DVD

Charlton Heston Presents the Bible

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2011

“How did The Bible come to be? The Bible wasn’t always a book or even a series of books. In the beginning there wasn’t even a written language. The prophets and holy men who roamed these lands seeking the truth and preaching God’s word as they perceived it were talking to illiterate audiences who could only be reached by the witnessed testimony and the spoken word.”

That’s where Charlton Heston comes in.
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Imax: Hubble

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 5th, 2011

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“May, 2009 – Seven brave astronauts are about to launch on the most challenging and risky missions ever flown in space. This is the last chance to save the Hubble Telescope.”

You have to really go back to April of 1990 to get to the start of the story. That’s when the shuttle Discovery launched from Cape Kennedy with the Hubble Telescope in its cargo bay waiting to bring the ends of the universe to our waiting eyes. I was there that day among the crowd of hopefuls as the shuttle ignited its thrusters and pierced the sky for space.
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The Perfume of the Lady in Black

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 5th, 2011

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Three years after her unsettling turn in Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Mimsy Farmer headlined this giallo-related effort by director/co-writer Francesco Barilli. She plays a successful chemist on the verge of a psychotic break. She has been haunted since her childhood by the death of her father, and she has recurring memories (or are they fantasies?) of her mother in the arms of a sinister man. Her sense of reality crumbles as objects and people from her past appear and vanish.
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The Civil War, A Film by Ken Burns

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 4th, 2011

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I have been reviewing various discs for plenty of years now. As a rule, I’ve stayed away from most documentaries as I know that unless they involve video games, I will probably use them for a sleep aid. That is not to say I can’t enjoy them, I just know my track record. Then, I received the grand mother of all documentaries, The Civil War by Ken Burns with an anniversary edition to boot. Yep, this is going to be a long and bumpy ride, let’s hold on shall we?
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Our Planet: The Past, Present and Future of Earth

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 1st, 2011

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Our Planet is a merging of a large handful of documentaries that originally aired on the History Channel. Here they are packaged together to thematically display the “Past, Present, and Future of Earth.”
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Marillion: Live from Cadogan Hall

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 31st, 2011

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There is a place in London of the United Kingdom that is down in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea that used to be the first Church of Christ. However, throughout the years the populace decreased that flowed into the church and it became a shell of its former self. Still a goregous location, in 2001 it became home to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. That building is called Cadogan Hall. Fast forward to 2009, a band called Marillion decided to play there which led to this 2011 release.

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The Third Reich: Rise and Fall

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 30th, 2011

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The Nazis have been the subject of countless documentaries and films. On this occasion, The History Channel has decided to place the focus on the people of Germany, with a time line that starts at approximetaly the First World War and leads to the end of the Second World War. With the aid of newly discovered home videos gathered from Germany & Russia, we see a combination of German life during this time, as well as public and private views of Nazi discourse and planning.
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A Kiss of Chaos

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 30th, 2011

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Phoenix is having a rough night. Her scumbag ex boyfriend has just shown up in her apartment with a gunshot wound and a sack of stolen cocaine and her psychotic HIV positive prostitute sister has also shown up, having just shot a john in the face. Plus there are gangsters after the cocaine who will stop at nothing to get it back. Plus there’s her lesbian friend downstairs whose brother is involved on multiple levels and wants to drag her into a plot to steal and sell the cocaine. Plus it’s her birthday.
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Vega$: The Second Season, Volume Two

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 29th, 2011

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By 1978 the television detective model had been nearly complete and possibly already a cliché. Dan Tanna might have well been the complete model as far as the formula goes. It was almost as if you could go down a checklist and, like Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster, check off the necessary elements. The scripts could then almost write themselves, and you let the show fly on autopilot for three seasons or so until someone decides to look behind the curtain.
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The Zombie Farm

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 24th, 2011

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“Don’t let the love of your life leave you for a damned Gringo. Come and see us, and I guarantee you that we’ll save your life. United Parapsychologists Of America. Esoteric jobs, spiritual cleansing, taxes and immigration papers…”

If ever there was a movie that should have fired its marketing department, it’s Zombie Farm. If you read any of the descriptions or look at the cover art, you are expecting this to be one of thousands of movies that offer up gritty images,
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BMX Bandits

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 23rd, 2011

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The more famous a star, the more curious their early, pre-icon efforts become. Thus, we watch agog as Humphrey Bogart plays a murderous, blood-thirsty zombie in The Return of Doctor X (1939). And here, a 16-year-old Nicole Kidman makes her debut as a BMX-obsessed teen who runs afoul of a group of not-very-competent gangsters. Once again, one watches agog.
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The Virginian – The Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 23rd, 2011

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The Virginian set itself apart from the others in two ways. The first was found in the source material. The series was based on a 1902 novel by Owen Winsler, a man who actually lived in the Wyoming badlands during the time the series was set. The source material helps to add a sense of authenticity that might well have been a slight step ahead of the rest. It wasn’t as violent as the others, again reflecting a more realistic sense of direction.
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Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete Second Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 22nd, 2011

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While Scarecrow And Mrs. King first aired in 1983, this show is really one of the last of the 1970’s crime dramas. It was an early attempt to bring in more of the female audience that seemed reluctant to join the popular detective shows of the era. While not really a “detective” show (they were spies), it employed a lot of the 1970’s conventions. Even the film footage has that distinct style from those days and type of shows. The idea worked, and the series did bring in a sizeable female audience, but it never really caught on with the guy crowd who found it a bit too relationship-heavy. The two leads were chosen less for their character appeal than for their apparent “easy on the eyes” look.
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Daniel Tosh: Happy Thoughts

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 22nd, 2011

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I have a penchant lately for reviewing stand up comedians. This is mostly a good thing. After all, stand up specials aren’t usually that long, have few extras and will hopefully provoke a laugh from yours truly. But lately, it seems that the comedians I get to review aren’t really that funny. Hopefully that trend changes with Daniel Tosh, star of the tv show Tosh.O. Heck, I wasn’t even aware he did stand-up. Well, here goes nothing.
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Spooner

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 19th, 2011

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Most people know me to be a little bit quirky. *laughter comes from the back of the room*. Okay, very quirky. As to be expected, there are a lot of quirky movies out there for me to watch. But more often than not, most of those movies go way beyond anything I’ve ever thought was entertaining. Now here I am on the cusp of another review and I get a quirky romantic comedy called Spooner. I just hope that the movie I’m about to watch doesn’t involve cutlery and other assorted kitchen gadgets.

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Batman: The Brave and the Bold – Season One, Part Two

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 16th, 2011

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Some of you might remember my review of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the first thirteen episodes which can be found here. I found it to be a great little series that was rich in its roots. Well, six months have passed and we finally get a chance to look at the next thirteen episodes. With a little bit of luck, maybe they will be just as good if not better than our first look into the series.
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Felicity: An American Girl Adventure

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 16th, 2011

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The American Girl series appears to have started as a collection of dolls. The collection featured various girls from a wide range of historical periods. The dolls came with rather unique histories that provided both a chance to bring the doll to life in the imagination of the child and also teach a little of what life might have been like for girls that lived in these different eras. Of course, the collection had to have accessories, and before long an entire industry was born. The dolls led to a series of books that fleshed out the adventures these characters might have had in their time periods.
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The American

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 14th, 2011

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The cover of this DVD is, depending on which signals you pick up on, either misleading or perfectly accurate. If all you see is George Clooney running with a gun, and you therefore come to the conclusion that this is going to be some action-packed thriller, and that is what you’re hoping for, then you’re going to be disappointed. If, on the other hand, the orange colour and the rather retro look to Cloney’s image, not to mention the rather uninformative title, makes you think of the 1970s, then you’re on the right track.
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The Virginian – The Complete Season Two

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 9th, 2011

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“This is Fairfax County in the state of Virginia. I was born here. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and a long long way from Wyoming; beautiful, too, in its special way. Vast, proud and lonely; it’s my country now, Wyoming. But not exactly a peaceful one.”

Of course, if it were all that peaceful it wouldn’t have made for very compelling television. But The Virginian did make for compelling western drama in a television landscape that was as populated as prairies in those plains with western dramas.
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Scandalous Gilda

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 9th, 2011

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Monica Guerritore is an unnamed wealthy socialite (all of the characters in the film are unnamed) who catches her husband in flagrante with another woman. To add insult to injury this woman is a TV personality of a sort unknown in North America, but common in France and Italy – an attractive woman whose only job is to let you know what’s coming up next – and, rightly or wrongly, can represent, as is the case here, a certain form of empty glamour.
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The Storm Warriors

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 9th, 2011

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I must admit, I came at The Storm Warriors with very little knowledge of its creators, the Pang brothers, but as someone who appreciates Asian cinema, I felt that I had the sensibilities to enjoy the film.
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William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 5th, 2011

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William S Burroughs was the third hit of the 1-2-3 combo of Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch which closed out the 50s and defined the so-called “beat generation.” This film documents the significance of Burroughs work as a part of this scene, and the influence he had on artists, musicians, filmmakers, and countless others.
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Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated: Season 1 V.1

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2011

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Scooby Doo has spanned generations and over 40 years. Since the 1960’s the name and conventions have become a part of the pop culture. The original cartoon series had a series of conventions. The Scooby Gang would drive around in their green Mystery Machine van and solve ghostly mysteries. Fans of the show quickly grew to learn that these spirits and goblins were usually just normal people using scare tactics to get revenge or make a profit
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Tom & Jerry 1: Fur Flying Adventures

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2011

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In the 1930’s and 40’s MGM was trying to get in on the lucrative animation game. The field was dominated at the time by Warner Brothers with their Loony Tunes shorts, and of course, the iconic cast of animated characters coming out of the Walt Disney Studio. For years they had failed to find the right property to take advantage of the market.
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Paula-Paula

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 3rd, 2011

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Paula (Carmen Montes), a dancer at a strip club, is arrested for the murder of Paula (Paula Davis), a fellow dancer. The arresting officer (Lina Romay) questions the near-catatonic Paula, and the rest of the film is a slow-motion, flashback of the dead Paula dancing, the two women making love, and the murder. Once the slow-mo begins, there is no further dialogue, except for a cryptic fable that Paula tells to the camera.
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