Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 13th, 2009
Jack Webb invented the modern television police procedural with the creation of Dragnet, first as a radio play and eventually as a successful television series. The series told the tale of a pair of L.A. detectives. There wasn’t any flair or action sequences. No car chases and no gun fights. When Jack Webb turned his attention to the patrol officer, he realized that some of that formula would have to change. But he wouldn’t tweak it very much. There was the occasional gunfire, but it was rare and was never the focus of any given story. Instead Webb concentrated on the actual procedures and duties of the everyday patrol officers,
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 5th, 2009
I, of all people, should know that one person's cultural detritus is another's fond nostalgia, and what better example of that can there be than this release. A strange mix of athletic contest, pro-wrestling posturing and silly gimmick game show, this series (which has recently been reborn) pitted hard-bodied contestants against the even-more-hard-bodied (at least in appearance) Gladiators of the title. Some contests involve knocking each off a beam, or dodging tennis balls fired from a gun while trying to get in a shot of one's own. Or then there's swinging in on a rope in the attempt to knock the Gladiator off a pedestal. It's all pretty silly, made even more so by the straight-faced colour commentary. If the intent was to satirize sports broadcast generally, then this is quite brilliantly funny, at least at first, but the joke can't sustain itself over multiple seasons.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2009
Running for a single season in 2008, this ABC Family production is a humorous pastiche of superheroics and Avengers-style adventure. Natalie Morales plays Wendy Watson, a struggling artist making ends meet as a temp. When she demonstrates incredible unflappability when a monster is unleashed at her current job, straight-arrow superhero the Middleman (Matt Keeslar) recruits her to join him in the fight against all sorts of bizarre menaces. A sampling of titles gives the flavour of the series: “The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation,” “The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome,” “The Flying Fish Zombification.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 29th, 2009
Transformers are something near and dear to my heart. I grew up with them, watched all of the episodes, read many of the comics and watched the animated movie more times than I care to think about. When the original Rhino DVD set came out a few years back, I bought all of the volumes despite the hardship that roughly $50 a volume would cost me. Now, with the 25th anniversary of Transformers upon us, Shout Factory has gained the rights to the series and has re-released the first season to coincide with the release of the second live-action film. Is this simply an attempt to cash in on the mega movie hit of the summer? We shall see.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 27th, 2009
Here we go with four more cruel experiments inflicted on Joel, Mike, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot on the Satellite of Love. The Mad Monster is a 1942 proverty row epic with George Zucco as a mad scientist giving future Frankenstein Monster Glenn Strange transfusions of wolf blood, with predictable results. Manhunt in Space is a Rocky Jones, Space Ranger adventure – multiple TV episodes pasted together into one dreadful piece of SF idiocy. Soultaker has the unfortunate Joe Estevez, under the orders from Angel of Death Robert Z’Dar, tracking down four teens who are supposed to have died in a car crash. Finally, Final Justice sees Joe Don Baker as a Texas Ranger confronting the mob in Malta. But of course.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 27th, 2009
So there's this group of flight attendants, and we follow their swinging adventures and affairs on and off planes. One, for instance, hopes to be an actress, and hooks up with an advertising executive. And if you care what the plot of “the first 3D sex film” is, you need your head examined. Much of the what goes on is mind-numbingly banal (SEE Wine being poured SEE Drinks being mixed HEAR Dull conversations ), though the acid trip that leads one woman to make out with a lamp in the form of a greco-roman head is something you don't see every day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on November 3rd, 2008
As I get older, I still find myself watching a lot of cartoons. New ones, blue ones, ones that I have no idea how they got made in the first place. So, with this practice I often run into cartoons that I have never seen but feel the need to give them a chance and see if they have any draw whether to kids, parents or me the cartoon nerd who enjoys such things. In my review pile, I stumbled upon one such cartoon and that was Pucca. From a critical eye, one might dismiss the odd characters and strange style rather quickly. However, to the careful eye one might find something a little more entertaining.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 25th, 2008
Sonic Underground would be an interesting study in the land of Sonic Cartoons if one was into such a thing. The series lasted forty episodes and was made at the request of Sega who needed the promotion for their Dreamcast console in the fall of 1999. The show itself was an odd departure from the first two series in that it always contained a musical number and featured three main hedgehogs instead of just one. The show did serve to introduce a couple of new sub villains and Knuckles the Echidna. I honestly don’t remember Sonic Underground; I am more familiar with the previous two series, but with one look at the dvd cover and description on the outside, I might have begun to see why.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 1st, 2008
If you’ve followed my reviews, you know that I love Stargate. SG-1 or Atlantis; I can’t get enough of them. When the collection of Stargate Infinity discs arrived at my doorstep, I tore into them like a Wraith into a red shirt. Now the Stargate might be an incredible mystery that delights a legion of fans. What is not much of a mystery is why this children’s cartoon version of the franchise only lasted one year.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 12th, 2007
So here we have another double feature of episodes from Movie Macabre, with Elvira this time taking on Maneater of Hydra (1966) and The House That Screamed (1969). The former has the disconcerting spectacle of Cameron Mitchell appearing not only as a baron (ookaaayyy) but being dubbed. He’s experimenting with plants on his remote Greek island, and a group of tourists run afoul of one of his results. Given how long it takes for the titular plant to show up and relieve the dullness, one starts to wonder if the title doesn’t refer instead to one of the hot-to-trot tourists.
