Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 10th, 2011
"Only one creature has carved out a life for itself in every habitat on Earth. That creature is us. All over the world we still use our ingenuity to survive the wild places, far from the city lights, face to face with raw nature. This is the Human Planet."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 25th, 2011
In the 1980’s, I grew up watching a lot of sitcom family shows as I am sure a lot of kids my age did. Somewhere in my late teens and twenties, I ran away from sitcoms and straight in to cartoons and wrestling. (you thought I was going to say reality shows didn’t you?) But before that happened, I probably saw every last one of those crazy family sitcoms. Including Growing Pains. So when I received Growing Pains Season 2 to review, I knew I didn’t need season one and could dive right in. (
It is Season Two for the Seaver clan. Jason Seaver (played by Alan Thicke) is still operating his practice from the home while Maggie Seaver (played by Joanna Kerns)is exploring a career in journalism. With Jason at home, he is able to spend time with the three kids. The youngest, Ben (played by Jeremy Miller ) is going through middle school.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 14th, 2011
When the WB merged with the UPN to form the hybrid CW, a lot of good things happened. The new network stepped away from the twenty-something shows that began to all look the same after a while. The network began to take on cutting edge genre shows like Supernatural and Smallville. But deep down inside there was still that family drama mentality that drove at least one of the parent networks. Life Unexpected is, unfortunately, a totally expected result of that dark place.
The premise is actually pretty interesting. Lux (Robertson) is a 16-year-old girl who has spent her entire life in foster care. She has been bounced from home to shelter to home again 7 times in those 16 years. She's lived with drug addicts and abusive situations. She's had it, and so she decides to seek legal emancipation. Because her parents are still alive and somehow never gave up their rights, she needs their signatures on the court documentation. She finds her father first. Nate Bazile or Baze (Polaha) is a guy who's refused to grow up. He lives in a loft above a bar he runs primarily so he can drink for free. His father (Thomas) owns the building, and the bar is just one of many unresolved issues between them. He lives with two roommates who are only slightly more mature than he is, including English teacher Math (Basis). He's shocked when Lux shows up, because he didn't even know she existed. Together they contact her mom, Cate (Appleby), who is a popular radio talk show host with her partner and soon to be fiancée Ryan (Smith). Cate gave Lux up for adoption unaware that she had a heart condition that required her to remain in the hospital until she was three. That made her a tough adoption candidate. So, when Lux shows up she is just as surprised, believing she was happy and in a family. The emancipation doesn't happen, and Baze and Cate are given joint custody of Lux.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2011
"How did The Bible come to be? The Bible wasn't always a book or even a series of books. In the beginning there wasn't even a written language. The prophets and holy men who roamed these lands seeking the truth and preaching God's word as they perceived it were talking to illiterate audiences who could only be reached by the witnessed testimony and the spoken word."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2011
"And it came to pass in these days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city. So it was that Joseph, a carpenter, went up from Galilee unto Bethlehem to be taxed with his wife, Mary who was with Holy Child."
Every spring around the time of Easter you could count on several annual films to make their way to televisions across the country for special family presentations. For Easter you had The Greatest Story Ever Told and King Of Kings. For Passover there was always The Ten Commandments. And so it is an appropriate time to see all three of these films make their way unto high definition and Blu-ray for the very first time. We've already reported on the excellent release of The Ten Commandments. Our review of The Greatest Story Ever Told will come to these pages very close to Easter itself. That leaves the one more in this Holy Trinity of movies to review.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2011
"May, 2009 - Seven brave astronauts are about to launch on the most challenging and risky missions ever flown in space. This is the last chance to save the Hubble Telescope."
You have to really go back to April of 1990 to get to the start of the story. That's when the shuttle Discovery launched from Cape Kennedy with the Hubble Telescope in its cargo bay waiting to bring the ends of the universe to our waiting eyes. I was there that day among the crowd of hopefuls as the shuttle ignited its thrusters and pierced the sky for space. I bought a commemorative coin from a roving vendor and drove the two hours home without even listening to any music. Watching a shuttle launch is an almost religious experience that, unfortunately, few will ever know. I've been lucky enough to witness seven.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 29th, 2011
"Jellystone Park, one of the nation's oldest and most beautiful stretches of wilderness. For years, families have headed out from the busy city eager to enjoy a little camping, fishing, and, of course, observing the park's natural wildlife..."
He's smarter than the average bear. Children and adults alike have been watching his adventures since 1959. Yogi and his young sidekick Boo Boo were one of the most popular of the Hanna-Barbera stable of talking animal characters that reached a peak of popularity on the Saturday morning cartoon shows of the 1960's and 1970's. The two brown bears lived in the fictional Jellystone Park, which is often considered to be intended as Yellowstone Park. Such real-life fixtures as Old Faithful appeared in the original cartoons. The park was kept in order by Ranger Smith, who was always frustrated by the plots and exploits of Yogi, particularly his obsession with acquiring pic-a-nic baskets. It sure beat foraging, and Yogi would go to incredible lengths just to snatch an unsuspecting camper’s lunch.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 24th, 2011
The home video release of Hereafter, like its Asian box office release, is the victim of bad timing. The movie has been pulled from theaters in Japan since the tragic events that have struck that country in recent weeks. It's unfortunate that the movie opens with one of the most realistic depictions of a tsunami that I've ever seen. The ultra-realism will be an emotional pang for anyone who shares the sadness of the current disaster. The film has suddenly been criticized for its graphic portrayal, but that kind of statement bears the mark of the worse kind of insincerity. Anyone who has seen the recent works of Clint Eastwood knows that he's never been about such things. Eastwood has learned to mine the vast treasures of the subtle in recent years, and the scene here is an integral part of the story he's trying to tell. The movie was filmed long before the Japanese incident, and you certainly couldn't have expected anyone to anticipate such a thing. Still, with all of that said, this is not a movie you should be watching if you find yourself sensitive to those images. With the real images we've seen on our television and computer screens, this will be hard for anyone with a heart. I'm sure that Eastwood himself has experienced strong emotions in the last week or so. Is it disrespectful to watch something like this now? That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself. I will say it's an emotional experience. Perhaps it's a film best saved until distance has dulled some of the pain. It was absolutely the right move to pull it in Japan.
The film tells three very separate and distinct character vignettes that don't converge until the final moments. Each of the three characters has been touched by death in some fashion or another.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 22nd, 2011
While Scarecrow And Mrs. King first aired in 1983, this show is really one of the last of the 1970's crime dramas. It was an early attempt to bring in more of the female audience that seemed reluctant to join the popular detective shows of the era. While not really a "detective" show (they were spies), it employed a lot of the 1970's conventions. Even the film footage has that distinct style from those days and type of shows. The idea worked, and the series did bring in a sizeable female audience, but it never really caught on with the guy crowd who found it a bit too relationship-heavy. The two leads were chosen less for their character appeal than for their apparent "easy on the eyes" look. Again more fodder for the chick crowd. The show was always rather lighthearted, even if the material was somewhat serious cold war espionage. The two shared a banter that revealed a kind of love/hate relationship and the expected sexual tension that would eventually lead to the two getting hitched. And while the series only lasted four seasons, the formula would end up being tweaked to bring us the more successful Moonlighting with Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, which took the idea into the 80's with slicker production values but still a mainly female appeal.
Amanda King (Jackson) is a recent divorcée with two sons and a nosy mother (Garland) who lives with her. She has a boyfriend named Dean who works as a meteorologist at a local Washington DC television station, whom you never actually get to see. While at the train station, she suddenly finds herself embroiled in an espionage plot when a package is handed to her on the platform. Then she meets government agent Lee Stetson (Boxleitner) who works under the codename Scarecrow. She's intrigued by Scarecrow and agrees to help him in his current case. Of course, she ends up in a more permanent role with "The Agency", taking a job at their cover corporation The International Federal Film Company. Every week we find Amanda trying to balance her new role as a spy with trying to raise her kids, have a normal dating relationship, and keep her cover safe from her particularly prying mother. The results are often quite funny. There is also Scarecrow's partner, Francine (Smith), who is somewhat jealous of Amanda and Lee.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 16th, 2011
Some of you might remember my review of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the first thirteen episodes which can be found here. I found it to be a great little series that was rich in its roots. Well, six months have passed and we finally get a chance to look at the next thirteen episodes. With a little bit of luck, maybe they will be just as good if not better than our first look into the series.
When we last left the Batman, he had taken part in a two part episode where he was having a lot of trouble with the villain known as Owlman. In order to restore balance to the world, Batman had to not only become Owlman but then turn around and partner with the Joker to defeat Owlman who had donned the cape of Caped Crusader. Wrap your head around that one. Anyway, all is safe and we continue on to the next set of thirteen episodes.
![King of Kings [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/king-of-kings-blu-ray-large.jpg)
