Anime DVD Review: Astro Boy 2003 Complete Series
I never quite realized how much of a rip-off Mega Man was until I started watching the 2003 remake of Tezuka Osamu's classic manga-turned-anime, Astro Boy. Similarities abound between the two series, including the setting, the characters and the design of the technology, which actually made it easy for me, as a Mega Man fan, to jump in and appreciate the show for what it is: a silly action series about a robotic boy who lives in a wonderful future world.
DVD Review: The Best of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
One of the nice things about improvisation is that it can produce hilarity whether it works as intended or fails spectacularly. It only really suffers if you're somewhere in between. So taking the brilliant theatre sports showWhose Line is it Anyway? and finding the episodes with the biggest successes and most spectacular failures leaves you with plenty of excellent comedy.
DVD Review: Transformers: Season One 25th Anniversary Edition
Generation 1 of The Transformers is twenty five years old. Doesn't time fly? Twenty five years and the franchise is probably healthier now than it has been in at least twenty years, thanks to Michael Bay's flashy live action interpretation, whose second installment just released. As a new generation of viewers are discovering the pleasures of robot aliens who turn into cars, and jets, and dinosaurs and bugs and cities and planets and pretty much anything you can think of, Shout Factory and Hasbro are celebrating the past with the re-release of the first season of Generation 1 of The Transformers on DVD, now restored to its original broadcast quality.
DVD Review: Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Volume 1 and 1970s Volume 1
Ahh, Saturday mornings. Time to grab some breakfast and plant yourself in front of the TV so that a variety of commercial sponsors can tell you what to want in between snippets of ridiculous animated stories frenetic enough to hold your minuscule attention span! Ok, I haven't always been this cynical, and it is that innocent youngster that lurks somewhere inside us all that these collections are made for. Most of these series are from before my time, but anyone who watched cartoon reruns as a kid will find something recognizable in these collections.
DVD Review: Spectacular Spider-Man Volume 4
It has been far too long since The Spectacular Spider-Man has aired new episodes… I forgot how fun this series is. The series follows Peter Parker as the teenage-nerd-turned-genetically-enhanced-superhero Spider-Man as he fights crime and survives high school, and seems to draw influence from the Spider-Man movies and Ultimate Spider-Man comics, as well as the original comic story. The hip character designs really capture the essence of the characters and action sequences are really exciting thanks to the energetic animation. The show also features an excellent cast of voice actors, led by Josh Keaton as Peter Parker.
DVD Review: Role Models
You've had a bad day. Not just "I'm feeling kind of stressed" bad, or "my co-workers are all jerks" bad, but "dumped by my girlfriend in the face of an existential crisis" bad, and you make one tiny mistake and end up looking at 30 days in prison or 150 hours of community service. Which do you take? The community service, right? How could it be worse than prison?
Wii Game Review: Deadly Creatures
An Arachnophobe’s Review of Deadly Creatures:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! AAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!
In short, I am never going to sleep again.
DVD Review: The Silver Chalice
The late, great Paul Newman thought that the performance he gave in his first feature film was so bad that he purchased ads in a trade paper apologizing to those who went to see it. That movie was The Silver Chalice, an epic historical drama set in the first century AD about early Christians who hire a young Greek silver worker to make a silver chalice to conceal the holy grail, and now you too can experience the film as a part of the Paul Newman Film Series.
DVD Review: Rachel, Rachel
While his acting debut in The Silver Chalice wasn’t particularly well received, Paul Newman’s first motion picture as a director, Rachel, Rachel, went so far as to be nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (From the novel A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence), and Best Actress.
DVD Review: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is the story of a small time British gossip monger who crashes the right party and inadvertently finds himself in the big time, working for one of the hottest celebrity tracking magazines in New York City. Unfortunately, he’s kind of a horrible jerk. Hilarity ensues.
DVD Review: Choke
Choke is weird: a personal quest of self discovery through worlds of sexual addiction and delusion, occasionally hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking, and absurd throughout. It shares several characteristics with Fight Club, most notably the author, Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the novels that inspired both films. Choke drips with Palahniuk’s style: it has a clever yet mentally deranged protagonist who constantly makes snarky observations about human nature while surrounding himself with other deranged individuals; it examines the ugly underside of human nature; it has a twist, which managed to surprise because it provides a moment of reality in the midst of complete absurdity.
Nintendo DS Game Review: Bleach The Blade of Fate
In Bleach: The Blade of Fate you have to first go though the basic Story Mode, which is set during the first time in the Soul Society. Playing as Ichigo you go through levels, fight the people in your way, and then save Rukia, which can be relatively hard if you don’t read the cut scenes . When you’ve completed that, things get fun, and easier. New characters are unlocked for Arcade mode Versus mode. You also unlock some of the Extras and the rest of the story modes. There are a total of 23 story modes, each based on a different character and the last one is the really long conclusion of Episode 1. I quite enjoy the multiple Story modes you unlock and the character available.