Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 21st, 2010
This is the final seasons, so we are well into the series. Its groundbreaking nature (an unmarried professional woman as a central character) has obviously long since ceased to be a novelty, and the show is, by this point in its existence, what one might call a fixture. This is merely by way of observation, and not a criticism, because the writing remains as strong as ever, and the show has stood up well to the test of time. Not every joke is a winner, of course, and there are plenty of situations whose outcomes are visible a mile off. So name the sitcom for which this isn’t true. But it was the characters more than anything else that won audiences over, and the terrific chemistry of eccentricity and camaraderie is very much in evidence here. Humanity over ratings is typical of the show’s philosophy and spirit.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is classic TV comedy at its best. This show is legendary, and still ranks amongst the top comedy sitcoms of all time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 16th, 2010
Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is going through more than the usual puberty traumas. She pees on the carpet, curses a blue streak, causes objects to fly around the room, and speaks in the voice of Mercedes McCambridge. Her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) takes her to every medical professional under the sun, to no avail. With her daughter's life in the balance, she turns to Father Karras (Jason Miller), asking him to perform an exorcism. But not only is he skeptical, he has his own problems, not least of which is losing his faith. Meanwhile, Regan's symptoms of possession grow steadily worse...
The most successful horror film of all time (and, adjusting for inflation, still the ninth most successful film ever made) works as well as it does for a number of reasons. The performances, especially from Burstyn and Miller, are grounded and very convincing. The visual effects still hold up, but the sound design is as powerful as it ever was. It's also a smart, adult horror film, such that even if one disagrees with its philosophical and ideological stance, it remains no less compelling, no less interesting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 13th, 2010
"In 1539 The Knight Templars of Malta paid tribute to Charles V of Spain by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels --- but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token, and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day."
What is not a mystery today is the significant role that The Maltese Falcon has played in cinema history. The film itself was a remake. In fact, it was actually Warner's third attempt to film the Dashiell Hammett novel in a single decade. The first version came in 1931 and stared Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. That film also featured Dwight Frye as Wilmer Cook. The film was a moderate success but never really delivered on the potential of the source material. Five years later Warner would attempt a comedy version of the story in Satan Met A Lady. It was a total flop. It would only take another five years before the studio took its third crack at the material. In this case, the third time certainly was a charm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 13th, 2010
By 1948 John Huston had proven his ability as a director with just his first film, The Maltese Falcon. Since then he had returned to Humphrey Bogart in Across The Pacific and again in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Each of these films presented the star in very different surroundings and situations. His Dobbs character here couldn't have been any farther from his Sam Spade character. But in each case Huston relied on his leading man to dominate the screen with his trademark mannerisms and his ability to liven up even the most cliché of dialog. Now Warner is bringing these classic Huston and Bogart collaborations to Blu-ray, and it's about time.
Dobbs (Bogart) and Curtin (Holt) are down-on-their-luck men trying to make a living in Tampico, Mexico during some rough times. Dobbs has taken to street hustling for enough to buy a meal or a shave. The two try working on a work crew but get ripped off by the foreman. It seems as though there is no way for the two men to get ahead. They hear a story from old-timer Howard (Huston) who regales the two with stories of striking it rich prospecting the mountains for gold. He claims to have a nose for finding the stuff in remote areas that no one else would think of looking. All he needs is a stake. When Hobbs hits a small lottery, he combines his money with Curtin’s and the three buy the supplies they need to set off after the mother lode. In what turns out to be the worst luck in the world, the three find a strong deposit and pull out over a hundred thousand bucks worth of gold dust. The success leads to suspicion, particularly for Dobbs who no longer trusts his two partners. They have to defend themselves against bandits and eventually each other in order to get off the mountain with their "goods" as they call the gold, or even their lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2010
There hasn't been a show quite like Human Target on television. There are certainly action shows, and there have been many shows that have taken on the "private" bodyguard or dedicated do-gooder. But I haven't seen a series yet that managed to capture the kind of action that you only find in big-budget feature films on the smaller scale and more limited budget of television. That is, until I saw the 12 episodes of the first season of Human Target. I remember seeing a huge advertisement blitz around the time of the Super Bowl, but I've seen a ton of these dramatic previews that only seemed to lose the sizzle over the course of a season, or even a single episode.
Christopher Chance (Valley) has a mysterious past. We get the idea he was a paid assassin for some sinister organization. He, at some point, has had a change of heart. It's an incident that is only hinted at until the final episode of the season. He now works with former San Francisco detective Winston (McBride). They provide protection services for people who find themselves in danger or in need of being rescued. They function outside of the normal boundaries of the law. Winston has some pretty impressive connections that allow them to have access to sensitive information. These connections also come in handy during a pinch. Many of these people are folks that they had already protected at some point in the past. The team is often assisted by Guerrero (Haley). He is another former bad guy from Chance's old organization. Their old boss is trying to track down Chance. We don't completely understand the relationship Chance had with his boss, but we know that they were close and the Boss considered it a personal betrayal when he left the company. We know that the falling out involved a woman named Katherine, and she's a source of great guilt for Chance. Of course, much of this will be revealed in the last episode of the season.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2010
Charlie Sheen is an unlikely actor to star in a television sit-com. Even after watching the show, I’m not sure how anyone came up with the idea in the first place. He has little to no comedic timing, and he’s about as funny as a funeral. The thing that works here, however, is that he really doesn’t need to be all that funny to make this show work. Sheen pretty much deadpans his entire performance, which generously enough works rather well teamed with the more manic comedy of Jon Cryer. Throw into the mix a rather extraordinary young child actor in Angus T. Jones, and suddenly a show that looks terrible on paper turns out to be pretty dang funny. We’re not talking Fred Sanford funny, but I caught myself laughing far more often than I expected to. I had only caught the show before in bits and pieces and was never all that fond of what I saw. Watching these DVD episodes from the third season shed some new light on the show for me.
Charlie Harper (Sheen) is your typical womanizing bachelor. He’s got plenty of coin because he writes those annoying jingles you hear on commercials. He also happens to go through plenty of women. He’s got a swank place on the beach, and life is pretty much one big party until his brother Alan (Cryer) shows up on his doorstep along with his son Jake (Jones). In typical Felix Unger/Oscar Madison style, Alan’s been kicked out by his wife of 12 years and needs a place to stay for “just a little while”. Of course, Alan’s lifestyle is drastically different from Charlie’s. He’s got the responsibility of raising his son, and he’s rather obsessive-compulsive. As I’ve already mentioned, there is no escaping the obvious Odd Couple revival at work here, down to the slob vs. the neat-freak mentalities. Here we add the presence of an impressionable child. Most of the best laughs come when Charlie is trying to educate young Jake to his own philosophies of life. Naturally Alan considers him a bad influence, but then again, he is a guest in Charlie’s house. Helping to spread the humor out a bit, we get some great supporting work by Holland Taylor, who plays the boys’ smothering mother. Every good sit-com needs the nosy or pesky next door neighbor, and Melanie Lynskey fits the bill as the rapid staler, Rose. Some ethnic humor is provided by bossy housekeeper Berta, played by sit-com veteran Conchata Ferrell. New to the cast in season three is April Bowlby as the brainless Kandi dating Alan. As a particular treat, we get a visit from Charlie’s real life padre; Martin Sheen is an extremely off-the-wall character, the guys’s… what else… dad. If all of this sounds a bit complicated, it really isn’t. My best advice is not to ask too many questions, and enjoy the ride.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2010
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was the first movie I ever saw on HBO. These were the very early days of the cable network. It was before the dawn of any real home video. It was at my Aunt Shirley's house that several members of the extended family gathered in dining room chairs around a 19-inch television to watch a movie uncut and without commercial interruption for the first time in our lives. A lot has changed since that 1970's afternoon at my aunt's house. Today we have hundreds of such choices on our television dials. I've seen a huge wave of home video technologies since that day that have included CED video discs, VHS/Beta, laserdisc, DVD, and now high-definition Blu-ray and movies on demand. The entire game has changed since that gathering 35 or so years ago. One thing has not changed a bit. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was a dynamic and compelling film that day. It remains so today.
R.P. McMurphy (Nicholson) is a repeat criminal who has caused more than his share of trouble in the system. He is sent to the Oregon State Hospital to have his sanity evaluated. There the head psychiatrist Dr. Spivey (Brooks) doesn't really think he's crazy. But McMurphy is held over for observation. He's placed inside a general population ward where he comes into contact with the resident "crazies" of the hospital. He takes a particular liking to Billy (Dourif) who is a sexually repressed teenager who stutters and lacks any kind of self-confidence. In a big way, he is the opposite of McMurphy himself, who is quite the extrovert and borders on manic most of the time. There is an Indian man who is about as big as a mountain who the staff and inmates simply call Chief (Sampson). At first Chief is the subject of mockery from McMurphy, but the allegedly deaf and dumb Indian soon earns McMurphy's respect, something we quickly understand is a rarity for McMurphy. Other patients include the childish Cheswick (Lassick), the shy and naive Martini (DeVito), the borderline psychotic Taber (Lloyd), and Harding (Redfield) who was pretty much the crew's unofficial leader before McMurphy came along. In charge of the ward is the indominable Nurse Ratched (Fletcher). A battle of wills soon develops between McMurphy and the cold nurse. What McMurphy doesn't know is that she has the power to keep him even after his original jail sentence has expired.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2010
I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960’s that brought the gang into my life. The classics are running annually, still after nearly 50 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are the most mentioned and certainly beloved by generations of children and adults. I thought I never missed an airing.
He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown: Snoopy’s driving the neighborhood crazy, and they want Charlie Brown to do something about it. That means back to The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm for everyone’s favorite flying-ace beagle, and obedience school. But along the way to the farm Charlie Brown discovers just how much he loves Snoopy, just the way that he is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 4th, 2010
"1.2 billion TV viewers saw the home-made autopsy film in 1995. Experts have been divided over its authenticity ever since ... until now."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 22nd, 2010
"If you people spent less time thinking about sex and more time concentrating on comic books, we'd have far fewer embarrassing moments."
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