Life Goes On – The Complete First Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 10th, 2006
Sam: Hey, I recognize you.
Andrew: Oh, did you go to Columbia High?
Sam: No, not from high school, from TV. Didn’t you play the retarded quarterback?
Andrew: Yeah.
Sam: Are you really retarded?
Andrew: No.
Sam: Ooh, great job man! I really thought you were retarded. I mean, you’re better than that Corky kid and he’s actually retarded. If there was a retarded Oscar you would win, hands down, kick his ass!
– G…
Read More
Nanny – The Complete Second Season, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 9th, 2006
Fran Drescher, the nasally, whiny-voiced beauty we all either love or hate, returns in The Nanny – The Complete Second Season, and the show hits its stride, if you’re of the belief it ever had one. With mileage out of the mutually aloof Fran Fine-Maxwell Sheffield (played by Charles Shaughnessy) relationship, The Nanny does manage a few chuckles, even from someone such as myself. Let’s make things clear right out of the gate: I’m not a Nanny fan. If I had free reign to decide on everything that w…
Read More
Firewall
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 9th, 2006
Harrison Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, an online security chief for a mid-sized baking chain. One day, he is introduced to a new possible candidate in Bill Cox (Paul Bettany). We learn this turns out to be a setup. Cox and his men are holding Stanfield’s wife (Virginia Madsen) and their two children hostage. In return, Cox demands that Stanfield hack into his bank’s computers to transfer a fortune into Cox’s offshore accounts.
Firewall, in whole, contains a smart plot, one that makes you think. The …
Read More
Short Films of David Lynch, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 9th, 2006
Synopsis
Spanning 1966 through 1995, these are six short features covering David Lynch’s career from is very beginning to his current position as one of the most important voices in American cinema. The shorts are, in order: “Six Men Getting Sick,” “The Alphabet,” “The Grandmother,” “The Amputee” (two versions), “The Cowboy & The Frenchman” and “Lumière.” As one might expect from Lynch, there is a pretty heavy nightmare quotient here. The first three films have a lot of animation, and the result is n…
Read More
When a Stranger Calls (2006)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 8th, 2006
First off, let me say what a great idea it was to remake this film. The original has enjoyed elevated status far too long based only on an intense 23-minute opening sequence. And as good as that opening piece of suspense is, the same exact premise punctuates Bob Clark’s earlier 1974 masterpiece Black Christmas – so even what When a Stranger Calls does well owes a debt of gratitude to an overall better film. Still, I’ll give the Devil his due – knock-off or not, that sequence stands as an effective, inte…
Read More
Towering Inferno, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 8th, 2006
Synopsis
The Who’s Who of San Francisco is gathering for the grand opening of the Glass Tower, the world’s tallest building. The architect, Paul Newman, is disturbed by what appear to be corners cut in the electrical installations by Richard Chamberlain, and sure enough, a fire starts on the 81st floor. Fire Chief Steve McQueen is soon on the scene, but the situation deteriorates rapidly, and hundreds of celebrants on the top floor are at risk of fiery death.
Producer Irwin Allen’s follow-u…
Read More
Goodfellas (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 7th, 2006
Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Narc’s Ray Liotta), an Irish-Italian kid whose only ambition, it seems, is to be a type of wise-guy kid. In one of the first scenes with Hill we learn that “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be gangster.” This line here tends to set the emotion and mood for the whole film. Hill, as a kid at least, is your typical child who defies his parents, struggles to do well in school and wants to hang out with the older looking tough guys down the street. F…
Read More
Grandma’s Boy
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Game tester Allen Covert is evicted from his apartment, and winds up rooming with his grandmother (Doris Roberts) and her two friends, the stone-on-meds Shirley Knight and the sexually predatory Shirley Jones. He attempts to keep this rather humiliating set-up secret from co-workers and sexy new boss/potential love interest Linda Cardinelli.
All of this is tied in with game development, and the film is essentially an extended product placement for the Xbox, thus making one question…
Read More
Swordfish (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 4th, 2006
Swordfish stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men as computer hacker Stanley. Stanley has just spent two years in jail for hacking a program used specifically by the FBI to snoop in on everybody’s email. Enter Halle Berry (also X-Men) as Ginger who has been assigned to recruit Stanley to help stop mastermind Gabriel Shear played by John Travolta (Face-Off). The initial problem here is that Stanley, obviously, doesn’t trust the government. He has been previously forbidden by the courts to come anywhere n…
Read More
The Guardian’s Top 10 Sci-Fi Films
Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on May 4th, 2006
Click Here to see the Guardian’s Top 10 (Blade Runner, 2001, SW: ESB, Alien, Solaris ’72, T1/T2, The Day the Earth Stood Still, WoW ’53, The Matrix, Close Encounters). Got it? Now, compare and contrast with the Top 25 as detemined by UpcomingDiscs DVD BATTLE. Ummm, someone vote down “Aeon Flux” already. Please.
Star Wars Original Theatrical Versions coming to DVD?
Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on May 4th, 2006
The DigitalBits RumorMill is reporting that late 2006 will see the release of the originial (Han shoots first) versions of the trilogy released to DVD. Keep your fingers crossed!
Big Momma’s House 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
Synopsis
FBI agent Martin Lawrence has given up the dangers of field work because of his family responsibilities. Now he’s a safety mascot. But when his first partner is killed, Lawrence surreptitiously dons his Big Momma persona gain, posing as a nanny in the family of the chief suspect, a man who is developing software that could compromise national security.
All of the above, of course, is mere pretext to set up all sorts of kute kid komedy as Big Momma tries to play nanny, and romantic …
Read More
West Wing, The – The Complete Sixth Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
I have been rambling on and on about the merits of this outstanding series to friends, family and innocent bystanders for years. I will continue to do so until the final disc of the final season has hit Amazon.com; and probably for quite some time after that. It is a show that is important, culturally relevant, and surprisingly political without becoming annoyingly partisan.
Season Six is something of a bounceback season for the show. In Season Five, the show floundered a bit. While it was still easily one of…
Read More
Toshiba HD-DVD Player Dissected [via Gizmodo]
Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
Lorin Thwaits dissects an HD-DVD Player
Some crazy dude bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player and pulled it apart to find that its essentially an off the shelf desktop PC using a Pentium 4, a gig of PC2700 ram, and RedHat Linux stored on a 256MB NAND flash module. There’s also apparently a USB bus, and all sorts of interesting stuff in there. So – does this make the Tosh player a super-hackable ultrafun home theatre accessory? Yes….
Read More
Aeon Flux
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 2nd, 2006
Synopsis
Over 400 years in the future, the remnants of humanity live in one last city. This is under the total control of the Goodchild regime. Innocents are constantly disappearing. The government is fought by the Monican resistance, and super-assassin Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is sent to assassinate supreme leader Trevor Goodchild. At the moment of her victory, however, she hesitates, and it soon becomes apparent that nothing is as she though it was.
This financial dud is unlikely to be…
Read More
Doom (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2006
I will be honest and inform you that I have yet to like a video game based film since 1995’s Mortal Kombat. It seems that no matter how closely they try to follow the story based on the game, the director always fails. One of the more famous director’s in the video-game to movie based series is director Uwe Boll, who has brought us The House of the Dead and the recent Bloodrayne, These movies, as the popular consensus agrees, were extremely awful. They lacked anything redeeming, despite the orig…
Read More
UpcomingDiscs Re-Design
Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2006
UpcomingDiscs is proud to release our new site design. Along with the new look, we have also added some new functionality (i.e. enlarging cover thumbnails and screenshots, comment on blog posts, new RSS feeds), and fixed some old functionality (i.e. DVD Battle). Please add your comments on the new design.
Jeff Cesario – You Can Get a Hooker Tomorrow Night
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 30th, 2006
There was a day in the not so distant past when there were about six big name comedians in the country, and everybody pretty much knew who they were. In the past several years, however, stand-up has really taken off in the United States, and it has become increasingly more difficult to keep track of who is who. Jeff Cesario is one of those that has garnered some popularity over the past several years, and is starting to make a big name for himself, but has certainly not arrived on the big stage just yet.
Sinc…
Read More
Mercenary for Justice
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 30th, 2006
Honestly, does the world really need another Steven Segal movie? I think what’s even more depressing than the thought of another Segal flick is the fact that he has attached himself to the project as an executive producer. Clearly, this is the failed actor’s latest attempt in an ongoing quest to regain the successful film career he enjoyed in the 90’s. Of course, his string of hits ended for a very good reason. Sure, there will always be a place for the big, dumb, mindless action movie. The thing is, even mindless ac…
Read More
The Big Question
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
When The Passion of the Christ was released on DVD several years ago, I didn’t buy it, opting instead to wait for the strongly-rumored special edition release to come. Here we are almost three years later, and no such release is being discussed. The funny thing is, The Big Question is essentially an extra for that non-existent DVD package. This documentary, which discusses questions of faith, was shot on the set of The Passion of the Christ, amongst the actors and artisans that were gathered from all parts of the planet for the production. This is a wonderful idea, and it makes for a great documentary featurette to support the film, but I just don’t feel that there is enough here for a stand-alone release.
Read More
Jarhead (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
In the era we live in, the eventuality of a movie about war was going to come, whether or not we wanted to see the film. Since the war in Iraq is such a hot button topic with a majority of people, regardless if you were for the war or against the war, Universal thought this would be the perfect moment to capture our interest in war. Enter director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) and Academy-Award winning Actor Jamie Foxx (Ray) and you know you have a m…
Read More
Dumbland
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
Best guess, this is David Lynch’s way of showing how crude and tasteless many modern animated shows are. Maybe by creating one of these shows at the truly lowest possible denominator, Lynch is trying to make an artistic comment on what the American public freely accepts as quality entertainment. Shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head have been mocked for their poor animation quality. South Park has frequently been mentioned when strong language is the topic of discussion. This series hits an all-new low in…
Read More
Teddy: Live in ’79
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 28th, 2006
Teddy Pendergrass, one of the lesser known soul rebels of the seventies, comes to DVD in this lackluster edition, which purports to be 80 minutes – but that’s only true if you factor into the running time the one bonus feature. This fact could be a detriment to fans of Teddy’s music. For me, however, it was a relief to discover the actual concert only ran about an hour. There was nothing here to justify the man’s status as some kind of legend, as his audience interactions and movements on stage were limited in scope …
Read More
Hoodwinked
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 28th, 2006
Synopsis
Red (as in Riding Hood) visits Granny, only to find the Wolf in disguise. Granny bursts out of the closet, and then the Woodsman crashes through the window, axe upraised. We then cut to the police investigation of this scene, as a frog investigator interviews each of the players in turn. The forest has been terrorized by the Goodie Bandit, who has been stealing recipes, and one of these characters might be the guilty party. What follows is a series of tales in the vein of Rashomon, wh…
Read More
Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 28th, 2006
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother has everything that Young Frankenstein had except Mel Brooks (although he does make a very brief vocal cameo). With the combined comedic genius of Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman, how could this film go wrong? Like Young Frankenstein, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes offers a rich classical mythology to mine for material. A wonderful supporting cast featuring the likes of Dom Deluise can’t miss, right? No so elementary, my dear Watson. Focus. …
Read More