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Universal

Rundown, The (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2006

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For Director Peter Berg, the film The Rundown was an interesting note for him. Before his ultimately better film Friday Night Lights, The Rundown marked the first time Berg directed a film that went on to become a big success. Before The Rundown, Berg had films like Very Bad Things which was just that and The Last Seduction which was excellent. The Rundown also marked the first main feature film (main staring role) for wrestler turned actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. N…
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Dave Chappelle’s Block Party

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2006

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Utter the words ‘Dave Chappelle’ or ‘The Chappelle Show’ to any person and odds are they will think of the ‘Lil’ Jon’ skit or the ultra famous “I’m Rick James, bitch”. While this one joke doesn’t even come close to the charm and humor that Dave Chappelle had on his once popular ‘Chappelle Show’ on Comedy Central, it still has become the most popular joke. But enough about that and more about the actual film at hand.

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party takes place around September of 2004, which was before …
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U-571 (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2006

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Director Jonathan Mostow is an interesting director to say the least. He directed Kurt Russell is the great Breakdown where a man must fight to save his wife. He director Arnold Schwarzenegger in the third Terminator film where a machine must fight another machine to help save the human race; but before he made Terminator 3, he directed Matthew McConaughey and Bill Paxton in a film where men must fight against their wits to save themselves. Two of the three films are great and are a joy to watch,…
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Chronicles of Riddick, The (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 1st, 2006

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The Chronicles of Riddick takes place about five years after the events of Pitch Black. Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) continues to fight for his life on Crematoria (what a name), a planet whose sun, apparently, is so blazingly hot that every 15 minutes it blankets everything beneath it basically vaporizing it. But that doesn’t really matter all that much now does it. For Riddick, who is one of the few surviving members of the Furions, has been captured by the Necromongers and now must find a way to po…
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Van Helsing (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 30th, 2006

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In Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing, we meet Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) who is a professional monster-killer with a sidekick named Carl. Van Helsing must first track down Mr. Hyde who lives in the Notre Dame Cathedral and, sometimes, likes to venture outside for the occasional murder here and there. After completing this basic mission, Van Helsing is sent to the famous Transylvania to deal with Frankenstein’s Monster where he meets Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale). Anna and her brother Velkan represent the…
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Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 28th, 2006

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The 2005 Version of Assault on Precinct 13 is an obvious remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 classic. Precinct, for Carpenter, was one of his first films made before his ultra famous Halloween. But if anyone has seen the 1976 version, you can easily know what will come from the 2005 version. Instead of making a possible change to the 2005 version, Director Jean-Francois Richet decided to use the similar theme of a police station being abandoned that Carpenter did. Instead though, Richet focuses on the corru…
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Bourne Supremacy, The (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 23rd, 2006

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The basic plot to The Bourne Supremacy is very similar to The Bourne Identity in that Jason Bourne is still trying to evade any and all forces that seemingly will stop at nothing to kill this man. Naturally though, Bourne can’t just evade these forces in a normal manner, but he has to evade these forces using his explosive martial arts and wit. As we learned in Identity, Bourne had his memory wiped. To escape people, Bourne has traveled halfway across the world living on the beach of Goa in south…
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Apollo 13 (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 20th, 2006

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One of the things that Ron Howard ( Beautiful Mind) mentioned during various little interviews and press junkets for Apollo 13 was that he was surprised that up until this film everyone seemed to forget about story. He could not have picked a better cast to boot, with recognizable names as Tom Hanks (who was coming off his back to back Oscar wins with Forrest Gump and Philadelphia), Bill Paxton (Twister) and Kevin Bacon (Where The Truth Lies), along with Oscar nominees Kathleen Quinlan (A Civil Action) and Ed Harris (A History of Violence).
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The Producers (2005)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 17th, 2006

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The Producers has taken an almost cinematic storyline of its own. In 1967 Mel Brooks filmed this tale with one of his mainstays, Gene Wilder. The film was a modest success. It was as a Broadway production that this material reached a wide audience. The play has been a hit for decades now. It only seems inevitable that a new film would surface. This 2005 version of the story is closer to the stage production than the original film. There are quite a few more musical numbers, and that’s essentially where this film goes wrong.
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Cinderella Man (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 16th, 2006

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Are we that jaded a country when a movie like Cinderella Man can be somewhat ignored during its theatrical run, and yet when it still garners the occasional award nomination as it did last winter, people snort, “Well, it’s just your usual manipulative dramatic crap”. Yeah? So what? For god’s sake, take a look at what plays during the summer. Did we honestly need a remake of When a Stranger Calls?
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Doom (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2006

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I will be honest and inform you that I have yet to like a video game based film since 1995’s Mortal Kombat. It seems that no matter how closely they try to follow the story based on the game, the director always fails. One of the more famous director’s in the video-game to movie based series is director Uwe Boll, who has brought us The House of the Dead and the recent Bloodrayne, These movies, as the popular consensus agrees, were extremely awful. They lacked anything redeeming, despite the orig…
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Jarhead (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006

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In the era we live in, the eventuality of a movie about war was going to come, whether or not we wanted to see the film. Since the war in Iraq is such a hot button topic with a majority of people, regardless if you were for the war or against the war, Universal thought this would be the perfect moment to capture our interest in war. Enter director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) and Academy-Award winning Actor Jamie Foxx (Ray) and you know you have a m…
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Munich

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 24th, 2006

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Steven Spielberg has always been a surefire type of director to go to if you want a high quality film. I was first introduced to Spielberg’s work via his groundbreaking film Jaws. Since then, Spielberg has continued to churn out hit after hit from 1993’s Schindler’s List which was awarded a Best Picture Oscar to his most recent film 2005’s Munich. Both of these particular films have gained numerous political and critical praise for the messages and raw power they both contained via the film’s int…
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Brothers

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2006

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Synopsis

After hearing a lot of good things about a sleepy film from Denmark called Brothers, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. After all, we are talking about a country that has produced a visionary director in Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves), but whose films have been a little bit on the polarizing side.

Produced as part of the Danish Dogme productions and written and directed by Susanne Bier (who created the underrated Open Hearts), Brothers is ab…
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A-Team – Complete Fourth Season, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 19th, 2006

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The appearance of Mr. T as B.A. Baracus unfortunately overshadows the rest of this show. Why is that unfortunate? Because Mr. T’s appeal mostly comes from his performance as the show-stealing Clubber Lang from Rocky III, and not from any major importance he had on this series. While people certainly tuned in to see Baracus, they were often disappointed by the back seat he would frequently take to the other stars – disappointed because they wanted to see Clubber Lang on the A-Team, and not the back-seat charact…
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Magnum P.I. – The Complete Fourth Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 13th, 2006

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Hawaii 5-0 was one of CBS’s most successful shows of the 1970’s. A great deal of money had been spent creating facilities to take advantage of the Island’s unique setting. When the show had finally run its course, executives with the network were not keen to give up the production resources, so they simply created a new show to fill the same time slot and utilize the Hawaiian settings. Instead of a cop, this new show would center around Thomas Magnum (Selleck). Magnum was a former Naval Intelligence operative from …
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Motorcycle Diaries, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 7th, 2006

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The Motorcycle Diaries tells the story of an 8,000 mile trip by either motorcycle (hence the name of the film), raft, truck or foot from Argentina to Peru in the year of 1952. Friends Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Alberto Granado take this journey to travel across the continent. It’s important to note that Ernesto eventually became “Che” Guevara, a man who was involved in the political world. According to wikipedia, “Che” is mostly referred to as a Fidel Castro type figure, which is interesting especially co…
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Charles in Charge – The Complete First Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 4th, 2006

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Synopsis

I have to write an open letter to those who are (deep breath) fans of teen idol used-to-bes Scott Baio and Willie Aames. What the hell is wrong with you people? Did the online petition have THAT many signatures that it had to be recognized and acted upon? Did you really need to have the theme song to Charles in Charge on DVD? I admit, it’s a little bit catchy, but if you watch all 22 episodes in one setting, you need to up your lithium dosage. I know and understand that Universal is catering…
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Thing, The (1982)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006

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John Carpenter can be hit or miss on some of the things he’s done in his career. Vampires may be a good case in point. In his version of The Thing, remade from Howard Hawks’ 1950’s classic, he doesn’t focus on the creature as much as the relationship between the men in the camp, and how the paranoia starts to creep in the group, as they try to figure out who may or may not be infected by the creature. I might have jumped ahead of some people who haven’t seen it, but just to briefly recap for those few w…
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Brokeback Mountain

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 28th, 2006

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Brokeback Mountain tells the story of star-crossed lovers Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Both are young men, not even twenty, working in the year of 1963. They meet and fall in love on a sheep-herding job in Signal, Wyoming. The film chronicles the next 20 years of their lives from Ennis marrying Alma Beers (Michelle Williams) to Jack marrying Laureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway). The 20 years that the film takes place over show Ennis and Jack trying to lead a normal life without see…
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Prime

Posted in 1.85:1 Widescreen, Comedy, Disc Reviews, Dolby Digital 5.1 (English), Dolby Digital 5.1 (French), DVD, Universal by David Annandale on March 8th, 2006

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Synopsis

The recently divorced Uma Thurman is seeing therapist Meryl Streep as she tries to put her life back together. She meets Bryan Greenberg, sixteen years her junior, and falls for him. Streep encourages her to go for it, and then discovers that the object of Thurman’s affection is her son, whom she wanted to find a nice Jewish girl. Neither Thruman nor Greenberg know of their connection through Streep and carry on with their relationship, while Streep struggles to carry on with Thurman’s thera…
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Ice Harvest, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 7th, 2006

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Synopsis

Christmas in Wichita Falls, but there’s not much comfort and joy going around. John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have just stolen two million bucks from mob boss Randy Quaid. If they can keep things together for just a few hours, they will be home free and off to warmer climes with their loot. But a huge thug is looking for them, Cusack keeps drawing attention to himself, and then there’s the question of whether these two can really trust each other.

Harold Ramis’ comic noir/black…
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Pride & Prejudice

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2006

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Synopsis

The Bennet family is not rich, and when Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) dies, the estate will pass out of the family’s hands and into those of a rather pompous little twit of a parson. There are five daughters, and their future can only be achieved through marriage. Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) is the second daughter (improbably described as plain). Her path repeated crosses that of Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), an aloof, brooding gentleman who apparently has little use for her or her …
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King Kong (2005)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 6th, 2006

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Ever since making the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Director Peter Jackson has almost become a household name that seems to always guarantee success. Don’t get me wrong though, Jackson has not always been successful. Before making the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson had the film The Frighteners and a few smaller films where he only produced. The idea of giving this not so successful movie director hundreds of millions of dollars to remake the Lord of the Rings trilogy, made many turn their…
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Magnum P.I. – The Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2006

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Synopsis

Let me tell you a story. Back in 1904, I used to be in the Army. For 3 glorious years, I went to the office every day from 9 to 4:30 (with an hour and a half for lunch), typing up and processing awards and various evaluation reports and generally doing the best job I could. When I had to, I went out for field training and would (for lack of a better phrase) “play Army”, where I would sit in a communications center for 8 hours at a time, checking to see if the radios worked occasionally.

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