Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 16th, 2002
Synopsis
Peter Falk, patriarch of the Romano crime family, is about to be taken down by the FBI. He needs someone to go undercover in the FBI, and find and destroy the evidence against him. The only available man for the mission is black sheep of the family Corky (Chris Kattan). Corky is an assistant vet, and as incompetent and childish as he is sickeningly sweet. Pretty high concept stuff, in the negative sense of the term, and the result is slapstick so old and worn that Jerry Lewis would take a pa...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 15th, 2002
Synopsis
Herbert's novel is very complex, and one attempts a synopsis at one's own risk (this is part of the problem with Lynch's film). At its most basic, it is about power struggles in a galactic empire, power struggles centred on the planet Arrakis, or Dune, home of the spice, the most vital element in the empire. Paul Atreides, newly arrived on Arrakis, turns out to be the long-prophesied messiah. This is an incredibly ambitious project for a telefilm, and though some of the budgetary limitations...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 11th, 2002
Synopsis
Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley star as Edina and Patsy, terminal fashion victims and loathsome relics from the sixties. Edina is a psychopathically narcissistic motormouth (conveniently, writer Saunders gives herself the lion's share of lines), and Patsy is a vaguely sinister man-eater. She spends most of the time lurking about on the edges while Edina makes life miserable for her long-suffering daughter. The sum total of the series' humour is graspable within five minutes, but that did...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 6th, 2002
Film
Walking With Dinosaurs plays out like a National Geographic special, tracking dinosaurs and their kin in the field. Wonderful CGI recreations of some of the more obscure beasts set this special apart from all other dinodocumentaries.
Synopsis
The vast worlds of prehistoric times are brought to life in a series of documentaries starting with the beginning of life in the seas and ending with the death of the final land giants. There are 6 segments: "New Blood", "Time Of ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 26th, 2002
Synopsis
This is a collection of clips along with retrospective interviews with the participants. Shower antics, bathroom disasters, lots and lots of digitally fogged nudity. If watching paint dry is just a little too racy for you, then this is just what you're looking for.
Audio
The source material is TV, and the disc reflects this. Nothing much wrong with the sound, but there's nothing much to it either: people talking, people yelling, musical interludes. The surroun...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 26th, 2002
Synopsis
You might wonder how it's possible for a reality show to have bloopers. How are bloopers different from the other things that go on? Not much, except for those instances where the crew gets involved (cameras falling down, that kind of thing). All of this is strung together by Puck, who seems to think he is entertaining. Beyond boring.
Audio
The audio is a faithful reproduction of the TV experience, for what it's worth. The music has decent surround presence, a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 25th, 2002
Aliens was one of those rare sequels that must include T2 where everything gets taken up a notch without spoiling the elements that made the first successful. This is not to say Aliens is better than the original, but very different yet somehow very much the same. Sigourney Weaver acts with a confidence made possible by the first film. It’s hard to believe but Ripley just gets stronger. The story is much more complex but still retains the chilling simplicity of a horrible creature stalking its prey. There are more cr...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 25th, 2002
Synopsis
It's a musical. It's called 1776. What do you think it could be about? That's right: the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence, with all the major figures of the time (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson) singing up a storm. The production is extremely handsome. I do think, however, that you the events have to be part of your history for the film to really get your juices flowing.
Audio
As part of the restoration process, the original mon...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 19th, 2002
Synopsis
Crowe plays John Nash, schizophrenic genius. The film follows him from his grad student days at Princeton, to his revolutionary formulation of game theory, to his later breakdown, and climaxes in his reception of the Nobel Prize in 1994. Though overlong, often burdened by an excessively emphatic score by James Horner, and following all the usual conventions of Hollywood melodrama, the film also offers stunning cinematography by Roger Deakins, uncharacteristically good dialogue by Akiva Golds...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 18th, 2002
“In space no one can hear you scream” was the slogan that drew a conglomerate of horror and science fiction fans to theatres in 1979. Was it horror or sci-fi? Alien turned out to be a rare cross-genre film that managed to satisfy both audiences. Ridley Scott started out by bringing the “space ship” film away from the glamorous bright future and depicted a world startlingly very much like our own. In Scott’s gritty future companies are quasi-government agencies and these astronauts are not explorers out for glory and...
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