Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2010
For ten years we watched Jack O'Neil, Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the Jaff'a Tealc' enter the Stargate. Others would join the team over the years. Each week we would follow their adventures, first on Showtime and finally on the Sci-Fi (now Sy Fy) Channel. We watched with awe as they stepped through a portal that was in reality a wormhole transporting them instantly to another world, brought online by dialing the device like an old fashioned telephone. For another five years we traveled not only to another planet, but to the Pegasus Galaxy itself to the Atlantis Base, a bright floating city left behind by the ancients, the people who created the Stargate system millions of years before. On this show we met new friends, new bad guys, and had new adventures. The location might have changed. The faces might have, at first, been unfamiliar, but the missions and the entertainment value didn't let us down. For 15 seasons we enjoyed a spectacular tale to rival the myths of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
I'm told that all good things must come to an end. When Atlantis was finally cancelled, I was made almost immediately aware of the plans to continue the franchise. First reports started coming out that the show was going to be called Stargate Universe. Soon my inside contacts started giving me tidbits about the story. Details began to emerge about the Destiny, an ancient ship abandoned in another universe far away. The ship was on some kind of predetermined course and would sport an unsuspecting crew of humans that would be left stranded on the ship for an indeterminate amount of time. It was starting to sound a lot like Star Trek: Voyager to me. Of course, this is Stargate, so there has to be some gate travel, one would assume. The ship would come with a gate, and the vessel would come out of faster than light travel from time to time and dial up a local planet for exploration. The ship was ancient not only in its origin but in its duration in space. There were going to be a lot of system failures, as the equipment was long past its expiration date. The ship itself would know what resources it needed to continue to operate. Searching its vast planetary database, the ship would locate planets with the essential resources, allowing away teams to get such vital raw materials. Unfortunately, the ship didn't always give a good indication of what to find or where on the planet it might happen to be. Oh, and did I mention the countdown? The ship would decide how much time it would allot for each mission, instituting a countdown. When the clock reached zero, the ship goes back to FTL, and whoever's not back in time gets left behind.
![Stargate SG-U: 1.0 [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/stargate-sg-u-10-blu-ray-large.jpg)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 22nd, 2010
Eddie Sutton (Russell Hornsby) is an idealistic police officer, dreaming of making a real difference. His family (nurse wife and three kids) is currently living in a too-small apartment. The chance to kill two birds with one stone comes up with a program that encourages officers to buy homes in depressed neighbourhoods, and so Eddie moves his family into a spacious former crack house in the titular LA district. Things, as one might expect, are not easy. Eddie discovers (to his unaccountable surprise) that his new neighbours are suspicious of the police. His son is bullied in school. The girls have their own problems fitting in. And crime keeps rearing its ugly head. But as the series progresses, Eddie and his family make of their new house, and its neighbourhood, a real home.
Back in 2007, Variety reviewed this series, and compared it unfavorably to The Wire. Given that show's status as one of the best series EVER to grace American television, just about anything would look back in comparison. But Lincoln Heights doesn't do itself any favours by yoking together (with violence) gritty urban drama and Hallmark-style sentimentality. The latter makes the former hollow, while the former shows up the latter for the lie that it is. The show has stars in its eyes, and its heart may perhaps be in the right place, but that does, unfortunately, make it good, despite the best efforts of its able cast. The characters remain familiar mainstream TV types, and so when Eddie warns that their new neighbourhood “isn't Disneyland,” he is, in fact, wrong. He simply moves his family from one area of the amusement park to the other, from Cosbyland to Gangstaland, and there is no more authenticity than at Disneyland. I won't even get started on the action scenes, which feature the most gratuitous use of splitscreen this side of CSI: Miami.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 21st, 2010
Greetings here from your favorite neighborhood reviewer and Spidey-expert: the infamous Kedrix. I certainly have a habit of appearing whenever there is a Marvel or DC superhero involved, especially if the source material happens to be animated. Needless to say, when the opportunity to review Spectacular Spider-Man both volumes 6 & 7 came available, I jumped to the task. Somehow, we missed Volume 5 (I have seen the first four), but I'm sure we can pick right back up and get to the spectacular action. (one paragraph in and we are already using bad puns, tsk tsk)
Volume Six of Spectacular Spider-Man is something short of a breather for Spidey as he is recovering from some run-ins at the hands of Mysterio & Kraven the Hunter. He even had yet another altercation with Dr. Octopus. Things are also looking up for the web slinger as he even gets invited to Flash Thompson's birthday party. Little does he know he is about to run into the Sandman who is still looking for his big score.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 20th, 2010
Steven Seagal plays an LA cop who is forced into early retirement after being betrayed and shot by his partner. After an astounding recovery, which included blasting his partners brains all over the hospital walls (I'm assuming it was part of his rehabilitative therapy), he is hired by an old friend to be the head of security for his friend's daughter. This family is linked to some bad dudes who are keen on uranium and kidnapping, so Seagal is forced to slowly shoot everyone near him while mumbling something about being a tough guy or whatever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 17th, 2010
Recently, I got married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Well, the most wonderful woman I ever met anyhow. Her name is Sarah. Then I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if I included her every once in a while in my reviews? She’s very opinionated but she speaks from the heart. When our webmaster sent me New York, I Love You, I knew it was the perfect vehicle to introduce her to a mass audience.
Most of you are quite aware how I start my reviews, but this is going to be something of a departure. Traditionally, I start with a long narrative about the movie. We describe the movie and then I offer some quips and informative points after that. The problem is if I sit here and explain all of the ten stories presented then I might as well compile a book on the subject. I really don’t want to torture my reading audience like that.
![New York, I Love You [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/new-york-i-love-you-blu-ray-large.jpg)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 17th, 2010
Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) is the manager for the Leeds United soccer team, brought in to replace Don Revie (Colm Meaney), who is off to manage the England team. Clough is young, charismatic, brash, arrogant and opinionated, and has some pretty unflattering (and publicly aired) views about his predecessor and the thuggish style of play he fostered. So begin his 44 catastrophic days in 1974 as the unwelcome manager of United, and the film flashes back to the meteoric rise that brought him to this crucial pass.
This must surely be one of the best sports-related movies I have ever seen. Every conceivable sports movie cliché goes out the window. There are no extended sequences showing the games, just some quick, impressionistic shots that tell you all you need to know. This is not the inevitable story of the Underdog Making Good. It is the reverse: a rising star who takes over the most successful team in the country and becomes a legendary disaster. And yet the film is oddly triumphant. It is very much about Clough's relationships with two men: his obsessive rivalry with Revie, who isn't even aware of him, and his deep friendship with partner Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), a friendship that might save him from himself, did he but realize it. The performances are superb, with Meaney looking uncannily like Revie (seen in footage at the end of the film), and Sheen astounding yet again, in the wake of his performances as Tony Blair and David Frost, cementing his position as one of the great actors of this generation.
![The Damned United [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-damned-united-blu-ray-large.jpg)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 17th, 2010
Director Robert Altman here adapts David Rabe's play about a small group of recruits on the verge of being shipped off to Vietnam. The action takes place entirely in the barracks, and here we get to know African-American Roger (David Alan Grier), fitting in as best he can in a white man's army; sensitive and gay Richie (Mitchell Lichtenstein); and possibly-closeted Billy (Matthew Modine). They talk about and dance around their various fears and anxieties, and then into the mix comes the explosive Carlyle (Michael Wright), whose life on the streets and experience with racism have turned him into someone who talks and acts long before he thinks...
Moving from stage to screen is always a tricky business. Some plays open up to the cinematic world quite easily, while others remain stubbornly stagebound. Altman's decision to restrict the film to a single set is a risky one, but it is testament to his skill as a filmmaker that it works. He preserves the claustrophobic, hothouse environment of the play, but keeps his camera and editing so active that the work remains visually interesting and properly cinematic. That said, there is no disguising the fact that Streamers is designed for the stage. The script, with its long, anecdotal monologues, could only be that of a play. What would no doubt be incredibly powerful on stage becomes, well, stagey on the screen, and though it is impossible to remain unmoved by the events in the plot, neither can one ever forget the artificiality of the enterprise, and the suspension of disbelief that would come naturally while watching a liver performance is much more difficult here. The result, then, is ultimately more interesting than powerful.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on February 17th, 2010
EA Restores NFL Players, Lawsuits involving NCAA Games, & Microsoft spends 200 million on Facebook apps? - Welcome to the column that would be willing to trade bad jokes for virtual currency known as Dare to Play the Game.
This is the part of the show where I tell you I played all these games and then you use the scroll wheel on your mouse and get to the news or the releases because you don’t like reading my witty banter on my own life events. Well, it’s unfortunately worked because I barely played anything over this past weekend. I really didn’t play that much World of Warcraft (Priest at 72, Warlock at 31) and I didn’t even touch WWE Smackdown vs Raw. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to work on the very last achievement so I can put away the game for a while.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2010
“In the 1940’s and 1950's the juiciest roles for actresses in Hollywood were often in B pictures that explored the dark side of life, staring roles as cool, calculating girls who could stick a knife in a man's back and make him like it."
And so Sony collects 8 of these films as part of what looks like is going to be an ongoing series. But what exactly is Film Noir? You hear the term used from time to time, but what does it mean?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2010
"During the 1980's over 70% of American adults believed in the existence of abusive Satanic cults. Another 30% rationalized the lack of evidence due to government cover-ups. The following is based on true unexplained events."
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