The sheer volume of releases is starting to increase,
though the quality hasn’t particularly improved.
First, the genre releases:
- The
4400 –
Season Two: I’ve been meaning to check this show
out. - Animated
All
Stars: A collection of 50 animated shorts,
including some that are
hard to track down. - Bloodrayne
–
Unrated Director’s Cut: Take a look at the movie
Uwe Boll wanted
to make. Then look away and dig your eyes out of
their sockets. This
will not be the pick of the week. - Hollow
Man
2: Starring Christian Slater in a direct to video
sequel. - Samurai
Jack –
Season 3: Featuring the voice talents of Phil
Lamarr. - X-Men
Evolution – The Complete Third Season: They
finally
started releasing complete season packages.
Now, the non-genre releases:
- The
Boondock
Saints – Special Edition: Willem Dafoe and
friends. - Boston
Legal –
Season One: This is a rather amusing series
starring sci-fi vets
James Spader and William Shatner. - Brilliant
But
Cancelled – Crime Dramas: Selections of good shows
that got
canned. I hope the series continues; who wouldn’t
want to have
Firefly, American Gothic, and others
in one
convenient box set? - Brilliant
But
Cancelled – EZ Streets: Paul Haggis created this
show just after
creating Due South and ten years before
Crash, which
won this year’s Oscar for Best Picture. - The
Cecil
B. DeMille Collection: Includes
Cleopatra, The
Crusades, Four Frightened People,
Sign of the
Cross and Union Pacific. - Cheaper
By The
Dozen 2: I never saw the first, because it never
appealed to me. - Classic
Crime
Collection – Street Justice: Not many collections
would include
both William Friedkin’s excellent The French
Connection and
Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre. Also
includes Murder, Inc. and The
Seven-Ups. - Classic
Western Collections – The Outlaws: Includes
The Proud
Ones, Forty Guns, Broken Lance,
and The
Culpepper Cattle Company. - The
Closer –
Season One: Another well reviewed crime show I
haven’t seen. - Compulsion:
I
haven’t heard of this one before. This surprises me,
as it’s directed
by Richard Fleischer and stars Orson Welles and Dean
Stockwell. - Deadwood
–
Season Two: A well reviewed western. - Dick
Tracy: The 1950 version, not the Warren Beatty
version. - The
Dirty
Dozen (Two Disc Special Edition): Lee Marvin,
Ernest Borgnine,
Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, and John Cassavetes, among
others. Also
includes The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, the
1985 sequel. - Harlan
County,
U.S.A. – Criterion Collection: You don’t have to
read many of
these columns to know that anything released in the
Criterion
Collection will automatically make this list. - Kingdom
of
Heaven (4 Disc Special Edition): Ridley Scott’s
film. - MASH
– Season
Ten: The show ran for 11 seasons, which will be
out in a massive
full-series box set like the one Buffy had at
some point in
the future. - Tora!
Tora!
Tora!: Another Richard Fleischer film. - Viridiana
–
Criterion Collection: A Luis Bunuel film. - Wings
–
Complete First and Second Seasons: See a
pre-Superman Tim Daly and
a pre-Monk Tony Shaloub.
Finally, the pick of the week. It’s a big week for
war and westerns,
and I’m not particularly a fan of either genre. There
is good stuff
here, but nothing really jumps out at me. My advice
this week is to
save your money for June when the really great stuff
starts to roll
out.
The 4400
I really enjoyed the first season, but I quit watching mid way through the second. It was turning into a soap opera, and the pace was dragging.
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Bloodrayne
My favorite review site, Screenit, actually gave this movie a zero out of ten. Was it really that bad?
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