It’s now available at ClassicMoviesNow.com through MGM’s made-on-demand program, with no frills attached, but the important thing is that it’s out at all … assuming you’re a Price checker. If you liked his AIP vehicles adapting Edgar Allan Poe, you’ll probably feel the same about this AIP vehicle adapting Jules Verne — two novels, to […]
DVD reviews
Posted inArts & Culture
True Legend
To HK aficionados, this will come as no shock, as the film bears the directorial credit of Yuen Woo Ping. Although known to American audiences as the guy behind the wire-fu choreography of “The Matrix,” “Kill Bill” and “Charlie’s Angels,” he’s responsible for the whole of some kick-ass projects in his homeland, including Chan in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hesher / Just Peck
In the infancy of “Saturday Night Live,” John Belushi starred in a sketch about an obnoxious party guest, “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.” That’s the character of Hesher in a nutshell, minus the cultural impact. As played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”), he’s an aimless, homeless, near-worthless stoner metalhead who essentially enters the house of grieving […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Venetian Affair
“Venetian” opens with a bang — an explosion at the table of a nuclear disarmament summit, and the person to blame is one of the men sitting there: the diplomat repping the United States. Fenner, now replete with sobriety issues, is called back into action in a plot that involves peeping telescopes, fatal gunshots, secret […]
Posted inMusic
Heroes of the Old West
One inexpensive way to find out: Mill Creek Entertainment’s release of “Heroes of the Old West.” Let’s run the numbers: For less than $10, you get almost 22 hours of material on four DVDs. That’s 10 feature films, 20 television shows and, hopefully, one happy camper. With the exception of John Wayne in 1963’s “McLintock!,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Live from Tokyo
The live scene is healthy, although with so many bands, there aren’t enough rewards to go ’round. As with here, the Internet has taken a huge bite out of CDs, but low album sales doesn’t mean a lot of people aren’t listening. They are. And thanks to the Internet, followings can be built overseas without […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Man from Atlantis: The Complete TV Movies Collection / The Complete Television Series
Those fans — and the curious, like me — should embrace Warner Archives’ pair of releases that bring the show to the DVD surface for the first time: “The Complete TV Movies Collection” and “The Complete Television Series,” at two and four discs, respectively. Yes, before NBC made it an official series, the fantasy first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Beaver
Try to separate Mel Gibson the actor from Mel Gibson the potentially crazy man who hurls epithets and anti-Semitic remarks in equal measure. Trust me: If you ignored the work of every Hollywood performer whose offscreen life is effed-up, or whose views don’t align with yours, all you could watch would be a test pattern. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dangerous Babes
But you know that going in. Anyone expecting Oscar-level material from titles like “Hot Target,” “Sextette” and the mega-depressing “Virgin Queen of St. Francis High” is misinformed, if not film-illiterate. Some highlights and/or lowlights from the collection… Having just returned from New Orleans, I opted to begin with 1978’s “French Quarter,” in which underage Trudy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Trollhunter
Troll movies number a scant few, so their relative absence as a screen creature makes “Trollhunter” seem that much more fresh — because God knows there’s no shortage of found-footage films these days. Speaking of God, the trolls here are drawn to the blood of Christians, so if you want to investigate them further, it’s […]