Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 24th, 2007
The latest in Lionsgate's line of movies about nice black people (see Daddy's Little Girls and Akeelah and the Bee), Pride presents a well-tread story with a few tweaks.
Its formula is the sports team underdog winning against all odds. The sport is swimming, which I don't think we've seen much of in the past. All of the usual players are here, though: the frustrated coach inspired to lead, the unlikely athletes who are too poor and too black to succeed, the rival team too rich and too white to be beaten, the crusty old guy who helps out and the token love interest for our protagonist coach.
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on July 23rd, 2007
So who knows how Harry Potter ended?
The big disc news this week is New Line’s announcement that they’ll be coming out with next-gen titles, even if the first title is the current musical of Hairspray. Lord of the Rings, here we come? Aside from that, the biggest disc release news appears to be related to discs that don’t have street dates attached to them yet. Warner says that there will be a box set of the first five Harry Potter films on HD DVD and Blu-ray, and there’s even pricing f...r them, but a date has yet to be announced, along with he extras (although expect lossless soundtracks for at least some). Much is the same for Blade Runner as well, including a massive five-disc treatment. For more normal material, Black Book comes to Blu-ray from Sony on 9/25 (along with Underworld and Memoirs of a Geisha), and a week later, Starz/Anchor Bay drops Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead 2, Day of the Dead and Halloween. They also bring Volumes 1 and 2 of the Masters of Horror sets on 10/16, with Volume 3 coming out on November 13 and Volume 4 on December 11. Speaking of fourth quarter titles, the classic 20 Million Miles to Earth comes to Blu-ray on 12/4. Format neutral parties get to decide what version they want to see the Warner films The Wild Bunch, Gods and Generals and Wyatt Earp, all of which will be appearing on 9/25, along with Gothika. And finally, Cars will finally arrive on 11/6. Discs this week are an eclectic bunch, with HD DVD exclusivos seeing Scent of a Woman, Streets of Fire, The Bourne Identity, The Contract, In Good Company and Nutty Professor 2. Blu-ray campers decide if they want to pull the trigger on Season Two of Weeds, while format neutralities can decide on Purple Rain, Out For Justice and The Host.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 23rd, 2007
Shooter is based upon the Stephen Hunter novel Point of Impact, and although there are multiple similarities, readers of the book can look forward to a modern rehash of the Hunter story. Since the release of the trailer I have been looking forward to this one, especially now that its being released on HD DVD, how does it turn out?
Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg, The Italian Job) is an elite Marine sniper and patriot. But that all changes when his commanding officer abandons him behind en...my lines, his best friend and spotter dies and Swagger narrowly escapes. Naturally Swagger turns to a life of solitude in the minuteness wilderness of Wyoming, where he shares a log cabin with his dog.
![Shooter [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/shooter-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 23rd, 2007
Synopsis
I started watching cartoons in the 80's growing up and remembering most fondly cartoons like Transformers, Batman, Thundercats, TMNT and so forth. Oh I've had my fill of Looney Tunes and appreciate them greatly. But once you go past Looney Tunes a lot of the older cartoons escape me (with the exception of Droopy and Scooby Doo). Good examples are the Flintstones and almost anything out of the Hanna-Barbara lineup like Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound. So imagine my ...confusion when I received Batfink - The Complete Series across my reviewer table. Batfink was a cartoon series that originally ran in the late 1960's with influences like the Green Hornet and Batman which also ran at this time. The series was created by Hal Seeger and basically featured three main characters; Batfink, Karate and the Chief.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 23rd, 2007
Video games (especially those with platformer elements) were easy fits for syndicated cartoons. I spent a lot of time watching the Super Mario Super Show despite the show's silliness and use of Captain Lou Albano. Another show I naturally watched in the same vain was the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Featuring Sonic, the speedy blue hedgehog and his sidekick Tails (something resembling a fox but with two tails) would face off against Dr. Robotnik and a legion of robots that wanted to take over the planet Mobius. These robots included Scratch (a chicken), Grounder (the gadgets robot) and a less used Coconuts (monkey bot regulated to sanitation duty). The original series would run 65 episodes and a special before spinning off into a somewhat darker show dubbed just Sonic the Hedgehog.
The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog worked in a lot of areas. It was entertaining, using its slapstick humor to keep the plot moving for the entire 22 minutes. Sonic might have been an ego-maniac but it wasn't so overbearing that it took away from the cartoon (except the phrase "I'm waiting"). The villains were extremely entertaining as Dr. Robotnik came to life better than expected since the video game series was fairly new and it didn't really have much to draw from. Even the main robots were fun to watch, well with the exception of Scratch who to be honest was just plain annoying. The show also served to create many sub-villains and sub-heroes that held interest and were sometimes multi-dimensional. In fact, they even created a few characters that switched sides and did so in a way that made sense.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 23rd, 2007
I did a couple of high school musicals growing up. South Pacific and Oklahoma. South Pacific I remembered much more fondly as sometimes I wanted to wash that man right outta my hair. Wait...umm...*taps fingers* *pause*. Oh, right, musicals. High School Musical was a low-budget Disney tv movie that would end up becoming one of Disney's best successes in recent memory. It was only natural that due to its musical nature and teen fanbase that it would expand into a national tour that would encompass 51 dates over 6 months. The DVD is kinda cool in the sense that the show they used is footage from the December 18th performance in Houston, Tx at the Toyota Center since I happen to live in the Metro area. For those living here, it's easy to tell that it is the Toyota Center from it's sky boxes (and also the fact they mention it about half a dozen times). No I did not go. Let's just make that perfectly clear. I think I had to wash my hair that night. *more taping*
I could sit here and pan the dvd for being hokey and being nauseating. However, in all reality; it's not that bad if you go in expecting something that will appeal only to it's fan base. I mean if I am a fan of High School Musical, this concert dvd is going to be great; first of all I get a whole 57 minutes of material. All the familiar songs are here from the movie and wait, 57 minutes? The shows usually ran 2 1/2 hours. Sure there is an intermission or two and you have to count the opening act, but the edits are obvious and it feels like a best of. High School Musical can not do a best of until they get at least two cds worth of material. Like Hilary Duff or Brittany Spears. The good thing about the concert is that they do have most of the original cast minus Zac Efron who went to go work on Hairspray (he liked standing in the shadows of a very big and scary John Travolta). It just feels like they rushed the dvd a bit in the editing process so that they could sell a few hundred thousand copies to the fanbase and say cha-ching.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 22nd, 2007
George Dolenz is the Montreal scientist working on an atomic something-or-other. Foreign spies (could they be.... Communists??!!) hire exiled American gangster George Raft to get Dolenz and his secret into their clutches. His secret weapon for this project is the seductive power of Audrey Totter. Working for the angels is RCMP detective Edward G. Robinson. The expected race against time ensues.The Montreal setting is unusual, as is the idea of Robinson as a Mountie, so that's fun. Rraft is very much the aging gangster by this point, but still rasps it out with the best, and the film is really about his redemption. Not only is Dolenz' research a pure McGuffin, so is he, his character nothing more than the means to have Robinson and Raft play cat and mouse. This isn't in the top rank of films noir, but it is still a lesson in how to pack a lot of entertainment into an economical 87 minutes.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 21st, 2007
Synopsis
Honestly, the only thing that I remembered from watching For Your Eyes Only was that Sheena Easton sang the title song (qualifying her as probably the most attractive Scotsperson out there) and that there was a sprawling chase scene involving Roger Moore on skis that was cool. But that’s it. And now that I’m wrapping up this long winding once over for all the James Bond Ultimate Edition DVDs and I get a chance to see everything again, it turns out that this film is a pretty good one.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on July 20th, 2007
It’s been a fairly commonplace activity over the last few years to compare our current troubled era with that of the late-sixties/early-seventies, with special attention paid to discussion of parallels (and to what degree they are or are not justified) between the Iraq and Vietnam wars. In that context, it is interesting to consider the way popular culture has dealt with those conflicts, with particular reference to genre offerings.
This is by way of making a bit of a case study of Deathdream (AKA , The Night Andy Came Home,Dead of Night and The Veteran), a 1972 horror film directed by the late, lamented Bob Clark. The film was a bit of a first in a couple of respects. From a genre perspective, it marks the beginning of Tom Savini’s make-up career. But it was also, it seems, the first film to directly deal with the domestic cost of the Vietnam war. It tells the story of a young solider killed overseas, but who nevertheless comes home, thanks to his mother’s intense desire for him to do so. She refuses to recognize anything is wrong with her son, and at first, things seem relatively okay. But decay gradually sets in, as do murderous impulses. You see, he must drink blood in order to avoid disintegration. His father realizes what’s up, but is too weak to do anything about it, and his mother is in total denial. Much has been written about the film’s critique of the patriarchal nuclear family, but of more interest here is the movie’s depiction of the costs of untenable beliefs, and of the damage war does to the home front. 1972 was pretty early for such subject matter. The mainstream of Hollywood wouldn’t really deal with these issues until some years after the war, and so here is another prime example (among so many) of a low-budget horror picture blazing the controversial trail.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 20th, 2007
While expecting her husband home from a business trip, Sandra Bullock receives word that he has died. But the next morning, when she wakes up, he is still alive, and hasn't even left yet on the trip. Next morning, he's dead again, and it's the day of the funeral. Understandably, our poor heroine is a might discombobluated as she deals with having become unmoored in time, struggling to save her sanity, her husband, and her marriage.This film was thoroughly trashed at the time of its theatrical release, and there are, it must be said, plenty of things wrong with it. Some temporal elements are inconsistent as the days move around (why, for instance, does Bullock's older daughter not show, on the day the news of the husband's death is received, the facial injuries that she received a few days prior?), the pace flags after a fairly taut first half-hour, a theme of incarceration mysteriously disappears, and the explanation for why this is all happening is weak, not to mention that the purpose for it all is rather pointless. So yeah, all of that is wrong. As a supernatural thriller, the film doesn't work. But as an old fashioned weepy melodrama, it has a certain daffy power. Bullock gets to chew up the scenery in some wonderfully OTT moments of Grand Guignol soap opera. The film also stays true to the weepie form with its heroic/tragic conclusion. As a piece of whacked entertainment, engaging in no small part because of all the things it does wrong, but also because it takes itself so seriously and plays the emotional heartstings for all they're worth, this isn't on part with such classic weepies as Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas or Mildred Pierce, but it could hold its head up alongside the likes of The Other Side of Midnight.
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