Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 17th, 2008
I love CSI and have been an avid fan from day one. I think it brought a fresh look to the procedural crime dramas that have long ago become just a little stale and predictable. The problem is that the series has gone the Dick Wolf route of branching out so that the final product might be a little diluted. Unlike the Law & Order franchise, each version of CSI has attempted to take on a unique look and style to reflect the location without giving up those elements which are the tradition of the series. CSI:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 17th, 2008
Wings was one of those unusual sitcoms that depended more on the characters than the situations they were in. While the setting was a small
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on September 13th, 2008
This is going to be half a review, and half nostalgia.
In 1980, Dario Argento’s Inferno was released, and, bizarrely, it was one of the films profiled on a kid’s SF TV show I watched back then. The scenes on display sent my terrified little self fleeing from the room. But the images I saw stayed with me, as did the spookily elegant poster I saw on Paris theatre marquees in the weeks that followed: a purple-and-blue skull with a single drop of blood forming at the still-fleshy lips.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 12th, 2008
I’m going to admit from the beginning that I had a lot of trepidation going into watching Desperate Housewives. I’ve never seen the show on broadcast television, and frankly don’t know anybody who’s a big fan. The closest I ever got to any of this was the famous T.O. Monday Night Football towel incident that featured the woman from the show lusting after Owens while he was with the Philadelphia Eagles. And like Owens’ tenure with the team, Desperate Housewives was just one of those things I figured we just didn’t talk about. Certainly I’ve seen the hype, and believe, me I’m well aware of the show’s popularity.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 12th, 2008
Eli Stone is a typical corporate lawyer. He admits to being totally self-involved and greedy, that is until he begins to see and hear things that aren’t really there… or are they. These visions appear to be connected with events unfolding in Stone’s life and seem to be leading him toward a mission of sorts. It could be helping a mother whose child was stricken by a harmful vaccine or helping a convict fight prison abuse. In the pilot, Stone discovers that he has a brain aneurism, which might account for the vivid visions he is experiencing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 11th, 2008
A mixture of biopic and musical, this vehicle stars Susan Hayward as Jane Froman, an incredibly popular singing star in the 40s who had to battle back from terrible wounds suffered in a plane crash after her first performance for American troops overseas during WWII. The film begins with Froman’s triumphant comeback, and flashes back to the events leading up to this. The pic is efficiently put together, and Hayward’s lip-synching (Froman dubbed in her own singing) is unusually convincing. But the crash itself is disappointingly undramatic.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 11th, 2008
The show’s most basic premise remains intact. Melinda Gordon is a newlywed and owns the antique shop in a quaint
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 11th, 2008
“You wanna be where everybody knows your name”
And who wouldn’t want that? In its landmark 10th year Cheers kept on delivering pretty much the same. It’s remarkable that this cast remained almost untouched since the first year a decade ago. Coach passed and Diane left, but the patrons just kept coming back week after week providing that friendly ambiance that Billy Joel likely understood when he wrote Piano Man. Cheers was a simple show with very little fluff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 11th, 2008
“Hey Hey Hey, It’s Fat Albert!”
That’s right, it’s Fat Albert. Bill Cosby invented the portly young Albert for his stand-up and album releases in the 1960’s. The character, like many of Cosby’s stories, is based on elements of his own youth. My parents were huge Cosby fans, so I had heard all about these Cosby Kids long before they hit television in 1972. Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids was an almost instant hit on the Saturday Morning cartoon menu.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, Regular Columns by David Annandale on September 6th, 2008
We have all encountered films that are less intelligent than they think they are. My favourite example of this syndrome would probably be Contact, the deeply serious Jodie Foster vehicle, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and adapted from the Carl Sagan novel. The film keeps the novel’s primary weakness (the ending, which, smacks of a writer who hasn’t worked out a full outline before starting) and introduces some unintentionally funny visual elements (the alien-inspired technology looks suspiciously like it was designed by Wile E. Coyote, and the first time out works like was designed by him, too). But the film’s biggest sin was not that it has some very silly aspects, but that it is completely unaware of same, and really seems to believe that it is Important Art. Similarly, M. Night Shyamalan has become the undisputed King of Movies Less Intelligent Than They Think They Are.
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