Posted in: Contests, Expired Contests by Gino Sassani on September 14th, 2013
With the help of the kind folks at Webster & Associates we've got a special treat for you. Summer may be over but we decided it was time to hit the beach, China Beach, that is. They've given us 5 copies of China Beach Season 1 on DVD and we're giving them away to you. Catch Dana Delany, Marg Helgenberger and Robert Picardo before Desperate Housewives, CSI or Star Trek: Voyager. China Beach paid tribute to the vets of Vietnam.
To win just follow these instructions.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on September 13th, 2013
“Personally, I prefer the ghosts to people.”
The biggest reason Insidious became a surprise smash was because of its astoundingly straightforward and effective approach to delivering scares. The 2011 film came at the height of the "found footage" craze (and counted Paranormal Activity mastermind Oren Peli as one of its producers), yet it managed to resist the gimmick. It was also released less than six months after the Saw franchise limped to its bloody conclusion, so the fact that Insidious had a grand total of one fatality made it seem downright revolutionary. Unfortunately, the sequel doesn’t seem nearly as interested in standing out from the pack.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 12th, 2013
Modernizing Sherlock Holmes has been a popular trend in film and television lately. We have seen two slick action film adaptations courtesy of Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes and its sequel), a contemporary BBC adaptation (Sherlock) and now there is Elementary, which transplants Sherlock Holmes and his loyal companion Watson from Victorian Era England to modern USA (New York, more specifically).
Jonny Lee Miller's portrayal of Holmes makes me want to start drawing comparisons to the title character in the medical drama House. Both shows surround an eccentric, drug-addict savant who blazes beyond socially acceptable behavior to a series of “aha!” moments. Granted, said “aha!” moments are much less contrived and formulaic than they are in House. It takes a little while for the show to get it's legs, but it does. The creators are clearly hoping the eccentric charm of Holmes can shoulder the burden of maintaining audience interest. Said eccentricity can come off a bit aimless at first. Sherlock has the ability examine people almost perfectly, yet the writers do not seem to have the character fully figured out, and there are too many moments where Holmes' odd behavior seems a bit tacked on, such as when he hypnotizes himself to get through an addiction support group meeting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 11th, 2013
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is an acquired taste. For me, I’ve really got to be in that certain mood to watch it. The idea is pretty whacked. Depending on the season you’ve got, Joel or Mike is trapped in space on the “Satellite of Love”. Doomed to spend his life watching very bad films, our hero makes the best of a bad situation. He uses his resources to construct a couple of robot pals. Together they watch the films from the front row, constantly riffing on them. If you’re like me, you’ve invited a few friends over to watch a schlock festival. The movies weren’t as important as the banter you created while watching. That’s exactly what you see here. The silhouettes of our host and his robots dominate the lower portion of the screen, where they provide alternative dialog and sometimes witty commentary on the action. The two evil station owners/mad scientists send them a new bad film each week to observe their reactions to the bombs. The films are broken up by off-the-wall skits and fake commercials to alleviate the tedium. The series started as a public access show in Minnesota and was picked up by Comedy Central, where the access quality remained as part of the show's charm. This is a show you could have produced for the cost of a lunch at McDonald's and remain on the value meal menu. What would happen if they got Hollywood money and a chance to go big?
The idea started actually while the show was quite young and still just a local phenom. It was the early Joel years, and ideas for a feature film were always flying among the writers. One of the early ideas had robot Crowe reproducing Steve McQueen's motorcycle stunt from The Great Escape, except this time it was to get to a sunbathing Kim Cattrall. Apparently Cattrall was into the idea, but costs and other factors killed the idea in the...well...idea stage. Other ideas included a musical. None of these ideas got off the ground, and the show continued to plow its television horizons, cultivating a bit of a cult following.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 10th, 2013
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Every Star Trek fan has had that phrase beaten into their brain about as many times as Uncle Ben's mantra about great power and great responsibility. Who knew that the tagline was appropriate to filmmaking? When J.J. Abrams signed on to direct the reboot/remake/reimagining/rehash (insert your own word here) of Star Trek he quickly made it known that he was not really that into the franchise. He considered himself a Star Wars man, and a chill went through the spine of every Trek fan on the planet. I approached the 2009 effort with dread.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on September 10th, 2013
Survival, Endurance, Adversity, and Courage took on new meaning for me after No Place on Earth. They say that you can never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes and experienced their life. Well, I haven’t walked that mile, but the documentary did give me a first-hand account of the 511 days the Stermer family spent underground during the Holocaust. After seeing what that family went through firsthand (or at least as close as I could get to firsthand) only one world truly describes my opinion: Awe.
October 1952: Esther Stermer is living a quiet life surrounded by her family. Then the Nazis come, capturing every Jewish family and taking them to concentration camps. Neighbor turns on neighbor in the clamor to survive. Esther, knowing it is only a matter of time before she and her family are taken, acts quickly trying to find a place to hide from the Nazi forces. Their refuge came in the form of an underground cave. Forced to remain there for the foreseeable future, Esther along with her children and grandchildren battle to survive against starvation, dehydration, and the ever looming danger of Nazis, achieving the longest recorded uninterrupted underground survival occurrence in history.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on September 10th, 2013
Earlier this year, I reviewed Enlightened Season One and said about Laura Dern's character that she “has so many outrageous outbursts of issues great and small that most people have dismissed her as crazy and just wish she would go away.” Now we are back with Season Two, and all of the potential craziness of Season One is ready to spill and overflow in an uncontrollable fashion. Originally conceived with a three-season arc, it is my sad duty to report that it is unlikely we will ever see the promised Season Three. Many shows have met an untimely demise like (the not so aptly titled) Luck, John from Cincinnati, Carnivale and The Big C. The Big C was given a very generous opportunity to come back with an abbreviated four-episode fourth season to conclude its heroine's story. I wish the same could be said of Enlightened. Enlightened was not renewed for a third season despite almost unanimous pleading from the nation's critics. It is always disappointing when a great series with compelling characters doesn't get to complete telling the story to the end. Two great series, Dexter and Breaking Bad, are in the middle of their final episodes, and nothing is more satisfying.
Enlightened Season One was about recovery. Season Two seems to be about revenge. Laura Dern's character, Amy, seems to be trying to sort through many confusing and unsettled feelings. Amy decides to focus on bringing down the company she works for. She has good reasons, but which are the real reasons? Her company is corrupt and dangerous, but is she merely motivated by petty feelings of rejection? Amy is a constantly shifting mass of conflicting emotions, good intentions, and bad impulses.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on September 10th, 2013
Supergroups are hot right now: witness the astonishing box office dominance of The Avengers, as well as Warner Bros./D.C. Comics’ frantic attempts to replicate Marvel’s success. But the idea of a supergroup — a collective whose members have previously achieved individual success — has been around for a very long time, and is most commonly found in the world of music. The members of PSMS (Mike Portnoy, Billy Sheehan, Tony MacAlpine and Derek Sherinian) certainly fit the supergroup bill. Late last year, they united to rock the faces off their fans in Europe and Asia.
Live in Tokyo captures their Nov. 14 show at Zepp Tokyo last year. PSMS — Portnoy (drums/vocals), Sheehan (bass/vocals), MacAlpine (guitar), Sherinian (keyboards) — was formed in January 2012. Although they weren’t exactly strangers, the group experienced some understandable growing pains when they first got together. (Portnoy expands on this in the Behind the Scenes featurette on this Blu-ray.) By the time this concert was filmed, however, PSMS had been together for nearly a year and they sounded like a totally cohesive unit.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 9th, 2013
Knowing very little about Thailand’s gangster history, I jumped into The Gangster with no expectations and was left breathless by the time the final credits rolled. With the energy and violence on display here, I can’t help but feel this is the intensity Scorsese intended in his underwhelming film Gangs of New York; there he had over a hundred million and the street fights, though they had epic buildups, seemed to just fall flat. The Gangster, on the other hand, is on a micro-budget by comparison and delivers street fights that hurt, that leave scars and stay with you. Though both films tell separate origins of gangs, I can’t help but feel there is some unspoken cinematic bond between the two.
From the start we meet Jod (Krisada Sukosol Clapp) who is young and eager to make a name for himself. He’s nothing more than a street thug but wants more than anything to be part of one of the organized gangs. From the film’s one-on-one knife fighting sequence at the start of the film, I knew I was watching something special. The brutality of this scene sets the stage for the violence that is to come, and there is plenty of it.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on September 9th, 2013
Vin Diesel. He is a man. A character who doesn't seem real. He is an actor who seems like an artificial creation. He seems to be all brawn and Cro-Magnon heft with just a tiny spark of sensitivity and some sense of inherent intelligence. It turns out Diesel started out making small independent films like Multi-Facial and Strays which led to Hollywood calling for the films Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant,which then led to Pitch Black and a TV movie called The Chronicles of Riddick: Into Pitch Black with Diesel playing the Riddick character. Diesel went on to be identified with two other characters, Dominic Toretto (Fast and Furious) and Xander Cage (XXX) but soon bridled at being typecast, and then his career stalled. The sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick (not to be confused with the previously mentioned TV movie), had a much bigger budget with too many new plot lines, but, more importantly, too much pretension. But Diesel loved the Riddick character and got to buy the rights in exchange for a cameo in Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.
Riddick definitely drops the pretension of the second Riddick film, and the new film more closely resembles Pitch Black. The difference is that he winds up on a totally different planet. Now Riddick is a Furyan, so he wanted to go back home, but no such luck. He has to make do with a barren, unfamiliar and inhospitable world. He also has to self-heal a broken leg. No big deal.
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