Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 28th, 2006
Synopsis
Dana Andrews was never an actor who radiated warmth, and here he is perfectly cast as a hardboiled con artist on the lookout for number one. He arrives in a small town and falls hard for sultry waitress Linda Darnell. She is holding out for marriage, but marriage with financial stability, which Andrew can’t offer. So he sets about seducing Alice Faye with the idea of fleecing her of her fortune.
Director Otto Preminger’s follow-up to Laura had Andrews doing fine work again, ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 28th, 2006
Synopsis
Valentina Cortesa plays a survivor of the Belsen concentration camp. She has lost everything in the war. Her best friend in the camp is a woman whose infant child is being looked after in the USA, and when this woman dies shortly before liberation, Cortesa decides to adopt her identity, since no one alive would remember what she looks like. Once in the States, she meets and falls in love with Richard Basehart, the guardian of her “son.” Moving into their home in San Francisco, she sense host...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 24th, 2006
Betty Grable is best known for keeping the many, many GI’s thinking about their home country during World War II. She was mostly known for being a Pin-Up Girl during this time, and is also the star of the 1944 film Pin Up Girl. The film is part of Fox Home Entertainment’s Marquee Musicals and is pretty entertaining if you enjoy musicals or enjoy Betty Grable.
Betty Grable in Pin Up Girl is a pretty odd film overall, probably because of the four different writers the film had. The basic plot is...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 23rd, 2006
My name's trouble... and you got some of it lady.
I admit, I wasn't even a big fan of The A-Team back in the day. I mean, I was a boy, and Mr. T was cool and all, but the show itself never really grabbed my attention. Even at a young age, the whole thing just felt a little too unbelievable. I mean, if these guys are a group of deserters and felons who are wanted by the government, then how is it that everybody knows who they are? Plus, Mr. T isn't exactly inconspicuous wearing 832 gold ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2006
Synopsis
When he was a teenager, firefighter Tony Comes was sexually abused by a Catholic priest. When he and his family move to their new home, and he discovers that his victimizer lives just down the street, the shock forces him to come to terms with his past, and to seek redress. The documentary follows what happens, detailing, among other things, the way the Church circled its institutional wagons, and the terrible emotional cost to Comes and his family as the court battle drags on.
The...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2006
Synopsis
Documentary makers Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan followed the creation of the liberal Air America Radio, a deliberate attempt to create an alternative to the all-encompassing right wing dominance of the talk radio airwaves. The making of the film took an unexpected turn when the newly born network suddenly fell into serious financial difficulty, and all sorts of stories of impropriety involving its founder circulated.
The story is therefore quite dramatic, and the filmmaker...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2006
The film’s prologue informs us that the sport of sculling captured the nation’s attention long before baseball or football came along. We’re told that this activity created a national obsession with much the same pitfalls of modern sports. Somehow I can’t imagine, in this age of sports bars and ESPN, that rowing would demand the attention this boast assumes. I don’t remember my grandfather or great grandfather for that matter reminiscing about some great rowing move he witnessed with his dad as a child. The film al...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2006
The longest running show in prime time doesn’t feature cops, doctors, or lawyers. It’s hard to believe that The Simpsons have existed as long as the Fox network. While the series didn’t really begin until Fox’s second year, the characters were part of The Tracey Ullman Show, which did start the first year of Fox. Who could have guessed that an animated short from an otherwise horrible and doomed variety show would explode into such a phenomenon. The Simpsons have not only dominated the pop culture; they have placed...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2006
Eric Idle, Kohn Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and of course Graham Chapman formed Britain’s most famed comedy troupe. The exploits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus were truly “something entirely different”. Their off the wall antics have written an entire chapter in the story of pop culture. There certainly is not near enough space here for me to give the group its just due. So I won’t even try. If you’ve never heard of them, then stop reading, crawl back into the rabbit hole you’ve been living ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2006
Sex and the City: The Essentials – Mr. Big is a release, which serves no purpose that can’t otherwise be obtained from watching reruns on TBS. True, the series is edited for television, but a show should not have to resort solely to objectionable content to build a relationship with its audience. That’s not to say it can’t, but if you’re interested in trying out Sex and the City, I doubt it’s to see how many breasts, penises, and profane words you can see and hear, respectively, in a half-hour of televi...
