Posted in: Contests, Tuesday Round Up by Gino Sassani on October 20th, 2015
Howdy there, partners. Gino back in the Tuesday Round Up rotation. This time Johnny caught me asleep down at the bunkhouse, and now I'm pullin' double duty tonight. That's OK. I'm gettin' him back later. I have a pretty good reptile collection here on the Upcomingdiscs Ranch, and I'm pickin' out a special sleepin' buddy for good ol' Johnny.
Enough horseplay. We've got titles coming out this week. Look for reviews on the following. You hockey pucks are going to just love the Don Rickles Ultimate Television Collection out from Timeless Media. Learn about the birds and the bees (or is that the Tooties and the Blairs?). It's The Facts Of Life Season 7 from Shout. Warner Brothers will knock you out with The Mike Tyson Mysteries. Anchor Bay is opening up the books for Making The Mob. We're sending a lucky winner History's The Curse Of Oak Island Season 2. Look for that contest coming soon. MPI is invading the classic television landscape with My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series. Lionsgate ends it all with the thriller Z For Zachariah and finds religion in The Vatican Tapes.
Posted in: Contests, Expired Contests by Gino Sassani on October 20th, 2015
When you're looking for an extra chill to pop into that Blu-ray player, don't forget our pals over at XLrator Media. They're going to help you remember with a free copy of Amnesiac on Blu-ray. It stars Kate Bosworth and Wes Bentley in an unforgetable little thriller. It goes out to one lucky Upcomingdiscs winner.
To win a copy of this prize, follow these instructions.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 20th, 2015
“This is the beginning of something, not the end.”
There weren’t any Lost-style mysteries to be resolved here. And unlike The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, this particular series never really hinged on whether the lead character lived or died. (Although a moment in Ep. 5/“Lost Horizon” seems to nod toward fan speculation that Don Draper would take a tumble similar to the silhouette from the show’s iconic opening credits.) Instead, the final season of Mad Men — more than any other all-time great show I can remember — is directly about the end of things.
Posted in: Contests, Expired Contests by Gino Sassani on October 19th, 2015
Those wacky nuts at Troma just couldn't resist cutting in on our 31 Nights Of Terror celebration. We've got Lloyd Kaufman to thank for the copy of Madcow we have to give away to one lucky Upcomingdiscs winner. Part man. Part cow. Udderly crazy! This one might end up becoming a valuable rare item. Or maybe not. You can get it for free.
To win a copy of this prize, follow these instructions.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2015
Walt Disney was a dreamer. Some of his dreams were realized. Some were not. Disney built a kingdom. He built more than one, in fact. One of Walt's dreams that was not realized was the experimental prototype community of tomorrow (EPCOT). He did incorporate some of the ideas of EPCOT into the Disney World theme park, but it was a mere shadow of the original dream. One of the essential elements of EPCOT was, and is, Tomorrowland. Disney was widely admired in the 1960's by urban planners for his visionary views about the possibilities of the future.
Unfortunately, Disney died in 1966, and the board of directors severely cut back Walt's original vision. Of course, Disney World wound up on 27,258 acres that is a short drive from NASA's main launch site, Cape Canaveral.
In the film Tomorrowland, Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is the daughter of Eddie (Tim McGraw), who is an engineer at NASA. Unfortunately, NASA is not what it used to be, and Eddie is being phased out. In a separate storyline, years earlier in 1964, a young inventor shows up at the New York World's Fair (the time and place that Disney introduced many innovations) with a flying jet pack. That inventor grows up and is central to the story. That young inventor grows up to be grouchy malcontent, Frank Walker (George Clooney). David Nix (Hugh Laurie) is also important to the story, because he is the inventor of Tomorrowland, and Nix first meets Walker at the 1964 World's Fair. A magical young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) is the final essential ingredient, because she is the catalyst for change throughout the story.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2015
by Dustin P. Anderson
Our story follows a sexually confused young girl, Lydia, who is going to an all-girls school in Britain. Lidia has a strong relationship with a girl named Abbie, to the point where the girls are rarely seen apart. Abbie discovers that she is pregnant and starts fainting at random points throughout her day. After the two girls act out in class they both wind up in detention, but the girls must be excused because Lydia is not feeling well. Lydia dies on their way out of detention. The school starts mourning the loss of Lydia, but everyone begins worrying when Abbie starts having fainting spells like Lydia did before she died.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2015
by Dustin P. Anderson
This DVD follows three standups, K. Douglas Tatum, Tone-X and Michael Colyer, as they perform for a live studio audience. We also follow Tommy Ford as he terrorizes the headquarters of Bossip, a gossip website. I would honestly love to tell you more in the summary of this DVD, but there is nothing more to it. A gossip website decided to release a DVD regarding comedy of some sort. This DVD was not good; entertaining such a notion that this DVD could be good should not enter any potential viewer’s mind. From the moment you play the opening credits, you can tell that this was made on a budget; more than that, it looks like it was made on a budget in the nineties. The small, unimportant things that fly by you while the names of the people responsible for this DVD come into view would not look out of place in a movie like Hackers. A lot of dated computer code graphics, a microchip (because technology?) and the sound used for almost every “computer working” moment in every TV show or bad movie (think Dexter’s Laboratory meets Ghost in the Machine). That’s just the first couple of seconds; then we are led into seeing how “The regular person feels about current events” by Tommy Ford. The interviews are overly cut with bad transitions, and lead us to one of my biggest problems with the DVD, the skits. These skits take up about half of the DVD’s run time, and none of them make me laugh or even remotely interested in the happenings at Bossip. I would say that I might not get it because I don’t frequent the Bossip site, but I was familiar with the stories talked about here just from looking at social media, and none of what they were saying was anything new or exciting. The problem with a gossip column creating a DVD for public consumption is that I will never want to go back to it, since half of what they are talking about are things that have come and gone. It dates the material and makes this AT BEST something to rent. It’s the same problem that I have with movies like Date Movie or Meet the Spartans; the current humor used makes them a quick burn and severely limits the re-watchability.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on October 18th, 2015
A scary premise, but overall this quickly becomes a story about one family overcoming obstacles to find one another again. Heartwarming, granted; however, not very fear-inspiring. Earthfall features a global incident, which ultimately could mean the end of days. A meteor storm strikes the Earth, knocking it off its axis. Terrifying, right? Good foundation, but based on what I observed, clearly not the focal point of the story, which says to me that this story clearly did not have its priorities right.
Now before I receive a tongue-lashing from our family-friendly audience, allow me the opportunity to clarify. I am not suggesting that idea that the main characters’ primary focus was to locate one another was wrong; I am indicating that for that to be the focal point of the entire story results in a lackluster movie. The actual grim circumstance receives very little attention in comparison. My observation is that the catharsis achieved by being reunited will be short-lived given the dire situation. You may embrace long enough to register the end of the world.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 17th, 2015
Oh Hell No! is the cheeky subtitle for the latest entry in SyFy's made-for-TV Twitter Sharknado franchise. Coincidentally, “Oh hell no!” was also the response the creators of the first film got from everyone they approached about starring in it a few years ago. Flash forward to 2015, and things have changed dramatically. Now Sharknado auteur Anthony C. Ferrante needs a stick to beat away the washed-up actors, reality stars, and politicians(?!) angling to serve as chum for some comically unconvincing sharks.
“Why do you always have to be a hero?”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 16th, 2015
“People have short attention spans. And there’s always another murder.”
Barely a year after Gone Girl became a mid-range blockbuster, we're already getting our second big-screen adaptation of a Gillian Flynn novel. To be fair, both Gone Girl and Dark Places went into production around the same time in the fall of 2013. But that just means someone anticipated that a single shot of Flynn's twisted brand of Midwest murder/mystery mayhem wouldn't be enough to satisfy movie audiences.









