Available on DVD as of August 31, 2010
When the Mark Schwahn teen angst drama One Tree Hill premiered on September 23, 2003 on former WB Television Network, audiences where to the teen denizens of the fictional North Carolina town of Tree Hill. Filmed on location in Wilmington, NC to give a more realistic feel, One Tree Hill followed the lives of follows half-brothers, Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) an aspiring writer and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) a high school basketball jock with dreams of a pro career. With heavy focus on the high school years of the Scott brothers and their respective romantic entanglements with Peyton Sawyer (Hilarie Burton), Haley James (Bethany Joy Galeotti) and Brooke Davis (Sophia Bush) One Tree Hill ran on steady course for of ratings success for The CW Network (a merger of UP with UPN). Both of the Scott brother’s lives were also affected by the shady dealings and scandalous relationships of their father father Dan Scott (Paul Johansson).
Season Five was a pivotal season for One Tree Hill as creator Mark Schwahn made the decision to move the characters out of high school by advancing the timeline of the series four years into the future thrusting the characters into adulthood. Season Six saw the departure of Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton and a new direction was in order for season Seven.
Now in its seventh season, which is now available on DVD, One Tree Hill continues to explore the journeys of its beloved characters, while seamlessly introducing new favorites. As the series jumps ahead 14 months, these new relationships infuse the history and change the lives of those who live there. Through it all, these friends and family members realize that life always leads you right where you belong.
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Grade: B
Tags:
Bethany Joy Galeotti,
Danneel Harris,
DVD Review,
James Lafferty,
Jana Kramer Paul Johansson,
Mark Schwahn,
One Tree Hill,
Robert Buckley,
Shantel VanSanten,
Sophia Bush,
The CW Network
After five seasons in which NCIS garnered ever better ratings, someone [CBS? NCIS: LA creator Shane Brennan] had the bright idea, “Why don’t we make a spin-off/companion series?” And so, in the fullness of time [or about a month before the end of the seventh season, take your pick], NCIS ran a two-part story, Legendary, that introduced an east coast-based team out of the NCIS Office for Special Projects – which would’ve been highly rated and made that spin-off happen even if the two-parter hadn’t ended with one of the LA team riddled with bullets in the final few minutes.
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Grade: A
Tags:
CBS Home Video,
Chris O'Donnell,
Linda Hunt,
LL Cool J,
NCIS: Los Angeles
The Red Riding Trilogy [Red Riding 1974, Red Riding 1980, and Red Riding 1983] is a series of movies that deal with police corruption and the kidnapping of several young girls in the Yorkshire area of England during the period of time the city was the site of a series of murders by the so-called Yorkshire Ripper. They are masterful examples of how to fold real events into a fictional narrative.
These are grim, grimy, gritty films in which one character seeks to find the truth, root out the bad guys and make things right – but two of the leads [in 1974 and 1980] fail to realize how systemic the corruption has become, while the third is one of the corrupted who is faced with events that cause his not quite dead conscience to reappear in fill bloom.
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Grade: B+
Tags:
Andrew Garfield,
David Morrisey,
IFC Films,
Paddy Considine,
Red Riding - 1974,
Red Riding - 1980,
Red Riding - 1983
Season seven of NCIS was, quite possibly, the show’s best yet. Over the course of the season, characters faced personal challenges that more than rivalled the cases they were working on. Throughout, the writing, performances and direction kept things moving and the audience involved.
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Grade: A
Tags:
Cote de Pablo,
David McCallum,
Mark Harmon,
Michael Weatherly,
NCIS: The Seventh Season,
Pauley Perrette,
Sean Murray
The Other Guys may be the funniest film of the summer, so far, but the funniest movie of the year, to this point, is April’s Date Night. The slightly unhinged [in a good way] fusion of romantic comedy and action flick starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey as an old married couple trying to kick a bit of pizzazz back into their humdrum marriage hits shelves today and well worth a look.
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Tags:
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,
Date Night,
Shawn Levy,
Steve Carell,
Tina Fey
Numb3rs has always been a bit of a weird step-sibling in the world of procedurals. With its innovative use of higher math to solve/prevent crimes, it could have been boring. With its emphasis on family – both at home and, in a surrogate fashion, in the workplace, it could have been smarmy – or worse, maudlin. Instead, the series pursued a course that melded action, warmth and the joys of education in a way that had never been seen before.
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Grade: A-
Tags:
CBS Home Video,
David Krumholz,
Judd Hirsh,
Navi Rawat,
Numb3rs,
Rob Morrow
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