Amazon.com The remarkable first season of Deadwood represents one of those periodic, wholesale reinventions of the...
(12/02/07) Amazon.com The remarkable first season of Deadwood represents one of those periodic, wholesale reinventions of the Western that is as different from, say, Lonesome Dove as that miniseries is from Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo or the latter is from Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur. In many ways, HBO's Deadwood embraces the Western's unambiguous morality during the cinema's silent era through the 1930s while also blazing trails through a post-NYPD Blue, post-The West Wing television age exalting dense and customized dialogue. On top of that, Deadwood has managed an original look and texture for a familiar genre: gritty, chaotic, and surging with both dark and hopeful energy. Yet the show's creator, erstwhile NYPD Blue head writer David Milch, never ridicules or condescends to his more grasping, futile characters or overstates the virtues of his heroic ones. Set in an ungoverned stretch of South Dakota soon after the 1876 Custer massacre, Deadwood concerns a lawless, evolving town attracting...See less
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The Wire is HBO again hitting it straight out of the ball park. Just like Oz and the Corner (two of HBO's other...
(12/02/07) The Wire is HBO again hitting it straight out of the ball park. Just like Oz and the Corner (two of HBO's other critically acclaimed but under-appreciated dramas) the Wire makes your heart bleed for the "bad" guys, makes them and the people that chase them seem, at the end of the day, human-- flawed, fragile, evil, in need of redemption, and in some cases, better off with a bullet in the brain. This first season was great, and the second season managed to be even better. The best thing about this show is that it turns every part of your brain ON. You can't watch it after you had a couple beers and are ready to doze off in front of the TV. You need to be awake, alert to follow the twists and all subtle character stuff. In a word: bliss. Thank you, thank you David Simon and crew! Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)See less
Amazon.com As the 2005 theatrical release of Serenity made clear, Firefly was a science fiction concept that deserved a...
(11/27/07) Amazon.com As the 2005 theatrical release of Serenity made clear, Firefly was a science fiction concept that deserved a second chance. Devoted fans (or "Browncoats") knew it all along, and with this well-packaged DVD set, those who missed the show's original broadcasts can see what they missed. Creator Joss Whedon's ambitious science-fiction Western (Whedon's third series after Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel) was canceled after only 11 of these 14 episodes had aired on the Fox network, but history has proven that its demise was woefully premature. Whedon's generic hybrid got off to a shaky start when network executives demanded an action-packed one-hour premiere ("The Train Job"); in hindsight the intended two-hour pilot (also titled "Serenity," and oddly enough, the final episode aired) provides a better introduction to the show's concept and splendid ensemble cast. Obsessive fans can debate the quirky logic of combining spaceships with direct parallels to frontier America (it's...See less
Join Joel and his "robot friends" as they're forced to endure two of the worst movies ever made. To maintain their...
(11/27/07) Join Joel and his "robot friends" as they're forced to endure two of the worst movies ever made. To maintain their sanity, they hilariously skewer the films' performaces, special effects and dialogue.See less
Throughout his long, wandering, often distinguished career Francis Ford Coppola has made many films that are good and...
(11/27/07) Throughout his long, wandering, often distinguished career Francis Ford Coppola has made many films that are good and fine, many more that are flawed but undeniably interesting, and a handful of duds that are worth viewing if only because his personality is so flagrantly absent. Yet he is and always shall be known as the man who directed the Godfather films, a series that has dominated and defined their creator in a way perhaps no other director can understand. Coppola has never been able to leave them alone, whether returning after 15 years to make a trilogy of the diptych, or re-editing the first two films into chronological order for a separate video release as The Godfather Saga. The films are our very own Shakespearean cycle: they tell a tale of a vicious mobster and his extended personal and professional families (once the stuff of righteous moral comeuppance), and they dared to present themselves with an epic sweep and an unapologetically tragic tone. Murder, it turned out, was...See less
The definitive ten-disc DVD set, The Ultimate Matrix Collection features all three films in the trilogy together for the...
(11/27/07) The definitive ten-disc DVD set, The Ultimate Matrix Collection features all three films in the trilogy together for the first time ever with a newly remastered picture and sound for The Matrix. Also included is the companion piece The Matrix Revisited and the best-selling The Animatrix, plus five entirely new DVDs packed solid with brand-new supplemental materials that encompass every aspect of the Matrix universe, including two new audio commentaries on each film, Enter the Matrix video game footage, 106 deep-delving featurettes/ documentaries and much more!DVD Features:Additional Scenes:Filmed for Enter the Matrix video gameAudio Commentary:The Philosophers: Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber; The Critics: Todd McCarthy, John Powers and David ThomsonDVD ROM FeaturesDocumentaryEaster EggsFeaturetteIntroduction:by the Wachowski BrothersMusic VideoPhoto galleryStoryboardsTV SpotTheatrical TrailerSee less
Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of...
(11/27/07) Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that...See less
The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish)...
(11/27/07) The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letterboxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western...See less
14 of the finest works from the universally acclaimed Master of Suspense come together for the first time in one...
(11/27/07) 14 of the finest works from the universally acclaimed Master of Suspense come together for the first time in one collection. These captivating landmark films boast three decades of Hollywood legends, including James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery and Doris Day. The premium packaging and collectible book make Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection the must-own, definitive anthology of gripping works by a true genius. System Requirements: Running Time 1630 MinFormat: DVD MOVIESee less
From the innovative "James Bond Western" style of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) to the complete restoration of Duck You...
(11/27/07) From the innovative "James Bond Western" style of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) to the complete restoration of Duck You Sucker (1971), The Sergio Leone Anthology pays lavish tribute to one of the greatest of all Italian directors. A lifelong film buff deeply influenced by the movies he enjoyed as an uneducated youth in southern Italy, Leone (1929-1989) had officially directed only one previous film (1961's The Colossus of Rhodes) when he recruited a relatively unknown American TV star named Clint Eastwood (on a modest salary of $15,000) and made cinema history with A Fistful of Dollars, not the first Western made by an Italian but certainly the first truly Italian entry in the "Spaghetti Western" genre that Leone virtually invented. Each of the four films included in this eight-disc set are influential milestones in that once-maligned, now-celebrated genre, and while Leone's classic Westerns were largely dismissed by critics throughout the 1960s and '70s, they now stand as the...See less
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