Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 23rd, 2010
Let's see if you can follow any of this. Jesse Warren is a wannabe actor/director/gofer. He's taking acting classes like a million other Hollywood hopefuls. During his classes he begins to write the "way cool" story about a character named Neil Bannen. As luck would have it, he runs into another aspiring star in Mark Gantt. Gantt appears to be exactly like the character in Warren's fledgling script. So, he approaches his classmate and both agree that the story is "way cool".
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 22nd, 2010
American Pickers revolves around two “gifted” pickers: Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz. The thesis of the show is that these two men comb the back roads of the Midwest searching for hidden treasures and collectible items. The people they encounter along the way are far from garden variety with the majority of them having stacks upon stacks of junk cascading out of their property. These two men barter and haggle over pricing on many different things with each item earning them a considerable profit. The question arises through these exchanges, does morality come into play?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 21st, 2010
The Super Friends as a cartoon show had a long and sketchy past. It started out in the 1970’s and ran in nearly a dozen different incantations and over a hundred episodes until 1986 when it was put down for the last time. The original episodes that ran from 1973 until 1974 were unique, they ran for an hour with commercials and focused on one core story. Eight of them are provided here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 21st, 2010
Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) has been the maid for the family run by matriarch Pilar (Claudia Celedón) for 23 years. Those years have taken their toll, and Raquel looks worn far beyond her 41 years. She is clearly unable to look after the household on her own, and Pilar tries to hire another maid to help out. Raquel takes this the wrong way, imagines she's being eased out, and treats each new maid as an invader who must be repulsed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 20th, 2010
This compilation of cartoons takes from different Madeline series', produced from about 1993 to 2001. Each episode is in the half-hour long format, with different title cards, theme songs and narrators, but all following the same format of rhyming narration, and imaginative story lines, songs peppered throughout, and a couple even dipping into the supernatural.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 20th, 2010
The Real McCoys was a major TV hit during its run of 1957-1963. Starring three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennen and a pre-Rambo Richard Crenna. Led by Grandpa, the family move from Virginia to California (sound a touch familiar?) and is comprised of brothers and sisters that range in age from their twenties right down to eleven. This series paved the way fir rural comedies, especially the Beverly Hillbillies, proceeding it, and Brennen's voice set the bar for wiley Southern farmer characters for a generation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 20th, 2010
This was Lucille Ball’s follow-up to I Love Lucy. Here Ball is a widowed mother of two, sharing her home with best friend Vivian Vance, who is a divorced mother of one. All the other members of household are, of course, faced with the disasters triggered by Lucy. I screened this set immediately after viewing its close contemporary, Petticoat Junction, and the difference between the two was instructive. There are plenty of hokey gags and situations on The Lucy Show, but there is an enormous difference between the shows,
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 20th, 2010
The fifth season of Matlock brought more of the same. If you’re a fan, that’s very good news indeed. What is that, you ask? Imagine Sheriff Andy Taylor older and now an attorney, and you pretty much have the setup for Matlock. Forget for a second that both characters were played by Andy Griffith. That’s not all they have in common. Matlock is every bit the “southern gentleman” that Taylor was. He might be a little smarter, but he walks and talks like Andy Taylor.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 19th, 2010
This series from Comedy Central began as a low-budget film hosting show in a small television station in Minnesota. It was the brainchild of Joel Hodgson. It ended up running for 11 years and a feature film version.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 15th, 2010
Parasomnia is a broad term that covers a lot of sleep disorders. I even ran into the term in association with restless leg syndrome. But there is a severe disorder called Kleine-Levin Syndrome, also known as Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, where the sufferer spends a very large part of their lives asleep. In reality, it usually amounts to days at a time. In William Malone's new thriller Parasomnia, we meet Laura, who sleeps about 90% of the time, making her a true Sleeping Beauty.
