Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 6th, 2009
“If you look closely, you’ll find that everything has a weak spot, where it can break….”
The same can be said for Fracture. There are plenty of flaws, and if you look hard enough you can find a lot of problems with everything from the story to the performances. Thankfully these flaws are quite minor and require the kind of scrutiny that would likely ruin almost any movie experience. I taught law for about 7 years and make it a bit of a (bad?) habit to look for the errors in court and legal procedures. I found plenty here, but they aren’t all that obvious or that detrimental to the plot. You’ll find errors in such trifles as chain of custody for evidence and the admissibility of certain types of testimony. If you’re a student of the law you’ll take note, as I did, and then hopefully move on. There’s too much compelling stuff here to allow yourself to miss out because of some rather common legal mistakes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 19th, 2009
“I’m Special Agent Kessel, in charge of the FBI and Department Of Justice’s joint task force on deranged and violent criminals. In the most extreme and violent cases traditional forensic investigations can be inadequate. In these instances, to hunt down the most vicious and elusive killers and psychopaths, we solicit the assistance of civilians with extraordinary gifts. Catherine Deane was one of them… now there’s another.”
That other is Maya (Santiago). It has been quite a few years since I saw The Cell. I was going to go back and watch the original again to get myself prepared for reviewing this direct to video sequel. Time didn’t allow for such conveniences, but in the end it wouldn’t have helped anyway. There are two reasons. The first is that the first film is only available on DVD and not yet out in a high definition release. It would have created quite a disparity, particularly when dealing with such visual exotic worlds as The Cell dealt with, and I assumed the sequel would as well. Unfortunately, there are no such visual stunning abstractions in this film beyond an irrelevant prologue scene. The second reason it would not have helped is that this film obviously has no connection to the original at all. The above introduction is about as close as the two films ever get. Maya does not enter dreams. She’s merely a psychic, with no more power or flair than Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone or Alison from Medium. Yes, she can enter our killers head, but it merely allows her to see what he sees. To feel what he’s feeling. Gone are the imaginative journeys deep inside the subconscious of the disturbed mind. This one is strictly in the mold of tracking down a rather brutal serial killer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 22nd, 2009
“3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines. The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.”
When Arnie told us that he’d be back, he wasn’t kidding. Not only has this film been through three cuts of the film itself, but this is at least the 9th home video release of the movie and the second on the young Blu-ray high definition format. Lionsgate is doing everything it can to squeeze as much out of us as possible. I don’t blame them, really. But, is it too soon to release a second Blu-ray of the same movie? Yes, I think that it is. I might not feel quite so bad about the whole thing if I didn’t suspect that there will be another one within the year. With the theatrical release of Terminator: Salvation and the inevitable home video versions of that film, likely by Christmas, my crystal ball predicts a third T2 Blu-ray by the end of this year or the first quarter of the next.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 19th, 2009
"Space...The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!"
Star Trek: The Original Series finally makes it to high definition. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been waiting for this day for what seems like centuries. They’re here. One of the best features about this set is the multi-angle option. Remember how we were promised all of this control way back when DVD’s first hit the market? We got the same promises when Blu-ray arrived, and we weren’t going to hold our breath. Hey, I still have a red, yellow, blue, and green button on my Blu-ray remote. What are they ever going to be good for? Anyway, we finally have a use for the angle button. You can use it to toggle between the new digital f/x Paramount recently created for the show, or you can watch the original f/x if you’d rather. With that button you now have the ability to toggle between the two. Through the use of branching technology you can go between them as often as you like and never stop the show. I will warn you, however, that many of these shots occur so quickly that the second delay in transition might not allow you to see the entire segment. It also does not change while the video is in pause. It’s one of the best new features out there and perhaps the best reason to upgrade your recent purchase of season one to the Blu-ray release.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 8th, 2009
“The Black Freighter, the Hell bound ship’s black sails against the yellow Indies sky. I know again the stench of powder and men’s brains and war…more blood”
Zack Snyder had a big problem. He was trying to make a film out of a graphic novel that many acclaim as the best graphic novel ever written. Many directors before him have declared the project unfilmable. Alan Moore, the writing part of the book’s creation team, was dead set against a film version of the book and refused to have his name associated with the film. A lawsuit had broken out between Warner and Fox over who exactly owned the rights to even make the movie. The fans were making their expectations known loud and clear: Mess this up and we’ll get you for it. Did I say Zack Snyder had a problem? On second thought he had several, and not the least was that he found himself staring into the abyss of an unreleasable four hour film. Cuts were going to have to be made, severe cuts. One of those cuts was the comic within a comic story of The Black Freighter.
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