Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 30th, 2010
Despite lasting over a hundred episodes, The Patty Duke Show only lasted about three years from the fall of 1963 until the late spring of 1966. However, it was often penned as one of the best shows of the 1960’s and still finds a way into syndication when networks such as TV Land need a wholesome show to fill a time slot. So, it is little surprise that Shout Factory have decided to release all three seasons of the show to DVD. But how does the final season of this show hold up after all of these years?
Prior to this dvd set, I wasn’t very familiar with the show and had only caught a few random episodes on Nick at Nite. So I’ll do the service of giving a brief layout before we continue. The show is based in Brooklyn where the Lanes family resides. The main character of the show is Patty Lane (played by Patty Duke) who is a strong willed and outgoing teenager. She has a dad named Martin (played by William Schallert) and a mother named Natalie (played by Jean Byron).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 29th, 2010
The original Batman: The Animated Series is one of my favorite cartoon shows of all time. Depending on which day you ask me, I might go ahead and say it is my favorite (the other times, I'll probably mention X-Men or Johnny Bravo). It was the perfect blend of cartoon super-hero drama, with a dose of dark and foreboding circumstances. Enter 2008, Batman: the Brave and the Bold, another Batman cartoon but on the lighter side of the equation. Would this show hold up as much as the historic original?
Before the Dark Knight, Batman Begins, heck even before Jack Nicholson wanted to dance with devil in the pale moonlight, there was a Silver age television show of Batman. It was light-hearted and we always knew that Batman was going to save the day and foil some of the most oddball villains along the way with intelligence and an awesome utility belt. Somewhere, in Heath Ledger's crooked smile and a really raspy squawk box for a Batman voice, we lost that wholesome value caped crusader.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 26th, 2010
Mention the name Jackson Browne and one thinks less of the performances and more of the music itself. While he never achieved quite the fame of many of his peers, his style and songwriting has had a lasting impact on some of the biggest names in the music industry. He was part of the whole Troubadour scene in the early 1970's where he hung out with the likes of James Taylor, The Eagles, and other notable artists who were about to find their golden tickets to larger stages and the crowds, money, and fame that went along with them. The likes of Crosby, Stills, & Nash have been inspired both by his ability to write and his passion for the causes he believes in. In the 20 years from 1979 to 1999 he organized and performed at over 1000 benefit concerts. It's not so much an accomplishment to be willing to give up your own time for the causes dear to your heart. Brown has a reputation in the business of being someone they can't say no to. His biggest cause has been his stand against nuclear power plants. Agree with him or not, Browne used his fame in a responsible way that today's artists can learn from. He did his preaching at the events and not so much at his paying gigs.
"For more than two decades, Jackson Browne has been one of the most compelling artists in popular music. In August of 1994, The Disney Channel presented Jackson Browne: Going Home, a chronicle of Jackson's remarkable career. Jackson Browne: Going Home contains interviews, performances, and rare footage spanning twenty-five years featuring Don Henley, Bonnie Raitt, David Crosby, Graham Nash, The Eagles, David Lindley, Jennifer Warnes and many more."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 25th, 2010
Pauly Shore seems to be trying to steer his career from being a washed up b-lister to being a self-aware washed up b-lister. Pauly Shore is Dead was his first dabbling into mockumentaries about himself, and now he has followed it up with Adopted. This yarn is about Shore, following the trend set by Angelina Jolie and Madonna, of flying to Africa (and later Cambodia) to adopt a child, with the hopes that being a father would fill a void in his shallow Hollywood hills life.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 24th, 2010
"I'm Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my old man and my son, Big Hoss. Everything in here has a story ... and a price. One thing I've learned after 21 years? You never know what is going to come through that door."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 24th, 2010
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. It wasn’t until the team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera approached the studio with their first project that the times did change, at least a little, for the fledgling animation department at MGM. The project was far from an original one even for the time. It was a very basic cat and mouse adventure featuring a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. There would be almost no dialog on the shorts. It certainly didn’t look like much of a hit to the studio brass, but with no better ideas on the way, they went ahead with the new shorts of Tom And Jerry. There’s a reason why the cat and mouse pair is such a classic. It’s because it works. If you can make your characters entertaining and endearing enough, you can have a hit. MGM finally entered the major leagues, and the team of Hanna and Barbera would become one of the most successful animation teams in history. They would go on to create such cherished characters as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, and, of course, Scooby Doo.
Tom and Jerry find themselves in Victorian England and at the famous flat on Baker Street where the most famous detective in the world resides. No, we're not talking about Jim Rockford. It's Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion and chronologer Doctor Watson. Moriarity is up to his old tricks, and he's planning to steal a precious gem. The gem has secret powers that can only be revealed during a lunar eclipse, which is just what is about to happen. Tom and Jerry along with damsel in distress Red, the lounge singer, and a church mouse team together to help the detective stop Moriarity and his gang of thugs.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 23rd, 2010
"They rob, kill, and terrorize, and they've left their mark on our nation's history."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 23rd, 2010
A robber tosses his loot onto a freeway and it lands on the hood of a random passerby. Said passerby decides to keep the $600,000+ and use it to buy brand new...everything, for him and his wife. While the robber gets incarcerated, he offers half the money to his twin brother if he can track it down. If the young couple flashes their money around and started paying cash for big ticket items, they will be hunted down...they do, and they are.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 23rd, 2010
Robert (Jakob Cedergren) is a Copenhagen police officer exiled from the big city for a misdeed that is initially mysterious. His new position is as marshal in a small town in the marshlands. Though it seems at first as if he won't have much to do here, things are looking more than a little weird. The locals all have their assigned seats at the pub, and resent any deviation from the way things are done locally. Shoplifting kids are expected to be beaten. The bicycle merchant has disappeared, but no one seems interested. A little girl in a red coat pushes a squeaky pram through the streets at all hours of the night. Then there's the girl's mother, the extremely flirtatious wife of the local bully. Robert is attracted to her, wants to protect her from her husband's beatings, and one night succumbs to temptation. The consequences are deadly.
The jacket copy compares the film to the work of the Coen brothers and David Lynch, and rightly so. This would be Coen and Lynch at their darkest, though, and if there is some leavening humour here, it is low key and never breaks the mood of unease and imminent doom. The town and its flat, desolate, boggy countryside are uncanny: there is enough recognizable here to be familiar, and to connect (at some level) with the real world, but there is enough that is twisted out of true to make one very anxious indeed. An excellent noir.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 23rd, 2010
Michel Gondry is a director whose work has been characterized by its originality and personal vision. The likes of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep have marked him as a filmmaker with a distinct vision. Here he makes what must be his most personal film yet, as it is a documentary about his family. More precisely, it is about his aunt Suzette, a strong-willed, redoubtable matriarch who worked as a schoolteacher in some of the most remote regions of France. Gondry and crew follow Suzette as she revisits her former schools, working her way through the decades and chronicling her life, that of her family, and, along the way, that of France.
As personal and culturally specific as the movie is, I fear that it might not translate very well for a North American audience. Some minimal familiarity with the context might be necessary to really get into the movie. Granting that, the film, with its mixture of new footage, model train transitions, and super-8 family movies, is fascinating and moving.
