Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Posted by Ken Spivey
The Smithsonian Channel's three part documentary, “NatureTech” explores the “striking parallels between nature and technology.” The episodes of “NatureTech” work with the assumption that scientists have ignored nature for the past century, and their narrow focus has limited their growth. Contemporary researchers who bear this in mind are making unexpected leaps in their respective fields.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Male bonding deep in the heart of the Oregon wilderness is the order of the day in Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling, a direct-to-video sequel to the Seth Green-Dax Shepard-Matthew Lillard comedy of 2004. Unfortunately, it’s more of a training ground for actors and crew than an actual film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
It’s hard being the bad guy, but sometimes you just don’t like a film that seemingly everyone else does. Such is the case for me with Funny Face, the classic Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire teaming that sees a bookish young lady go from the obscurity of her lonely library to the glitzy Paris lights as a high-profile fashion model.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 13th, 2009
Most people know the Chipmunks for three characters: Alvin, Simon and Theodore. This trio was known for a voice that sounded like too many rpm’s at the old record machine. However for the purposes of this disc, the six episodes featured were focused on a trio who was the equivalent of the Chipmunk “B” team. Their names were Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor. They were known as the Chipettes. These are their stories. Dun Dun. (Cue Law & Order music).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 13th, 2009
A disfigured young man with an unhealthy interest in his sister attacks and kills a woman. Five years later, he is released (by psychiatrist Jess Franco) into his sister’s care, who is helping organize a language school on property owned by her disagreeable, but very rich, aunt. In short order, the female students at the school (and there are ONLY female students, for reasons not explained) start being killed off. But no one other than heroine Olivia Pascal actually believes that anything is going on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 12th, 2009
The giallo was never a genre that specialized in tight, coherent, logical storylines. But even by the bizarre standards of the form, In the Folds of the Flesh takes some kinda cake. Trying to summarize its plot is next to impossible, as the first two thirds of the plot are incomprehensible, and are cleared up only in the final third, which feels more like a play than a film, and where the revelations and twists pile up to such a degree that they don't induce whiplash – they torque your head clean off. So, for what it's worth, we have a castle (whose interiors look distinctly un-castle-like) where, thirteen years ago, a man was decapitated. His body was disposed of by the woman living there, and she and two children, now grown and thoroughly insane, dispose of anyone else foolish enough to come prying into their lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 11th, 2009
After having been present at a political assassination, the Grave Diggers biker gang starts being killed off one by one. Undercover cop Stone joins the gang (by basically saying, “Hi, I’m a cop. Can I hang out with you guys?”) in an effort to solve the murders. Plenty of shenanigans, riding around, and utterances of the word “man” ensue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 9th, 2009
A group of low-life gangsters kidnap a starlet (Ursula Fellner) and hightail it off to a jungle island, where they subject their victim to endless indignities while waiting for the ransom money to arrive. Al Cliver is dispatched to rescue her, but his helicopter arrival draws the attention of a group of hostile natives and, more to the point, a red-eyed, cannibal zombie-god who holds them in a grip of fear.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 9th, 2009
Gitane Demone was one of the lead singers for seminal deathrock band Christian Death before going solo in 1989. This 2-DVD set is a record of her various solo efforts, tracking various incarnations, most notoriously (and most prominently featured in the release's packaging) being the fetish performances for the likes of the DeMask club and Skin Two magazine. Present here is a mix of television interviews, one video, and a raft of live footage.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 9th, 2009
Holly Golightly is perhaps the most tragic, depressing character in all of literature and film, especially to those of us who know (or have known) people just like her. As an example to aspire to, Golightly fails miserably. She is internally and externally destructive, intentionally so. Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the novella in which she was formed, has created in her a realistic portrait of people that fear happiness, and so imprison themselves to lives of restless and reckless abandon.
