Mirrors (Blu-ray)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 21st, 2009
“When one starts to perceive one’s own reflection as a completely separate being, one is suddenly confronted with two entirely separate egos, two entirely separate worlds that can surface at any given moment. A feeling of self hatred usually triggered by a psychological shock can split the personality in two, hence creating two or more personalities with distinct memories and distinct behavior patterns within the same individual. The patient has the false perception of the existence of two distinct worlds, the real world and the world inside the mirror.”
Or maybe not so false, at least according to the 20th Century Fox thriller, Mirrors.
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Boogeyman 3
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 21st, 2009
I have to admit that I’m usually very wary of direct to video sequels to films that weren’t exactly box office smash material to begin with. The original film was a typical and predictable mess of a film that didn’t even make use of a better than average cast for this kind of film. It took me by surprise when Boogeyman 2 came out, but I’m a glutton for punishment, so I rented the title mostly because it had Saw franchise star Tobin Bell in it. I ended up halfway liking the feature, and considerably more than the original film. When I saw the chance to review the third entry, I wanted to see if the DVD franchise was heading forward or backwards. Boy, was I pleased to find out that the answer is both.
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Dare to Play the Game
Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on January 21st, 2009
Nintendo has growth issues, Rockers who can’t play RockBand and Circuit City is all gone – Welcome to the column that says it is responsible for 99% of the bad jokes against the Wii, Nintendo 64, and Portal known as Dare to Play the Game.
There were essentially three games that I played this week: Lego Star Wars CS, Fable II Pub Games, and RockBand 2. In Lego Star Wars, I played half-way through the 4th episode. I’ve noticed that the stages are a lot longer and you simply can’t zoom through them as much as you would like.
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City of Ember
Posted in No Huddle by Archive Authors on January 21st, 2009
Posted by Ken Spivey
In a box, the men of importance placed a secret. They then created an underground city capable of complete autonomy, isolated from the outside world in hopes of shielding them from the trials of time. The box was given to the first mayor of “Ember City” and passed on to each successive mayor. After two hundred years the box was to open, revealing to the mayor’s descendant the way out of Ember City. Yet, somewhere along the way the box was lost. Meanwhile, the city has fallen into a major state of disrepair.
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Walker, Texas Ranger – The Complete Sixth Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 21st, 2009
Paramount has decided to standardize their DVD releases. This goes from everything to the DVD disc art, which is now just a two tone silver on all releases, to the cases. The new cases are a mixed deal. You get 6 discs inside of a single DVD space. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the disc holders are quite brittle and end up chipping and breaking. You save space but ultimately endanger the discs themselves. I hope someone at Paramount takes a look at the packaging and comes up with something a little better.
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My Three Sons – Season One, Vol. 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 21st, 2009
Just to look at it you would think that My 3 Sons was a Disney production. Its star Fred MacMurray had appeared in many Disney films of the 50’s and 60’s and is most likely recognizable from those appearances. Two of the three boys were also known for work with Disney. The eldest boy, Mike, was played by Tim Considine, who starred with MacMurray in Disney’s The Shaggy Dog.
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Election (Blu-ray)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2009
There’s something I hate about election season. No, it’s not all of those negative ads. No, it’s not the wall to wall coverage on the news networks, It isn’t even the campaigning that closes streets and makes you late for work. It’s the fact that every studio decides to dust off any title they think is even remotely political in nature and put it out, hoping to cash in on the perceived political craze.
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Small Touches of Evil
Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on January 17th, 2009
Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows (1976) isn’t the most high-profile Italian horror film, and only landed a legit North American release with Image’s 2002 DVD release. But it has been a succès d’estime for quite some time, particularly in its homeland, and it is well worth tracking down. Viewers looking for something fast-paced, or a Lucio Fulci-style gorefest will be disappointed, but those willing to work with it will find a deeply atmospheric, disturbing and intelligent contemporary gothic with elements of the giallo.
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Eden Lake
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
“It’s not about monsters, or zombies, or vampires. It’s about kids.”
One of the horror trends going around involves the isolation of a young couple who find themselves suddenly terrified. The pursuer can be a creature or undead vengeful spirit, but more often than not the attacker is very much human. The location can be a desert or even a hotel room as it was in one of the better examples of the subgenre, Vacancy with Kate Beckinsale and Luke Fox.
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The Plot to Kill Hitler
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
“As the end of World War II drew near, Hitler’s Germany was not only waging a war on separate fronts but from within the Third Reich. This story is based on actual events.”
If any of that sounds familiar, it should. It’s the plot and historical source for Tom Cruise’s latest big budget film, Valkyrie. One can’t help but wonder if this 1990 made for television film would ever see the light of a DVD release if not for the hype surrounding the Cruise film.
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Supercop
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
Supercop is really just the American title for the third entry in Jackie Chan’s very popular Police Story series in Hong Kong. For the first time in the franchise, Chan decided to go with an outside director, and he made a wise choice with newcomer Stanley Tong. Tong might have been a green director, but he had a natural feel for the abilities and strengths of his mega-star. The two would go on to collaborate on several more films after this rather remarkable first time pairing.
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Matlock – The Second Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
The second season of Matlock brought some change to the series. Matlock’s daughter was written out of the series when Purl left the series after the first season. In the 2 hour opening episode of the second season Matlock meets Nancy Stafford (Thomas) in London when he goes there for a case. The episode was filmed on location and marked a spectacular return for the sophomore series.
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Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling (Blu-ray)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
Here’s the deal. I don’t remember anything about the 2004 release of Without A Paddle. I guess it did some business; however, because someone working at Paramount, or should I say, who used to work at Paramount, came up with the harebrained scheme to deliver a direct to video sequel. This out of work crackpot also seems to have figured that returning any of the original’s cast was not a good idea; in fact, the brainstorm, here was that this film will have nothing at all to do with the first film.
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Strays (Steelbook)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 15th, 2009
In the review business, we often get films that we find to be distasteful or just plain rubbish. This is especially true when we receive a popular star’s directorial debut. Usually it is an egotistical pompous piece with no merit outside to try to drive the idea home that the actor is a well-rounded individual. However, once in a while we get a film that was directed by an established star that actually gave birth to his career. This is a self-promotional piece that got the world to know the person’s name. The name of this person I speak of? That would be Vin Diesel. The movie is called Strays.
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Dexter: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 15th, 2009
“Tonight’s the night, and it’s going to happen again and again. It has to happen…”
What is going to happen is that Dexter has finally come to Blu-ray. I can’t think of a better cable show to make the leap onto high definition. More than any current show, I think I’ve been looking forward to this release. Imagine what it would be like to visualize Dexter’s world in such wonderful detail. Imagine no longer. Dexter’s here, and he’s got something to show you.
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The Who At Kilburn: 1977
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 15th, 2009
“On 15 December, 1977, after a hiatus of over a year, The Who assembled at Gaumont State Theater in Kilburn, North London, to record a concert for Jeff Stein’s documentary film, The Kids Are Alright. Shot before a select invited audience it would turn out to be Keith Moon’s last, but one live performance. Unusual for live rock at the time, it was shot on 35mm film by six cameras and professionally recorded on a 16 track recorder. Never seen before, the film rested in The Who’s vault for 30 years.”
What young 1970’s pup, learning to play a guitar for the first time, didn’t, at one time or another, attempt to imitate Pete Townsend’s windmill power chord strum?
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Mannix: The Second Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2009
The show was created by the team of Link and Levinson, who later gave us the detective in the rumpled raincoat, Columbo. It was groundbreaking in so many areas. While it might not be remembered today as one of the top detective shows, there can be no argument about the impact Mannix had on the genre. A decade later one of my favorite television detectives, Jim Rockford, would borrow rather heavily from Mannix.
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NatureTech
Posted in No Huddle by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Posted by Ken Spivey
The Smithsonian Channel’s three part documentary, “NatureTech” explores the “striking parallels between nature and technology.” The episodes of “NatureTech” work with the assumption that scientists have ignored nature for the past century, and their narrow focus has limited their growth. Contemporary researchers who bear this in mind are making unexpected leaps in their respective fields.
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Dare to Play the Game
Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on January 14th, 2009
No Blu-Ray for Xbox, Fallout 3 level cap to 30 & the MMO Crash of 2008 – Welcome to the column that will be going Blu-ray as soon as it figures out how to reconfigure the CPU that resembles a Commodore 64 known as Dare to Play the Game.
Gaming was a weird bag for me this week. I primarily played Lego Star Wars CS and find myself done with Episode 3.
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Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Male bonding deep in the heart of the Oregon wilderness is the order of the day in Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling, a direct-to-video sequel to the Seth Green-Dax Shepard-Matthew Lillard comedy of 2004. Unfortunately, it’s more of a training ground for actors and crew than an actual film.
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Funny Face
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
It’s hard being the bad guy, but sometimes you just don’t like a film that seemingly everyone else does. Such is the case for me with Funny Face, the classic Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire teaming that sees a bookish young lady go from the obscurity of her lonely library to the glitzy Paris lights as a high-profile fashion model.
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Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Chipettes
Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 13th, 2009
Most people know the Chipmunks for three characters: Alvin, Simon and Theodore. This trio was known for a voice that sounded like too many rpm’s at the old record machine. However for the purposes of this disc, the six episodes featured were focused on a trio who was the equivalent of the Chipmunk “B” team. Their names were Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor. They were known as the Chipettes. These are their stories. Dun Dun. (Cue Law & Order music).
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Bloody Moon
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 13th, 2009
A disfigured young man with an unhealthy interest in his sister attacks and kills a woman. Five years later, he is released (by psychiatrist Jess Franco) into his sister’s care, who is helping organize a language school on property owned by her disagreeable, but very rich, aunt. In short order, the female students at the school (and there are ONLY female students, for reasons not explained) start being killed off. But no one other than heroine Olivia Pascal actually believes that anything is going on.
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In the Folds of the Flesh
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 12th, 2009
The giallo was never a genre that specialized in tight, coherent, logical storylines. But even by the bizarre standards of the form, In the Folds of the Flesh takes some kinda cake. Trying to summarize its plot is next to impossible, as the first two thirds of the plot are incomprehensible, and are cleared up only in the final third, which feels more like a play than a film, and where the revelations and twists pile up to such a degree that they don’t induce whiplash – they torque your head clean off. So, for what it’s worth, we have a castle (whose interiors look distinctly un-castle-like) where, thirteen years ago, a man was decapitated. His body was disposed of by the woman living there, and she and two children, now grown and thoroughly insane, dispose of anyone else foolish enough to come prying into their lives.
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Stone
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 11th, 2009
After having been present at a political assassination, the Grave Diggers biker gang starts being killed off one by one. Undercover cop Stone joins the gang (by basically saying, “Hi, I’m a cop. Can I hang out with you guys?”) in an effort to solve the murders. Plenty of shenanigans, riding around, and utterances of the word “man” ensue.
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