Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 14th, 2011
For ten years we watched Jack O'Neil, Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the Jaff'a Tealc' enter the Stargate. Others would join the team over the years. Each week we would follow their adventures, first on Showtime and finally on the Sci-Fi (now Sy Fy) Channel. We watched with awe as they stepped through a portal that was in reality a wormhole transporting them instantly to another world, brought online by dialing the device like an old-fashioned telephone. For another five years we traveled not only to another planet, but to the Pegasus Galaxy itself to the Atlantis Base, a bright floating city left behind by the ancients, the people who created the Stargate system millions of years before. On this show we met new friends, new bad guys, and had new adventures. The location might have changed. The faces might have, at first, been unfamiliar, but the missions and the entertainment value didn't let us down. For 15 seasons we enjoyed a spectacular tale to rival the myths of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
I'm told that all good things must come to an end. When Atlantis was finally cancelled, I was made almost immediately aware of the plans to continue the franchise. First reports started coming out that the show was going to be called Stargate Universe. Soon my inside contacts started giving me tidbits about the story. Details began to emerge about the Destiny, an ancient ship abandoned in another universe far away. The ship was on some kind of predetermined course and would sport an unsuspecting crew of humans that would be left stranded on the ship for an indeterminate amount of time. It was starting to sound a lot like Star Trek: Voyager to me. Of course, this is Stargate, so there has to be some gate travel, one would assume. The ship would come with a gate, and the vessel would come out of faster-than-light travel from time to time and dial up a local planet for exploration. The ship was ancient not only in its origin but in its duration in space. There were going to be a lot of system failures, as the equipment was long past its expiration date. The ship itself would know what resources it needed to continue to operate. Searching its vast planetary database, the ship would locate planets with the essential resources, allowing away teams to get such vital raw materials. Unfortunately, the ship didn't always give a good indication of what to find or where on the planet it might happen to be. Oh, and did I mention the countdown? The ship would decide how much time it would allot for each mission, instituting a countdown. When the clock reaches zero, the ship goes back to FTL, and whoever's not back in time gets left behind.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 14th, 2011
“Corporations… They have all the money. They have all the power, and they use it to make people like you go away. Right now you’re suffering under an enormous weight. We provide the Leverage.”
The series centers on Nathan Ford (Hutton), an ex-insurance investigator. His life was turned around when the very insurance company he recovered millions for turned down his child for treatment to keep her alive. He quits his lucrative job and forms a team to help people who are backed against the wall by large corporations. Cases include: a soldier looking to get medical care, a family ripped off by a mob boss, a company that has allowed dangerous chemicals to harm children, and a real estate mogul trying to take a church away from its congregation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 13th, 2011
Jean-Hugues Anglade plays Zorg (yup, that's his name), a handyman living in a beach-front house, scribbling away quietly in his spare time. Not so quiet is his tempestuous affair with Betty (Béatrice Dalle in her debut), whose passions overwhelm both of them. First, she moves in on him with no warning. Then, when she discovers his writing, she decides they must move to Paris so he can have a career as a writer. To make sure Zorg complies, she burns his house to the ground. Once in Paris, her plans for him fall apart, and so, bit by bit, does she.
Writer/director Jean-Jacques Beineix has both audience and characters sweltering from the get-go, setting the tone for another French tale of amour fou. Angalde and Dalle inhabit their characters perfectly (though one might be forgive for wondering what exactly Zorg sees in Betty, beyond the physically obvious). The film is stylish and dramatic, and if, at 185 minutes, it outstays its welcomd, it doesn't do so by much.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 12th, 2011
As one could probably guess from my tender age of thirty five years, I listen to lots of 80's music. Not only did I grow up in it, the music was energetic and often thoughtful (without being too depressing). But the thing I remember most about the music on a whole is the brilliant videos behind them. David Byrne of Talking Heads was the head (literally) of one of my favorites, Burning Down the House. A great musician and pop legend, David Byrne is back to entertain us in Ride, Rise, Roar.
David Byrne was born in Scotland in the spring of 1952. He knew how to play the guitar, accordion, as well as the violin before he even entered high school. David went through a couple of minor bands before landing his first major gig with the Talking Heads in 1975. The band went on to do great things and several of their albums went gold with sales well over 500,000 copies. Unfortunately, the group broke up in 1991 after creative differences and David Byrne went on to a solo career.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 10th, 2011
"Two can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 8th, 2011
"Since the birth of time, humanity has endeavored to restrict evil men in prisons. But since Cain fled the murder of his brother, evil men have fled the walls of punishment. So it doesn't matter if you're a badass mother on the run because you think you're better than everyone else and somehow entitled to do what you gotta do. No, because you see, badass mothers are never fast enough. In the end, they will be accounted for."
People have been breaking out of Hell since the days of Dante. In recent years we've had two very good television shows on the subject. Brimstone suffered an early death but was a wonderful character piece with John Glover as the Devil and Peter Horton as a cop and resident of Hell he uses to track down his escapees. Reaper took a more comedic route and had Ray Wise as Satan utilizing the efforts of Jack Black clone Tyler Labine helping out damned soul Bret Harrison to bring in the escaped. Enter Nicolas Cage in the underachieving action film Drive Angry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 8th, 2011
Somewhere in my family’s history, I have a couple of odd branches. One of them leads to a former Pope (17th century I believe) and the other is even more curious, the mob. Specifically, it leads to the most popular gangster of them, Al Capone. It is pretty far down the branch, but interesting nevertheless. This leads us to our movie review for today: Kill the Irishman which deals with the real life story of Danny Greene, a man who escaped death countless times and took down the mob.
The period in time is Cleveland, Ohio circa 1975. Danny Greene (played by Ray Stevenson) is driving along and listening to his 8-track player. All of the sudden, his player starts to fizzle and then sparks fly. Danny realizes that the car is about to explode and gets out. He narrowly escapes death. He shouts, “It will take more than a few firecrackers to kill me.” Indeed it would.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 4th, 2011
The other day, I was taking a look at my past reviews and I realized that I have been reviewing on this site for over six years. If you have been reading my reviews for that long and you aren’t married to me, bless you for sticking it out that long. Heck, I’ve only known my wife for almost 4 of those years. Anyhow, I have reviewed a plethora of subjects. One of the hardest things to do is to review a dvd season in the middle of its run. It becomes even harder when that show is True Blood
Before we go anywhere with Season 3, we need to take a step back in time and analyze the last couple of episodes of Season 2.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 3rd, 2011
Did you ever see a movie that might have been pretty good, but it reminded you so much of other things that you just couldn't keep your concentration on the film at hand? That was my experience with the After Dark original film Seconds Apart. At almost every turn I couldn't help thinking of other films. Often times it was such a distraction that I'm afraid I never fully appreciated the one I was watching. And, there is a lot to like about Seconds Apart.
The story is pretty simple. Jonah and Seth, played by real-life twins Edmund and Gary Entin, are not your normal twins. They share more than an uncanny fraternal link. Together they can enter inside of a person's mind and cause them to do all sorts of nasty things that usually end in the victim's death. The hold hands to focus the power. It might just be me showing my age here, but I couldn't stop thinking about the 1970's Saturday morning cartoon, The Super Friends. The show featured the powerhouse members of the DC comics universe along with a boy and girl known as The Wonder Twins. One could take the shape of anything made out of water, while the other could become any animal. Every time these guys held hands to perform their evil deeds in someone's mind, I couldn't get that Wonder Twins image out of my head, and I kept expecting them to chant: "Wonder Twins power activate". Silly, I know and it's entirely possible that no one connected with the film was even aware of the image. So the fault is entirely mine, to a degree.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 3rd, 2011
"From cradle to grave."
Lionsgate is really starting to crank out some original horror films under the After Dark label, and if this is any indication of what's in store for us down the road, I'm eager to see a few more of these titles hit the shelves. The films are direct-to-video low-budget films that have a more independent feel. While I wouldn't call the film terribly original, it does offer a slightly fresh face on the haunted house theme. The movie carries a sub-theme of family secrets and histories. Talk about your skeletons in the closet.
![Betty Blue: Original Theatrical Release [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/betty-blue-original-theatrical-rel-large.jpg)
![David Byrne: Ride Rise Roar [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/david-byrne-ride-rise-roar-blu-ra-large.jpg)
![Drive Angry [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/drive-angry-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Kill the Irishman [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/kill-the-irishman-blu-ray-large.jpg)
