The ten episodes that comprise Series [season] Two of Pie in the Sky originally aired in the winter of 1995. Such is the show’s writing, direction and acting that it remains as entertaining now as it was then. The series stars Richard Griffiths [best know as Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon] as Henry Crabbe; a semi-retired […]
Category: DVD Reviews
DVD REVIEW: A Mind to Kill – CSI’s Ancestor and Just as Intriguing!
Half-a-dozen years, or so, before CSI: Crime Scene Investigation premiered, a little Welsh series called A Mind to Kill presented us with Detective Inspector Noah Bain [Philip Madoc], a Welsh cop who headed a team that used a combination of cutting edge forensics technology and his own unique thought processes and instincts to solve murders.
DVD REVIEW; VEGA$: The First Season, Volume 2 – Michael Mann’s First Series Picks Up Steam!
Although he only wrote one episode, VEGA$ bore the stamp of series creator Michael Mann. It was a slick detective series set in Las Vegas – a place where, especially then, the flashy façade hid a grittier reality. The big hotels and casinos [like the long gone Stardust Hotel and The Sands] where not family […]
DVD REVIEW: The Sarah Silverman Program: Season 2, Volume 2 – Whimsically Shocking Series is Hit or Miss!
Sarah Silverman is an actor/stand-up comic who looks like an especially pretty girl next door while writing material that can best be described as whimsically shocking. How else to explain an episode of her The Sarah Silverman Program that weds a low-budget animated Little Mermaid spoof with bedwetting?
DVD REVIEW: Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic – Animated Movie Made to Complement Video Game Stands on Its Own Merits!
Dante’s Inferno is an unusual direct-to-DVD release for two reasons: it’s only the second film tie-in to a videogame released the same day, and both adapt [very freely] Dante Alighieri’s epic poem of the same name. In the poem, Dante, more of a scholar than a fighter, finds his way into hell to save the […]
DVD REVIEW: Becker: The Third Season – Before House, There Was Becker!
I have no idea if David Shore was influenced by Becker when he was creating Dr. Gregory House, but as I screened the third season of Becker, I couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t have taken much to turn Ted Danson’s second hit series [six seasons] into a drama.
DVD REVIEW: Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening – Sorry, Dude, Vulgarity Requires More Than Volume!
Lenny Bruce went to jail for taking street language onstage and giving it a context. Richard Pryor went to jail for drugs – and giving vulgarity music. George Carlin took a more philosophical approach but still got arrested. By the time that David Milch’s Deadwood gave vulgarity a Shakespearean poetry, the days of jail time […]
DVD REVIEW: The House of the Devil – Old School Thriller!
The House of the Devil opens with a graphic card that claims seventy per cent of American adults in the ‘80s believed that there were Satanic cults that abducted and sacrificed people – and that thirty per cent believed that we didn’t hear about because of a government cover up. So, we know going that […]
DVD REVIEW: Trucker – Michelle Monaghan Powers Indie Fractured Family Drama!
Diane Ford [Michelle Monaghan] is a truck driver, who has a reputation for always delivering early. She’s just paid off her big rig when she gets what seems to be a nasty surprise: her ex-husband’s current flame drops of her eleven-year old son. Neither Diane nor Peter [Jimmy Bennett] is particularly thrilled by this. What […]
TVonDVD: Callan – Set 2: British Cold War Spy Series is Chilling!
Beginning in 1967, Callan, starring Edward Woodward – best known for The Equalizer and the original The Wicker Man – portrayed David Callan on a spy series that was as dark as the Cold War. Callan was, as he puts it, “a sergeant who was promoted to private,” before he was forced out of the […]
DVD REVIEW: Ghost in the Shell 2.0 – Enhanced Original Is Entertaining But Is It Really Necessary?
I love Ghost in the Shell, its sequel, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and the two seasons of the GitS TV series [all available here on DVD]. The original Ghost in the Shell was filled with great ideas and set in a world that, other than the cyber-technology, looked a lot like this one. Part […]