Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 16th, 2006
I really enjoy stand-up DVDs, but they're pretty formulaic. The show starts, there is usually a short un-funny skit, and then the stand-up portion starts. The comic does his show, the credits roll, and that's it.
This is really something unique and innovative, however. This film is something of a musical comedy, skit, music video stand-up film. It's a lot to squeeze into a 72-minute film, but is is done surprisingly well. The transitions work out well, and it really shakes up the standard notions of what a co...edy DVD should be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 16th, 2006
Valley of the Dolls is a musical that way way ahead of its time. Based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann, the film tells the story of three aspiring actresses and their attempts at becoming stars. Sure, this is an age old tale, but it had not been told as bluntly an honestly until now. The film starts Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate as the actresses in question. Audiences must have been shocked upon going to the theater, as they were much more used to rags to riches musicals such as A Star is Bo...n instead of the brutally honest vision that Dolls presented.
The actresses in this film are mean-spirited, nasty, drug-addicted women who will stop at nothing to get where they want to be, and they don't care what they have to do or who they have to step on to get there. As horrible as these women are, this Hollywood musical strips away all the glitz and glamor to bring the true story of what it takes to make it in show business. It is a groundbreaking film that was nominated for an Academy Award for its wonderful musical numbers. Both the beauty and the ugliness of the business are shown here, and the film completely took me by surprise.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2006
Tommy Lee Jones makes his directorial debut with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a new take on the western genre. Set in modern times, this is a unique revenge picture with a more positive message than most. Jones also stars as Pete Perkins, an old cowboy, who embodies all the classic western ideals. Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) is his Spanish-speaking friend and ranch hand, who falls victim to an unfortunate shooting at the barrel of trigger-happy border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper). After a...failed attempt at cover-up, spearheaded by crooked police officer Belmont - a masterful portrayal by country music star Dwight Yoakam - Estrada's body finds itself in Perkins' possession, and a journey for a proper burial begins. But Perkins isn't going back to Mexico alone. He kidnaps Norton and forces the man into the role of Estrada. Jones does a great job of walking that line between insanity and friendship, nowhere more apparent than the scene, where he proudly boasts of his triumph to slow his old friend's decomposition. (I'll never look at antifreeze the same way again.)
Shot from Guillermo Arriaga's literary script, Jones' interpretation of time and place is stunning. The film begins in a strange place and jumps around with great frequency. Pete and Estrada's relationship contains not a word of English. One minute, the title character is alive. The next, he's dead. Then, he's alive again. It would have been too easy for the film to crumble under its own structural weight, if not for Jones' seamless direction, which keeps the film's nomadic tendencies surprisingly clear. By excluding English (and subtitles) from the scenes with Pete and Estrada, the audience realizes just how special the young immigrant was to Perkins. Their relationship was something exclusive, and it seems as if it was the closest Pete ever came to loving another human being. Unfortunately, there will probably be a few snickers if I don't clarify; but for the record, it's a non-sexual love. It's friendship, plain and simple. And the fact the audience doesn't even get to invade that bond tells all the more what Estrada meant to Perkins.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2006
Frank (Peter Mullan, Braveheart) has been designing and building ships in a British shipyard for 36 years. Suddenly and very cruelly, Frank is let go without any pension or prospects, and is left wondering what to do. An attempt at job searching finds him virtually at the feet of his sister-in-law, so he is basically left to walk around this nameless London suburb stunned and unsure of what to do with himself. His friends Eddie (Sean McGinley, Gangs of New York), Norman (Ron Cook, Quills) and Danny Boyd (yes, that's Pippin from the Lord of the Rings films, a.k.a. Billy Boyd) all try to help him out however they can. Frank's wife Joan (Brenda Blethyn, Secrets & Lies) is unsure about how Frank is holding up, so she decides to try out for a bus driver's license. Frank's son Rob (Jamies Sives, Mean Machine) is a stay at home Dad, but feels Frank has been resentful of that in some large way because Rob's brother (and Frank's son) died in a tragic drowning accident almost 30 years ago.
Written by first-time screenwriter Alex Rose and directed by Gaby Dellal (Football), the focus of On a Clear Day is undoubtedly Frank, the stoic patriarch who suddenly finds joy in life again with swimming. He notices a boy in the pool who is barely able to swim one length of the pool while Frank can do armloads. At the end of each length the boy rejoices. He perhaps finds these qualities in his lost son, but he is so introverted that he hardly indicates this. And it's that that becomes the inspiration for Frank's quest, which is to swim the English Channel.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2006
Lately, I've been wondering out loud about what will happen to these over-produced teen pop stars who are thrown all this media exposure by their parents (to the point of exploitation). When are we going to start seeing some Playboy or Maxim photo shoots? When are we going to see someone on Cinemax After Dark, or even Night Calls? I mean, it's obvious at this point that Ashley Simpson can't sing, and she's starting to look more and more like her sister in an attempt to become her, without the appeal. And since there's a rumor floating around that she turned down a multimillion dollar Playboy photo shoot (after the proverbial "great deal of thought"), it seems to be the next logical step.
Enter Joanna Levesque (RV), a.k.a. "Jojo". I don't know what song she's famous for, I don't know what she's doing lately, but I know she's been thrown a lot at MTV and Nickelodeon for whatever reason. I know this because I watch copious amounts of both. She plays Hailey in Aquamarine, a bit of a tomboy and a close friend of Claire (Emma Roberts, Blow), who is the granddaughter (I think) of owners of a beach club of some sort, and they both seem to have a crush on Raymond (Jake McDorman, Echoes of Innocence), a local life guard and resident teen hunk.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2006
The thing that makes the death of Bruce Lee an even larger tragedy is that he virtually set back the kung-fu/karate genre from gaining mainstream recognition by a couple of decades. Set back may not even be the proper word for it, as he would have become a larger than life action star whose dreams were bigger than most anyone had anticipated.
In the case of Enter the Dragon, the film was designed to be Lee's crossover attempt into American films, and it's one worthy of his abilities. Bruce (or in this case, Lee) lives at a temple and is invited to a private island for a martial arts tournament where a man named Han (Kien Shih, Once Upon a Time in China) runs the tournament and possibly some illegal operations. His henchman is Oharra (Chuck Norris protégé Robert Wall, Game of Death), who might have been responsible for the death of his sister. Some of the more colorful characters in the tournament are Roper (John Saxon, From Dusk Till Dawn) and Williams (Jim Kelly, Black Belt Jones), friends from America that are also looking to gain the top prize. Lee isn't there to win the tournament, but to try to expose Han's dealings.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 12th, 2006
I guess because of some anniversary related to the initial version on Disney, someone decided to do a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and not only lengthen it, but turn it into a miniseries. Built over a couple of parts, the piece, adapted by Brian Nelson (Hardy Candy) and directed by Rod Hardy (December Boys) stars some familiar names and faces, but is it really worth it?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 11th, 2006
Gregory Peck plays Francis Chisholm. After losing his parents as a young boy, and then his sweetheart (to moral turpitude, it seems), Francis enters the priesthood. His unorthodox ways make him a failure initially, but kindly bishop and mentor Edmund Gwenn sees potential in the man, and sends him off to China to be a missionary. There too, things get off to a rocky start, but a turnaround happens when he saves the son of a local mandarin. His struggles are far from over, but through it all, he remains a triumphantly decent man.And one would expect no less from Gregory Peck, now would we, in this, his screen debut. This is old-fashioned religiosity following in the vein of The Song of Bernadette and Going My Way. It certainly is easy to cynical about it, and there is more than a whiff of cultural imperialism about the affair. Even so, and in spite of the very stately pace, the film is so fundamentally sweet-natured that it is very hard not to be caught up in it.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 11th, 2006
When Star Trek: The Next Generation began, we were introduced to a new crew and a new Enterprise. What I remember most about that first episode, however, was the new villain of sorts: Q. John De Lancie has created one of Star Trek’s most memorable and endearing characters. Some claim the Q character was really introduced in the Original Series episode Squire of Gothos. William Campbell plays the all powerful gamester Trelane who turns out to be a child of omnipotent parents who was merely playing with Kirk and his crew. While I can see the similarities, the Trek gurus have not officially endorsed this connection. I hope it stays that way. I didn’t like that episode. Trelane was quite an annoying character. That leads me back to my feeling that it’s really De Lancie and not necessarily Q that we’re in love with. Let’s face it. While some of the best Next Generation episodes feature Q, some of them are also pretty lame. Still, no matter how bad the episode is, it’s still worth watching Q. I guess I’ve always been a sucker for the clever con artist characters. Sid the Snitch from Hill Street Blues is another of my all-time favorite characters. In case you don’t know, Q is just one part of an omnipotent Q continuum. This omnipotent race or collective usually keeps to themselves. Our Q, however, has found a playmate in Picard and some of his counterparts. He seems intent on being that stone in Picard’s shoe while expressing some sincere interest in the human condition. While most of his appearances have resulted in mere annoyance, we can’t forget that it was Q who brought the Federation in contact with its most powerful and perhaps most popular bad guys, the Borg.
I tend to frown on such multiple dipping, but in the case of these fan collections I think they’re generally a good idea. The entire Trek collection would cost several thousand of your hard earned dollars. If you have most of this stuff on laserdisc like I do, you’ve been reluctant to plunk down the coin again. For me these collections are a good way to upgrade some of the more important stuff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 10th, 2006
Synopsis
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are two down-on-their-luck jazz musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago. They witness a gangland massacre, and in order to hide from the hoodlums, dress up in drag and join an all-female jazz band that is off to play an extended gig in Florida. The vocalist of the band is none other than Marilyn Monroe, and though it is Lemmon who first casts designs for her, it is Curtis who engages in the wooing. Lemmon, meanwhile, has his hands full when billionaire Joe E. Brown f...lls head over heels for his female persona.
![Enter the Dragon [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/enter-the-dragon-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
