Last night I was invited to be a part of a round table talk with two of the talents from the Disney animated film, Bolt. Here is the transcript of that interview. I was joined by other media members and we spent about an hour and a half talking about Bolt, the character of Rhino and the Super Rhino short that appears on the home release. I will be adding my Bolt review next week. Until then, enjoy the interview.

Sony Are Their Own Bosses, Stranglehold without Chow-Yun Fat & Capcom hates complaining - Welcome to the column that thought they were in the charge of their own destiny until they met Miss Dare to Play the Game known as Dare to Play the Game.

My gaming this week has consisted solely of beating the crap out of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis collection for 360. If you remember, I was at about 360 achievement points last week. This week? 710.

On October 9th 1986 the network television landscape did something that hadn’t been done successfully in its 40 year history. A fourth network broke on the airwaves. It was called FOX and wasn’t even going to broadcast 7 days a week. Most pundits in the television industry never gave it a chance. Most of the channels were in the double digit UHF range. This had long been considered the independent station area, and a lot of televisions didn’t pick up this band as well as the established VHF band. And for a while it looked like the network was going to disappear almost as quickly as it appeared. But by 1987 the network suddenly had two big hits on its hands.

In 1976 a New York media group conducted a survey of the NYPD detectives. The question was: “Of all the TV cop shows, which most accurately portrays life as a detective?” The overwhelming response was the comedy Barney Miller. Seems real cops related to the daily grind and weekly wackos of Barney Miller. Let’s not put aside that this was also one of the most consistently funny shows on television. I remember it took me a while to accept Abe Vigoda in such a light role as Fish. My first exposure to Vigoda was the ruthless mobster in The Godfather. Barney Miller always managed to be funny while still telling a good short story. The characters were always wonderful.

“When you wish upon a star. Makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.
When you wish upon a star, as dreamers do… Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.”

The song has become a standard. Every kid knows it. Walt Disney Studios has made it their theme song. You hear it each time you load up a Disney disc. If you have been fortunate enough to have visited Walt Disney World, you’ve heard it the entire day long.

There’s a lot to want to love about this film. You have the return of the super powered Malone children, and more importantly, the same actors to portray them. Director John Hough returned to direct the sequel. The film also includes Christopher Lee and Bette Davis as the villains. Like I said, a lot to want to like. Something went terribly wrong along the way. Neither Christopher Lee nor Bette Davis take their roles seriously at all. I don’t think I’ve seen either accomplished thespian show so little effort in a performance.

Walt Disney has always had as a main theme in its movies the idea of empowering children. It didn’t matter what circumstances the children might find themselves in, Disney always found a way to bring them out of their predicaments with an inner strength that they never really knew or believed that they had. It’s likely one of the reasons the studio has been so successful with children’s films over the decades. Escape To Witch Mountain is one such film. It’s certainly not the greatest from the Disney vaults, but you could do a lot worse.

A “sexy” movie is more than a movie that just has two people performing the horizontal mambo with heavy breathing. There needs to be passion, there needs to be raw emotion and even sometimes there needs to be love. If there are words to be spoken between the two beings, they need to have strength and feeling.

Sony Pictures has graciously given us one copy of I’ve Loved You So Long on DVD to give away.
To enter to win a copy of this Kristen Scott Thomas Drama, just follow these two steps...

  1. Fill out your name and email address in the comment form below - your email address will remain private and visible only to us.
  2. Do not post your address as an actual comment! Instead- just jot in a random thought, such as "entered!" or "hope I win!"

The Contest is now closed The Winner is Lisa. Congratulations!

Well, I might as well follow up last week’s piece with my own thoughts about Watchmen, now that I’ve seen it. Let me begin with the most important point: these musings must be understood as provisional. My feelings are mixed, and I think I will have to see the film a few more times before I can come to a definite conclusion about it.