Paramount

For many, Saving Private Ryan has been the measure of the perfect war film in the modern era. Without question the Steven Spielberg film is a milestone in depicting battle on the screen. But I’m going to make the possibly unpopular statement that Enemy At The Gates is a better film, and the standard by which war films should now be measured. The movie is at least almost as good technically as Private Ryan.

“Don’t expect too many mistakes from this man. After all he does seem rather more interesting than just another reader researcher. For example; has he gone into business for himself? Was he turned around? Does someone operate him? Is he homosexual? Broke? Vulnerable? Could he be a soldier of fortune? Did he arrange the hit? Is that why he’s still in flight? Still, he may be innocent. But why didn’t he come in gently?”

Sydney Pollack might have been channeling the essence of Alfred Hitchcock when he directed 3 Days Of The Condor.

My history with Westerns isn’t exactly a vast one. I watched a bunch of Westerns with my dad growing up and I continued to watch the bigger ones of the modern era like Tombstone and Unforgiven as I progressed through my teenage years and young adulthood. John Wayne is kinda a mystery to me. He’s a huge gritty guy with a lot of patriotism and a funny way of talking. For lack of a better analogy, Sylvester Stallone is my generation’s John Wayne. Or Chuck Norris I guess. El Dorado is an interesting western flic because it was shot later in John Wayne’s career but he had still had the swagger of earlier pictures. A true classic revisited by the minds at Paramount.

“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye. So you think you can love me and leave me to die. Oh Baby, just can’t do this to me baby. Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here… Nothing really matters. Anyone cane see. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me.”

I don’t think I can ever listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without conjuring up the image of the gang in the Mirth Mobile bobbing their heads up and down and singing to the Queen classic song.

“White supremist world was cancelled.”

When you talk about Wayne’s World 2 you can’t help but talk about disappointment. I mentioned in my review for the first film that over the span of nearly 20 years the skit had lost some of its luster. I certainly wasn’t nearly as entertained now as I had been when I first saw the film in the early 1990’s. That same principle appears to have been true just a year later when Wayne’s World 2 was released.

Have you seen the Chris Farley/David Spade film Tommy Boy? If you have, then you’ve also seen Black Sheep. The circumstances might have changed, but the general idea is still there. Farley plays the mentally challenged family member, yet again. This time he’s Mike Donnelly, and his brother Al (Matheson) is running for Governor of Washington state. Spade once again plays the faithful employee who is charged with babysitting Farley’s character and trying to keep him out of trouble.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. No, I’m not having a Charles Dickens flashback or reliving Star Trek II. I’m talking about the new Trek release The Best Of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It does feature one of the best Trek episodes of any of the shows, the Borg extravaganza The Best Of Both Worlds. In fact this really does contain 4 of the show’s best episodes. The problem is that there are only 4. With the fan collectives already taking up Yesterday’s Enterprise, it’s not that great a bargain for the real Trek fan.

With the original series I see no reason at all to buy into a 4 episode release. This stuff has already appeared countless times in the last 5 years or so. The episodes appeared in double episode discs originally. Then there were the complete seasons. There was the remastered DVD season sets. Finally, the best news yet, the release of these episodes in high definition on Blu-ray. So, why is Paramount releasing these single disc DVD’s now? There’s no question that they picked 4 of the best episodes, and they are the remastered versions.

“Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those great American writers from the classic age. In school most of us were required to read various works from the writer. For many students those works included The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. The original work is a mere 20 page short story. For the last 15 years Hollywood has made one attempt or another to bring the classic story to the screen. The closest anyone got was Ron Howard who expected to bring in John Travolta

They say that it isn’t over until the Fat Lady sings. Did you ever wonder what “it” was or who the heck this Fat Lady is they keep talking about? I can’t help you there, but I do know who the Fat Man is. It’s William Conrad, who came back to television in 1987 as J.L. McCabe, better known as “the Fatman”. McCabe was one of those tough as nails district attorneys. He was actually an ex-cop, so had great criminal instincts. McCabe wasn’t above bending the law to put away the bad guy, and he wasn’t considered a very friendly type of fellow.