Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 15th, 2009
“The power of the Sun drives the seasons, transforming our planet. Vast movements of ocean and air currents bring dramatic changes, create some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth.”
The Planet Earth series from the BBC brought with it critical acclaim and 11 hours of some of the most spectacular video footage from around the globe that we’ve seen on television. It was a particular treat to anyone who was fortunate enough to catch it on an HD broadcast. Not content with that work, the same team assembled once again to create this follow-up series, Nature’s Most Amazing Events. At first I was a bit skeptical and more than a little worried when I read that the series was going to focus on the effects of global climactic phenomena. I immediately expected another propaganda piece on global warming. If that’s what you fear/hope for out of this series, it’s going to surprise you. Instead the BBC crew takes the Planet Earth cameras to some of the most extreme climactic places on Earth. The piece examines not so much the climate, but the animals that thrive under these intense conditions.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 2nd, 2009
William “D-Fens” Foster (Douglas) is caught in a typical L.A. traffic jam. The annoyances about him are beginning to mount up: a buzzing insect, tremendous heat, a child screaming. All of these things are becoming a perfect storm that is about to ignite a powder keg that’s been gathering here for some time. He abandons his car in the middle of the street and begins an apparently aimless walk across L.A. He first encounters a Korean convience store clerk, who he critizes for his accent and exorbitant prices. He thinks 85 cents is highway robbery. I guess he’s never been to a ball game. He picks up the clerk’s baseball bat and begins to “roll back prices”, smashing items he considers too high as he plays a twisted game of The Price Is Right with the clerk. After smashing up the store he gladly pays 50 cents for the Coke and walks out as if he’s just conducted a routine transaction. Next he meets up with a Latino gang, whose territory he unwittingly stumbled into. After an escalated fight with them he leaves a few dead, and now he has a gym bag filled with automatic weapons. Next stop is a burger joint that doesn’t subscribe to the “Have it your way” philosophy. Out come the guns, and his destructive trek across the city continues. Through phone calls we learn that Foster has a family. Or, more accurately, had a family. His wife has a restraining order against him to protect her and their young daughter who happens to be celebrating her birthday today. Now Foster has a destination in mind.
Enter Detective Prendergast (Duvall). It’s is last day on the job. He’s about to retire because his wife is a bit loony tunes. His colleagues think he’s a coward because he’s avoided dangerous jobs, and now he’s taking an early retirement. At one point he’s leaving his retirement party just when the stripper arrives eliciting a comment: “Are you afraid of girls, too?” He’d rather they all think that than learn the truth about his wife. His partner, Detective Sandra Torres (Ticotin) knows the truth and is the only one willing to work with him. He’s been following the seemingly unrelated reports of Foster’s antics. He’s pieced together the real story but no one takes him seriously, so he spends his last day tracking down Foster and attempting to stop him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 29th, 2009
This 4th season release of The Closer would become my first exposure to the rather good series from TNT. I don’t have time for network television these days, so the cable shows often fall by the wayside in my schedule. Of course, I’ve made time for some of the better ones over the years, but The Closer never seemed to find its way onto my radar. It should have. Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them.
You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer. While the series was, in many ways, your standard procedural police drama, each episode would end with Brenda getting some reluctant perp to spill their guts. She relied on Southern charm. She looked and sounded harmless enough that she could get the person to lower their guard and fall for some rather simple trick or another. Case closed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 23rd, 2009
Yul Brynner is the titular Catlow, a jovial outlaw rounding up maverick cattle, much to the consternation of cattle barons who feel the strays belong to them. Richard Crenna is Ben Cowan, Catlow's best friend but also a federal Marshal, who is tasked with arresting Catlow. Leonard Nimoy is the hired gun whose task is rather more lethal. Catlow and Cowan spar good-naturedly as the former plans to steal a great deal of gold in Mexico, which will have many other people annoyed with him.
This 1971 western is a lighthearted romp, or at least it intends to be. In fact, the humour is rather forced, even though everyone is grinning madly and putting a great deal of energy into convincing us that they're having mad fun. The effect, however, is rather flat. The film also trots out unquestioningly almost every old western convention, up to and including a completely unreconstructed vision of its “Indians” as dangerous savages. In the wake of the Spaghetti Westerns and Sam Peckinpah's elegiac orgies of violence, it seems curiously old-fashioned, and in the end functions as little more than passable entertainment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 7th, 2009
Talk about your hit show running out of steam. The Waltons is the perfect example of a show that outstayed its welcome. When it first took television audiences by storm in 1971, it became a cultural phenomenon. But by the show’s ninth and final year as a regular series it was 1980 and the country, the world, for that matter, had changed. It didn’t help matters that Richard Thomas had left the show, and his popular John Boy character, behind. The show’s core fans remained, but America’s love affair with The Waltons was clearly over. The show continued with 6 specials, often around holidays that brought the now scattered family back to Walton’s Mountain and our television screens. The last of these reunion films aired in 1997. They are not included in this final season set. I would expect they are awaiting their own release, much as the Columbo series has done.
John (Waite) and Olivia (Learned) Walton lived on the Walton land high atop Walton’s Mountain. The land had been in their family for generations. They shared their home with Grandpa (Geer) and Grandma (Corby) Walton and 8 children. At first we found the family in the heart of the Great Depression. They series had a Little House On The Prairie feel to it. The stories took place mostly in that small town where they all lived. The family would suffer one hardship or another and overcome weekly obstacles by sticking together as a family. As the years moved on, the series entered the World War II era and some of the boys would end up fighting in the conflict. By far the breakout character became John Boy, who was first played by and made famous by Richard Thomas. In the last season the character was covered as a recurring character by Robert Wrightman. It would never be the same.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2009
Two And A Half Men reached their 100th episode in the 5th year. That’s the milestone when a series becomes viable in syndication to local market stations. That’s the kind of show you see once, twice, a hundred times a day on those local stations either just before primetime or late at night. This is also the year that the writers of CSI and Two And A Half Men switched shows for an episode. It’s one of those cross-over ideas that I don’t think had been done before. I’d love to see the South Park and Family Guy staffs do something like this. That would be pay per view worthy. So, here on 3 discs is that milestone season for you to enjoy at home.
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.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 5th, 2009
Warner nearly single-handedly invented the cartoon medium as we know it today with the advent of their various Bugs Bunny and associates cartoons. Ever since the early 1930’s these characters have become an indelible part of the American pop culture. Their images became an important part of the World War II effort and even helped to put a face on the issues of the Great Depression. They represent one of the richest histories in animation, second only to Walt Disney. There are some, I’m sure, that would argue they might even belong in front of Uncle Walt. When I was growing up in the 1970’s, I had no idea I was enjoying cartoons and characters that were already 40 years old. The truth is that my grandfather had been a fan of these same cartoons when he was a kid. Today the Warner cycle of Loony Tunes cartoons is over 70 years young. Things might have changed with the passing of Mel Blanc, who provided most of those familiar voices for much of that time, but Bugs and the gang are still out there and going strong.
Which brings us to The Looney, Looney, Looney, Bugs Bunny Movie, which arrived in theaters in 1981. While the film wasn’t a huge box office success, it was pretty cheap to make. The film was made up of bits and pieces from various Looney Tunes shorts. The featured shorts included: Knighty Knight, Bugs, Hare Trimmed, Sahara Hare, Wild And Wooly Hare, Roman Legion-Hare, Golden Yeggs, Catty Cornered, The Unmentionables, Three Little Bops, Birds Anonymous, Show Biz Bugs, and High Diving Hare. All of these shorts were from the time period between 1949 and 1957. The shorts were edited into an opening and a three act film. The cartoons are not necessarily shown in their entirety and are used to create these three separate stories. There is new material that was created more to bridge the shorts and act as a wraparound for the whole affair.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on May 2nd, 2009
This is the second season of this prime time soap opera's fourteen season run. This show is the stories of three couples who all live in the same cul-de-sac, along the second season addition of single temptress Abby Cunnigham (played by Donna Mills), whose role inspires the packaging's amusing tag-line "Abby Cunnigham moves to Knots Landing. Do you know where your husband is?"
The show is a spinoff from the massively popular Dallas, and it contains much the same level of drama peppered with some sassy comedy, leading it to surpass Dallas in ratings for a time. This particular season kicks off with a two part story where one of our Californian cul-de-sac heroes is accused of rape and needs the aid of his lawyer neighbour. From there on we get stories involving the FBI, the mob, and an especially interesting episode where the women of the neighbourhood are held hostage at a baby shower and newcomer Abby uses her seductive powers to aid their escape.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2009
“The legend began hundreds of years ago when the fierce warriors known as the Samurai served the warlords of Japan with absolute loyalty. The most fearsome of all were the ronin, the samurai who had lost his master, set adrift like a wave on the open sea. One ronin sought out the master swordmaker, Masermune. The legendary master agreed to forge the samurai a sword of great mystical power. But, it would take an entire year to complete the work. The master’s evil-minded apprentice, Masamas, offered to forge another sword, but in only half the time.”
Scooby Doo has spanned generations and over 40 years. Since the 1960’s the name and conventions have become a part of the pop culture. The original cartoon series had a series of conventions. The Scooby Gang would drive around in their green Mystery Machine van and solve ghostly mysteries. Fans of the show quickly grew to learn that these spirits and goblins were usually just normal people using scare tactics to get revenge or make a profit. The cartoon classic spawned music albums, live action movies, and several new shows and animated features. The very latest of these direct to video animated features is Scooby Doo And The Samurai Sword.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 30th, 2009
“Super-toon extraordinaire Freakazoid! Freakazoid! Runs around in underwear Freakazoid! Freakazoid! Rescues Washington D.C .Freakazoid! Freakazoid!
Unless something better's on TV Freakazoid! Freakazoid! His brain's overloading. It has a chocolate coating. Textbook case for Sigmund Freud Freakazoid! Freakazoid!”
Only from the mind of Steven Spielberg and the gang that brought us Animaniacs could such a cartoon series and superhero be found. From 1995 to 1997 it could all be found as near as your television set, with the oddball Freakazoid series from Spielberg and Warner.
