Category
DVD Reviews
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02.08.10Prom Night in Mississippi DVD ReviewThe high school prom has been a staple in modern cinema for as long as I can remember. So many great films have climaxed with a killer school dance: Carrie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Back to the Future, Sixteen Candles. With Prom Night in Mississippi, director Paul Saltzman throws his chips on the table, trading in time travel and pig's blood for...small town racism! After all, this is prom night in Mississippi, not Hill Valley. So apparently Charleston, Mississippi still holds segregated proms. How messed up is that? I guess it's not totally surprising that there are still pockets of the ...
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01.24.10Beautiful Losers DVD ReviewA lot of people see art as a pretentious, high-brow pursuit that is the exclusive domain of snooty rich people, but the truth is, creativity comes from all walks of life. Creative people are driven to follow their artistic impulses at any cost, and quite often they must suffer and sacrifice in order to make it happen. Aaron Rose has spent much of his life searching for these diamonds in the rough, and as an art curator in 2004 he put together a traveling art exhibit called Beautiful Losers, featuring the work of a number of do-it-yourself artists. The documentary ...
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01.21.10WWII in HD Blu Ray ReviewYou'd be surprised how tough it is to come across a good WWII documentary. It seems to be a matter of quantity over quality, resulting in a blind-buy hit or miss scenario that unfortunately usually falls on the miss end of the spectrum. Having said that, every now and again a series will hit the target with a program that both informs and entertains. The History Channel's WWII in HD series does just that. The series presents recently uncovered colour footage of the war in 1080i high definition, combined with modern day interviews with war veterans as they tell their stories. ...
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12.02.09Gimme Shelter Blu Ray ReviewIt was some time ago that Criterion first announced their plans to jump into the HD world with their blu ray editions of select films from their past and upcoming catalog. I remember being particularly excited about the inclusion of Gimme Shelter on that original list. Now, more than a year later, the film has finally hit stores and like all of Criterion's previous blu ray releases, it does not disappoint. Directed by Albert and David Maysles and editor Charlotte Zwerin, Gimme Shelter is certainly a classic film that has been written about for years, both in a positive and negative ...
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10.27.09Crude Independence DVD ReviewThank goodness Noah Hutton's 'Crude Independence' was about people and not oil. Sure oil might be a timely catalyst for the economic and social upheaval experienced by a small town after the discovery of 200 BILLION gallons of oil under their land, but the hot button issue certainly doesn't bog down the human drama with facts and figures. As the picturesque landscape of Stanley, North Dakota slowly succumbs to the numerous oil wells, a community is forced to deal with some newfound riches -- for those lucky enough to own their property's mineral rights -- and hordes of outsider oil drillers ...
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09.28.09The Complete Monterey Pop Festival Blu Ray ReviewI'll just come clean right off the top here and admit that this was my first time watching D.A. Pennebaker's Monterey Pop and although it's definitely a great film, it's probably my least favourite of the three big music festival documentaries to come out of the late sixties/early seventies. There's something about the grandiose cluster-fuck nature of Woodstock that appealed to me -- along with the split screens of course -- and Gimme Shelter's cynicism was the perfect end to the short lived era of 'Peace and Love'. I think the thing that drops Monterey Pop down a notch or ...