January 2006

Airplane! (SE)

From: Paramount Home Video - Year: 1980 - Rated: PG - Release Date: December 13, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Extras! * - Recommended! Twenty-five years after it crash-landed on America's movie screens, Airplane! remains one of the funniest and most irreverent films of all time. This new special edition doesn't include enough fresh material to warrant an upgrade (unless you're a diehard fan), but if you haven't yet added this hysterical comedy classic to your collection, there's no better time.
Airplane! (SE)

The Execution of Wanda Jean

From: HBO - Year: 2001 - Rated: Not Rated - Release Date: November 29, 2005 The Execution of Wanda Jean refrains from preaching about capital punishment, but in its close study of one morally excruciating instance, it points up the flaws in a system designed for revenge and rehabilitation, and in fact offering neither. It's a passionate and well-made documentary, using one woman's sad story to illuminate a public debate in which the stakes are literally life and death.

The Execution of Wanda Jean

Titus Season 3

Comedian Christopher Titus comes from a background that, to put it gently, is profoundly troubled. Others might go so far as to call it what it is: deeply fucked up. Upon discovering a statistic that over 60 percent of American homes are dysfunctional and realizing that meant that he and his family were in the majority, Titus set out to share his pain with the world. As a young comedian, Titus would riff on, among other things, his mother's mental illness and eventual suicide, his father's incessant drinking, tough-love parenting and numerous wives, fights with his father and getting into trouble with his step-brother. All of this angst was eventually turned into the stand-up work "Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding," (serving as the basis for his TV show lasting three seasons and 54 episodes) which is every bit as caustic, revealing and poignant as moments in the aforementioned short-lived series. This i... Read the entire review

Titus Season 3

Interview With an Ex-Vampire

The Movie:

Until I settled in for the night with this nine-disc set, I was unfamiliar with Bill Schnoebelen, his work, and his world. It would seem that he's lead a pretty interesting life as apparently he was involved in ultra secret levels of Free Masonry, The Church of Satan, both black and white magick, and at one point in time he was a vampire – not, as the website for this release claims 'people who pretend to be vampires by drinking blood' but a real vampire with powers and stuff.

You'd think that someone who has experience as a 'real vampire' and who knew the inner workings of the devil and his minions would be a shoe in for 'interesting guy' right? Right. After all, evil is fascinating to most of us and the chance to hear from someone who has been there, done that and lived to tell the tale should make for a very interesting session. Well, the fine folks over at Mark ... Read the entire review

Interview With an Ex-Vampire

Saturday Night Live - The Best of Alec Baldwin

In 10 Words or Less
The best of one of "SNL"'s best hosts

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Alec Baldwin
Likes: SNL
Dislikes:
Hates:

The Show
Right off the top, I must say I am a huge fan of Alec Baldwin, and it's not just because we are both products of Long Island's south shore. Building a career from a small number of acclaimed parts and a large number of enjoyable, though guilty pleasures, Baldwin has made the transition from leading man to character actor, while using his distinctive voice to create some very memorable characters.

Despite playing defining roles like the stunning Blake in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and Jack Ryan in "The Hunt for... Read the entire review

Saturday Night Live - The Best of Alec Baldwin

The Fighting Westerner

The Roan Archival Entertainment Group, now owned and operated by Troma Films, is responsible for digitally restoring and remastering classic Films. While falling short of the lengths to which Criterion goes when issuing a classic release, Roan still puts out very solid work. I had the pleasure of watching their John Wayne: The Early Years Collection and was very pleased with the results. Crisp black and white prints with clean audio and solid, steady transfers seem to be the norm. I'm happy to say that Randolph Scott's The Fighting Westerner (1935) also lives up to their exacting standards.

The Fighting Westerner

My Big Fat Independent Movie

The Movie

The explosion of independent film that dominated the arthouses of the Nineties has long since subsided, as previously marginalized films are taking center stage; a movie like Brokeback Mountain or Capote would've been relegated to small, coastal runs a scant few years ago. Now, they're contending for Oscar gold – what a difference a few years makes. While indie films are more prevalent now, you'd still practically need a scorecard to keep up with all of the lightning fast references in My Big Fat Independent Movie – riffing on everything from Pulp Fiction to Memento, director/editor Philip Zlotorynski, working from a screenplay by Film Threat's Chris Gore (who also served as a producer) and Adam Schwartz, piles on the satire, rarely pausing for a breath.

The movie's Achilles heel, however, isn't that it's not occasionally funny (it... Read the entire review

My Big Fat Independent Movie

Zone of the Enders: The Complete Collection

Movie: If you know much about anime, you'll know that in Japan it is pretty common to base a series on a successful videogame just as it used to be pretty common for videogames to be made out of movies and television shows over here a few platforms ago. The reasoning is clearly relating to the excellent marketing strategies devised by those who claim to know how cross markets work. The problem is that those geniuses often found that the games would be rushed and no one would want to play them; leading to the advent of the so-called discount bin. Regardless, there have been some successful franchises in this genre over the years with the first coming to mind being the Sakura Wars releases and a second being the Zone of the Enders: Complete Collection.

The television version of the show began wit... Read the entire review

Zone of the Enders: The Complete Collection

M*A*S*H - Season Nine Collector's Edition

In its ninth season (1980-81), M*A*S*H's main title theme got a new, sparser orchestration, heralding the beginning of a last creative phase, a final three years of highs and lows, when much of its cast and crew became anxious to move on to roles that didn't require khaki slacks and long excursions to the Fox Ranch in Malibu. Both visually and in its writing, M*A*S*H of the 1980s was notably weaker than the more fruitful mid- and late-1970s period, and by season 9 the show had become virtually unrecognizable from its first year and the Robert Altman feature that had inspired it. M*A*S*H 's Neilsen ratings actually went up slightly in its ninth season (the show ranking 4th among prime-time series), but creatively it was winding down.

A television writers strike further emphasized the aesthetic barrier between the late-'70s shows and the early-'80s ones. The strike resulted in a... Read the entire review

M*A*S*H - Season Nine Collector's Edition

Rock 'n' Roll High School (SE)

From: Buena Vista Home Video - Year: 1979 - Rated: PG - Release Date: December 13, 2005 - Features: Widescreen * Extras! * - Recommended! This one gets the special edition treatment, and even if the image transfer is the same old nonanamorphic print, the film is still a dose of glorious dumb fun, fueled by the music of The Ramones. Look up the definition of "drive-in movie" and the odds are you'll find a picture of Rock 'N' Roll High School. Highly recommended. Amazon Compare

Rock 'n' Roll High School (SE)

The Great Raid (Director's Cut)

From: Miramax Pictures - Year: 2005 - Rated: Not Rated - Release Date: December 20, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Extras! * - Recommended! A well-made and rousing portrayal of American heroism, this director's cut of The Great Raid is actually an improvement on the theatrical release. Miramax gives the film a stellar DVD home, with impressive extras and excellent transfers. Amazon Compare

The Great Raid (Director's Cut)

Next Stop, Greenwich Village

From: 20th Century Fox - Year: 1976 - Rated: R - Release Date: December 13, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * Too treacly too often, the movie seems more a collection of fond remembrances than a searing look at the travails of a young man coming of age. But Mazursky's writing is occasionally sharp, and he gets some very good work from a talented young cast.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village

The Cave

From: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment - Year: 2005 - Rated: PG-13 - Release Date: January 03, 2006 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Quite possibly the worst film of 2005, The Cave is a prime example of how not to make a monster movie. Now everyone with a DVD player has a chance to see just how boring this action/thriller is, albeit on a nice disc from Sony. Amazon Compare

The Cave

Erasure: Live in Cologne

From: Mute - Year: 2005 - Rated: Not Rated - Release Date: December 13, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Extras! * An Erasure show is always a fairly flamboyant experience to take in, and this live set from early 2005 is no exception. The songs are hook-filled, there's plenty of gaudy Andy Bell costume changes here, but the energy level of the group for this show seems somehow lacking, and is far less effusive and seemingly more robotic. The image transfer is just fair, which only compounds the presentation issues.

Erasure: Live in Cologne

Toy Story 2 (SE)

From: Walt Disney Home Video - Year: 1998 - Rated: G - Release Date: December 26, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * DTS * Extras! * - Recommended! The second installment in Pixar's signature franchise is a terrific movie, and you'll catch up in a heartbeat if you haven't seen the first. The technical values on this 2-DVD set couldn't be stronger, and only the suspicion that somewhere down the road we'll be asked to pony up for yet another edition of the film puts a damper on my enthusiasm. But my hypothetical financial bellyaching aside, there's no reason not to enjoy the many pleasures of this one, and you won't age out of Andy's room any time soon.

Toy Story 2 (SE)

New DVD Reviews: The Constant Gardener, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Chicago

Now with over 14,300 DVD reviews in the DVD Talk Review Database, it's easy to overlook some of the...

New DVD Reviews: The Constant Gardener, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Chicago

The Valachi Papers

The Movie:

Based on a 'tell-all' novel that claims to be based on actual mob history by Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers, interestingly enough, had to be filmed in Italy for fear of mafia intervention on American soil. The real life Joseph Valachi, upon whom the stories in this film are centered around, was an actual mafia big-wig and no one involved in making the film wanted to wake up next to a horses head because of their commitment to the production.

Told in flashback by Valachi (played with a wonderful sense of menace by Charles Bronson), and book-ended by his time in custody, the film details his story to a U.S. Federal Agent about his work in the underworld between the years of 1929 and 1961. Employed by a mob boss named Vito Genovese (prolific star of French cinema, Lino Ventura), Valachi is wronged and turns informer on his former employer. It's a dangerous move... Read the entire review

The Valachi Papers

Gilgamesh, Vol. 4: Under a Blood Red Sky

The Show:

The fourth volume of Gilgamesh has some interesting twists in the plot that will entice fans of the show, but is still hampered by stylized animation and a slow moving plot.  That wouldn't be so bad, but the gaps in plot development are fill with teenage angst that really has been overdone in anime recently.

Series Background:

Fifteen years ago the Heaven's Gate project, a scientific organization with unknown goals and methods was about to be shut down.  A lone scientist who was working on the project and also lobbied for its termination, Dr. Madoka, enters the inner core of the project and sets off a reaction that has global implications.  A wave of energy races across the planet and alters the sky, making it shimmer and reflect lite, blocking out most of the... Read the entire review

Gilgamesh, Vol. 4: Under a Blood Red Sky

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

The Film:

A long time ago Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris) knew how to enjoy life…he played the piano. Unfortunately his dreary job as a real estate broker-errand boy for Thomas Seyr Sr. (Niels Arestrup) has slowly expanded into a monotonous routine of never-ending shady business deals, late-night visits at future "properties" unlawfully occupied by illegal immigrants, and increasingly dangerous "negotiations" with murky characters to which Thomas Seyr Sr. owns money.
But after a gifted Chinese pianist (Linh-Dan Pham) agrees to prepare Thomas for a piano audition at the Paris Conservatoire all hell breaks loose - Thomas Seyr Sr. gets involved with a group of Russian mobsters fascinated with the subtle language of fist fighting and Thomas' associates from the broker company can no longer tolerate their colleague's newly-discovered passion for the piano.
Directed by J...Read the entire review

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Grizzly Man

The Movie:

The subject of Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell, was an odd duck. In a nutshell, he was born and raised in Florida, then headed on out to California to become an actor. When that didn't pan out for him like he'd hoped, he somehow managed to get the funding together to start making annual trips out to Alaska every summer for thirteen years where he lived alone (save for his thirteenth and final year where he was accompanied by his girlfriend, Amy Huguenard) and unarmed among the grizzly bears that live in the area.

Treadwell's self proclaimed goal was to protect the bears and study them and to more or less become one with them. During the winter months he would travel around to different schools and present his information and his findings to children without ever asking for a fee, simply to spread the word and get his message out. Fo... Read the entire review

Grizzly Man

Snatch: Deluxe Edition (w/ Exclusive Poker Kit)

The Product:
Though it doesn't quite hold the record in this category (Anchor Bay and its Dawn of the Dead /Army of Darkness fixation is more than likely numero uno), Guy Ritchie's incredibly entertaining Snatch has got to be some sort of double dip champion. It's been released in a standard version, a two-disc special edition and under the notoriously underwhelming Superbit title. Like the annual migration of birds to the warmer climes come winter, it seems like every year brings another DVD variation of this crackerjack crime comedy. This time around, an "exclusive" poker set presentation is being used. It's still the same package as the old two disc SE, but now you can get some cards, a dealer's chip, and a collector's 'scrapbook' of film trivia. If all that floats your 'must buy' boat, then by all means pick up this obvious marketing ploy. If not, then there's really... Read the entire review

Snatch: Deluxe Edition (w/ Exclusive Poker Kit)

Interview with Craig Brewer - Hustle and Flow

On this episode of DVD Talk Radio: DVD Talk Editor Geoffrey Kleinman speaks to filmmaker Craig Brewer - director...

Interview with Craig Brewer - Hustle and Flow

The DVD Savant: The Bad Sleep Well and Let Him Have It

This week the DVD Savant has a number of new reviews including: The Bad Sleep Well - Akira Kurosawa's...

The DVD Savant: The Bad Sleep Well and Let Him Have It

New DVD Reviews: Nowhere Man, Dumb and Dumber Unrated and Open House

Now with over 14,400 DVD reviews in the DVD Talk Review Database, it's easy to overlook some of the...

New DVD Reviews: Nowhere Man, Dumb and Dumber Unrated and Open House

The Polar Express

From: Warner Home Video - Year: 2004 - Rated: G - Release Date: November 22, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Extras! * - Recommended! The Polar Express will become a holiday tradition in my household as, more than any other film, it manages to evoke the spirit of Christmas while completely enthralling in nearly every aspect. Highly recommended. Amazon Compare

The Polar Express

Empire of the Wolves (L'Empire des loups)

From: Sony Picture Classics - Year: 2005 - Rated: R - Release Date: December 26, 2005 - Features: Anamorphic * Widescreen * DD 5.1 * Nearly as confusing as it is long, this disappointing mess of a Euro-thriller goes nowhere fast, and takes its own sweet time getting there. I generally consider Jean Reno one of those actors that can make anything endurable, but that theorem really gets put to the test here. Amazon Compare

Empire of the Wolves (L'Empire des loups)

Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities

From: Walt Disney Home Video - Year: 1923-1962 - Rated: Not Rated - Release Date: December 06, 2005 - Features: Extras! * The selection of shorts is eclectic and many great favorites are here, but the presentation is somewhat disappointing. They probably won't be released on the DVD format any other way, so strike while the iron is in the stores.
Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities

Hollywood showed its serious side in 2005

Offscreen, Hollywood recorded its lowest attendance in 20 years, a slump that pundits attributed to high prices, low quality, chatty patrons and the quick release of films on DVD.

Hollywood showed its serious side in 2005

The Escapist

The Movie

Look past the amazingly goofy (and misleading) DVD cover and you'll find The Escapist, a low-budget British indie from 2001 that's only now making its way stateside because it stars a pair of actors who've since gone on to build a pair of names for themselves.

And guess what? It's actually pretty good!

Jonny Lee Miller, co-star of three films released this year ( Melinda and Melinda, Aeon Flux, and Mindhunters), stars here as a wealthy young pilot named Denis. Husband to a beautiful (and mega-pregnant) wife and seemingly on top of the world, Denis hits Nightmare City when a trio of scummy thieves break into his house and summarily slaughter his missus. (Not a spoiler, since it happens in the first ten minutes!)

The leader of the scummy thief bastards is Ricky Barnes, as played with much sweat and scumminess by good ol' Andy Serkis, th... Read the entire review

The Escapist

The Secret Life of Geisha

The Secret Life of Geisha is a well-made and intriguing overview of its subject. The 1999 television documentary first aired on A&Ewhen Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha was a red-hot book but still a long way from becoming a blockbuster movie. As things turned out, Golden's intricately-researched novel ironically was adapted into an alarmingly inauthentic movie that ignored the book's primarily appeal. Though The Secret Life of Geisha is not without problems of its own, it's a better source of information for Westerners interested in learning more about this singularly Japanese profession and cultural icon.

The 93-minute show is well-organized, with about a third of the program devoted to an informative history of geisha, from their introduction in Japan in the early 1600s, through the Edo Period, Meiji Restoration, World War II, and the American Occupation. This is inte...Read the entire review

The Secret Life of Geisha

The Constant Gardener

The Film:

Straightforward, conventional, obviously a bureaucrat who knows how to follow procedure Justin (Ralph Fiennes) is impressed by a beautiful woman (Rachel Weisz) who asks uncomfortable questions. He offers her a drink, she accepts, they both end up at her place. At the beginning sex is all that connects the two but as the relationship progresses Justin and Tessa find themselves madly in love. Life seems good…until one day Justin receives a note that Tessa has been brutally murdered on a desolate country road in Kenya.

But why, who in the world would want Tessa dead? Why would she be murdered in Kenya? What did Justin miss in a relationship where Tessa would often seem rather edgy in her comments but nonetheless normal? Slowly reconstr... Read the entire review

The Constant Gardener

The Galaxy Railways, Vol. 4: Leaps of Faith

The Movie:

The fourth volume of Galactic Railways goes down a notch in quality from the previous discs. While the earlier episodes in this series toyed with melodramatic elements, most of the shows on this volume fully embrace it. There's just a bit too many people pining for their lost love and not enough action that had previously made the show so entertaining. While it's not a bad set of shows, it didn't have the charm of the other volumes.

Series recap:

Manabu Yuuki is the son of a Captain in the SPD, Space Defense Force, the organization that protects and guards the millions of miles of interstellar space routes that the galactic trains travel across. Manabu's father, Wataru, is the Captain of Big One, the pride of the SDF fleet. Wataru sacrifices his life to save his crew a... Read the entire review

The Galaxy Railways, Vol. 4: Leaps of Faith

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Bueller Bueller Edition

The Movie:

In the role that he'll probably always be best remembered for, Matthew Broderick plays a high school student named, amazingly enough, Ferris Bueller. He's a popular kid, and a good natured soul even if Principal Roony (Jeffrey Jones of Ed Wood) isn't his biggest fan – you see, Ferris has a tendency to get away with a lot more than Roony would like.

One fine, sunny day, Ferris decides that he needs a day off. He could go to school and he probably should go to school but it's just one of those days where his heart isn't in it and he'd really rather be doing his own thing. He calls up his good friend Cameron (Alan Ruck of Spin City) and the two decide to cut class for the day. Cameron heads over to Ferris' place to pick him up and Ferris decides that before school ends, he's going to show his friend a truly good time and that they're going to go all out a... Read the entire review

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Bueller Bueller Edition

Bloodline

The Movie

Given the generally dismal quality of Lions Gate's direct-to-video horror films, one could be forgiven for intentionally bypassing a title like Bloodline. Perhaps I'm only rating this flick in comparison to most of its LG brethren, but it's actually not half bad!

The story opens with a sequence you've seen 1,000 times before: a campground massacre from which only two brothers escape. OK, so far, so familiar.

The deformed, mute, and mildly retarded brother (Henry) disappears into the woods, while the "normal" brother (Travis) gets to return home and deal with all the "survivor guilt." Obviously we (the audience) are meant to assume that Henry did the killin' and Travis was the hero. But then that supposition gets flip-flopped, and reversed again -- and before you know it, you're actually caught up in this dinky little no-budget horror flick.

Some well-earn... Read the entire review

Bloodline