Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on June 1st, 2009
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 29th, 2009
This 4th season release of The Closer would become my first exposure to the rather good series from TNT. I don’t have time for network television these days, so the cable shows often fall by the wayside in my schedule. Of course, I’ve made time for some of the better ones over the years, but The Closer never seemed to find its way onto my radar. It should have. Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them.
You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer. While the series was, in many ways, your standard procedural police drama, each episode would end with Brenda getting some reluctant perp to spill their guts. She relied on Southern charm. She looked and sounded harmless enough that she could get the person to lower their guard and fall for some rather simple trick or another. Case closed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2009
It’s a disc loaded with pilots. No, you won’t find any daring men and their flying machines here. These pilots owe more to Philo T. Farnsworth than The Wright Brothers. Farnsworth transmitted the first televised image in 1927. In case you’re wondering, that image was a dollar bill. These pilots follow in those footsteps; that’s because these pilots are television shows. They’re the first episodes of some of the best action series to appear on CBS over the last few decades. Going back as far as the 1960’s, these shows represent a nice cross section of television action entertainment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2009
This single DVD contains the premiere episodes of 7 of CBS’s most endearing comedies. All were influential to those that came after. These weekly shows offered that much needed relief from the pressures of whatever decade they appeared in. The stars are names that everybody knows, even those that appeared 50 years or more ago. If you ever wondered how some of these shows began their historic runs, here’s your opportunity to go back in time with Forever Funny.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009
Another release, and it’s another half season of that iconic western, Gunsmoke. Among the 20 episodes found on 3 discs you’ll find Claustraphobia. Dillon has to arrest his old friend Ollie who kills a man because he killed Ollie’s hogs. In Ma Tennis, you’ll meet the ultimate Mama’s boy. When a man ends up in Dillon’s jail, his mother breaks him out. In Sunday Supplement, a couple of newspaper writers come to Dillon looking for a juicy story, even if they have to instigate one themselves. In Texas Cowboys, Dillon closes up all of the shops in town until they are willing to tell him who committed a murder. A woman comes to Dodge wanting Matt to kill her in Amy’s Good Deed. In Hanging Man, there’s a vigilante out there killing folks and making it look like suicide. Dillon’s got a serial killer on his hands now. Chester is nearly killed in a break out attempt in Chester’s Hanging. Finally, in The Gentlemen, Dillon gets caught up trying to keep the peace with a torrid love triangle brewing in Dodge.
The setting for Gunsmoke was the by now famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20 year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy, he had a taste for bourbon and a soft heart underneath a rather gruff exterior and was always ready with free advice. Dillon’s love interest throughout most of the series was Miss Kitty Russell (Blake). While there were certainly a few romantic undercurrents, the romance never came to fruition. Miss Kitty was a prostitute on the radio and was likely one here as well, but CBS chose to underplay that aspect of her character as a “saloon girl”. Finally Dillon’s faithful sidekick deputy was Chester (Weaver). Chester often found himself in trouble and was the naïve son figure to Dillon.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009
Infected is one of those many made for television films that appear on the Sci-Fi, I mean Sy-Fy Channel almost weekly, I mean weakly. Most of them are relatively low budget affairs that utilize very low grade CG f/x and often actors that haven’t been getting a lot of steady work in the legitimate world. It amazes me, actually. How can a network dedicated to science fiction consistently produce some of the worst movies in the genre? You would think that after a hundred of these things that they would have to get it right once in a while. The law of averages almost demands it. Instead, week to week, month to month, and year to year, the worst the genre has to offer finds its way as “original” movies on the network.
Infected is a sort of V meets The Arrival. A band of evil aliens have arrived on Earth to help them to repopulate their species. The somehow arrive at the idea they can best do this by setting up a bottled water company and selling humans plague tainted water. Of course, no one catches on, and the company grows to conglomerate size in no time. Enter a pair of reporters. Ben (Bellows) and Lisa (Roy). Of course, they used to be an item and now have trust issues working together on a tabloid. When the mayor is killed, a sample of his blood is retrieved and finds its way to the couple. Tests prove it is some wacked out hemoglobin. The clues eventually lead to the bottling company and its boss, Peter Whitefield (Dinsmore) who is actually a big insect under his fake human skin. The plot unravels and Ben discovers he has a natural immunity which he can use to fight off those pesky grasshopper things. And we all live happily ever after. Naturally, there’s a government cover up. Invasion? What invasion? We know nothing about no stinkin’ invasion?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 26th, 2009
The danger in revisiting a show you used to love as a kid is that it will almost always disappoint, especially, it seems to me, if the show was made in the 70s. I have had this experience several times in my life, sitting there with a dull expression in my eyes, gazing at the screen and wondering why I ever thought Welcome Back Kotter was funny. And did I really thrill to the exploits of Starbuck and Apollo without noticing how awful Battlestar Galactica was?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 26th, 2009
Aging senator James Stewart and wife Vera Miles arrive in the prosperous town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of an anonymous farmer. The local newsmen want to know why. Stewart tells the story. Cue the flashback, where he arrives in a much more anarchic Shinbone as a naïve lawyer. Held up and beaten by the brutal outlaw Liberty Valance (a psychotic Lee Marvin), he is determined by bring law and justice to the town, but must come to terms with the fact that he cannot do so without the gun of John Wayne (the aforementioned farmer).
For all intents and purposes, this 1962 film was director John Ford's last western. It is an elegiac, melancholy piece (and one that makes Catlow, reviewed here a few days ago, look even more out of step with time). Like Unforgiven, it is a film whose casting is not only perfect, it is necessary. The collisions between the Wayne and Stewart characters are also the collisions between the symbols of American Myth the two icons represent. Vera Miles, as the woman torn between the two men, comes to represent the country itself, which must, for its own sake, choose the civilization and rule of law embodied by Stewart, even as it grieves over abandoning the larger-than-life figure of Wayne. He is the Old West, a figure from a more anarchic time, perhaps the light to Marvin's darkness, but in many ways not that different. He must vanish to make way for the future, but the future cannot come into being without his help and sacrifice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 25th, 2009
Galaxy Quest is an odd movie. It opened on Christmas Day of 1999 and did alright in the box office gathering roughly 71 million and some change. It was one of those movies that you went to go see and would laugh a lot but wouldn’t tell anybody in fear of people making fun of you. So it did respectable sales, but nobody knew the full potential of the movie until it hit the video format. The movie found a considerable audience and after many years, the movie holds up. Possibly better than it ever did nine years ago in a tiny theater. Now, with the release of a deluxe edition many years later, the movie can reach new audiences. Hopefully, they will be able to appreciate it as much as I did.
Once upon a time, Galaxy Quest was an entertaining space drama. It lasted only four seasons but found an audience that lasted many years later. The cast however has for the most part not been able to find reasonable work, reduced to conventions and lowly promotional work. There is Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver in a blonde wig) who played Tawny, the Computer Officer of the Protector and served as the beauty on the ship. Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman) plays Dr. Lazarus serves as the resident Spock/intelligent alien and is positively sick of his catchphrase (By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on May 25th, 2009
Two guys enter a 3-on-3 Basketball tournament, but they stink. They work at a morgue and their crazed former coworker reanimates a gigantic man...they put him on their team...he's good because he's big (almost automatically)...they try to get money, girls and yadda yadda yadda, you can guess how it turns out for them.
This film is a mundane, predictable tale that is low on the laughs and big on the stereotypes. Our two heroes even lure in the zombie giant to be friend's with them with fried chicken and weed! I'm not black but I was feeling rather offended by the amount of lowbrow and unfunny stereotypes being deployed.
