Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 1st, 2008
Aqua Teen Hunger Force has hit mainstream, well for the most part. The Tv Show has been on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for a few seasons now and they even released a theatrical film. The film entitled Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film wasn't exactly a run away success. The film only made 5.5 million dollars nationwide. However, this was also about 7 times the budget which made the film a profitable success. So with the movie behind them, would the fame of past efforts fill their minds and make the creators' (Dave Willis & Matt Maiellaro) heads swell with pride? Let's turn into Volume 5 (Season 4) and find out.
For those new to the game (then why are you starting out with the fifth dvd set?), Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the story of three characters who look like they came from a Happy Meal; well a Happy Meal from a place that serves meatballs. Master Shake, Frylock & Meatwad return for 13 episodes (one is a 2-parter) to fight crime, bad advertising & just make sure that nobody gets Carl's favorite appendage if you know what I mean. Who's Carl? Ahh, that would be their next door neighbor who spends a lot of his time listening to classic rock, eating hot wings and getting raped by artificially created dogs. It's in episode 4, you'll have to see it for yourself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 30th, 2008
Stargate Atlantis went into its third season with a lot to prove. Its companion and older series SG-1 was winding down and preparing to take its show to the longer direct to video path. Atlantis rose to the challenge and had what was arguably its best season to date. The best decision the show runners could have made was the one to concentrate on their core characters and give us episodes that were obviously intended to help us learn more about them. We meet McKay’s sister and Ronon’s wife and family along the way. We get to witness Sheppard in his alluded to battle in
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2008
In The Mist, Frank Darabont returns to familiar territory, directing another movie based on a short story by Stephen King. Darabont struck gold in 1994 with The Shawshank Redemption and then came close to, but did not equal, that magic with 1999's The Green Mile.
Is the third time a charm for Darabont working with King material? The answer is a resounding "yes".
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on March 28th, 2008
Let’s consider today’s exercise a companion piece to my colleague’s excellent Dare to Play the Game column. That’s by way of saying to that I’m going to risk slightly poaching on his turf by considering a tangentially game-related topic.
I’m probably not going too far out on a limb to assume that just about anyone with access to an Xbox 360 or a sufficiently powerful PC played Bioshock at some point in the last year. Among its many qualities, Bioshock is one of the best-written games to have come down the pike, and one of its not-inconsiderable delights is the dialogue it engages with the ideas of Ayn Rand. Specifically, it is her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged that provides most of the game’s philosophical fodder. Anyone with the time to slog through the book’s utterly lunatic thousand-plus pages will surely find their appreciation of the game increased (and this is one of those rare cases where the writing, characterization and ideas of a game are consistently better than the work of literature it is bouncing off). And the book is so insane that is has an absolutely compulsive, Biggest Train Wreck Ever appeal. But let’s pretend you don’t have that much of your life to give up to an experience that can best be described as the philosophical equivalent of high camp. There is a more time-efficient alternative.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 28th, 2008
Three female friends are there for each other’s personal storms. One is a coke-addled sensation addict, one aspires to be an artist (and does her share of powder too) and the third is taking refuge from an unhappy marriage and questioning her sexual identity. Many scenes of heightened emotion are the order of the day.
The title (translated as “On the Edge”) recalls Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but Teresa Suarez isn’t quite in Pedro Almodovar’s league. The film has some fine comic moments (I’m thinking of one dream sequence in particular), and plenty of energy, but some of that is second-hand: a coke-frenzied drive early in the film more than slightly recalls Ray Liotta’s paranoid excursion in GoodFellas. Further, despite the universally vile male characters in the film, many of the protagonists’ problems are so obviously of their own making that they are hard to care for.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 28th, 2008
Tyler Perry burst on the scene in 2005 with Diary of a Mad Black Woman. It was one of the worst reviewed movies of the year, but when it raked in over $50 million dollars at the box office, Tyler Perry silenced critics and became a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood.
Before his movie-making career, Perry was already a huge success in the African-American community, having written several Christian and family oriented plays upon which many of his movies are based.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 27th, 2008
The Kite Runner is one of those films that is extremely hard to pin down. On the surface it’s a moving story about friendship and redemption, but I have to wonder if that is really the collection of themes intended by either the original novel’s writer Khaled Hosseini or the film’s director, Marc Foster. The story begins with two young Afghan children who appear to be friends, but they are from different worlds. Hassan (Mahmoodzada) is the son of household servants. Amir (Ebrahimi) is the son of the household’s masters. Yet they appear to share a common bond and fondness for one another. We quickly learn that the friendship is one sided. Hassan pledges that he would do anything for Amir. He vows he would eat dirt if Amir asked, but adds the belief that Amir would never ask him to. Even a look at Amir’s guilt tells us that’s certainly not true. Soon Hassan is approached by bullies and asked to give up a kite he captured and promised to Amir. Rather than break his promise to his friend, he is savagely beaten and sexually molested by the bullies. We are shocked to see that Amir is witness to the entire event and does nothing. To make his sin worse, he decides he can no longer be friends with Hassan because to see him reminds him of his shame, so he accuses the boy of theft. To complete his unconditional loyalty Hassan admits to the fictional theft to allow Amir to save face. Amir eventually flees
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 27th, 2008
It has always been odd to me that for as popular as Bollywood films are in India, they really haven't made much of an impact here in the States. Films from other countries find their place here, but Indian works are pretty widely overlooked here. Maybe it has to do with the wide cultural differences. Maybe it is because so many Bollywood films rely heavily on the traditions of the American musical. Whatever the reason, no Indian films have really caught on here, and the same can be said of the beautiful and talented Indian actors and actresses.
The Namesake is a film that may finally have opened this part of the world up to Americans. Ironically, it has been done through the salesmanship of Kumar Patel himself, Kal Penn. Previews sold this film as a Kal Penn vehicle, wherein he confronted his painfully uncool parents and learned that they might not be so uncool after all. I was shocked when I discovered that this is not at all what the film is about.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 27th, 2008
From the Oscar ceremony, the only thing to speak of when it came to the quaint Irish charmer Once is that the girl was going to speak after the song "Falling Slowly" won the award for Best Original Song, and she was cut off, but she got a chance to thank everyone after the commercial, so points for trivia in case you stuck in there for that long (I know I didn't). For those who hadn't seen the film before that, they were certainly missing a slightly profound and moving experience.
Written and directed by John Carney, the film's lead characters are simply named "Guy" and "Girl". The guy is played by Glen Hansard, who is better known to some as singer for the Irish rock bank The Frames, and he and Carney were once bandmates in the early '90s. He's playing guitar on a street, making some additional money, when he runs into a woman who is curious by his playing. The woman, or "Girl" if you will, is played by Marketa Irglova, who wants to see him get what he wants, which is specifically a record deal in London. The guy takes her home to meet his Dad, who runs a vacuum cleaner repair shop, and she takes him home, to meet her mother and child. Her husband split awhile back. But the film is I think less about the relationship (although one could make the case of really really wanting to see one) and more about their creative similarities. She plays piano, and the two hit it off together creatively, and perform a song together that the guy had written early in the film. That creative synergy, and the feelings they share for it, speaks volumes for the rest of the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 27th, 2008
Imagine my surprise when I found out that the show Wildfire, aired exclusively on the ABC Family network on Monday nights, is coming up on its fourth season. So it makes me wonder, since ABC Family is a little long on episodes, if a show airs on a network that people barely watch (aside from the occasional Gilmore Girls repeat), does the show really exist?
Wildfire is not, as I first thought, a reality show surrounding professional wrestler Tommy Rich, nor is it a dramatic show about fighting brush blazes in California or Montana. It is the name of a racehorse. The horse finds a kindred spirit in Kris (Genevieve Cortese, Kids in America), who is on a work release program and is given parole to work at Raintree Ranch, owned by Jean Ritter (Nana Visitor, Star Trek Deep Space Nine). Jean's son Matt (Micah Alberti, American Pie Presents Band Camp) is becoming an accomplished trainer, perhaps better than the farm's head trainer Pablo (Greg Serano, In the Valley of Elah), but despite his feelings for Kris, he's become the trainer for a horse owned by Danielle Davis (Nicole Tubiola, Imaginary Heroes), in a family that Jean seems to run into conflicts with. The patriarch Ken (James Read, Legally Blonde) has tactics that seem a little bit seedy, and his son Junior (Ryan Sypek) wants to break free from his hold.
On The Web
Sponsors
