Pads & Panels

The Disco Exorcist spoofs nostalgia, horror clichés

Review by Jon DePaolis

All cards on the table, I usually don’t like nostalgic movies. This is mostly because I wasn’t alive in the 1970s and I don’t get what the big deal was. So that generation had disco clubs, cocaine and a promiscuous attitude toward sex, but so what? OK … that sounds great. All the same, I didn’t live through it and, to be honest, Sega Genesis and Puff Daddy’s No Way Out suited me just fine.

Where was I? Right, The Disco Exorcist. I’m pretty sure Wild Eye produced this movie just so that it could do a retro horror movie. If that is the case, they succeeded, and I loved it.

The film is shot similar to Grindhouse, with its grainy, old film strip picture. The gore is mostly contained to red corn syrup and old-school sound effects. The plot is even cheesy, with main character Rex (Michael Reed) – a notorious ladies man – sleeping around on a witch who subsequently tries to kill him. Disco Exorcist is basically softcore porn with a horror movie attached to it, but if we are really getting down to brass tax, what horror movie isn’t these days? (more…)

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Title: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Format: Blu-ray + DVD + Ultraviolet Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directed by: Stephen Daldry

Written by: Eric Roth

Starring: Tom Hanks, Thomas Horn, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, Max von Sydow

Studio:Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Rating:

Review by: Sarah Jones

The Film

Almost everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they found out about the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. Some were directly affected, knowing someone who was killed in the attacks or in the rescue efforts.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close portrays such a story, but it is also a story about trying to move on after losing a loved one and trying to find meaning in the pieces they leave behind. (more…)

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Title: Baseball’s Greatest Games: 2011 World Series, Games 6

Format: Blu-ray

Studio: A+E Networks

Game Rating:

Blu-ray Rating:

Review by: Jon DePaolis

The Game

All cards on the table, I absolutely hate it when people deem something an instant classic. I hate it when ESPN pushes product by calling a first-round playoff basketball game an instant classic just because it goes to overtime. No, a classic gets its status because it changes the way someone views a sport or is so superior to anything anyone has seen in recent memory.

So take heed when I write, as much as it pains this Cubs fan’s heart to write, Game 6 of the 2011 World Series is an instant classic. And the fine folks at Major League Baseball Productions agree, as they have already packaged Game 6 as an addition to its “Baseball’s Greatest Games” series with A+E Networks. (more…)

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Title: War Horse

Format: 4-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Written by: Lee Hall, Richard Curtis

Starring: Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Jeremy Irvine

Studio: Touchstone Home Entertainment, Dreamworks Pictures

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Blu-ray Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

War Horse is unique in that it essentially tells the story of a war from the perspective of an animal used in war. It features a number of human characters, the most prominent of which is Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the son of the owner of the horse Joey sold off to the cavalry, but ultimately the story is about the horse and what it endures in the midst of this human war.

But despite the promising premise and the acclaim it has received, War Horse is a disjointed, overly long film that lacks direction and more so focus in its execution, leaving viewers with a film that puts forth a lot of effort but fails to hit its mark. It boils down to a lot of action and moments, but the only lasting impression I had was one particularly amusing grammar joke made in the midst of some self-awareness that the Germans in this film speak English, but with accents. (more…)

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Title: Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention

Format: Blu-ray

Created by: Nick Park

Starring: Peter Sallis, Ashley Jensen, Jem Stansfield

Studio: Lionsgate, Aardman

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Review by: Bill Jones

The Series

Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention saw a six-episode run in 2010 that brought together Aardman Animations’ flagship characters, Wallace and Gromit, and live video coverage of inventors and their wild inventions from around the world. The result is a show hosted by Nick Park’s fantastic clay characters and their special brand of humor, rolling to clips of fascinating people in the vein of classic educational shows using cartoon characters to draw in the kids.

The episodes come themed, from nature to space, home inventions to the senses, safety to transportation. The jokes are on par with what Wallace & Gromit fans have come to expect, while the clips find some insanely interesting people and stories to put on display. The show is ultimately fascinating, and it’s just a shame that it didn’t last longer. (more…)

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Title: A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas

Format: Extra Dope Edition Blu-ray + DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: R (Theatrical), Unrated (Extended)

Directed by: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Written by: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris

Studio: Warner Bros.

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Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle may have been one of the best surprise standout comedies when it was released in 2004 (not to mention one of the best product tie-ins around), but the series took a sharp dive with the 2008 sequel Harold & Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay, which was nothing short of torture in its own right.

But maybe, just maybe, it was worth enduring to get to 2011’s unexpected sequel, A Very Harold & Kumar (3D) Christmas. While the duo’s Christmas special doesn’t quite find the former glory of the original, it is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor and in theaters it opted to embrace 3D technology fully, finding many of its laughs in jump-out-of-the-screen gags. (more…)

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Title: Shakespeare in Love

Format: Blu-ray

MPAA Rating: R

Directed by: John Madden

Written by: Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench

Studio: Miramax, Lionsgate

Blu-ray Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

It’s hard to look back more than a decade after the release of Shakespeare in Love and think it was truly deserving of its seven Academy Award wins. It is not a film that carries with it the air of a “great” film, nor does it feel like a classic these years later. Still, Shakespeare in Love in a heck of a lot of fun, telling the tale of a working William Shakespeare in Elizabethan England. He is a Shakespeare who finds himself falling in love with a woman he cannot have as he begins to write Romeo and Juliet. It is a mix of comedy and tragedy that expertly weaves together multiple storylines that cross between the film’s reality and Shakespeare’s fiction. (more…)

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Title: Contagion

Format: Blu-ray + DVD + Ultraviolet Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Scott Z. Burns

Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Sanaa Lathan

Studio: Warner Bros.

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Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

As a procedural on the spread of a lethal, airborne virus, Contagion is fascinating. It follows a cast of characters who are dealing with the first case and ensuing epidemic of a spreading deadly disease and the social unrest that goes with it. But despite its star-studded cast, engaging premise and timeline structure, Contagion falls flat simply because it is hard to care about any of its characters. (more…)

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Title: Metalocalypse Season 3: The Dead Man

Format: DVD

Created by: Tommy  Blacha, Brendan Small

Directed by: Jon Schnepp and Mark Brooks

Written by: Brendan Small, Tommy Blacha and Krostofor Brown

Studio: Adult Swim

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Review by: Eric Stuckart

The Season

The third season of the irreverent heavy metal Adult Swim program Metalocalypse sees the show expand its episode length from the first two seasons’ length of 11 minutes (without commercials) to 21, and while it’s only ten minutes extra, the show is better for it. The longer show length does mean, however, that there are fewer episodes, but I’d rather see the ideas introduced be more fleshed out and thought through than rushed, as some of them tended to be in the past. (more…)

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Title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: The Complete Sixth Season

Format: 3-Disc DVD

Studio: Warner Bros. Television

Created by: Andy Barowitz, Susan Barowitz

Starring: Will Smith, James Avery, Daphne Maxwell Reid, Alfonso Ribeiro, Karyn Parsons, Tatyana M. Ali, Joseph Marcell, Ross Bagley

Season Rating:

DVD Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air was many things. A launching pad to the career of Will Smith. A popular comedy in the age of sitcoms with a six-season run, and a long-loved program in syndication. It also opened with one of the most memorable theme songs on any television show.

But so many of these success stories long outlive their creativity before finally going off the air for good. Luckily, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air wasn’t one of those shows. Its sixth and final season originally aired on NBC in 1995-96, and offered the same brand of humor the show was known for in its first five years. (more…)

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