THE FILM

To me, Fantasy Football is this undefined experience shared by strangers with lives hinged upon Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. It's chess for the average football fanatic; the contest a way to enter the weekly NFL sweepstakes without actually suiting up and taking hits on the field. The documentary "10 Yards" scrubs away the mystifying veneer of Fantasy Football to expose the weekly highs and lows of the subculture, and how something as inexplicable as tracking game stats helps to bridge lives otherwise lived without communication.

If you've had the pleasure of viewing the 2007 cross-country documentary "10 MPH," "10 Yards" is something in the realm of a sequel. Returning are director Hunter Weeks, editor Josh Caldwell, and suburban ...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Jack Wrangler was an adult film superstar in a way you don't find anymore these days. He was a phenomenon that slowly enveloped the smut culture, constructing a name for himself through whispers and uncomfortably long, held gazes. When they write that they don't make 'em like they used to, they're talking exclusively about Jack Wrangler.

"Anatomy of an Icon" is a straightforward documentary piecing together an overview of Wrangler's often potent life and his imprint on the glittery, marquee-intensive "Boogie Nights" culture of 1970's pornography. Directed by longtime documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz, the picture is a blazingly paced injection of information and retro sensations, revealing Wrangler to be a puzzling, intelligent human being who greatly contrasted the perception of the adult movie world, eventually reaching icon status as he conquered the gay porn scene and then...Read the entire review

The Movie
If you haven't seen the 1998 Danish film The Celebration (Festen), shame on you. If you have, I don't need to convince you of Paprika Steen's greatness. Gifted with an achingly expressive face and a charismatic energy, she makes you feel her emotions. That skill comes in handy in The Substitute (Vikaren), where she's given a unique challenge--a role that's more performance than person. Lucky for us, she's up to the task--and is surrounded by an equally talented director and cast, making this one of the strongest titles in Lionsgate's "Ghost House Underground" set.

Directed by Ole Bornedal--t...Read the entire review

The Show

As much as it pains me to write the following, I must. Family Guy has slipped. Was was once a delightfully caustic mash-up of obscure pop cultural references, non sequitur punchlines and delightfully off-kilter characters has become strident, labored and very thin-skinned. While the Seth MacFarlane creation still has its moments -- there are often sequences that can leave you breathless with laughter -- they are not nearly as plentiful as the series' early days.

Maybe it's the job security (MacFarlane is the highest paid television writer and producer ever, having signed a deal with 20th Century Fox reportedly worth $100 million), MacFarlane's compulsion with overseeing countless other projects or the fact that Family Guy is no longer the scrappy underdog it once was, but as the show eases into its seventh season, you can't help but wonder how much more c...Read the entire review

THE FILM

The strained "Dance of the Dead" makes it easier to appreciate what "Shaun of the Dead" effortlessly achieved years back. A clunky, low-budget zombie send-up, "Dance" has heart and a few surprises, but it swallows patience by the pound, reheating screenplay leftovers and trying to disguise the results under the forgiving blanket of the horror genre.

As Cosa High prepares for its prom, the students are getting ready for the party of their lives. Unfortunately, pollution from a nearby nuclear power plant has reanimated the dead, bringing about a zombie apocalypse. For a small band of teens, including detached Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz), sci-fi nerd Steven (Chandler Darby), cheerleader Gwen (Carissa Capobianco), bully Kyle (Justin Welborn, "The Signal"), and booster Lindsey (Greyson Chadwick), the night becomes a combat zone as the dead try to eat the living. Fending off the zomb...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Back before individual song downloads began threatening to make music albums obsolete as complete packages, the previous emergent technology, the compact disc, changed what albums could be by expanding them. With CDs, one record could now hold 75 minutes of music, and bands started packing each and every second with sound. This was not always to the benefit of the material, and many albums were too long, too overblown, because none of the fat had to be trimmed.

I'm starting to feel that we have entered into the equivalent era for music documentaries. DVDs mean that documentaries can bypass traditional methods of distribution and broadcast, and so a program need no longer fit into the prefigured time slot of a television show or the preferred length ...Read the entire review

A disappointment, to be sure. Nickelodeon and Paramount have released SpongeBob SquarePants - WhoBob WhatPants?, a new collection of six SpongeBob SquarePants shorts, including a new title, What Ever Happened to SpongeBob? that premieres tonight on Nickelodeon. I'm a big fan of SpongeBob, but this latest collection of shorts...falls short, with the new headliner not nearly funny enough to head up its own disc. The remaining five shorts are from Season Five, and they're nothing too special, either. Bonuses are pretty paltry, also.

Read the entire review

Nympha:
It's tempting to look for deeper meaning in Nympha. You don't even really have to try too hard to dig up a pretty interesting concept or two, concepts that are far above Nympha's station. Because, if you think back to the idea that Nympha is really just a modern update of the 'nunsploitation' genre starring Tiffany Shepis, you'll want to ditch any highbrow notions you might be brewing, and just hope for more boobs, blood and nun-on-nun action.

The big crime here is not that Nympha might get you thinking, it's that boobs and blood are in short supply until the final half-hour, and even then there's probably not enough to satisfy you sickos who actually know what nunsploitation is. There are some other faults, too, including a multi-tiered flashback motif that's irritating, (until that final half-hour when everything momentarily gels) with proceedings filled with crying, screaming an...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Capturing genius on film is probably easier when you're the genius. Sure, you might struggle to get what you want the way you want it, but even so, you just have to do what you do. Charlie Chaplin, for example, had his instincts and his talent to work with, and his ideas were his own and needed no further explanation. Richard Attenborough, on the other hand, had to figure out how to show where that genius came from when he made the 1992 biopic, Chaplin, which is returning to DVD a year late for its 15th Anniversary Edition (oops). The biographer has to contend with not just the accomplishments, but how they were accomplished, where the genius came from. It's a tall order, and one the director of Gandhi doesn't entirely fill; and ye...Read the entire review

Review:

Kim Kardashian, for those unaware, has ridden a friendship with Paris Hilton to stardom. Once she achieved her "celebrity" status, she has managed to keep herself there thanks to her famous rear (and if you forgot about that, the cover of the DVD, which has Kardashian sticking out her behind - is there as a reminder.)

"Keeping Up With the Kardashians" is a reality series on E! that focuses Kim and her family - siblings Robert, Kendall, Kylie, Kourtney, Khloe and parents Kris and Bruce. Kris was formerly married to the late Robert Kardashian, famed defense attorney. Bruce, on the other hand, is widely known for his Olympic success.

The series follows the misadventures of Kim and her family, as well as...well, it's mainly about Kim's career, with the family as supporting players. A fairly large part of the series is the business side of things between manager ("momager...Read the entire review

Since 1950, Charles Schulz' Peanuts has remained a popular and enduring franchise celebrating the life and times of Charlie Brown and company. This lovable loser, always clad in his trademark yellow and black shirt, has been the centerpiece of a long-running comic strip and appeared in countless animated full-length films and shorter TV specials. The very first Peanuts animated feature, A Charlie Brown Christmas, aired in 1965 to enormous success---and like nearly all successes, sequels were inevitable. For the most part, these animated specials were based on original Peanuts comic strips, which were fleshed out to create fully-realized 25-minute adventures. Featuring simple yet charming animation, a cast of child voice actors and music by Vince Guaraldi (until his death...Read the entire review

It wasn't the first Fox series to be canceled too early (and it certainly won't be the last), but the demise of Matt Groening's Futurama proved to be slow and steady. Not in quality, of course: this tale of a man frozen for a millennium only got funnier as the series progressed, though network support dwindled during its four-year lifespan. As the Simpsons machine rolled on, Futurama's timeslot was shuffled around; for a time, the series' broadcast directly followed Groening's most famous creation, but it didn't last long. The series was eventually cancelled in August of 2003, though subsequent DVD releases (broken into four "volumes", due to the erratic broadcast schedule) reinforced Futurama's rabid fanbase.

As creations like Fox's own Family Guy would prove, s...Read the entire review

The Product:
There's no denying it - Michael Palin changed the face (and attitude) of TV travel programming forever. It's one of those unusual ideas that just should not have worked - a retired sketch comedian, part of a now mythic broadcast classic, stepping into shoes no one knew he owned (or enjoyed). But not only did he succeed, he practically reinventing the reality genre. Now, some seven series later, Palin has traversed the globe, gone from one end of the planet to the other, explored the Sahara and the Himalayans, circumnavigated the Pacific Rim and a post-millennial New Europe. One of his most unusual journeys consisted of following in the literary and personal footprints of favorite author Ernest Hemingway. Now, along with two unconnected installments of the BBC program Great Railway Journeys, Region 1 DVD gets a chance to experience both exploits. They wind up being lesser ...Read the entire review

The Product:
There's no denying it - Michael Palin changed the face (and attitude) of TV travel programming forever. It's one of those unusual ideas that just should not have worked - a retired sketch comedian, part of a now mythic broadcast classic, stepping into shoes no one knew he owed (or enjoyed). But not only did he succeed, he practically reinventing the reality genre. Now, some seven series later, Palin has traversed the globe, gone from one end of the planet to the other, explored the Sahara and the Himalayans, and followed in the footsteps of Hemingway and traversed a post-millennial New European. One of his most unusual journeys consisted to circumnavigating the Pacific Rim, going Full Circle around the Earth, if you will. Now finally available in a Region 1 release from the BBC, this brilliant showcase suggests no one does the seemingly impossible better than this persona...Read the entire review

The Movie:

INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY

So reads the opening title for Stuck, a 2007 true crime thriller from cult director Stuart Gordon now receiving a home video release via distributor Image Entertainment. I sometimes cringe when I see that clich d phrase (or its sister phrase BASED ON REAL EVENTS) at the start of films. Sometimes this expression denotes a cheap made-for-television style fluff piece or an awful low budget horror runaround.

Luckily, Stuck falls into neither category. Instead, it's a fairly well-acted and darkly humorous take on a rather scandalous news story a few years back involving a young woman who hit a vagrant and kept driving, with the man still lodged in her windshield. One has to imagine that Gordon, along with fellow screenwriter John Strysik, have taken considerable liberties in their telling of this story. The plight of th...Read the entire review

The Movie
Antisocial Behaviour is an independent, British film that amounts to a home video movie you made at your grandmother's house last summer. If you can find this on DVD to purchase, you'll come to see that it's tantamount to a YouTube video of two nerds swinging baseball bats at each other like lightsabers for 45 minutes. And it looks about that good, too.

The plot is simple. Jakob (David Watkins) is a simple man who lives alone in a suburban area of England. The area outside his small house is a popular hangout for local teens. They amount to what are called hoodies in England; they vandalize and disrupt all day. Jakob tells a couple of them off, and in retaliation, they trash his house while he is at church one Sunday. The police are no help, so Jakob ends up taking things into his own hands. A confrontation with one hoodie accidentally results in the boy's death; af...Read the entire review

The Movie
Awww, Jackson would be so proud! Wow, where do I begin? When Gabriele Albanesi finished writing "Swerve"--now renamed, no doubt, to attract fans familiar with similarly titled Last House exploitation efforts--he was just 22 years old. It took four more years for the film to be finished and released in his native Italy, and it now finds life in North America as part of Lionsgate's new "Ghost House Underground" label.

It's quickly obvious that Albanesi lacks vision, and isn't quite sure how to pull together his scattershot ideas (jump to the Extras section below to read about his almost innumerable influence...Read the entire review

The Product:
Sometimes, a complicated project requires an innovative approach. Unusual material frequently mandates an equally atypical take. A while back, the art of stop motion animation was used to bring the story of Charles Manson and his Freaky Deaky Helter Skelter philosophies to darkly comic life, while Stephen Spielberg once contemplated turning the musical Cats into a traditional 2D animated adventure. In the case of Dante Alighieri's classic literary treasure The Divine Comedy, many have taken on the epic poem's first cantica, "Inferno". But few have found a way to make it come alive for a contemporary audience like Sean Meredith and his creative collaborators Sandow Birk and Paul Zaloom. Using live action puppetry and post-modern artistic renderings, they have refashioned Aligheri's trip through Hell into a stunning social commentary. The results - both...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Some of you may know from reading my reviews that my "day job" is as a professional musician, and I would like to tell you a perhaps hard to believe fact about performing on piano in public. In my decades of playing, I have only experienced one song that will instantly bring an audience to rapt attention, no matter what their age. No, it isn't a warhorse like Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," or something flashier like Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude." It is, incredibly, Vince Guaraldi's lilting "Linus and Lucy," which most people simply think of as the "Peanuts Theme." That simple, childlike melody with the rhythmic bass instantly transports those old enough back to 1965 when they first viewed A Charlie Brown Christmas, or, if they're younger, to whenever they first saw the special in any of its annual reruns. But more than that, the song kindles an instant spirit of kindn...Read the entire review

The Product:
It's a question most horror film fans contemplate now and again - did audiences in the '50s really get the heebie jeebies over movies about giant insects and nature gone radioactively wicked? Today, we look at the efforts of Bert I. Gordon and Roger Corman and giggle ourselves into a sense of stupid complacency. No one, we assume, could find a killer carrot horrifying, or look at the bad rear-screen projection inserted behind some pet iguanas as anything but laughable. Still one has to imagine that gullible crowds, unfamiliar with such by now hackneyed cinematic techniques, actually quivered with that all important fear of the unknown. It makes you wonder what viewers 50 years from now will think of M. Night Shyamalan's shameful scarefest The Happening. Surely, they won't conclude that we took this foolish story about botany gone batty on a harmful mankind seriously, will ...Read the entire review

Harry Houdini was a very good magician and escape artist.  Whatset him apart from other magicians of his day, and the reason that justabout everyone reading this knows his name, was his genius for self-promotion. There have been several people more talented and creative in performingmagic, but no one comes close to Houdini's ability to capture the interestof the public and turn that interest into paying customers.  By themiddle of the 1910's it was easy to see that movies, whether they werea flash in the pan or not, were making a lot of money, and Houdini sawfilm as a win-win situation.  Not only could he make money by appearingin movies, but it would increase his exposure and he could use them topromote his stage act.  SO in 1919 Houdini made his first foray intomovies with The Master Mystery, a 15-chapter serial....Read the entire review

The Movie:

Believe it or not, you've seen Two Tickets To Paradise before. The one about the three life long friends who find themselves stuck in their small town as they enter adulthood? The film about the men who's lives seem less and less memorable, causing them constantly ask where all the good times went, while following characters that are pulled for the most overdone of typical male archetypes (the dreaming rock star, the former athlete)? The story about the tired men who go on a road trip to reinvigorate their spirits, yet find more than they bargained for? Sound familiar? Like I said, you've seen Two Tickets To Paradise. Maybe not as a whole, but in bits and pieces in films here and there, most of which fail to make any actual impact. Two Tickets To Paradise does one less than that, and actually manages to be bad. How's that for a little twist in ...Read the entire review

Ray Harryhausen Collection:
Just in time for the holidays comes this bulky, attractive and pretty nifty gift pack for Harryhausen fans on your list. (Those who don't already have these simply repackaged 2007 editions of three of the effects master's early films, that is ... unless they really want the anchor to the box, a sweet Ymir figurine from an edition of 10,000.)

It Came From Beneath The Sea:
Genre movies often don't age well. Special effects get more sophisticated, mores change and the audience's ability to deal with tension tends to escalate (think of how early automobile riders were scared driving 30 miles an hour). It Came From Beneath The Sea fits snugly in the above category, but it's still a great movie, thanks in large part to Harryhausen's work.

The year: 1955. The problem: atomic radiation. The result: gigantic octopus terrorizes San Francisco. That's your basic ...Read the entire review

The Third Season

CBS's drama Ghost Whisperer, which first aired in 2005, stars Jennifer Love Hewitt in a television series inspired by real-life medium James Van Praagh and paranormal investigator Mary Ann Winkowski. The show is about a woman who has had a special gift since she was a young girl. Her gift is the ability to communicate with earthbound spirits, or ghosts, that for one reason or another have been unable to crossover into the afterlife. For more details about the series, refer to DVD Talk's reviews of season one and season two.

After a pretty intense second season, Ghost Whisperer kicks it up a notch with some new and exciting developments. In season two, the series went beyond its first season to include a bigger focus on the darker aspects...Read the entire review

In 2007 the History Channel launched a new documentary style series that took on a topic with more content than could ever be discussed. The Universe debuted to masses and became an instant success thanks largely in part to its quality production, but mostly due to an audience hungry for more. With shows like Planet Earth being all the rage, History Channel took that idea and expanded upon it, showing us detailed features of planets within our own solar system and even those beyond. The first season was a hit on DVD, and just about a year later it's time to check out the second collection of episodes.

The thing about The Universe that appeals to me the most is the manner with which it's presented. With state of the art computer graphics and several scientists and astronomers, popular and unknown, getting together to talk about each subject, th...Read the entire review

Timing's everything. If the Quark pilot had premiered just three weeks later back in the Spring of 1977, who knows? An instant cult classic before it even ended its sad little seven episode network run back in 1978, Quark - The Complete Series comes back to life via this Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's bare-bones, single-disc release. Fans (quite a few of them Star Trek enthusiasts) who have kept Quark's memory alive for over thirty years will love seeing these funny episodes again, but the lack of even one Quark-related extra will probably alienate those same viewers who have become obsessed with this daffy little show.

Since the pilot episode differs from the resulting series, I'll give a brief synopsis of the re...Read the entire review

Powerful and provocative, Mongol takes a resonant approach at portraying the early life of Genghis Khan -- a style that leans heavily on art-house poeticism than historical badgering. Like Mel Gibson and Ridley Scott's panache in epic history lessons swirled into early Mongolian tribal brutality, it's a singular and uncomplicated collage of images that gloriously and luridly interpret these "nebulous" years of the warlord's life. Instead of a mere hollow overview, Russian director Sergei Bodrov's insight works towards making its audience comprehend -- and even approach humanistic justification -- of Mongolia's unitary warlord on an instinctual, beautifully evocative level.


The Film:

EliteXC is a fledgling Mixed Martial Arts promotion that has existed for nearly two years. They currently broadcast cards on Showtime and CBS in addition to pairing up and co-promoting with other MMA brands like Strikeforce, Cage Rage, and Affliction. As it stands of this writing, despite some success, Elite like all US MMA brands, struggles to compete with the UFC.

Street Certified was (discounting co-promotions and their ShoXC challenger series) their fourth EliteXC event and was held on Feb 16, 2008 in Miami, Florida. The commentating team consisted of hyperbolic mouthpiece Mauro Ranallo, ex-wrassler Bill Golberg, and Steven "The Fight Professor" Quadros.

The main fight card begins with James Thompson Vs. Brett Rogers- Heavyweight Thompson is a UK import and Pride veteran best known for two things- charging his opponents like a raging bull and having a jaw made of glass. Needless ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
"Hey, you, wanna make a quick buck? You know who's an easy mark? Beatles fans. They're abundant, and they are legion. They'll by any slipshod DVD you slap the Fab Four's picture on, no matter how inconsequential or poorly made. No, seriously. They'll buy anything."

I'm imagining this conversation took place a few years ago between some of the bargain DVD distributors. Maybe there was a seminar at a convention a while back. All I know is that the cheap-o unauthorized Beatles DVD has become a cottage industry over the past few years, and if you've ever had the misfortune of watching The Beatles: Destination Hamburg, Beatles' Biggest Secrets, or Read the entire review

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

The first season of Tsubasa proved to be a worthwhile excursion for fans of CLAMP. Comprising many elements from some of the manga group's most popular series Tsubasa quickly became a successful staple in FUNimation's catalogue. Pulling material from Chobits and Cardcaptor Sakura there are other tidbits and morsels tossed in for good measure as well. In my opinion the show isn't quite as enjoyable or creative as xxxHolic, but that's par fort he course I suppose and by the end of the first season it was clear that this particular series had some good legs to stand on.

I'm going to proceed from here on assuming that you know what the show is all about. If for any reason you don't then by all means go check out one of the previous reviews for a synopsis of the plot. Honestly, if after eight installments y...Read the entire review

It's kind of funny when you're looking at the popular trends in television and how fads come and go. One of the most successful genres right now, at least for the History Channel, has to be the focus on dangerous jobs in a reality-like setting. Often called the real-men-in-danger genre, some examples of shows of this nature are Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. The most recent attempt at capturing an audience comes from History Channel and takes you deep into the woods to show you that it's okay to be a lumber jack. Ax Men premiered in March of this year, and the first season gathered fourteen episodes of logging goodness. History Channel has just released the complete first season of the show and it's time to see whether or not it's worth watching, or if an axe should be taken to it.

Ax Men follows four teams of logging crews as t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Le Deuxieme Souffle, better known in some circles as The Second Breath, may not be as well known as some of director Jean-Pierre Melville's top tier pictures like Le Circle Rouge or Le Samourai but it's still a film that fans of French noir will no doubt appreciate quite a bit.

The film tells the story of Gustave 'Gu' Minda (Lino Ventura), a convict who escapes from prison and soon finds himself in Paris where he and a few other hoods murder a man in cold blood to save the life of his sister, Manouche (Christine Fabrega). If that weren't enough to get the cops, lead by Inspector Blot (Paul Meurisse), after him he then robs an armored car and makes off with two hundred million Francs. Gu figures this will be enough money for he and Manouche to get out of France and live comfortably but he didn't count on Blot's obsessive tactics and soon finds...Read the entire review

The Movie:

One of the most enduringly popular Holiday specials of all time, A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first of many Peanuts holiday specials, originally aired on CBS over forty-years ago back in December of 1965. The fact that it's just as well known now as it was back then is testament to the incredible popularity of Charles Schulz's comic strip and the various spin-off cartoons that have been created over the years.

The charming and timeless tale begins with Charlie Brown confessing to his friend Linus that despite Christmas' impending arrival, he's feeling pretty down in the dumps. He knows he's going to get presents and that he's going to get to partake in all of the holiday fun, but he doesn't feel quite right about it all. Charlie Brown decides to pay a visit to Lucy's 'psychiatric help' booth where she encourages him to get involved with the school Christmas pag...Read the entire review

"I saw amazing things out there in space. But there's strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure, too. You just need to know where to look..."

After successfully reviving the once long-dead staple of UK television, Russell T. Davies then set out to expand the franchise, creating "Torchwood," a sort of Earthbound "Doctor Who" for grown-ups only, what with all the naughty language and extra violence and gorgeous omnisexual heroes quipping about. It worked, and then some, which paved the way for Davies' other spin-off idea: a kid-friendly series following the new adventures of former companion Sarah Jane Smith. Again, it worked. And then some.

"The Sarah Jane Adventures" actually began as a completely different concept: BBC executives approa...Read the entire review