Philadelphia's pretty well-known as a town that loves its sports teams. Those fans are also known to be pretty raving, rabid and raucous on occasion, but hey, who goes to a football game and pretends it's a ballet? Growing up the son on a Philadelphia firefighter, my youth was fairly coated with a non-stop deluge of Phillies, Flyers, 76ers and Flyers. I grew up to focus more on the football/baseball side of the equation, but for most Philadelphia sports families, the Flyers are like a religion. Seriously.
So it was with much enthusiasm that I sat down with WB's new Philadelphia Flyers: 10 Greatest Games collection, a 10-disc set that'll bring a tear to the eye of any old-school Orange & Black fan. No frills, no extras, just one classic hockey game per disc. Here's what we get:
05/09/74 - Bobby Clarke scores an overtime goal to win a playoff game in Boston. (Flyers at B...Read the entire review
"Reality TV" always seems to find a fresh "bottom of the barrel" whenever a new season rolls around, and if Dane Cook's Tourgasm isn't one of the very worst -- it surely is one of the most disappointing. It's as if HBO found themselves with the rights to the whole of Dane Cook, and instead of simply delivering a rock-solid comedy concert, they decided to stretch a generally worthless concept into a 9-episode series. They really, really shouldn't have.
Full disclosure: I think Dane Cook is a pretty damn hilarious comedian. Based only on his comedy CDs and a handful of TV appearances, I definitely consider myself a fan of the guy's work. So when I got a hold of the 3-disc Tourgasm set, I figured I was in for a pretty good time. Yikes.
Here's what Tourgasm is: Dane Cook brings three old pals (all of whom fancy themselves professional comedians) on a tour of col...Read the entire review
It's been about six years since the "love it or hate it" sensation that is The Blair Witch Project hit the scene, but we haven't seen a whole lot of directors Dan Myrick and Ed Sanchez since that time. Myrick's follow-up (The Strand) hit video shelves last year, and he has a pair of horror flicks (Solstice and Believers) in the works. Sanchez's second feature has taken equally long to get off the ground. It's a sci-fi / horror indie called Altered and it's kind of a mixed bag: Half chintzy and raw, half interesting and semi-creepy.
The flick opens with a decidedly different approach to the "alien abduction" idea: A pair of guys are seen high-tailing it out of the woods with lump buried inside a blanket. When they arrive at the house of an unhappy old friend, we learn what the blanket contains: an unconscious alien creature! One of the bastards who...Read the entire review
It really is amazing how terrible a movie can be and yet still earn a big enthusiastic DVD release as if it were an actual piece of filmed entertainment that's worthy of your time, money and effort.
Trust me on this one, people, and this is coming from a guy who lived through/survived the Wretched Teen-Sex Comedy Flood of the Mid-'80s: The Naked Mile is one of the lamest, laziest and most shockingly amateurish comedies I've ever seen. The fact that Universal wants to keep riding the "American Pie" gravy train is no big shock; that they put so little effort or creativity into these video sequels, well, it's kind of a slap in the face. Just because someone's looking for a mindless college comedy, that doesn't mean that person is a mentally-deficient moron -- but that's precisely what The Naked Mile (and its equally pathetic predecessor, Band Camp) is: witless, wo...Read the entire review
Background: Fans of anime are often grouped into a limited number of sub-categories based on their favorite shows and viewing habits. I tend to like a lot of different types of anime so my own tastes are difficult to define (having been raised on Americanized versions until the 1980's; with Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Star Blazers, and Force Five, being among the titles I enjoyed over the years until then). Still, as the market expands, marketing niches make it easy for companies and reviewers alike to describe some of the tenants of a particular title in an easier form, noting that your mileage may vary considerably. One of my favorite mech-robot titles from the mid-1990's was Neon Genesis Evangelion, a series that explored a darker version of anime, one where not only were things not as they seemed but even the good guys had serious inst...Read the entire review
Clearly influenced by the innocent but edgy aura of the Novelle Vague Benoit Jacquot's (The School of Flesh) latest picture A Tout de Suite a.k.a Right Now (2004) follows the steps of free-spirited Lili (Isild Le Besco), a Parisian art student, who becomes involved with an enigmatic robber (Ouassini Embarek) whose luck is running out. After a deadly heist Baba and his accomplice Alain (Nicolas Duvauchelle) take shelter in Lili's house and consequently leave Paris embarking on a dicey escape through Spain, Morocco, and Greece.
Shot in glorious black and white A Tout de Suite arrives to North American shores rather late. Having gathered plenty of positive reviews during its initial screening at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) in 2004 Benoit Jacquot's film took awhile before it finally attracte...Read the entire review
Background: One of the great things about TV on DVD is getting to see your favorite shows unedited and without the commercials (at least when companies like Universal do the shows justice) that were always a drag when the shows first aired. I know the idea of paying for television shows you could (or still do) get to see for free grates on the financial sensibilities of some but think of it this way, you're paying in lieu of the advertisers for the benefit of a better experience. One such title I came across last year was from my younger, more military oriented days in the form of Airwolf: Season One. It was great fun to revisit the two dimensional characters and situations, and while I may have a more critical eye nowadays, I can still enjoy the fluff of a fun "popcorn" show which is why I'm happy to report that today's release of ...Read the entire review
Paris Hilton was the main selling point of the movie.
Background: Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten or so years, you'll know that the last time a movie with the header "National Lampoon" was even remotely funny was about ten years ago (even further back if you don't include derivative efforts in the Vacation series) with the first hit under the label coming out back in 1978 in the form of Animal House. These days, the name appears to be sold to boost the meager efforts of substandard fare such as National Lampoon's Barely Legal, National Lampoon's Going the Distance, and Read the entire review
After the rabid successes of "Beavis and Butt-head," "King of the Hill," and the cult supremacy of "Office Space," one would think that 20th Century Fox could've extended some level of trust to writer/director Mike Judge when it came to his latest film, "Idiocracy."
What's finally being shown to audiences after two years sitting on a shelf gathering dust is a Frankenstein's Monster of a film, pieced together by a studio looking to pull off cinema's greatest single act of irony: they've dumbed down a film about dumbing down.
Private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) is volunteered by his commanding officers to take part in an experimental hibernation program that will put him to sleep for one year. Sent under with a prostitute (Maya Rudolph), the program is eventually cut short, with Joe's tube lost for 500 years. When a garbage avalanche ends his centuries-long slumb...Read the entire review
Background: There has long been a large following for fictional accounts of Vampires, Warlocks, and other supernatural beings. The reasons vary more than I care to explore here but the bottom line is that such works run a wide gamut of quality, regardless of how they are presented. Earlier this year, I came across one of the best examples of the genre in anime (it even placed highly on the Best of Anime 2006 list); the futuristic tale of Trinity Blood 3: Collector's Edition, a show where humanity survives thanks in large part to the efforts of the Catholic Church with a struggle between the organization and a large group of vampires that seek to subjugate the survivors of a past war. As stated in Read the entire review
When filmgoers complain that they don't make 'em like they used to, such grousing surely doesn't apply to the inspirational sports flick. If there's a genre that seems as cryogenically frozen in time as Walt Disney's head, it's the one about the spunky underdog athlete -- which might help explain why the good folks of Disney are particularly adept at such movies, exemplified in recent years by Remember the Titans, The Rookie, Miracle and Glory Road.
Add Invincible to that roster. While as formulaic and predictable as every other film of its ilk, it also scores points for (as a zillion sports movies have put it) having plenty of heart. Based on the life of Vince Papale, a blue-collar stiff who catapulted from tending bar to NFL heroics, this is a story tailor-made for the big screen. That it takes place in the Philadelphia of 1976 -- the same year that...Read the entire review
Background: I liked comic books growing up and even today will find some unique projects worth checking out, the most recent being the creative Broken Saints; a project on the internet that gained a lot of buzz from movers and shakers. My roots in liking comics in general go back to when Marvel and DC slugged it out on the newsstands for supremacy; Marvel being known as much for how many advertisements they carried in each comic as the characters fans grew to love. In the spirit of some of the editorials in Marvel's comics from my youth, I start today's review with an homage to Stan Lee. Okay, here's a trivia question with a "no prize" award for getting it right: What Stan Lee project involves a superhero becoming super fast and fighting supervillains: Superman, Read the entire review
Background: Sometimes you find a show that you really like after hearing all the unreliable buzz by a select horde of slavering fanboys online and wonder why you never listened in the first place. The answer, of course, is that there are numbers of people devoted to all sorts of anime so if you are to believe everything you read online, you'd quickly come to the conclusion that all anime is great (which is simply untrue). Thankfully, I finally got in a copy of Bleach V1: The Substitute and found that it lived up to much of the hype, albeit too late to push for it to make it into the recent Best of Anime 2006 article ahead of some of the other titles making the list. Like the leads from Moonphase, the show focuses on a couple of unlikely heroes with unique abil...Read the entire review
Even the worst movies have something to like about them.
Background: There exists in society a market for just about every type of movie you can imagine, from the silly kiddy fare offered by Disney to the hardest of hardcore offered up by the jaded veterans of Chatsworth, California. Since we all have different levels of expectation and tastes for what we find appealing, your mileage may vary when reading a review because of this. That makes any review suspect since no one can speak to all folks and taking the middle ground all but guarantees the kind of mediocrity you'd expect from one who sits on the fence about everything. Well, today's review of the upcoming release of The Covenant won't be one of those reviews so stick with me for a moment while I explain w...Read the entire review
A massive 260 min. saga following the history of two rivaling families, the Solomins and the Ustyuzhanins, Andrei Konchalovsky's (Maria's Lovers) nostalgic Сибириада a.k.a Siberiade (1979) arrives on DVD in the United States after being released earlier this year by Russian distrib Ruscico.
Siberiade covers more than six decades of Russian history beginning in the early 1900s all the way to the late 60s. Each decade is reserved for one of the numerous main protagonists in this story (the feud between the Solomins and the Ustyuzhanins is inherited by their sons and daughters) as they indirectly symbolize the evolution of the Soviet state. From the victory elation in the post war years, to the modernization of the Far East, a...Read the entire review
With 2006's end coming soon, it's natural to take stock of the previous year's events, and try to put them into some kind of perspective. Being in that contemplative frame of mind, I had a terrific time watching MPI's four disc set, The Sensational 70's, a ten-part Canadian documentary produced in 1979 by Philip S. Hobel, that looks at the highlights and curious sidelights of that famed decade. I grew up during the 1970s, so many of the people and the events were familiar to me, but you don't have to have lived through the 1970s to enjoy The Sensational 70's. Culled entirely from archival footage, The Sensational 70's largely employs grainy, washed-out 16mm news footage to give the viewer a kaleidoscopic view of each year (I love the disco music intro that sounds like the tracks they played at the drive-in, for the concession stand promos). Produced in 1979 as a summation of...Read the entire review
Low budget films truly are the backbone of the movie industry. Each year indie features are released that are greeted with one degree of success or another. 2005's Searching for Bobby D is an example of one that connects with moderate success in what it attempts to do but for all intense and purposes falls short in the end.
The movie features a plot about an aspiring filmmaker getting his name out there and attempting to put together his opus. It's supposed to be a comedy that showcases the plight of a struggling script writer with the backdrop of a mob-like atmosphere. It's fun, sometimes witty, and entertains in spurts but ultimately the script feels shallow and the acting, even more so.
Johnny Argano (William DeMeo) spends his days and nights dreaming about starring in a film with Robert DeNiro. He wrote a script but hasn't been able to make any conn...Read the entire review
Brian De Palma is proof that being a great moviemaker doesn't necessarily entail being a great storyteller. Ever since his ascent in the Seventies as a kind of Hitchcock Lite, De Palma consistently does his best work when he isn't expected to make too much sense. But give the guy a big, juicy story to tell, and he winds up charred in a bonfire of his own bravado. The Black Dahlia, adapted from James Ellroy's acclaimed crime novel and involving perhaps the most infamous unsolved murder in California history, ought to thrill and amaze.
Sadly, it mainly just disappoints.
Set in post-World War II Los Angeles, the saga follows straight-arrow police officer Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), an ex-prizefighter who is paired up with another boxer-turned-cop, Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). The two become friends after an exhibition match to benefit the polic...Read the entire review
The Product: It happens so rarely that, when it actually does, it is definitely worth noting. Critics rarely change their mind at least not a mere four months after their initial contact with an entertainment. No, it usually takes decades of differing opinions and considered scholarship before a hated movie becomes acceptable, or visa versa. But in this case, there is something about The Descent that rubbed this reviewer the wrong way back in August. Maybe it was the loud and obnoxious teens in the audience who were too busy text messaging each other to pay attention to the film. Perhaps it was the lousy projection levels, which rendering most of the movie's cave scenes dark and indistinguishable. It could have been the unbearable hype, a machine that made the film out to be the second coming of horror. Whatever the circumstance, he came out unimpressed and angry at those who would p...Read the entire review
World Cycling Productions' 2006Spring Classics series of professional bicycle racing kicks off withthe two-race set of Ghent-Wevelgem and Het Volk. These early-seasonraces are interesting not just for their own sake, but also as aglimpse of what the field looks like after the winter season oftrades, training, and team reorganization. The 2006 edition of theseraces turns out to be quite interesting, with some surprises in storefor riders and viewers alike.
While Ghent-Wevelgem gets topbilling in the set, it makes more sense to watch the Het Volk discfirst, as Het Volk is the earliest of the races on the calendar. This"semi-classic" race gets started in the chilly Belgianweather on February 25, with all the riders eyeing each other to seewho looks strongest. It's not the first race of the year, but it'sthe first big ...Read the entire review
The 2004 Seoul Broadcasting System television series Stained Glass is a love story about three individuals who were connected on an emotional level at a very young age. Over the course of eighteen hour long episodes, their story is told. It has dramatic, romantic, and somber elements. It is a true K-drama and delivers an engaging story that is slow at times but nonetheless hard to put down. The characters are all likeable and their melodramatic situation will have you on the edge of your sit wanting more.
Stained Glass's main plotline deals with three individuals and the sordid love triangle that ensues as two best friends pine over the same girl, who also feels conflicted about her relationship with each of them. Han Dong-Joo (Lee Dong-G...Read the entire review
The Movie: Funny Factory with Huey, Dewey & Louie Vol. 4 features some classic Disney cartoons starring Donald Duck's trio of troublemaking nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie who make all sorts of mischief for the cantankerous Donald. In all, there are eight cartoons on this disc, clocking in at just under an hour.
Some highlights include:
Donald's Nephews: Donald receives a postcard from his sister, Dumbella, informing him that his "angel" nephews are coming for a visit. They systematically proceed to turn Donald's house upside down, playing croquet in the living room on their tricycles, tossing a baseball and breaking things, until Donald tries out some advice from a childcare book, which only ups the level of hysteria.
Soup's On: Song of the South fans will enjoy the fact that this episode opens with Donald singing "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah." Don...Read the entire review
A healthy dose of conquest with a strong dash of brutality is the recipe that lay within the blood of the 16th century Indian Mughals. This History Channel presentation of the Warrior Empire: The Mughals truly illustrates the bloodthirsty nature these individuals had to expand their reach. The result is a story that involves young princes that learn of domination from a young age, technological wonders that would further escalate their capabilities, and the extraordinary spoils of war that lay within these conquered locales. Plus, the overall weight and influence this "moving city" obtains would affect the world, specifically the full quarter of population the Mughals acquired.
The Documentary:
From the start of the empire in the power of Babur to the decline starting in the 1780s, these people fought tooth and nail for their land. And they did so with some amazin...Read the entire review
The Movie: Funny Factory with Goofy Vol. 3 features some classic Disney cartoons from as early as 1937, including seven shorts with many favorite Disney characters, but obviously the main focus is on Goofy, who more than lives up to his name.
Some highlights include:
Clock Cleaners: Goofy, Donald, and Mickey frantically try to clean a large clock, with hilarious mishaps that ensue, similar to any time the three of them try to work together.
Man's Best Friend: A tongue-in-cheek examination of the trials and tribulations caused by dog ownership, featuring Goofy as a dog owner, which is curious given that most Disney fans have concluded that he is one himself!
Father's Weekend: Poor Goofy. As a husband and father, he can't get any rest on a lazy Sunday. His child pushes him out of the bed, then wakes up and practices his trumpet, his wif...Read the entire review
The Game: This is a pretty unique idea for families looking for ways to entertain themselves on a rainy afternoon when everyone is climbing the walls a DVD board game where everything needed is on-screen. The spinner, which determines how many places each person moves, is even on-screen and that, along with question selection, is easily activated by the DVD player's remote control.
So, here is the good stuff first, garnered from a few rounds of play with my six-year-old son. This game can be played by up to 4 members of the family, or with only one player, which is great for families with only 1 child. The game centers around four cute pups from past Disney flicks like The Fox and the Hound, 101 Dalmatians, and Lady and the Tramp. Mickey's dog, Pluto, joins the fun as well. The navigability of the game is super-easy, and there are two levels of play, an easier on...Read the entire review
