Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Where your trusty columnist has joined the ranks of the Xbox owners…
Things have moved along like people have figured in the next-gen DVD wars, which is to say, there isn’t a clear winner since the last time we talked. There is some news from Paramount, being that Mission: Impossible III will release SD, Blu and HD DVDs all on the day and date (10/30 for those who are curious). The HD release and extras will be duplicated from the Blu-Ray extras, with the exception of a picture-in-picture commentary ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Horror films have transformed over the years. We’ve essentially gone from horror films using religion to frighten (The Exorcist, The Omen) to slashers (just about everything in the 80’s), to nothing (the early 90’s void), to post-modern slashers, (Scream, Urban Legends, I Know What You Did Last Summer) to torture (Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes).
With I”ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, we take a short trip back into the slasher genre. And surprisingly, it still looks and fe...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Today, anyone with a credit card and some free time can make a movie. But that doesn't mean it's always a good thing. Case in point is Kisses and Caroms, which sports a massive hard-on for Kevin Smith’s Clerks (it’s Clerks in a billiards store. Brilliant!), but its characters, dialogue and location fail to be funny or engaging. For one, how many oddball customers can a billiards store receive in one day? In Clerks, it was believable, since people from all walks of life need what is readily...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 13th, 2006
I've said it before, and as long as Warner Brothers keeps putting these classic discs out, I am going to keep on saying it. No studio respects their classic film catalog like Warner's. They have done marvelous things with their special editions of classic films, such as their fantastic 2-disc tin box release of King Kong. They have the largest collection of classic films on the planet, including the entire RKO Pictures catalog, and they are succeeding in introducing an entirely new generation of film fans to the best that cinema has to offer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 12th, 2006
You would have to either be from another planet, been raised by wolves or be under the age of 15 to not have some sort of a personal history with Full House. The show was a staple of Friday night television for eight seasons, defying all logic and proving that the general public doesn't always know quality when they see it. The story about a non-traditional household was inexplicably popular, despite the fact that it got consistently poor reviews year after year. Even more surprising was how many careers came out of the show.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on August 11th, 2006
The work of H.P. Lovecraft has had a rather uneasy relationship with film adaptations. The attraction of his fiction for filmmakers is understandable: this is classic horror, and the cosmic evil on display can potentially lead to huge payoffs. Yet his prose style is very difficult, and most of the attempts at adaptation have been, at best, flawed. Stuart Gordon is the director who most consistently returns to his work, but he doesn’t really have the right touch. Re-Animator is a hell of a lot of fun, and it he...
Posted in: News and Opinions by Archive Authors on August 11th, 2006
A CNet article from Austrailia explains that PC Blu-Ray drives aren't able to play Blu-Ray movies released by studios as there aren't PC video cards or chipsets capable of handling HDCP.
Not good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 11th, 2006
I think the fact that Invasion only ran for one season is more of a result of circumstance than anything else. The series starts with a very large hurricane hitting Florida, and the rest of the season dramatizes the aftermath of such a tragic event. Unfortunately, the series made its debut right after the real life hurricane Katrina wiped out much of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. With the 24-hour coverage of the real-life disaster plastered all over the airwaves, audiences just didn't feel much like unwinding with a dramatization of the very same experience.
Posted in: News and Opinions by Archive Authors on August 10th, 2006
Discussing the old school DVD’s that still sound and look great in the era of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD technology.
The submarine film is tough to improve upon. With classics such as Das Boot, The Hunt for Red October, and even Crimson Tide, the submarine film genre is chock-full of movies with intense drama and claustrophobic action.
But then again, for every highly revered submarine film, there is a Below and Down Periscope.
So where does Jonathan M...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 10th, 2006
Tell me if you've heard this one before... a high school girl is not allowed to join a certain club because it is boys only, so she dresses up like a (transvestite) boy to sneak into the club and prove that she has girl power!
Seriously, how many times can Hollywood make the exact same movie, before somebody sues somebody for copyright infringement? I understand the argument that each new generation of teens will pay big bucks to see the same crappy movie that has been made every couple of years for generations, but come on.
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