Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 13th, 2006
Like it or not, you can't talk about this show without talking about the C.S.I. phenomenon. The extreme popularity of that single show has launched an entire genre of hour-long police investigation shows that are showing up on every network, every night. There are now three different C.S.I. programs on the air, as well as military crime programs, FBI profiler programs... even a mathematical approach to crime solving with Numbers.
The latest show in this trend is The Closer, a TNT ...riginal program staring Kyra Sedgewick. The twist on this program is that Sedgewick's character is a sweet southern investigator from Atlanta who becomes the head of the Priority Murder Squad in Los Angeles. As one could discern from the title, her specialty is suspect interrogation. Despised by her colleagues because she is a female southern outsider, she must fight against criminals as well as the members of her own department to solve the crime.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 11th, 2006
Training Day stars Academy Award Winning Actor Denzel Washington in the role of Alonzo Harris. Harris, who is one of the meanest, baddest cops in the city of LA, is a person who cruises the streets in his customized Caddy. Harris, in one of the film's opening scenes, meets Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a young cop whose dream is to be promoted to the elite narc squad. Naturally, this is Jake's first day of training and he is thrown into the arms of Harris. Alonzo tries to show him the streets so he can understand e...erything. He has Jake smoke pot just because he can. In one interesting scene, possibly Alonzo being a tough ass to Jake, doesn't arrest two rapists like Jake wants to, but, instead, proceeds to beat the living crap out of them.
For Alonzo, acting the way he does is simply because this is the way Alonzo feels he should act. As he tells Jake in one scene "If you turn down gifts on the street, you'll be dead." Jake, who has just learned his pot has been laced with PCP, has just awoken to find out that he is now involved with a raid on a drug dealer's house. Alonzo continues to take Jake on these various trips, which all seem to be teaching Jake more and more about the type of cop Alonzo truly is. It makes me wonder if all LA cops are truly this evil, not necessarily as a poke at LA and the crime, but possibly a look into the corruption of the cop field in itself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 10th, 2006
Sam: Hey, I recognize you.
Andrew: Oh, did you go to Columbia High?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 9th, 2006
Harrison Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, an online security chief for a mid-sized baking chain. One day, he is introduced to a new possible candidate in Bill Cox (Paul Bettany). We learn this turns out to be a setup. Cox and his men are holding Stanfield's wife (Virginia Madsen) and their two children hostage. In return, Cox demands that Stanfield hack into his bank's computers to transfer a fortune into Cox's offshore accounts.
Firewall, in whole, contains a smart plot, one that makes you think. The ...asic plot, however, is nothing new. The plot has been updated with newer technology, such as an iPod containing everything Stanfield needs to get into his bank. It seems a bit odd that a small little device like an iPod could hold this much data. The bigger question is if a film like this needs events that are plausible in order to make a shred of sense. Fortunately though, mostly due to how entertaining Ford is to watch, the film holds its own and doesn't necessarily conclude in an odd manner.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 7th, 2006
Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Narc’s Ray Liotta), an Irish-Italian kid whose only ambition, it seems, is to be a type of wise-guy kid. In one of the first scenes with Hill we learn that “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be gangster.” This line here tends to set the emotion and mood for the whole film. Hill, as a kid at least, is your typical child who defies his parents, struggles to do well in school and wants to hang out with the older looking tough guys down the street. F...r Hill, gangsters were his Superman type hero; they could get anything they wanted including the best seats at the show, the best cars and they actually belonged to something.
As Hill becomes immersed in the Mob world, he starts to do little jobs. It isn’t until he meets Jimmy Conway (15 Minutes’ Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (JFK’s Joe Pesci) that his life starts to change. We learn that Conway and DeVito are two of the most feared hit men in the entire Organization. If someone needed something done, odds are they approached one of these two men. Conway and DeVito teach Hill the basics of the mob world included a few life lessons all while they make it so evidently clear to Hill that they have no problem killing any man and neither should Hill.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 4th, 2006
Swordfish stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men as computer hacker Stanley. Stanley has just spent two years in jail for hacking a program used specifically by the FBI to snoop in on everybody’s email. Enter Halle Berry (also X-Men) as Ginger who has been assigned to recruit Stanley to help stop mastermind Gabriel Shear played by John Travolta (Face-Off). The initial problem here is that Stanley, obviously, doesn’t trust the government. He has been previously forbidden by the courts to come anywhere n...ar a computer. Ginger decides to use a little persuasion in the form of a lap dance and a weapon to give him exactly one-minute to hack into a government computer. It looks like Stanley still has a bit of hacker in him as he completes this task. Stanley is offered $10 Million Dollars to work for Shear as one of his main men. Why on earth Shear would trust Stanley we soon learn.
Shear wants to recruit some of the world’s best hackers, Stanley being one of them, to help him break into a DEA bank account that contains some money. Some money in this cast is being translated into $9.5 Billion Dollars. I must take a quick break here and comment on the work of John Travolta. Ever since becoming a ‘nut-case’ (in the media’s eyes) along with Tom Cruise, it seems like audiences have forgotten how great of an actor he is. Travolta has made some of the best action films in Face-Off and Broken Arrow all while making funny films like Get Shorty. Back to the program though, Shear is able to, through his cunning skill, manipulate and use many people, including us in many scenes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
I have been rambling on and on about the merits of this outstanding series to friends, family and innocent bystanders for years. I will continue to do so until the final disc of the final season has hit Amazon.com; and probably for quite some time after that. It is a show that is important, culturally relevant, and surprisingly political without becoming annoyingly partisan.
Season Six is something of a bounceback season for the show. In Season Five, the show floundered a bit. While it was still easily one of...the best things on television, the ship lots its way. Issues were explored, but no one issue really solidified itself as a strong story point. By the time Season Six came around, the show had a natural theme to run with; re-elections. As Bartlet begins to struggle with complicated issues in the Middle East, Presidential hopefuls emerge in the form of Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits. Instead of winding down and fading away, this show picked up steam as it headed toward the end of its seven season run. I, for one, am enjoying every minute of it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2006
Clint Eastwood’s film Million Dollar Baby tells the story of an aging fighter trainer named Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) who eventually decides to train a hillbilly girl (Swank) who thinks she can be a boxer. Dunn runs a gym in the Los Angeles area. One day a girl named Maggie Fitzgerald, from Missouri, approaches Dunn informing him that she has been working at a waitress job since the age of 13. She tells Dunn that boxing for her is the only way she can escape this type of job her life has thrown at her.
< ...>Dunn, naturally, doesn’t want to give this girl a chance because there is no way he will train a girl. Dunn’s former boxer Scrap (Morgan Freeman) convinces Dunn to give this girl a chance because she knew growing up that she would be nothing but trash if not given any chances. Scrap serves as the film’s narrator, similar to his role in The Shawshank Redemption. His voice is very flat and subdued usually putting no effect on what he is ever saying. He talks about how the girl walked into the gym, how she refused to ever leave and how Frankie decided to finally train her. Scrap, to some, may just serve as a person who tells us what is going on, but he is more. Scrap serves as an individual breathing life into his own when he is not focusing on Maggie or Frankie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 21st, 2006
With HD-DVD gaining a lot of press and discussion over the past few months, many wondered what would be the initial title for release that would help showcase the power that Toshiba wanted to showcase. Some figured a big blockbuster like The Star Wars Trilogy could be released. (wouldn’t that be nice?) But with Fox being exclusive to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD’s main competition, no one could figure that a moderately successful film like 2003’s The Last Samurai would ever be thought of as a player seller. Well, af...er jumping through the disc, one can easily understand why Warner Brother’s decided to chose this title for the main release.
The Last Samurai stars Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, who is a decorated Civil War hero. Algren, as of late, has fallen into a world of drunkenness and performing in side shows selling rifles. He wants a sort of redemption from the world he lives in now so he can eventually return to his famed world of before. It turns out that the Japanese government is looking for a military leader to train their new Imperial Army. Japan, who was trying to move into the world of modernization, needed an army to fight against the rising world of the samurai who wanted to preserve the countries sense of the old. Algren accepts the job for the main reason of the nice pay.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 13th, 2006
The Academy Awards are starting to build a case against their own validity. In 2005, they nominated a simply amazing film called Downfall in the Best Foreign Film category, but eventually gave the award to The Sea Inside. While Sea is a fine film, it was clear that the Academy got nervous about the ramifications of giving an award to a film about the last days of Adolph Hitler, and took the easy way out.
In 2006, they again got nervous and avoided ultimate controversy by giving their Best...Picture Oscar to the safe vote of Crash, thus avoiding the controversial choice of Brokeback Mountain. Likewise, Paradise Now was also the victim of the weak knees of the Academy. The Foreign Language Oscar in 2006 eventually went to a South African film called Tsotsi, instead of the proper (and controversial) choice of Paradise Now.
![Training Day [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/training-day-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Goodfellas [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/goodfellas-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Swordfish [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/swordfish-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Million Dollar Baby [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/million-dollar-baby-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![The Last Samurai [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-last-samurai-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
