DVD

A good erotic movie is actually harder than it sounds.  Sure, you have to have skin, word play, arousal, and yes, that other kind of play.  But the good erotic films like Basic Instinct, 9 1/2 Weeks, and Embrace of the Vampire (You thought I was going to say Fatal Attraction, didn't you?) are very entertaining and have a story that draws you in to keep you there even when the spicy bits aren't on the screen.  Today's erotic film is Curiosa, which certainly hits all of the skin elements, but does it have a story that I would want to watch again and again?  Let's check it out.

Nelson Mandela once said, “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”  Most people, even in today's society, think of prisoners as lower than the ground they walk upon.  Prison abuse is as old as Greek and Roman times.  Heck, true prison reform didn't start in the United States until the 1960's.  But what about other countries?  In Caged Birds, we explore the Switzerland of the 1980's and how one lawyer named Barbara Hug tried to change that very system.

Some of my favorite movies are ones where they use the "author" as the focal part of the story.  Films like Secret Window, Misery, and The Ghost Writer are ones that immediately come to mind for me.  However, Westerns tend to be somewhere down on the list of genres for me, and only ones like Tombstone or Unforgiven tend to spark any interest.  So when I received Jesus Kid, which features a Brazilian author who likes to write Westerns, well, you can kinda understand my apprehension.  However, my curiosity was also piqued at the same time for the very same set of reasons.

Bakugan was originally a toy first envisioned by an inventor named Aldric Saucier, who thought he could fit a small action figure inside a marble.  He then presented the idea to Spin Masters, who accepted it eagerly, as they were in search of a marble for the 21st century.  Ultimately they sent the idea to Sega Toys in Japan, who came up with the concept to turn it into a game complete with cards and miniatures.  From there it was only a matter of time before Bakugan became a cartoon show as well.  Today, we are reviewing Bakugan: Battle Planet, the newest series to feature these bio-mechanical creations in their animated form.

When you have done movie reviews for a very long time such as I have, you acquire knowledge about certain films and movies that in a normal life span one would probably never come across. One of those for me has been the Power Rangers series. I have reviewed several of the American adaptations for the site, and while they are not my cup of tea, I am familiar with how they work and operate. Last week, I received one of the Japanese original Super Sentai series, Chojin Sentai Jetman, and I was eager to check it out. Let's see how this all unfolds.

New cartoon series these days are a hard watch for me. Gone are the days of classic shows like X-Men, Batman: The Animated Series and even newer favorites like Regular Show which ended about a year ago. Now we get shows where it seems like it is one cheap joke after another including Teen Titans Go and that show about some kid named Steven. So, I wasn't too thrilled to get the newest incarnation of Ben 10 on my review desk a couple of weeks ago. That's when I decided to employ the talents of my 2 year old son, Keaton and see if he can offer some insight.

Honestly, looking back at my life I can't say I really have acquired any heirlooms from my father. I do have a picture from when I was a young boy in a railroad hat with my dad holding me that I always keep in plain sight, but that's very different from what most people know as a heirloom. I certainly don't have a special watch (though I imagine I will inherit a grandfather clock when my father passes on), especially one with an inscription. However, if I did have one like Tzanko Petrov did in our movie, Glory, I certainly can imagine the emotional toll that would take on a man.

Like most people my age (I'm not telling), I watched my fair share of Full House. I wished I could be as cool as John Stamos, be as funny as Dave Coulier and wished Bob Saget was my dad. Then I grew up and realized I wasn't as cool as John Stamos, didn't find Dave to be quite as hilarious (sorry Dave), and still wished Bob was my dad (Actually, even more so when I found out he was quite the dirty comic). Fast forward about twenty years and the Full House theme has been brought back into the present with some familiar faces and a few new ones. Let's take a look at Season 2 of Fuller House.

Detective Carrie Wells (played by Poppy Montgomery) and her former boyfriend/current crime fighting partner Al Burns (played by Dylan Walsh) have been noticed because of their uncanny crime solving percentage in the upper 90% (a fairly common thing in TV crime shows, but nearly unheard of in the real world) and get promoted to the NYPD's Major Crimes unit. With this move, and the fact that this program bounced in and out of cancellation quagmire between the first and second season

Six seasons (and several fictional years) in and Hank Moody (David Duchovny) is still drinking, snorting, womanizing and procrastinating from doing anything productive with his writing. Hank is still riding on the success of his first book and the subsequent money he received after it was adapted into a motion picture. Hank seems like the type of character who is incapable of any personal growth (aside from around his trousers...which is just the kind of joke he'd try to make) but with his daughter wanting to live abroad, which threatens his chances at reuniting with his on-and-off girlfriend, perhaps this season he'll mature.