There were numerous delays in getting started, not the least of which was the writers’ strike just days after the series was given the green light. Whedon had his cast and crew already in place, but it seemed they were all dressed up with no place to go. Once the strike ended, they quickly punched out the pilot episode from the series. Unfortunately, the new pilot had some issues. Whedon and the network hadn’t exactly been on the same page, and as quickly as it had been made, the pilot was scrapped. Fans were getting restless. It was just this kind of pilot debacle that started so many of Firefly’s problems. Fortunately, a second go went quite smoothly, and the show was off the ground. Ratings were not exactly the atmospheric numbers FOX was expecting from a Joss Whedon series. There was already talk by the middle of the first 12-episode run that the series was in danger. Then there was a problem with the number 12. Apparently FOX and Whedon had another one of their, by now, classic misunderstandings. The network was expecting not 12 but 13 episodes. The result was a pretty unconventional final episode that just might have saved the series as it turned out. Finally, the show finished production with no word on renewal. The show was considered on the bubble, with most predictions leaning toward its cancellation. It seems that the curse was going to make Dollhouse just another of its many victims. But then something unexpected happened, and the marginal show was renewed. But that was to be a short-lived reprieve. The series is gone now and these final 13 episodes are all that you'll have left to remember it.
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