Galaxy Quest Deluxe Edition (2009, Paramount)
purchase from Amazon: DVD
While the new Star Trek film continues to soar through the box office to become one of the most popular movies of the year, Paramount has decided that it’s time to take another look at the hilarious Star Trek parody, Galaxy Quest. Amazingly, it’s been 10 years since the film’s theatrical release, yet it remains one of the brightest and funniest comedies of the last decade with one of the strongest casts you’ll find in any movie.
Tim Allen stars as Jason Nesmith, a washed up actor from an ’80s sci-fi television series called Galaxy Quest in which he played Captain Peter Taggart. Since the cancellation of the show, Nesmith and his TV crew castmates have been stuck on the convention circuit, selling autographs and opening supermarkets. That crew includes Sigourney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco, the sex interest on the original Galaxy Quest, a droll Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane, a Shakespeare-trained actor relegated to performing in makeup appliances and uttering the words “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!” Tony Shaloub as Fred Kwan, and the always great Daryl Mitchell as Tommy Webber, whose character on the original show was a child. Tommy is now an adult and having to come to terms that his glory years were when he was a kid.
An alien race comes across the original episodes of Galaxy Quest and mistakes them for actual documentary footage and builds a functioning replica of the starship. The aliens are led by the brilliant Enrico Colantoni and feature a then-unknown Rainn Wilson as a member. They recruit Nesmith to help them. Nesmith goes along, believing the gig to be yet another promotional opportunity. When he discovers the mission is real, he recruits his old castmates, along with an incidental from the original series (hilariously played by Sam Rockwell). The entire crew is beamed into space in the middle of a REAL intergalactic confrontation, going up against some nefarious creatures that come to us courtesy of the legendary Stan Winston. The Galaxy Quest crew must put aside their differences, overcome their fears and unite as a team and help the aliens defeat the enemy. (more…)
Notorious (2009, 20th Century Fox) purchase from Amazon:DVD | Blu-ray
As a 39-year-old white male who lives in the suburbs, I am clearly not the intended audience for the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious, but damn, I really enjoyed this movie.While it does cover the same ground as almost all music biopics (rise to fame, fall from grace, then redemption), Notorious has enough great music, charismatic performances and, because the events being told took place in the recent past (the rapper was murdered just twelve years ago),a contemporary feel that helps it rises above to the top of the genre.
Notorious opens with a the drive by killing of Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace just as he’s on top of the world. The moment a hail of bullets shoot through the window of his chauffeured SUV, Wallace begins a voiceover narrative of his life. Its an effective method for the filmmakers, for if, as some say, your life flashes before you just before you die, then the highs and lows may be the things you recall. We begin with the young Wallace, (portrayed Wallace’s real-life son, Christopher Jordan Wallace) growing up in the tough streets of Brooklyn. He’s a bright kid being raises by his strong, single mother, Voletta (Angela Bassett, one of cinema’s great actresses). To escape the ridicule of his classmates, he shows an early gift for writing rap songs. Sadly, he falls in with a street hustler and begins selling drugs, thinking that money and bling make you a man.We jump forward several years and Wallace is a teenager (and from this point, portrayed by rapper/actor Jamal Woolard). WhenVoletta kicks him out of the house for dealing, Wallace winds up getting busted and spends two years in prison. Behind bars he begins writing raps in earnest and he decides to clean up his life and become a responsible adult.
Once out of jail, Wallace makes an attempt to be a father to his daughter by his girlfriend, while also starting relationship with a sexy woman he meets on the streets, Kimberly Jones (Naturi Naughton). Jones would later take on the stage name of Lil’ Kim under Wallace’s guidance. Wallace also meets a rising rap mogul named Sean Combs (Derek Luke). When an initial rap deal with Combs falls apart, Wallace returns to the world of dealing and gets arrested a second time. However his friend, D-Roc, takes the rap so Wallace can pursue his music career and make it out of the world of drugs and crime. Combs comes through when he creates his own record label, Bad Boy Records, and Wallace, now called the Notorious B.I.G. or just Biggie, is one of his first artists. (more…)
The Uninvited has recently come out on DVD, and if you choose to watch it, several other words with an “un-” prefix may wander into your mind. You’ll find the film Uninteresting, and the DVD will quickly become Unwanted and Unwelcome by you or anyone within your household. Viewing it, you’ll find yourself Unwilling to become involved in this very Unwatchable film.
A bastardized remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited stars Australian actress Emily Browning (Ghost Ship, Lemony Snicket’s ASeries of Unfortunate Events) as American teen Anna, recently released from a sanitarium after she attempted suicide following her mother’s death in a tragic boathouse explosion (seriously). She returns home to find her older sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), still angered by Anna’s supposed “abandonment” — while kid sis was away, their dad, Steven (David Strathairn), started banging the hot live-in nanny, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), to help cope with his grief.
The Spirit (2009, Lionsgate)
purchase this DVD from Amazon: DVD | Blu-ray
One of the drawbacks of being a comic book fan is that you hope each movie based on a book you like is going to succeed in translating to the movie screen. With the brilliance of Spider Man 2, 300, A History of Violence, and the two Christopher Nolan-directed Batman films, we comic book geeks were salivating when Frank Miller, one of the seminal comic writer/artists of all time, announced he was going to helm an adaptation of Will Eisner’s legendary The Spirit. And with a great cast attached to the movie, how could anything go wrong? Well, just about everything goes wrong in Miller’s version of The Spirit. A shame, because there is simply no excuse for The Spirit to be as bad as it is.
The source material is a classic comic book about a police officer who returns from the dead after a gangster guns him down. Now seemingly immortal, the Spirit assists the regular police in tracking down criminals. This is great pulp material that, in the right hands, should have at least made for a great popcorn flick. Sadly, it fell into the wrong hands, and Miller has given us a boring, “been there, done that” movie that looks exactly like his film SinCity, without any of the panache or excitement.
Gabriel Macht stars as the Spirit, committed to fighting crime in Central City. The local cops all call on him when needed, probably because he can take a punch or bullet and walk away afterward. The Spirit’s arch-enemy is The Octopus, pure evil and intent on wiping out Central City and anyone who stands in his way. The Octopus is played with over-the-top glee by Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson is having so much fun in the role he doesn’t realize that he’s hamming it up pretty badly. Part of the comic book’s appeal has always been the number of gorgeous women who populate it. The film at least does this well, casting Sarah Paulson as Ellen Dolan, the girl next door who actually cares about the Spirit; Paz Vega as the French, murderous Plaster of Paris; Scarlet Johansson as Silken Floss, a calculating vixen who is in cahoots with the Octopus; Jaime King as the angel of Death; and Eva Mendes as Sand Saref, a dangerous jewel thief. While any one of these women could cause a car wreck, they can’t stop the car wreck that is this film. (more…)
Bedtime Stories (2009, Disney) purchase from Amazon: DVD | Blu-ray
The most disappointing aspect of watching Adam Sandler’s latest, Bedtime Stories, is how much wasted potential the film has. From an accomplished cast that includes Guy Pearce, Russell Brand, Courtney Cox and Keri Russell, to a director coming off one of the most engaging films of 2007 (Adam Shankman and Hairspray, respectively), to a story idea that is both clever and imaginative, Bedtime Stories should have been the perfect companion to great family films like Night at the Museum and Elf. Instead, this movie feels rushed and half there and Sandler, normally an actor who commits to his roles no matter how ridiculous or outrageous, seems to be sleepwalking through the movie.
A brief introduction gives us Marty Bronson (Jonathan Pryce, also the narrator), a man raising his two children, Skeeter and Wendy, while trying to run his own motel in the heart of Los Angeles, creating a small oasis in the big city. The kids help around the place and it’s a true family-run business. Marty’s dream is for Skeeter to one day take over and run the motel himself. Unfortunately, Marty is terrible with bookkeeping and is convinced to sell the motel to a manipulative businessman named Nottingham.
Cut to the present. Marty has passed away, Skeeter and Wendy do not speak, and Nottingham has transformed the small motel into a high rise hotel for the stars. Despite a promise by Nottingham that Skeeter would someday run the hotel, Skeeter has been relegated to handyman while he watches others get ahead in the world. In case you didn’t figure it out, Sandler plays Skeeter. When Nottingham, somehow forgiven for screwing Skeeter’s dad out of his business, decides he’s going to expand and open a new hotel, he immediately appoints weaselly hotel manager Kendall (Pearce) to come up with the theme for the new place. Skeeter is devastated that Nottingham won’t even consider his ideas.
At the same time, Wendy has grown into an anal retentive elementary school principal. Who better to play her than Courtney Cox, bringing Monica from Friends to life once again? Wendy’s school is closing and she’s suddenly out of a job. Divorced with two cute kids, she has to go to Arizona to find work. In desperation Wendy asks Skeeter, a man she hasn’t seen in two years, to suddenly take responsibility for her son and daughter, Patrick and Bobby, even though Skeeter has a tough time taking care of himself. (more…)
The IT Crowd: The Complete First Season (2009, MPI Home Video)
purchase this DVD from Amazon: DVD
I love when a new show meets all expectations — and surpasses them, as is the case with the BBC’s The IT Crowd, a workplace comedy that features one of my favorite character actors, Richard Ayoade. Fans of The Mighty Boosh,and especially Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, will recognize Ayoade as a gifted comedian with the ability to play just about any outlandish character thrown at him. In The IT Crowd, he portrays Moss, a socially inept, nerdy IT support person at a billion-dollar business, Reynholm Industries. Together with his partner, bitter slacker Roy (Chris O’Dowd), he forms a duo of computer geeks that finds themselves with a new boss, computer illiterate Jen (Katherine Parkinson) and must deal with the changes her arrival brings. This hilarious series has been airing on IFC since last fall and the first six episodes for the first season have just been released on a single DVD that comes with deleted scenes, a farcical documentary, and hidden outtakes.
Created by award-winning Graham Linehan, who also co-created the classic Father Ted, The IT Crowd may resemble the typical workplace comedy you may see in on network television in the U.S., but it’s that British sensibility and its no-holds-barred approach to comedy that makes it stand out. For instance, the episode “Fifty-Fifty” opens with Roy on a date and a brown smear on his forehead. When his date exclaims “you have shit on your head,” Roy is mortified. To prove that the brown smear is chocolate, he licks the substance. While he claims it is chocolate, it’s never really clear, leaving us wondering if somehow, Roy actually got shit on his head before his date. U.S. standards wouldn’t let that get past the script stage. (more…)
One of the things I enjoy about writing for Popdose is the opportunity to introduce people to classic films that they may have heard of but don’t know whether to rent or buy. Paramount Pictures has been re-releasing many of their classic films in their “Centennial Collection” series, adding new bonus features and remastering the films to fit into those newfangled 16X9 TVs. The latest two films to get this deluxe treatment are Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 romantic caper, To Catch a Thief, and the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau 1968 classic screen adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. In addition to the crisp new pictures, these DVD collections come with a second disc of bonus features, some of which haven’t been released in previous DVD editions.
Before filming To Catch a Thief, Grant had been in a self-imposed retirement for several years when Hitch came calling for him to star in the film. What a great career move, because after To Catch a Thief, Grant then went on to star in such popular films as An Affair to Remember,Charade, Father Goose, and the quintessential action film, North by Northwest (also directed by Hitchcock). In the film, Grant is John Robie, a notorious, albeit retired, thief known as The Cat. Living in seclusion in the south of France, a string of new burglaries that match the Cat’s m.o. make him the lead suspect by the police. But Robie is innocent, and sets off to clear his name with the help of people he knew from the French resistance. Unfortunately for Robie, no one believes he’s innocent. He manages to get the name of an insurance man who provides the names and whereabouts of rich women touting expensive jewels in the hotels of the Riviera. Robie’s plan is to catch the thief red-handed. Robie takes on the guise of an American industrialist and meets one of the potential victims, Jessie, (Jessie Royce Landis) and her beautiful daughter, Francie (Kelly). Jessie takes a liking to Robie and invites him to hang out with them. At the same time, Francie immediately recognizes Robie, but plays along with his charade because she finds him attractive and interesting. By film’s end Robie discovers the real thief who has been framing him and plots to catch the thief. At the same time, Francie falls in love with the lovable rogue.
This isn’t one of Hitchcock’s all-time great thrillers. The plot keeps moving steadily, but there isn’t really much in the way of suspense or action. Instead, Hitchcock’s film is a breezy, witty movie with tight dialogue and great scenery. The real appeal here is getting to see Grant and Kelly work alongside each other, tossing off double entendres left and right. In fact, Hitchcock challenged Hollywood’s ratings system with the dialogue in the movie and a famous kissing scene in which fireworks are going off in the background, symbolizing the sex the two characters would be having if allowed by the censors. Still, with director as creative as Hitchcock, half the fun of watching his films is seeing how he handles the “sex” scenes. Another highlight of the film is the technical aspect, especially the cinematography and the costumes. Indeed, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Robert Burk’s camerawork (shot in Vistavision) capturing the beauty of the lush French countryside. Additionally, To Catch a Thief received nominations for Edith Head’s costumes and also the Art Direction by Hal Pereira, Joseph McMillan Johnson, Samuel M. Comer, Arthur Krams(more…)
Degrassi: The Next Generation — Season 7 (2009, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment)
purchase this DVD collection from Amazon: DVD
Degrassi: The Next Generation is like the older, Canadian cousin of the BBC’s Skins.Skins is brasher and quite a bit more racy, but that doesn’t mean that Degrassi: The Next Generation is some old fuddy duddy. Quite the contrary, using a half hour format (perfect for today’s attention deficit teenagers) and a much quicker pace, Degrassi: The Next Generation tackles the same issues as Skins with just as much drama, humor and effectiveness (with none of the nudity or foul language)
Echo Bridge Home Entertainment has just released the complete seventh Season of Degrassi: The Next Generation in a four-disc box set. If you are as unfamiliar with Degrassi as I was, starting your journey into the Degrassi universe with the seventh season is a little disorienting, like suddenly attending a new high school mid-way through the school year. However, a few clicks of the mouse are an easy remedy to that problem. Season 7 was significant because many of the regulars from the show (who had been on it all seven seasons) were finally graduating from high school (mind you, the actors playing these roles were actual teenagers and not twentysomethings trying to pass as teens). Particularly long-running was Emma (Miriam McDonald), whose origin dates back to the 1987 series, Degrassi Junior High, and whose character was the catalyst for Degrassi: The Next Generation.
The history of these characters may seem complicated, but once you’re immersed in this world, you quickly catch on. Which is good, because Degrassi has a cast so large I could spend most of this review rattling off their names and how they all interconnect. Instead, I’ll highlight several of the compelling story arcs that carried through season 7: (more…)
As the film adaptation of the seminal graphic novel Watchmen hangs on at movie theaters — it hasn’t exactly lived up to box-office expectations — a lot of questions have popped up about Alan Moore, the book’s writer. He’s refused to allow his name to be associated with the film, hence the “co-created by” credit that only lists the book’s artist, Dave Gibbons; Moore has even insisted that all of his royalties from the film be given to Gibbons.
So who is this enigmatic Englishman?How does he come up with his ideas?What do his colleagues think of him?How does he work?It was with these questions that I eagerly sat down to watch DeZ Vylenz’s The Mindscape of Alan Moore, a 2006 documentary about the author that came out on DVD last year in a two-disc set.
The bulk of the movie consists of Moore talking directly to the camera from, I presume, his home in England. Dressed in black, with snake and skull rings covering his fingers, and surrounded by stacks of books, Moore begins with the details of his tough childhood in the working-class area of England. He came of age in the ’70s during a period of unrest in the country, and after being expelled from school for selling drugs, he struggled to find any place that would hire him while at the same time trying not to join the establishment. Comic books became his freedom from despair.
By the time Moore discusses his entry into the world of comics, Vylenz’s use of psychedelic horror-film music and images of doom and gloom(slums, smokestacks, etc.) and creepy nature shots (bugs crawling across logs, fungus growing) have already begun to wear thin. What I thought would be an examination of Moore’s career wasn’t so much about the comics he’d written but an attempt to literally interpret what’s going on in the writer’s mind.
South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season (2009, Paramount)
purchase this DVD collection from Amazon: DVD | Blu-ray
I haven’t been a steady watcher of South Park since its early days, right after Jesus and Santa Claus fought and Kenny died in every episode.Some time after the brilliant movie musical, South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, catching new episodes became difficult, what with children running around and Comedy Central being broadcast on an east coast feed here in Los Angeles.By the time TiVo came around, SouthPark was off of my radar. Now in its 13th season, South Park continues to be the most consistently rude, obnoxious, vulgar and funniest damn show on television.What amazes me about what creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pull off each week is how topical and current their storylines are. As Comedy Central began airing new episodes last week, they also released the 12th season as a three-DVD collection. When the opportunity presented itself to review this latest season of SouthPark on DVD, I was excited to look at a hit series with fresh eyes.
The new DVD collection includes all 14 episodes from the 12th season that ran March to November of 2008.Highlight episodes include “Over Logging,” in which the United States comes to a complete standstill when the Internet shuts down.Families travel west to internment camps in Silicon Valley where there is word that there may be some Internet.At the same time, the government and its team of scientists try to figure out what caused the Internet to shut down.“Over Logging” is representative of SouthPark at its best, blending the dustbowl destitution of The Grapes of Wrath with the fear and paranoia of any 1950s sci-fi horror movie.
“About Last Night” is the election episode that aired 24 hours after this past fall’s Presidential election.Although the production team began planning the episode three weeks in advance, they had to wait for the election results to actually finish the show.Thus, Parker, Stone and their crew completed “About Last Night” at the very last minute.Combining the actual outcome of the election with an Ocean’s Eleven heist (Obama is played as a George Clooney cool cat jewel thief) makes “About Last Night” smart, topical and very funny.
The 12th season also includes the infamous episode “The China Problem.”For those of you who don’t know about it, in this particular episode, Kyle, Stan and the gang all go to the movies to see the latest Indiana Jones adventure.To their horror, they witness their hero, Indiana Jones, getting raped by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (literally).The show not only screamed what many fans felt after they walked out of the theater after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but was also a perfect parody of crisis of consciousness movies like Sleepers.Besides the obvious outrageous nature of this episode, “The China Problem” showed that Parker and Stone still had major cojones by openly mocking a huge money-making film for their parent company, Paramount (not to mention two of the most powerful men in Hollywood). (more…)
Galaxy Quest Deluxe Edition (2009, Paramount)
Notorious (2009, 20th Century Fox)
A bastardized remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited stars Australian actress Emily Browning (Ghost Ship, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) as American teen Anna, recently released from a sanitarium after she attempted suicide following her mother’s death in a tragic boathouse explosion (seriously). She returns home to find her older sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), still angered by Anna’s supposed “abandonment” — while kid sis was away, their dad, Steven (David Strathairn), started banging the hot live-in nanny, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), to help cope with his grief.
The Spirit (2009, Lionsgate)
Bedtime Stories (2009, Disney) purchase from Amazon: 
The IT Crowd: The Complete First Season (2009, MPI Home Video)
Before filming To Catch a Thief, Grant had been in a self-imposed retirement for several years when Hitch came calling for him to star in the film. What a great career move, because after To Catch a Thief, Grant then went on to star in such popular films as An Affair to Remember, Charade, Father Goose, and the quintessential action film, 
Degrassi: The Next Generation — Season 7 (2009, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment)
As the film adaptation of the seminal graphic novel Watchmen hangs on at movie theaters — it hasn’t exactly lived up to box-office expectations — a lot of questions have popped up about 
South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season (2009, Paramount)