Latest DVD Releases September 16th 2008 (Part 1)

Thanks to our friends at Onvideo.org for their help with my latest top 10 DVD releases for this week. I will look at a futher five of this weeks releases in a future post at Home Theater Fanatic but in the meantime here are my first top 5 releases this week in no paticular order. Read more

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DVD Reviews

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Transhcan Sinatras - Midnight at the Troubadour
21 Jan 2007 at 10:50pm
Highly Recommended

THE SHOW:

Scottish quintet the Trashcan Sinatras has been one of my favorite bands since their first album came out in 1990. I lived in Southern California at the time, and their singles “Obscurity Knocks” and “Only Tongue Can Tell” were in regular rotation on KROQ and were even getting some airtime on MTV. Their music was beautifully melodic and the lyrics inspired debates among fans trying to untangle their clever, twisted wordplay. Sassy Magazine at the time even put them in their Cute Band Alert. Unfortunately, despite the artistic growth of their next two albums, they suffered from diminishing commercial returns. Their 1996 album never got released in the United States, and most people thought the band faded. I was among a small group of loyalists on the …Read the entire review

I Dream of Jeannie - The Complete Third Season
21 Jan 2007 at 10:50pm
Recommended

Always thought of as the slightly declasse cousin of tony, glamorous Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie was a bright, bouncy, colorful little comedy on NBC from 1965 to 1970, that told the story of astronaut Major Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and his real-life genie in a bottle, Jeannie (Barbara Eden). While Bewitched grabbed the critical and public acclaim for dreamy, romantic Elizabeth Montgomery’s trials and tribulations as a married witch living in the suburbs (with a husband who didn’t like her witchcraft), I Dream of Jeannie was often belittled for being a crude, blatant knock-off of the more successful witch sitcom (even though it was more closely based on the feature film, The Brass Bottle, with Tony Randall, Burl Ives, and Barbara Eden). I Dream of Jeannie never had the intial public adoration that Bewitched enjoyed during its network run (…Read the entire review

Captain N The Game Master - The Complete Series
21 Jan 2007 at 8:32pm
Rent It

The Show:

When gamers say that Nintendo dominated the late 1980’s and early 90’s they aren’t kidding. The Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda got their own TV shows and The Wizard was released as a glorified commercial for Super Mario Brothers 3. It’s pretty hard to deny Nintendo’s ownership of the gaming industry (during that time period anyway) and as further proof of that today we’re looking at Captain N: The Game Master.

Running for a mere 34 episodes, Captain N wasn’t the smash hit that the producers were hoping for I’m sure. It began airing in September of 1989 and ended in 1991 with a total of three seasons under its Power Belt. Like many cartoons from this era this one was a 22 minute advertisement from start to finish. It was as if somebody took all of Nintendo’s hottest titles and paraphernalia, tossed them into a blender and pressed star…Read the entire review

Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back - 65 Tour Deluxe Edition
21 Jan 2007 at 7:07pm
DVD Talk Collector Series

THE MOVIE:

D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, a profile of Bob Dylan on his 1965 British tour, is arguably the most influential rock ‘n’ roll documentary of all time, predating even the Maysles’ Gimme Shelter and Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock. Thirty years later, Grant Gee pretty much orchestrated his Radiohead feature, Meeting People is Easy, note for note from Pennebaker. Ironically, given the movie’s title, Don’t Look Back is a film that deserves to be revisited every couple of years. While the movie has been on DVD since 1999, this new 65 Tour Deluxe Edition is a welcome upgrade in packaging and transfer.

Make no mistake, Bob Dylan in 1965 was one cool cat. Th…Read the entire review

I Trust You to Kill Me
21 Jan 2007 at 4:41pm
Recommended

The Movie

Musicians and actors have long drifted into and out of one another’s lives — the glare of Hollywood lights mingle with the intense heat of the nightclub spotlight, sometimes with good results (Kris Kristofferson has bounced between Tinseltown and the music industry successfully for decades) and sometimes with not-so-good results (30 Seconds to Mars, anyone?). I Trust You to Kill Me is a documentary with a few things on its mind, following “24″ actor Kiefer Sutherland around Europe for a couple weeks as he serves as tour manager for up-and-coming Los Angeles rock band Rocco DeLuca and the Burden, whose professional lives are also detailed, but with an almost detached air.

After wrapping up filming on the fifth season of “24,” Sutherland and his musical proteges packed up and jetted off for a series of dates in Europe over the Christmas holiday. From drunken par…Read the entire review

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DVD Reviews

Get The Latest Movies To Rent From Blockbuster Video Unlimited DVD Rentals delivered to your door first month is only $9.99.
Deal
19 Jan 2007 at 5:07am
Recommended

A provocative quote in the Atlantic Monthly stating “You can learn more about America watching one half-hour of Let’s Make a Deal than watching [CBS Evening News anchorman] Walter Cronkite for a month” probably was the inspiration for Deal (1978), a feature-length documentary on the iconically ’70s game show, where contestants dressed in wild costumes hoping for a chance to trade innocuous items (”from aardvarks to zithers”) for valuable merchandise hidden behind three curtains while avoiding “zonks” of worthless junk.*

Directed by E.J. Vaughn and John Schott, in collaboration with cinematographer Robert Young, Deal was described by Film Comment’s Amos Vogel as “hilarious, horrifying, apoplectic, bizarre, [it] attempts nothing less t…Read the entire review

Spacemen & Go-Go Girls Double Feature
19 Jan 2007 at 5:07am
Recommended

The Product:
You have to give Canadian filmmaker Brett Kelly credit. It’s not every struggling artist who would allow his less than successful efforts to see the light of day, let alone permit them to be marketed as clever, campy comedies. As a director, Kelly conforms to the 50/50 school of cinematic savants. On the one hand, he has made some excellent outsider efforts (My Dead Girlfriend, The Feral Man). But then there are those films that should have stayed under wraps (the rather weak Bonesetter series), viewed only by those with a real passion for the man’s past catalog. In this regard, Tempe has released The Spacemen and Go-Go Girls Double Feature, a DVD showcasing two of Kelly’s short schlock homages. While weak in execution, there is still something strangely likable about this pair of peculiar efforts.

The Plot:
When the planet Uranus runs out…Read the entire review

The Giant Majin Collection
18 Jan 2007 at 9:04pm
Recommended

The Movies:

The three Daimajin films that came out of Daiei’s studio in the late sixties are an interesting mix of period samurai drama and the type of monster mash mayhem that Kaiju fans enjoy. Unique in that they play around with Japanese folk legends rather than opt for a sci-fi style creature feature, the trilogy was set in feudal times and as such they were period films shot mostly on soundstages and sets. Although each of the movies would introduce various human elements, the real reason to watch these films was for the final act where inevitably the Daimajin or Giant Majin, would come to live and smite those who angered him.

AIP’s television department bought the American broadcast rights to the first two films in the series in the late sixties and had the films dubbed into English by professional voice actors so that they’d appeal to their target demographic kids. They were…Read the entire review

Wanderlust
18 Jan 2007 at 9:04pm
Rent It

Wanderlust, an IFC/Netflix documentary chronicling the “road picture” genre in movies, works in fits and starts, particularly when it sticks to letting actual clips from celebrated road films speak for themselves. But gradually, the documentary becomes less and less interesting as the generalities and cliches pile up, bogging down in its own one-sided aesthetic and political viewpoints.

Wanderlust works best when it lets the films discussed, speak for themselves. Generous clips from movies as diverse as The Grapes of Wrath, Detour and Vanishing Point more than get across their own points about America’s restless love affair with the road, with freedom, and with speed. Unfortunately, the directors of Wanderlust, Robert Pulcini and Shari S…Read the entire review

The Red Skulls
18 Jan 2007 at 4:36pm
Highly Recommended

The Product:
It’s about time that the mainstream recognizes the efforts of Luke and Andy Campbell. Since the late ’90s, these Ohio adolescents, working with a gang of pals under the Splatter Rampage Productions moniker (now Compound Films), have created some of the cleverest, most endearing homemade horror/comedy mash-ups in all of the outsider oeuvre. Beginning with their pro wrestling homage (the truly insane Splatter Rampage Wrestling) and working through a hilarious serial killer spoof (Midnight Skater) and a slightly more serious teen melodrama monster movie (Demon Summer), the boys have benefited from smart scripting, appealing amateur performances, and a real feel for how movies are made. Now comes their most ambitious project yet, the gang vs. zombie spectacle called The Red Skulls. Representing a real growth in the guy’s cinematic language, there is still …Read the entire review

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