Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 18th, 2010
Some of you are aware of this but my favorite movie of all time is Escape from New York. To me, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell represent the perfect director/actor combination. The director knows how to play the actor’s strengths (and minimize weaknesses) and the actor knows how to bring out the best in the direction. It is my sincere pleasure to cover this film on its first trip to the Blu-ray format.
In the year 1988, it was reported that crime had increased by four hundred percent. Things got so bad that they decided to turn Manhattan Island into one giant maximum security prison. Only prisoners live on the island and there are no police. Furthermore, if you are sent to the island, you are there for life. Exit from the island is impossible due to mines on all major bridges and a large 50 foot wall.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 10th, 2010
"Okay, first of all, let me get something straight. This is a journal, not a diary. Yeah, I know what it says on the cover. But, when my mom went out to buy this thing, I specifically told her not to buy one that said 'diary' on it. This just proves that Mom doesn't understand anything about kids my age."
I guess I missed out on the phenomenon. Apparently in 2007 a guy named Jeff Kinney created a sort of crude comic book. The figures are little better than stick men, and the wit is something from the sixth grade. I guess that pretty much matches the book's purpose, which is to cover the life of a smart-aleck from middle school. Of course, when I was young they didn't call it that. They called it junior high. Unless you went to Catholic school where it didn't even exist. Anyway, the comic built what you'd call a cult following. It was inevitable from there that the short little features would find themselves the subject of a motion picture.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 9th, 2010
Living just a couple of hours from Gainesville, Florida, it really is easy to sit down and get yourself in the mood for some Tom Petty. Look, the boy is never going to win any beauty contests, and his voice sounds like he went to the Bob Dylan school of vocals. But there's no denying that for a few decades Tom Petty, often along with those Heartbreakers, wrote some of the most recognizable American anthem music south of Ashbury Park, New Jersey. But it wasn't always hit songs and world tours for the college town natives. Today they might have never made it in a music business that demands immediate success and gold records. It was the third album that gave this band its break-out hits and fame: Damn The Torpedoes.
While Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were already generating some momentum in England where they broke sooner than their native United States, Damn The Torpedoes was an unmistakable milestone for the group. The musicians included: Mike Campbell on guitars, Ron Blair on bass, Stan Lynch on drums, and, of course Tom Petty on guitars and vocals. It was produced by Jimmy Iovine, who is generally credited with helping the band develop their signature sound. Released in 1979, the album contained three hit singles, with Refuge and Don't Do Me Like That scoring huge hits in the United States.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 9th, 2010
I recently reviewed Parasomnia on DVD. I was a bit disappointed that we hadn't been given a chance to see the full in high definition. The director, William Malone, arranged for us to get the film on Blu-ray, and I am thankful. I say this so that there will be full disclosure.
With all of that said, I have to tell you that I liked the film even more on my second viewing. A lot of it has to do with the high-definition image presentation which I will discuss in greater detail at the appropriate time. Some of it has to do with the number of nuances that this film contains. It is definitely the kind of movie where you make new discoveries on the second pass. Now keep in mind that I watch these films with a legal pad, taking notes as I go. I didn't do as much of that the second time around. Finally, even though there were not any plot surprises this time, I found the film just as interesting, perhaps more so, on the second pass. If that's not the mark of a pretty dang good film, I wish someone would tell me what is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 9th, 2010
A good thriller is something that has been absent from my recent viewing experience. One of my favorite thrillers of all time is a movie named Ninth Gate. This movie is directed by Roman Polanski. As luck would have it, Roman Polanski also directed the thriller I am bringing you today, The Ghost Writer. My fingers are crossed and I can only hope that this film is just as good.
When the movie opens, we learn that Ghost (real name never revealed) (played by Ewan McGregor) is made aware of a ghostwriting venture by his agent Rick Ricardelli (played by Jon Bernthal). It involves writing the memoirs of Adam Lang (played by Pierce Brosnan), the former British Prime Minister. Ghost also learns that his predecessor before him was unfortunately found dead, drowned aboard a local ferry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 5th, 2010
For most of you who read my reviews, I can be rather harsh when reviewing movies of a Christian nature. One needs to look no further than my scathing review of Fireproof. More than often they tend to be too preachy with messages and heavy themes that suggest a way of life too strict for many people’s tastes. Naturally, I was a little skeptical when I received To Save a Life. But as the movie teaches us: one should not be judged on appearances alone.
Today is the funeral of Roger Dawson (played by Robert Bailey Jr) who committed suicide at the tender age of seventeen. We see many people in attendance including one other fellow high school student named Jake Taylor (played by Randy Wayne). As it turns out, we are treated to a flashback that shows Jake and Roger as best friends growing up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 4th, 2010
"This is James Henry Trotter. He lived with his mother and father in a cozy little house by the sea. It was a wonderful life. They had each other, and they had their dreams. Then, one day a terrible thing happened. An angry rhinoceros appeared out of nowhere and gobbled up his poor mother and father..."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 4th, 2010
Johnny Handsome is based on a rather obscure and dated novel called The Three Worlds Of Johnny Handsome. Walter Hill must have found something in the dated material that attracted him to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to attract audiences. The film made a very paltry $7 million at the box and has been little heard from since. In spite of a solid cast and a script that does tend to move along at a nice clip, the film has never really found an audience and is somewhat of a surprise to be found on Blu-ray.
Johnny (Rourke) is a high-level hood who goes by the name Johnny Handsome in reference to extreme deformities in his face. He looks almost like tElephant Man. His deformity even affects his speech. He's almost indecipherable when he talks. He's involved in a big takedown of a coin shop that has some valuable pieces in its collection. He and his crew take down the store, but something goes very wrong. Rafe Garrett (Henriksen) and his girl Sunny (Barkin) betray the rest of the team. They end up running off with the loot and leave the rest of the crew dead. All except for Johnny, who managed to dodge the gunfire. All of his friends are dead, and Johnny's left behind to take the fall...and the prison sentence. Still, Johnny won't rat on the two that betrayed him and got away. But Rafe's not taking any chances. He has Johnny stabbed in prison. Once again Johnny's luck holds up, and he manages to survive Rafe's wrath. In the prison hospital ward, Johnny meets Dr. Fisher (Whitaker), who has an experimental facial reconstruction procedure he'd like to try out on Johnny. It requires having his entire skull reconstructed. In return, Johnny will get a new identity to go with that new face.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2010
"I always wondered why nobody did it before me. I mean, all those comic books, movies, and TV shows. You'd think that one eccentric loner would have made himself a costume. I mean, is everyday life really so exciting? Are schools and offices so thrilling that I'm the only one who ever fantasized about this? Come on. Be honest with yourself. At some point in our lives, we all wanted to be a superhero. Who am I? I'm Kick Ass."
You have to give the folks at Lionsgate some serious credit for the way they promoted Kick Ass. The film was generating a lot of buzz almost a year before it actually came out. It was a huge topic of conversation at last year's ComicCon, and I must have gotten promo alerts from the studio once a week for several months. But even with all of that hype, the film just refused to interest audiences enough to show up in any great numbers for the quirky superhero spoof. We're talking under $50 million for a film that got so much pre-release attention. And so it was with that history in mind that I rather cautiously approached the film when the Blu-ray arrived here from the studio. Most of what I had heard wasn't so good. I figured, at best, it'll be a nice diversion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2010
For ten years we watched Jack O'Neil, Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the Jaff'a Tealc' enter the Stargate. Others would join the team over the years. Each week we would follow their adventures, first on Showtime and finally on the Sci-Fi (now Sy Fy) Channel. We watched with awe as they stepped through a portal that was in reality a wormhole transporting them instantly to another world, brought online by dialing the device like an old fashioned telephone. For another five years we traveled not only to another planet, but to the Pegasus Galaxy itself to the Atlantis Base, a bright floating city left behind by the ancients, the people who created the Stargate system millions of years before. On this show we met new friends, new bad guys, and had new adventures. The location might have changed. The faces might have, at first, been unfamiliar, but the missions and the entertainment value didn't let us down. For 15 seasons we enjoyed a spectacular tale to rival the myths of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
I'm told that all good things must come to an end. When Atlantis was finally cancelled, I was made almost immediately aware of the plans to continue the franchise. First reports started coming out that the show was going to be called Stargate Universe. Soon my inside contacts started giving me tidbits about the story. Details began to emerge about the Destiny, an ancient ship abandoned in another universe far away. The ship was on some kind of predetermined course and would sport an unsuspecting crew of humans that would be left stranded on the ship for an indeterminate amount of time. It was starting to sound a lot like Star Trek: Voyager to me. Of course, this is Stargate, so there has to be some gate travel, one would assume. The ship would come with a gate, and the vessel would come out of faster-than-light travel from time to time and dial up a local planet for exploration. The ship was ancient not only in its origin but in its duration in space. There were going to be a lot of system failures, as the equipment was long past its expiration date. The ship itself would know what resources it needed to continue to operate. Searching its vast planetary database, the ship would locate planets with the essential resources, allowing away teams to get such vital raw materials. Unfortunately, the ship didn't always give a good indication of what to find or where on the planet it might happen to be. Oh, and did I mention the countdown? The ship would decide how much time it would allot for each mission, instituting a countdown. When the clock reached zero, the ship goes back to FTL, and whoever's not back in time gets left behind.
![Diary of a Wimpy Kid [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Tom Petty - Classic Albums: Damn the Torpedoes [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/tom-petty-classic-albums-damn-th-large.jpg)
![Parasomnia [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/parasomnia-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![To Save a Life [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/to-save-a-life-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![James and the Giant Peach (Two-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray/DVD Combo) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/james-and-the-giant-peach-two-disc-large.jpg)
![Johnny Handsome [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/johnny-handsome-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Stargate Universe - SGU: Season 1.5 [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/stargate-universe-sgu-season-15-large.jpg)
