1.78:1 Widescreen

For years different TV shows and movies have speculated not as too whether there is life on other planets but, what are they doing on earth. Some shows like the X-files play out that the powers that be have sold us down the river to ensure their survival with a hostile alien race, or like in ID-4 and the Alien series are here to kill everyone and use the planet for their own will.

Director Steven Spielberg has looked at aliens and their involvement with the human race in a number of his films and with the...help of 1 writer and 10 directors brings us Taken. We follow 3 different families through three generations as they search for the existence of alien life on earth or try to understand why they are being abducted. The story is told through 10 different 80-90 minute episodes the best of which is “Acid Tests”. To give away much more of the story line then this would be an injustice, I recommend that you owe it to yourself to see this.

MTV is getting used to productions about provocative love affairs. Just look at Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson at this year’s MTV produced Super Bowl. So in their production of a modern updating of Emily Bronte’s novel “Wuthering Heights”, MTV throws in everything but the nipple.

“Wuthering Heights” is a benchmark of Gothic Romantic literature. It tells the tale of a doomed and frenzied love between the two protagonists, Heathcliff and Cathy. “Wuthering Heights” has been adapted for film and tel...vision umpteen times, in different styles and different languages. The most notable adaptation is probably the first in 1939, with Larry Olivier and Merle Oberon in the title roles.

I generally don’t care for those hour long Teen Sci-Fi Romantic Dramas that are so prevalent on the WB. They all just seem a little too “I’m 18, and I’m mad at my parents” for my tastes. While there’s no doubt that Roswell certainly has a measure of that teen angst, there is just enough X Files included, too. Most of the melodrama in this show is tied in with the sci-fi aspects of the story, which makes the show not only watchable, but a bit of a guilty pleasure.

The basic premise of this show...(namely, that three aliens from the urban legend spacecraft landing in Roswell, New Mexico are now teenagers, and going to High School there) it pretty hard to swallow. Granted, I have seen my share of far-fetched plots in my day, but for some reason, this one is particularly unbelievable. Once viewers get past a few episodes, however, and the premise is accepted for what it is, the characters are afforded more room to grow into interesting directions.

Synopsis

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (OUTM) is the third film in the conceptual trilogy of El Mariachi, Desperado, and OUTM. Its not a direct sequel, but you’ll recognize a lot of characters and imagery from the prior movies.

Timothy Olyphant, in the movie Go, refers to the comic strip The Family Circus in this manner: “it’s always there, in the lower right hand corner, just waiting to suck.” This is one of my all-time favorite movie quotes, and it applies quite nicely when discussing Marci X. Completed in 2000, this is the film that the studio put on the shelf, all the while knowing that eventually they would have to do something with it, because there it was, looming in the corner, waiting to suck.

Finally... the studio decided to drop it into theaters in the middle of the summer blockbuster season of 2003, where it would get lost in the shuffle of bigger films, yet still make as much money as possible, despite its paltry promotion budget. The plan worked, the film recouped some of its costs (albeit less than half), and Paramount got on with their lives.