Hell Ride
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 12th, 2008
Larry Bishop’s Hell Ride plays like a childhood fantasy I might have had in the third grade had I known more about boobies and the joy they bring to my basest male desires. As a film, however, it’s terrible. It’s like Bishop set out to honor the bad movie genre by laying a turd so rancid the qualities of those other films shine brightly alongside it. Sitting down to watch Hell Ride a second time
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The Day the Earth Stood Still
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 12th, 2008
“Klaatu Berada Nikto…”
As a fan of Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness, I just had to do that. But Raimi’s masterpiece is not the subject of this article; rather a concerned alien visitor in the classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, now available on 2-disc special edition DVD from Twentieth Century Fox. No doubt the spawn of a marketing machine looking to cash in on the remake starring Keanu Reeves, this release should still be a welcome addition to the shelf of any classic cinema fan.
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Dare to Play the Game
Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on December 10th, 2008
Saw gets axed, No Aliens for Sigourney Weaver, and Age of Conan tanking – Welcome to the column that is considering slicing its wrists if it has to do any more writeups on remakes of Nintendo 64 games known as Dare to Play the Game.
Finally, I got my 120gb hard drive for my 360 on Monday night. There were a few messups in communication between the third party seller and myself but everything was resolved when I received the package. It was opened, however the hard drive, transfer kit, cd and manual all looked brand new as described on Amazon. I hooked it up to my 360 and started to transfer my files. Took about a little over half an hour. Then when it was finished, it said the curious message of “Some files were not transferred…they have been deleted”.
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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Three-Disc Collector’s Edition)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 10th, 2008
The worst thing about The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that it followed the most successful fantasy film trilogy of all time. Just two years after Return of the King blew us away in theatres and swept the Oscars, and only one year after the flagship Extended Edition release set a new standard for DVD excellence, ‘Wardrobe promised the return of high fantasy to theatres near us. Unfortunately, it proved to be nowhere near adequate for any Lord of the Rings comparison. It was sweet, non-threatening and even a little campy, where Peter Jackson’s films had been majestic, serious and polished – one fluffy, the other dramatic.
When The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian hit theatres in late 2007, I hoped it would offer a more mature Narnia, but I wasn’t too optimistic (these are supposed to be child-friendly, after all). Imagine my pleasant surprise early on when Trumpkin uttered this to the four child heroes: ”You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember.”
The Dickens, You Say
Posted in Random Fun by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2008
That’s right, gentle reader, it’s fast approaching Christmas. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, and today it is the single most filmed
Since that time a lot of
So what are your favorite Christmas films or specials? Let us know and share some of your holiday film memories and traditions in our comment section below. A movie can be the perfect excuse to spend quality time with your own loved ones.
From all of us here at Upcomingdiscs we wish you the best of the coming
(And don’t shoot your eye out, okay?)
Follow this song link to a Christmas Song I composed a few years ago, called Passage.
It’s a musical Christmas card from us to you:
Horton Hears a Who
Posted in No Huddle by Gino Sassani on December 8th, 2008
Welcome to an all-new way of presenting even more review titles to you.
From time to time we’re given a kind of disc called a “screener”. It’s sometimes the industry’s way of getting review copies without spending a lot of money. Instead of final product, we get a paper slipcase with just a disc. Even the disc is far from final product, the one you would buy in a store. There are often no extras, and the A/V isn’t necessarily the way it will look on the ultimate release. For years we here at Upcomingdiscs have often avoided reviewing those titles because we can’t really comment on the many factors we like to include in our reviews.
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Fool’s Gold
Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 7th, 2008
Most women would consider Matthew McConaughey a hot guy. Hubba, hubba, the whole nine yards. Typically when he stars in a new motion picture, women flock to see the show for him to walk around for ninety minutes preferably with his shirt taken off and speaking romantic to some leading lady. For those ninety minutes, those women wish that they were in his arms, they were in his touch. But what if Matthew was portraying an out of work treasure hunter, broken down on his luck and owing some guy named Bigg Bunny a whole lot of money? I think this will all depend on whether his shirt is coming off or not.
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The Lodger Redux
Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on December 6th, 2008
It must be at least five minutes since I last complained about ill-advised remakes, so it’s past time I returned to the subject. It was recently brought to my attention that yet another remake of The Lodger is in the works. The trailer is up on YouTube for those of you with a masochistic bent to examine. Now, far be it from me to prejudge a film based solely on the trailer, but I’m going to do it anyway.
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Cannon – Season One, Vol. 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 5th, 2008
Frank Cannon was unlike any detective we’d ever seen on television before, or since. He was known as a high priced PI with a taste for the finer things in life, particularly fine food. His appearance was counter to all of the rules about rock-jawed handsome detectives who ran around shooting it out and beating up the bad guys. Cannon was a big man and wasn’t about to do much running and fighting. He wasn’t totally different, however.
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Jake and the Fatman – Season One, Vol. 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 5th, 2008
This is another one of
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Dynasty: Season Three, Vol. Two
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2008
High art it isn’t, but one thing’s for sure: Dynasty is ass-in-seat television. Launched in 1981, the John Forsythe-Linda Evans-Joan Collins starring vehicle crossed lines and took chances few of its contemporaries were willing to take. For several years Dynasty defied conservative conventions with sordid tales of extramarital affairs, catfights, and the hot-button issue of homosexual parenting. It’s this last issue that is featured so prominently in Dynasty – The Third Season, Volume Two.
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Perry Mason – The Third Season – Vol. 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 5th, 2008
Erle Stanley Gardner wrote crime fiction, and while many of his 100 or so works are unknown to most of us, he created a character that has become as identified with criminal lawyers as any other in fiction. It was in these crime novels that Perry Mason first faced a courtroom. He developed a style where he would investigate these terrible crimes his clients were on trial for. He would find the real killer, and in what has become a
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The Nutty Professor (2008)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 5th, 2008
There seems to be some confusion over the title of this 2008 direct to video release. The release is simply called The Nutty Professor, like the original Jerry Lewis vehicle from 1963. It appears the working title of the film was The Nutty Professor 2: Facing The Fear. It is still listed under that title in the IMDB. Whatever the title, you should know that this isn’t your father’s Nutty Professor. This version is a CG animation feature, but don’t expect Shrek or Pixar quality work here. It’s a considerably lower budget affair, and that shows pretty clearly in the final product.
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The Zombie Diaries
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 3rd, 2008
December 3, 2008 11:07 A.M.: Dear Diary. Today I had a very harrowing experience. I think this event has left me feeling rather shaken, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to forget the horrors I have just witnessed. It all started when I decided to watch the new direct to video horror film Zombie Diaries. I just couldn’t wait. As I picked up the box and read the interesting description, my heart just went pitter patter in my chest. The box promised the best zombie film since 28 Days Later, maybe even the best zombie movie ever.
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7th Heaven – The Seventh Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 3rd, 2008
One of the hardest parts of reviewing DVD’s for this site is getting dropped in to the middle of a show I neither followed nor cared to follow and being told to judge fairly and objectively. Getting one’s bearings can be the toughest part of such a task, but this I will attempt to do with Seventh Heaven – The Seventh Season. As if playing catch-up with only one season to go on isn’t enough, the series hurls character after character at the unsuspecting viewer at a furious pace.
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White House Pets
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 3rd, 2008
While many of us think that President-elect Obama might have more important things to be concentrating on right now, I don’t know, like maybe the economy, we’re hearing a lot about his search for a new doggie. Of course, with a child who is allergic to dogs the search is complicated by the need for a hypoallergenic dog, if such a thing exists. No matter; it is certainly a tradition among most occupants of the White House to have pets. Most, of course, were dogs, allergies included.
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Dare to Play the Game
Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on December 3rd, 2008
Dominating 360’s, GTA IV making mistakes, and Escapist Gaming – Welcome to the column with copy protection that can only be decrypted with sharp wit or a giant pair of “hackers” known as Dare to Play the Game.
Last week was Thanksgiving. I ate lots of turkey, I ate lots of pie. The combination made me sleep until well today. No, okay okay not really. However, I had no desire to go out to Black Friday and found myself sitting at home for most of the weekend.
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Happy Days – The Fourth Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 2nd, 2008
What kind of woman could possibly make the oh-so-tough Arthur Fonzarelli fall hopelessly in love? We find out in the three-part opener of Happy Days – The Complete Fourth Season in one of the great names of the small screen, Pinky Tuscadero. Pinky (a stunning Roz Kelly) shows spunk as a female version of Fonzy (Henry Winkler in his career-making role), and it’s surprising she wasn’t used more in the series run. Perhaps CBS felt fettering Fonzy with a regular gal-pal took away from his enigmatic qualities, which he would eventually lose anyway in the show’s eleven seasons.
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SpongeBob SquarePants: Who Bob What Pants?
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 2nd, 2008
Another cheery bit of nonsense in this release, consisting of a half-dozen SpongeBob cartoons. The disc gets its title from the first episode, “What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?” In this story, our hero, rejected by all his friends for his consistent screw-ups winds up, after an amnesia-inducing bonk on the head, becoming the hero of a crime-ridden metropolis. Weird and funny stuff, and the same is true for the other pieces. That said, there’s even less of a connection than usual between the pieces, not even a hint of a thematic commonality that has usually been the case with these releases. What we have are six apparently randomly chosen episodes, adding up to 78 minutes of silliness.
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UFC 87 – Seek and Destroy
Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 1st, 2008
My experience with the UFC is more of a classic one. I remember watching various pay per views on DVD and VHS of the old matches back when they had 1 night tournaments and everybody was either talking about Gracie, Shamrock or Severn. Recently, I had started watching random fights on the Spike Network to pass the time when I wasn’t interested in WWE or TNA wrestling. However, the one thing that got me most interested in UFC or MMA as of late is one man. No, not Kimbo Slice. That man would be Brock Lesnar. The man who would came to UFC to prove he was a true fighter and put away of those rumors that existed about wrestlers and not really being able to compete. UFC 87 featured Brock vs Heath Herring and a Welterweight championship fight among 8 other matches on the card. Was it time for the “Next Big Thing”?
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TNA: Cross the Line (Boxset)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 1st, 2008
TNA Wrestling is currently a very exciting place in the world of wrestling. Two factions have formed: Main Event Mafia and the Frontline. MEM is five former & current world champions and they are a deadly combination not seen since the heyday of the NWO. They want to teach respect to the other faction known as the Frontline, composed of TNA Originals and young upstarts who have worked their tail off and believe that the MEM should step aside and pass the torch to them. However, one forgets what led to these two factions forming. Three pay-per-views that happened from July 2008 to September 2008 laid the groundwork of the current state of affairs in TNA. Victory Road, Hard Justice and No Surrender.
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Site Announcement – UpcomingDiscs Sold!
Posted in News and Opinions, Site News by Archive Authors on December 1st, 2008
Since starting UpcomingDiscs.com almost eight years ago, Rod and I have done our best to grow UpcomingDiscs into something that we are very proud of. In the last year or so, with many other ventures taking up our time, we have not giving UpcomingDiscs the time and effort that it deserves. Therefore, it is with mixed emotions that I announce that we have sold UpcomingDiscs.com.
While it was a hard decision to come to, we feel that we have sold the sites to someone who has the passion and drive to take these sites to the next level – Gino Sassani – who will take ownership of UpcomingDiscs.com effective immediately. We have complete faith in Gino and his ability to return UpcomingDiscs back to its glory days… and we ask that you stay along for the ride.
While we are parting ways with UpcomingDiscs.com, Rod & I will continue to own/operate both IntotheBlu.com (Blu-ray reviews and release news) and HDDb.net (High Definition Database).
It was a great eight years and we thank all of you for your continued support!
Jeremy Frost & Rod Edwards
PS – If you have any questions/comments about UpcomingDiscs, the sale, upcoming changes and/or any suggestions for the site going forward, please post below and Gino will get back to you.
Megara’s Gaze
Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on November 29th, 2008
When I wrote about Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, I said I would get around to talking about Terence Fisher’s The Gorgon (1964). So today I will. Curse is an example of Hammer at its most workmanlike. The movie, as I said, is fun but slight. The Gorgon, on the other hand, is Hammer and Fisher at their best, a film of considerable beauty and resonance.
After a young artist’s girlfriend is killed and turned to stone, and he hangs himself, the inquest declares the deaths the result of a crime of passion. The artist’s father, understandably skeptical, refuses to leave the little town of Vandorf after the inquest, despite the villagers’ hostility. He discovers the existence of Megara the gorgon, but at the cost of his life. His second son (Martin Pasco) arrives to continue the investigation, and after a near miss that nearly costs him his life, he is joined by his mentor (Christopher Lee), while falling in love with his nurse (Barbara Shelley). The road to true love does not run smoothly, however, as the film makes it quite clear midway through that Shelley is in fact Megara. She doesn’t know this herself, but local doctor Peter Cushing certainly does, but his obsessive love for Shelley leads him to cover everything up.
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Dare to Play the Game
Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on November 26th, 2008
In the Army, Fable II DLC & The Size of 360 Games – Welcome to the column that tried to copy itself to the Xbox 360 drive and realized it was 20 gigs (19.99 of which was pictures of Morgan Webb) known as Dare to Play the Game.
Last week, I mentioned the fun subject of storage. My dvd spinner arrived and was assembled on Monday. On Tuesday, we took the liberty of splitting up my current spinner so they would be even. It looks much better and as promised I have put a for trade list on the forum. Here is the link.
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Road House
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 26th, 2008
No, this isn’t the Patrick Swayze vehicle. Instead, it’s another golden opportunity for Richard Widmark to unleash his patented psycho act. Here he plays Jefty, playboy owner of the titular establishment. His right-hand man is Pete (Cornel Wilde), who is the serious-minded half of the partnership. Said partnership is strained when Jefty brings back the latest singer for the club, one Lily (Ida Lupino, in superb hard-boiled form). Pete thinks she’s bad news, and she is, only not in the way any of the three suspect. Jefty decides he’s in love with her, but she only has eyes for Pete, and he, despite misgivings, reciprocates. Jefty doesn’t take rejection well. Not well at all…
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