1.33:1 Fullscreen

The Hills are back! Hank, Peggy, Bobby and Luanne have returned for more down home shenanigans. After a successful first season that followed in the footsteps of the Simpsons, King of the Hill was a surprising hit from the creative mind of Mike Judge, formerly responsible for the heavy metal antics of Beavis and Butthead. The second series picks up where series one left off albeit with improved writing and further exploration of the characters. I particularly like the characterization of Hank as a true redneck – ... particularly sexually inhibited redneck at that.

There are some great moments in the second season that continued to define the pathological relationships between the Hill family – from the twisted father/son relationship that blossoms due to Bobby’s uncanny accuracy at shooting things which then allows us some insight into Hank’s own poor relationship with his war-vet father. There are some classic digs into American life as one episode gives us a little more background into Luanne as she is returned to the trailer park from whence she came, in time for the trailer park to be hit by a tornado. While this is happening, Dale’s wife, Nancy the TV weather girl, comments on air, “Why is it that tornado’s always hit trailer parks?”

Go up front and live with one of music’s fasting rising young stars. Then follow her behind the scenes and find out what she is like in real life.

Video

This wonderful British comedy comes to DVD once again… this time in a Vol. 6-10 box set. If you are not familiar with this outrageous show, it ruled BBC airwaves from 1972-1985, and continues to entertain today on DVD. Taking place solely on a single floor of a department store, this show covers the lives and misadventures of the staff who are employed there.

Audio

Just before the release of their eponymous second album, Portishead gathered at the historical Roseland Ballroom for their first ever performance in New York City. The band brought a film crew along for this special concert. It was a show that featured not only the first performance of much of the new album, but also the added attraction of playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The result is a brilliant and haunting presentation of all things Portishead. This legendary disc should be required viewing for ...ll fans of trip-hop, and for film students everywhere.

“Let’s go kick some Christmas butt!” When these are the climactic words spoken by Santa Claus prior to his Christmas Eve trip using a flying ice cream truck instead of his sleigh, you know you’re in trouble. A Freezerburnt Christmas is easily the worst Christmas movie I have ever seen and would challenge any reader to find a worse holiday film. Even though it is only 22 minutes long, I was frustrated by the fact that I’m never going to get those 22 minutes back. This was a stop-motion cartoon but let’s face it – the...classics were stop-motion “Rudoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” to name two, but they were classics because they were made in the 60’s and stop-motion may have reached perfection at that point…almost 40 years ago!

<p Freezerburnt is an ice cream vendor that happens upon a plan by an evil toy tycoon to oust Santa and supply the world’s children with toys made by his company. As it happens the tycoon’s name is Sualc Atnas (otherwise known as Santa Claus backwards…ouch…they actually paid someone to come up with this stuff) and has a striking resemblance to Sadam Hussein. I don’t know if that was intentional or not but it’s pretty bad. Anyways Atnas breaks into the local science professor’s home and steals his prototype gravity generator to use it to ground Santa’s reindeer. How diabolical! He then wants to get Santa’s magic flying powder to use his own vehicle to disperse his toys on Christmas Eve.