Connections between Eastern and Western cinema aren’t new, but they do seem to be proliferating. Back in 1964, Italian maestro Sergio Leone borrowed from Japanese genius Akira Kurosawa, turning Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars. Just last year, Korean writer-director Lee Jeong-Beom looked to the West for multiple influences, and the result is The Man From Nowhere, a psychological action-thriller that alternately engages, confuses and kicks major butt.

Some of you might remember my review of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the first thirteen episodes which can be found here. I found it to be a great little series that was rich in its roots. Well, six months have passed and we finally get a chance to look at the next thirteen episodes. With a little bit of luck, maybe they will be just as good if not better than our first look into the series.

The American Girl series appears to have started as a collection of dolls. The collection featured various girls from a wide range of historical periods. The dolls came with rather unique histories that provided both a chance to bring the doll to life in the imagination of the child and also teach a little of what life might have been like for girls that lived in these different eras. Of course, the collection had to have accessories, and before long an entire industry was born. The dolls led to a series of books that fleshed out the adventures these characters might have had in their time periods.

The cover of this DVD is, depending on which signals you pick up on, either misleading or perfectly accurate. If all you see is George Clooney running with a gun, and you therefore come to the conclusion that this is going to be some action-packed thriller, and that is what you're hoping for, then you're going to be disappointed. If, on the other hand, the orange colour and the rather retro look to Cloney's image, not to mention the rather uninformative title, makes you think of the 1970s, then you're on the right track.

"I guess if this is the first you're hearing about it, I know how this must all sound."

Unless you've been in a coma like the lead character of The Walking Dead, you've been hearing a lot about this AMC television series of late. It's no wonder. I'm amazed that it's taken so long to see a zombie television series. The show has incredible visuals. There's a courtyard scene at the beginning of the pilot that is as impressive as anything you've seen in a movie.

If you don’t already know and love the format, you will be inclined – and well advised – to stay far away from Jackass 3. For some oversensitive souls, the sight of adult males getting smacked, slugged, stomped, shocked, slimed, kicked, catapulted and covered with excrement is simply unappealing. I know, sissies, right? But if you relish the notion of seeing men take abuse that makes them moan, bleed and barf, then the third and final (please, Lord) pseudo-documentary in the series is a guaranteed gross-out of a maximum degree. Heck, if you’re lucky, you might even toss your cookies

There have been very few films of this stature that I have not had the chance to see over the years. Even if I don't think I might enjoy a particular movie, there are those titles that have become so well known or a part of the culture that one feels a sense of obligation to take in. For years The Last Tango In Paris was one of those films for me. Thanks to a new Blu-ray release by MGM, I was finally afforded the opportunity.

"This is Fairfax County in the state of Virginia. I was born here. It's peaceful, beautiful, and a long long way from Wyoming; beautiful, too, in its special way. Vast, proud and lonely; it's my country now, Wyoming. But not exactly a peaceful one."

Of course, if it were all that peaceful it wouldn't have made for very compelling television. But The Virginian did make for compelling western drama in a television landscape that was as populated as prairies in those plains with western dramas.

"A child born into a world with helicopters lives in a world where the miraculous is commonplace, a world where doctors swoop down from the sky..."

That's the world of the helicopter. Straight Up: Helicopters In Action was an IMAX feature created by the Smithsonian for the Air And Space Museum IMAX theater. A quick check of the museum's website reveals that the film is no longer part of the schedule. And, while this wasn't one of the bigger name IMAX films to make the circuit, it provides plenty of the exhilarating imagery that has made the format famous.

Monica Guerritore is an unnamed wealthy socialite (all of the characters in the film are unnamed) who catches her husband in flagrante with another woman. To add insult to injury this woman is a TV personality of a sort unknown in North America, but common in France and Italy – an attractive woman whose only job is to let you know what's coming up next – and, rightly or wrongly, can represent, as is the case here, a certain form of empty glamour.