Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 24th, 2004
Following what may be one of the best season finales ever (i.e. Buffy sacrifices herself for her sister Dawn) Buffy is raised from the dead by the ever increasing powers of Willow. She returns disoriented just in time to battle a horde of motorcycle riding demons hell-bent on turning Sunnyvale into their own personal property. It is during the opening two episodes that it becomes clear that secrets are going to play a major role in the sixth season.
Buffy’s friends believe that as a result of the events of...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 21st, 2004
Synopsis
Directed by Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, this is the follow up to Broomfield’sAileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. This summarizes some of what was dugup in that film, particularly the sleazy attempts by all and sundry to capitalize on theirconnections to Wuornos and her case, and the corruption of justice that ensued. The newnarrative picks up with Wuornos’ final appeal against the death penalty (which fails), and theninterviews her (and the people...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 19th, 2004
A doctor looking to escape his past gets stuck in Purgatory Flats and drawn into a circle of deceit with the wild Sunny. Sunny is looking for a ticket out of the one horse town and will do anything to get out including killing her husband. The plot is as thin as one of Sunny’s little skirts and grates on you like the desert sand in a windstorm.
Video
The 1.33:1 full screen transfer looks pretty bad; I have seen worse but this one ranks up there. Colors are over really saturated… I assume ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 19th, 2004
What do you when you are in your mid 20’s and are diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and only given a short amount of time to live. Do you move home and surround yourself with those who you love or do you enlist your friends to help you rob a bank and see if you can go out in a blaze of glory. This is an interesting film with a somewhat original storyline, there is a nice little twist at the end that you can see coming but overall it was an entertaining watch.
Video
The 1.33:1 full ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 18th, 2004
Love Nest is one of those films that has a great plot, but is unable to follow through on the script. The idea behind this film is simple; a man returns home from the war to find that his wife has purchased an apartment building, and they are now landlords. Every one of their tenants is crazy in their own way, and mad-cap adventures ensue.
After the first act, the story really settles in on one tenant in particular… a sneaky old Casanova who makes his money by pretending to fall in love with rich old...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 13th, 2004
Synopsis
Eight Pink Panther cartoons from the late 60s are offered here. See the cool cat deal with apersistent cuckoo clock, get caught in a jet fighter, drive a house painter mad, etc. Laid backcartoon fun, hardly in the same league as, say, the Looney Tunes, but appealing all the same. Thefrequently minimalist backgrounds add some visual interest to the efforts.
Audio
The sound is mono, and gets the job done. Given that the sound consists entirely of music...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 11th, 2004
Everything But The Girl is a group that has always been a bit of an enigma to me. I have never heard any of their albums, but I consistently run into one of their songs on the odd movie soundtrack or occasional visit to the record store. I am always struck by how different one song sounds from the next, much like the brilliant work of Blur, and I assumed that this was because most of the songs that I have heard are B-sides, or as I stated before, tracks that were donated to compilations or soundtracks. This disc has ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 10th, 2004
Synopsis
During World War II, Walt Disney threw the resources of his studio behind the war effort.The result is what we see here: a massive collection of animated shorts serving to boost morale,educate and propagandize, plus a feature-length argument for long-range bombing. I’m assumingI know have your attention.
Disc 1 breaks its short features down into three categories: “Propaganda and EntertainmentShorts,” “Educational Shorts” and “From the Vault.” The familiar Disney ch...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 6th, 2004
Synopsis
This is a fascinating collection, but be warned that this isn’t a “Best Of” by any means. Thereis no Duck Soup here. After leaving Paramount, the Marx Brothers moved to MGM,where (as we learn in the commentaries), studio head Irving Thalberg gave their movies a newform: big, lavish production numbers, and more linear plots.
With the first effort, A Night at the Opera (1935) (****), this approach producedwonders. The formula for all the other films in t...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2004
I’m not a big fan of “Reality TV.” I do watch Survivor, and I think that’s a really good show, but I don’t watch any of the others. When I first heard of the concept of “The Mole,” I have to admit that I was intrigued. Reality TV is all about real people reacting to each other’s most annoying personality traits and translating that friction into ratings. Well, “The Mole” puts a different spin on that concept by adding a dissenting element - one of the participants is “a mole” i.e. a nefarious agent of the producers ...
