Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 12th, 2011
Dennis Mitchell always means well when he wants to help out his parents, or good ol' Mr. Wilson, but he also just wants to have a good time. ¼ helpful young lad but ¾ mischief, Dennis made the leap from the beloved comic strip by Hank Ketchum to the small screen for four seasons.
Compensating for when ABC took over Leave it to Beaver from CBS, Dennis the Menace was the attempt to grab some audience back for CBS. Jay North is the titular Dennis, and does well to carry the spark of this character's “menacing” namesake. Each episode sees Dennis with the best of intentions, but always managing to create more damage than his help is worth. Along for the ride are his best friends Tommy and Joey (the latter seeming to be a strange mute boy), his rival Margaret, his parents played by Herbert Anderson and Gloria (who could not look closer to the original characters) and Joseph Kearns as the ever-frustrated Mr. Wilson.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 11th, 2011
Roger Corman has never let an exploitable opportunity slip by. A case in point is what we have here. In the wake of the first two Godfather films came this rise-and-fall tale. And because the Godfather movies were handsome, expensive and classy, then this Corman-produced effort is also a nice-looking piece of cinema, even if the budget-conscious element shows through with the use of leftover footage from The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Ben Gazzara plays Al Capone, moving up from street-smart hood to mob kingpin through cunning and violence. His mentor is Johnn Torrio (Harry Guardino), who works to unite the various ethnic Chicago gangs, but lacks the bloodthirstiness necessary to impose his will. Capone has the right ruthlessness, and betrays Torrio, taking his place. But Capone has his own right-hand man with high ambitions: Frank Nitti (Sylvester Stallone).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 10th, 2011
A stern, hectoring narrator laments the state of the Young People of Today's Modern World, and ascribes their terminal amorality to their having come of age during the World War Two. Having set the stage, he then withdraws until the end, that we might draw the proper moral conclusions from a trio of tales (inspired, loosely, by actual cases) that show the terrible depths to which the Young People of Today's Modern World have plunged.
The first is set in France, where a group of teens head off for a day in the countryside. Their goal is to murder one of their own, believing that a) he is about to betray them by taking off to Canada; and b) that all his fanciful tales are true, and that he is fabulously rich. In the second story, a young man from a good home in Rome is involved, for no very good reason beyond selfishness, with cigarette smugglers. Barely escaping from a police raid, he guns one man down and is badly injured himself. We then follow him through the day as he slowly stumbles toward his destiny. The last story takes us to England, where a fellow, utterly convinced of his own superiority, courts a newspaper's interest first by letting a reporter know about a body he has found, and later by boasting he killed the woman himself, believing that his crime is so perfect that he can confess to the police and then recant without suffering any particular inconvenience.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 9th, 2011
Since this week it appears I am taking on a U.K. flavor for my reviews, I decided to throw one more British drama review ripped straight from their local tele programs. This one involves a lawyer who turns into a judge and dons the infamous powdered wig. To my shock, it isn't even labeled as a comedy, so why am I already laughing? Well, before I go mad as a hatter, let's proceed forth with The Guilty. We will see if this judge is a cheeky bugger or a wanker. I'm guessing on the latter.
Steven Vey (played by Michael Kitchen)is quite the lawyer in England. He wins case after case and he is surely a lock to be the youngest person to ever be asked to be a judge. One night after a big win, he chats up a conversation with his new secretary, Nicky (played by Caroline Catz). They end up having dinner together and go back to her place for a midnight cup of joe. One tiny fact might be important at this juncture, Mr. Vey is very married. That cheeky bugger.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Bob Ross on April 9th, 2011
Everybody loves dolphins. We marvel at their graceful rolls among the waves. We enjoy watching trained ones do tricks for Sea World audiences, and some of us even pay big bucks to swim with them at specially built facilities. But behind these glimpses of intelligent marine life, there’s a deadly, disgraceful hypocrisy. There are mega-millions being made at the expense of innocent creatures, and the people behind the conspiracy will stop at nothing – including murder – to preserve their lucrative, dirty business.
The Cove exposes the evil, bringing the documentary format into the world of cinematic thrillers. Hidden cameras, hostile authorities and horrible slaughter are key elements in this eloquent but depressing documentary that won dozens of awards last year, including a well-deserved Oscar.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 8th, 2011
Saying there is an “elephant in the room” often means someone is ignoring some enormously obvious truth. To say that Patrice O'Neal can be ignored is foolish...and to say that he speaks the truth...well, you'd have to be pretty jaded to take this man seriously when he flips one PC view of the relationships between men and women on their heads.
The less enlightened viewers might write off O'Neal as misogynist as he explains “mooshing” and his advocacy for a “Harassment Day” (where office workers can make sexual passes at their female coworkers without fear of reprimand) but that would be like dismissing Lenny Bruce as racist for telling jokes about races. Of course, O'Neal is no Lenny Bruce, but the point stands that everything he says is done so with tongue firmly placed in his cheek, or purely as satire.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by BABY on April 7th, 2011
"You can't keep a good dog down."
Baby here again. Yeah, that's right. I'm the German Shepherd/Chow mix that runs security here at Upcomingdiscs. I make sure only the best movies get through my complicated security system. And that spells F A N G S. Okay, I made that last part up. I try to keep them all out, but let's not talk about that right now.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 7th, 2011
I say old chap, I do fancy a good British TV show. Maybe, it is because I grew up with more than my share of shows like Monty Python and the Black Adder. Maybe, I just like their funny accents. There is probably a bloke in the next alley who is willing to give me a beating for that comment. However, I will hold out and share with you my take on Man in a Suitcase, a late 60’s British drama that aired on ABC. Could I possibly bribe this bloke with some fish n chips?
McGill (played by Richard Bradford) used to be a former US Intelligence Agent. In one of his assignments from six years, he saw the writing on the wall that a top American scientist was going to go work for the Russians. Mac tried to prevent the situation by trying to intercept. The agent was told to stand down by his superior. However, shortly after the superior disappeared in a sailing accident and the scientist defected, leaving McGill to hold the bag.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2011
"We all know the story. Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom, but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love, her lustful twin, the Black Swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated, the White Swan leaps off a cliff, killing herself, and in death finds freedom."
Darren Aronofsky made a huge name for himself with The Wrestler. That film was a great comeback for Mickey Rourke, who was ripped off at that year's Oscars by the more politically correct Sean Penn. Aronofsky considers The Black Swan to be a companion piece to that film. You will certainly be able to see what he's talking about, but he's missing one important element in this film. He doesn't get near the powerful performance out of Natalie Portman that he did from Rourke. She was also nominated for an Oscar, but unlike Rourke, she didn't deserve to win it. She didn't.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2011
If you are old enough to have seen the original Tron back in 1982, you know how much things have changed in the digital world since then. The block graphics of the film and subsequent game might have been state-of-the-art at the time, but it looks like something very primitive to the younger generation. Like all good science fiction, many of the incredible elements of the film have become quite commonplace. The idea that a person can be scanned by a laser and transported into a virtual world might still be out of reach, but it turns out that using lasers to scan objects is exactly how we get three-dimensional images of real-world items into the virtual world. When Flynn is communicating with his program, the program is represented by an image of Flynn himself. Today we'd call Clu an avatar, and it's become quite common for people to socialize in environments like Second Life, where their avatar representatives engage in the same kinds of activities we do in the real world.
Tron wasn't quite the huge box office film you might have expected. It did pull in about $5 million on its opening weekend, which was pretty respectable in 1982. The film ended its box office run with just under $40 million from a $17 million budget. That's not where Tron found its biggest success. The film became more popular as the years went by and some of the content was getting more and more like reality. The game became a classic and is still found in the occasional arcade. That was another trend started by the film. It was one of the first films to spawn a video game, something almost every big-budget genre film does as a matter of course today. The movie was a milestone in computer-generated images combined with animation. It took nearly 30 years, but it really isn't a surprise that Tron has finally gotten a sequel. It's been a commanding presence for years at ComicCon. It's the little big movie that wouldn't die.
![The Cove [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-cove-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![All Dogs Go to Heaven [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/all-dogs-go-to-heaven-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Black Swan [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/black-swan-blu-ray-large.jpg)
