Years:  1972, 1973
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Mike Connors, Gail Fisher, Robert Reed
Guest stars:  Martin Sheen, Burgess Meredith, Abe Vigoda, William Shatner, Anne Archer, Marion Ross, Robert Reed, Jessica Walter
Theme music composer:  Lalo Schifrin
Run time:  21 hours 18 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  Mannix Season Two, Mannix Season One, Mannix Season Three, Mannix Season Four, Mannix Season Five

     As you can see from the picture above, very little has changed in the world of Mannix for the sixth season.  The DVD cover of all six have featured basically this exact same picture…a pastel background and Mike Connors looking at me.  Then six bullets.  You know, to reinforce that this is season SIX.  For those who can’t read, but can count.

     The sixth season itself is indistinguishable from the previous five, in that Mannix takes on a series of investigations – from finding a little kid’s stamp collection (which is probably plausible for a private investigator) to going undercover in a mob organization (which probably isn’t).  No matter what case he takes, though, one thing is for certain – Mannix will be shot at.  Even when attempting to recover a stamp collection, he will have shots fired his way.

     So the only thing that will set Season Six apart from other seasons is the guest list, which is highlighted by Martin Sheen, who appears as an amnesiac war veteran being conned into a heist by some nefarious characters.  This episode came just before Sheen became a major star – a year before his star turn in Terrence Malick’s Badlands and eight years before his definitive role in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. 

     Other stars who appear in the sixth season, like Marion Ross and Jessica Walter, have appeared in previous seasons of Mannix, then there’s William Shatner who used to show up in every single TV series ever created.  And Burgess Meredith and Abe Vigoda.  So…not a stellar guest list this time around. 

     I like Mannix, and I find myself rooting for him not to be shot in most episodes.  And sure, it’s the same thing episode after episode, season after season.  But there’s something to be said for knowing just what you’re gonna get, and liking it.  Which means there’s something to be said for Mannix.

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Year:  2010
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  France
Language:  French w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Isabelle Huppert, Bouli Lanners, Sabila Moussadek
Director:  Jeanne Labrune
Run time:  95 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

      Isabelle Huppert is probably the best French actress working today.  She has given electrifying, erotic and deeply personal performances in dozens of good movies over the past decade, like La Vie Promise and Merci Pour Le Chocolat.  And she is once again magnificent in 2010’s Special Treatment, on DVD now from First Run Features.

     The thing is, Isabelle Huppert is really the only GREAT thing about Special Treatment.  She plays a prostitute, one who services her clients in a variety of ways, dressing up and dressing down and sometimes, it appears, a little rough stuff.  She wants to get out of the life, and a particularly disturbing encounter with a client appears to be the last straw.  But she doesn’t seem to know how to quit. 

     The prostitute is one story, and at the same time Special Treatment tells the story of Xavier, a therapist with marital troubles who is just going through the motions with his clients. 

     We’re supposed to see parallels between Xavier’s therapy sessions and Alice’s prostitution sessions.  He charges people for ten sessions at a time, so does she.  He questions the validity of what he’s doing, so does she.  His job seems to be distancing him from those around him, including his wife.  So does hers. 

     The thing is, I get it.  Okay, they’re similar.  It feels too heavy-handed to me – after all, what prostitute has ever offered ten-session packages to her customers, and why bother doing that unless you want to make it totally clear that THEY HAVE SIMILAR PROFESSIONS!

     When Xavier and Alice finally get together, and might be able to help each other in some way, the movie picks up a bit.  But again, it’s Huppert who makes the whole thing worthwhile. Her performance is bold, strong and vulnerable all at the same time.

     The only problem I have with it is that she never takes her clothes off.  Come on, you’re playing a prostitute. If any role calls for tasteful nudity, it’s this one.  If you had done THAT, there would have been TWO reasons to watch Special Treatment.

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Year:   2004
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Andrew Rossi, Kate Novack
Featuring:  Billy Phelps, John McCormick, Sirio Maccione, Daniel Boulud, Keith McNally, Danny Meyer
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features
Special features:  Hours of more interviews with the participants

     I love cooking.  I even consider myself to be a good cook.  Others, at times, have told me that I am, indeed, a good cook.  And often I have heard the phrase “you should open a restaurant”.  My response to that is always “haha. Yeah right.”

     No business venture is as apt to go under as a restaurant.  As the restaurateurs in Eat This New York explain, it takes a lot more than the ability to cook to make a restaurant work.  You must also have great people skills (I think I do), an extraordinary vision (I think I don’t), and terrific business acumen (I know I don’t).

     And so with Eat This New York, I knew what I was getting from the very beginning.  This is a documentary about two best friends, Billy and John, who are struggling to open a restaurant.  They get into fights.  There are construction delays.  And of course the inevitable money troubles involving loan applications, personal finances and a budget that keeps ballooning.

     I’ve seen all of this before.  And there was nothing particularly compelling for me in the story of Billy and John, who moved out to New York City from St. Paul Minnesota with this dream of opening a restaurant in a city that already has tens of thousands of them. 

     What WAS compelling was the involvement of the luminaries of the New York City restaurant world.  Sirio Maccione, star of another Rossi documentary called Le Cirque: A Table In Heaven.  Danny Meyer, subject of the documentary The Restaurateur.  And many, many others.  Their insight and their memories are wonderful, and keep the story moving when I felt that just watching two guys struggle was getting a little old.

     Eat This New York is on DVD right now, and can be picked up through First Run Featuers.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Clancy Brown
Director:  Paul Tibbitt
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Another week, another Spongebob DVD release.  On January 3^rd, that DVD is Spongebob’s Frozen Face Off, from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This time, the little yellow square guy sets off on a cross-country race against all the other characters on the show.  For some reason this takes place on sleds, in snowy wintery blizzard conditions.  Are they even trying to pretend they remember this show takes place under water any more?

     I don’t know.  It seems that not only have they forgotten that the Spongebob lives in a pineapple Under The Sea, they have also run out of ideas completely.  Every episode seems to involve Plankton trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula, again.  Even the race through the frozen mountains is an episode involving Plankton stealing the Krabby Patty formula.  This makes me a little sad.  I love Spongebob, and I don’t really want the show to end, but this does sort of feel like the death knell of the series. 

     After all, how many cartoon series have featured a huge cross-country race in their final season?  Scooby-Doo, Popeye, Yogi Bear, and hundreds of others have signaled their upcoming cancelation by pitting all their characters against each other in a no-holds barred race across dangerous terrain, featuring back-stabbing and rampant cheating and other shenanigans.  Hundreds of them.  It may, sadly, be time to say goodbye to Spongebob.

     Until then, of course, Spongebob will be releasing a new DVD twice a month or so.  The only artist more prolific than Neil Young appears to be Spongebob.  If you were a hardcore fan of both, and had to pick up every Neil Young release and re-release and compilation and concert, and you had to pick up every Spongebob DVD as well, you’d go broke.  Then again, if you were a huge fan of BOTH Neil Young and Spongebob, you would more likely be spending all your money on weed.

     I think I’ll keep track of both this year.  Which will release more things on Tuesdays, Neil Young or Spongebob.  So far Spongebob has the lead, with one DVD in one week of 2012.  1-0 Spongebob.  To be continued…

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Years:  1979, 1980
Genre:  TV series, Cop, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jack Lord, Kam Fong
Creator:  Leonard Freeman
Run time:  19 hours, 51 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

        The twelfth and final season of Hawaii Five-O comes to DVD January 10^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  The show was clearly on the way out from episode one, as Danno is now gone and with the exception of Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett, the whole cast has pretty much changed.

     As always, there are some fairly interesting guest stars, like Jeff Daniels who shows up for an episode about remote controlled planes being used to rob a museum.  But since this is the very last season, of the original run of Hawaii Five-O, it’s all about one episode, the very last one, where McGarrett finally catches Wo Fat. 

     Of course, if this were today’s Hawaii Five-O, there would be six lead-up episodes during the season and a gigantic three-part finale to close out the whole deal.  Not in 1980.  The big series finale is one, stand-alone episode, where McGarrett disguises himself as an internationally renowned Nobel Prize winning scientist in order to infiltrate Wo Fat’s compound and prevent him from obtaining some kind of weapon of mass destruction.

     In the end, the final confrontation involves no explosions, no real gunfights, no car chases and no ticking time bombs.  It’s just McGarrett and Wo Fat having a good, old-fashioned fist fight.  Then instead of killing him, McGarrett makes the arrest, even without Danno around to “book him”.  In the end, the final season of Hawaii Five-O is probably the weakest of the whole series.  But it’s still a lot of fun, and hearkens back to a different age of television. 

     It occurred to me, watching Wo Fat and McGarrett in their fist fight, that no one does good fist fights any more.  Watch any of today’s shows, and the characters have to be superhuman badasses.  Which means that when, say, LL Cool J fights someone on NCIS: LA, he can’t have a real fight because he’s too badass.  He’s a SEAL, you know.  So when he has to fight, he just does some move and knocks the guy out and breaks his arm.  It’s over. 

     I blame Steven Seagal.  You’ll notice that in his movies, he never got into a fist fight, like Bruce Willis did.  He just beat people up and never got touched.  Even when he finally tracked down Bobby Lupo’s killer Ritchie, he just threw him into a series of glass objects until he got tired of it and put a corkscrew in his eye.  Now, many movies and a ton of TV shows follow that lead.  It really makes Hawaii Five-O feel even more old-school than it actually is!

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Year:  2010
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Tom McGrath, Jeff Glen Bennett, John DiMaggio, Danny Jacobs, James Patrick Stewart, Andy Richter, Mary Scheer, Tara Strong, Nicole Sullivan
Eye candy:  Nicole Sullivan (Marlene, if you will)
Director:  Bret Haaland
Run time:  73 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On January 10^th, Paramount Home Entertainment releases Operation Blowhole, the latest DVD from the Penguins of Madagascar.  There’s a lot of content on the DVD, not all of it the Penguins of Madagascar series, but you’ve really got to navigate around the disc a lot to find it.

     The three central episodes centre around Dr. Blowhole, the evil dolphin nemesis of the Penguin commando team.  Dr. Blowhole, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, is a lot of fun.  Like an evil dolphin super-villain version of Doogie Howser.  But again, as always, the penguins work best in small doses, and three back-to-back-to-back episodes of them fighting a dolphin is no small dose.  It’s a big dose.  I like Dr. Blowhole, and I like the multiple musical numbers they throw in here, but one at a time, please. 

     On the Operation Blowhole DVD, there are a lot of extra episodes, of this show and others.  That’s good, because some of those Blowhole episodes have appeared on other DVDs before.  There’s a total of 73 minutes of content on this DVD, some of which is a bit tough to find. But it provides some good variety, and the kids should really enjoy all of it.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  TV series, ”Reality“, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  The worst people in the world
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I spent much of my Christmas vacation lying on my favourite chair and not moving around much.  I wrecked my back, you see, carrying a giant box of fire logs on a tiny patch of ice.  So having lost much of my ability to move, I was fairly stationary.  But antsy, because I hate not doing stuff.  So I perfected Word Mole on my wife’s blackeberry.  Then I watched the entire PBS documentary series on American Presidents…again.  Then I ruined Christmas.

     Now, I must say I didn’t ruin eveyone’s Christmas.  Just my own.  See, I had just received the fourth season of Jersey Shore, sent to me by Paramount Home Entertainment for Cynical Cinema.  And I put it in my DVD player.  And I watched it.  The first episode was about the Jersey Shore gang travelling to Italy.  Snooki and Deena seemed a little confused about which country was the one shaped like a boot – it was either Italy or Europe, they figured.

     So they douchebagged their way to Italy (by way of Europe, no doubt), and got unpacked.  I had worked out a little beer cooler beside my chair, which helped me get through the plane ride.  In much the same way, it appeared that alcohol had helped Snooki and Deena through the same plane ride, as they kept falling down in the airport with stacks of luggage around them.

     Things started to get interesting/perplexing during Beer #2.  Mike “The Situation” confided to Ron that he and Snooki had been intimately involved a few weeks earlier, and then drunkenly professed his love to Snooki herself.  This confused me.  What rational person, drunk or otherwise, would ever admit to having had sex with Snooki?  And even more so, who would ever make an attempt at a relationship with this sloppy drunken troll?  None of this made any sense.

     Then I got to thinking.  Maybe there was another explanation.  Maybe the producers of the show decided there hadn’t yet been enough drama, and asked the Situation to do something stupid to create some.  But that didn’t make sense, because in the next episode Ronnie and Sam started getting back together.  So that must have been what the producers asked the cast to do in order to create drama and fights.

     Then I thought, cynically, that the Situation was just trying to increase his own fame – see, he and Snooki are the two biggest names from the Jersey Shore cast, and if they became a celebrity power-couple, like they combined forces to become the Snookuation or something, they could make more money in the offseason.  But that seemed unlikely.  Deena’s drunken move to have sex with some blond girl in episode three was more obvious as an attention-grabbing move.

     On episode #4, beer #4, I started to think that maybe I was approaching this all wrong.  Maybe the Situation IS as dumb as he appears.  And maybe he believes that Jersey Shore is actually reality television.  And maybe he thinks all reality TV is like Survivor.  And perhaps he thinks that, like on Survivor, you have to be the biggest douchebag in the gang to win the $1 million?

     I noticed that a lot of the cast members say “right now” or “at this moment” a whole lot.  Like, they will say “I’m just not equipped to deal with this right now”.  Or “I’m just an idiot at this moment”.  It seems to me if they could just remove those two expressions from their vocabulary, they would unwittingly be speaking a whole lot more truth.  I began to sink into a deep depression.

     It then occurred to me that every girl the guys were picking up was American, living in Italy.  The dirty booty call chick, the two slutty blonde twins, all of them!  I once told my buddy Kent that he would never have sex with a girl who spoke English, because she would be able to understand what he was saying, and he would never get laid.  He married a Japanese woman.  It’s the opposite for the Jersey Shore idiots – they can only pick up American girls, because they are the only ones who know these morons are celebrities, and this might get them on TV! 

     When the two hot blonde twins came back to their house to have sex with several of them, I asked my wife to bring me some cyanide.  It turns out we didn’t have any.

     Finally, mercifully, the first disc was almost over.  The pain was about to end, since I was definitely NOT going to get up and put in the second disc.  Episode #4 was almost done, and beer #6 as well.  By now, every person in the house hated the Situation.  This created a dilemma for me.  So…do I now like him?  Is the enemy of my enemy my friend…or my enemy?  I felt like Wesley Snipes in Blade II.  The beer and painkillers helped me think this way.

     Then just as I was about to stop the first disc, the Situation and Ronnie started a fight!  A fight that was going to take place…in the next episode.  On the next disc.  And…I got up.  And I put in the next disc.  And my back screamed at me.  My brain screamed at me.  My wife screamed at me.  My self-esteem screamed at me.  Even my beer started to think I was less of a man.  And it was right.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, Comedy, Kung-fu
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring (Voices):  Jack Black, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, David Cross, Michelle Yeoh, James Hong, Danny McBride, Dennis Haysbert, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Victor Garber
Director:  Jennifer Yuh
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The first Kung-Fu Panda worked because it was as much a kung-fu movie as it was a kids’ comedy.  The voice casting was superb, and the kung-fu staples weren’t (badly) dumbed-down.  It was as good a kung-fu movie as I’ve seen in a decade, and a gerat kids’ film as a result.

     The second Kung-Fu Panda, out on DVD and Blu-Ray December 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment, is even more a kung-fu movie than the first one.  There are some wonderfully animated kung-fu scenes, including a great chase through a Chinese city on rickshaws, which I think is the highlight of the movie. 

     There is much deference to kung-fu movies of the past.  And it’s not just the involvement of Michelle Yeoh and James Hong.  The central concept is that an evil peacock has invented the Ultimate Weapon, one that cannot be beaten no matter how good one’s kung-fu is.  This is a classic plot line to countless films, like Flying Guillotine.  And…Flying Guillotine 2.  And many others that don’t spring to mind right away.

     The weapon this peacock has devised is a cannon.  The advent of firearms was a plot device used in many classic films, as it signified the end to a way of life.  It was used in samurai movies as well as kung-fu flicks, the most famous probably being The Seven Samurai.  Similar themes sprang up in westerns with the advent of machine guns.

     Then there are the masters.  So many kung-fu movies have multiple masters, each one usually the master of a different discipline.  In this case, there is Master Rhino (Victor Garber), Master Ox (Dennis Haysbert), and Master Croc (the wonderfully cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, who says distressingly little throughout the movie).

     It works magnificently as a kung-fu movie.  Now for the bad news – it isn’t even close to the first film as a kids’ cartoon comedy.  Sure, it’s still funny in places, and charming and cute in others.  But Kung Fu Panda 2 lacks the charm of its predecessor, and it’s childlike sense of wonder.  Now that Po IS a member of the kung-fu elite, he no longer idolizes the Furious Five the way he did in the first film, so much of the magic that created is gone.

     I still like Kung Fu Panda 2 a lot.  I will definitely be watching it again, probably many times, with the kids (and by myself).  Just because it doesn’t live up to the magical humour and throwback genius of the first one doesn’t mean that this movie isn’t also very good.  Kung Fu Panda 2 is very good.

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Years:  1966, 1967
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball
Directors:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The official fifth season of The Lucy Show comes to DVD December 6th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This is, for those of you born after 1970, or those who haven’t heard or read my reviews of the first four seasons, that show Lucille Ball did after I Love Lucy, the one that wasn’t quite as funny or as classic or as well received as her first sitcom.

     In the fifth season, there are some really great moments.  Most of them involving other actors.  In the first episode, George Burns shows up and asks Lucy to be his partner for his new routine.  For some reason she turns him down and decides to stay where she is, for the sake of her boss at the bank Mr. Mooney.  I guess because the whole show was predicated on Lucy annoying Mr. Mooney.  At the bank, on a submarine for some reason, at the zoo, at a golf tournament, everywhere he goes. 

     If only there were some episodes that DIDN’T involve that same exact premise, that would be super!  Well, there are a couple.  Like one with ventriloquist Paul Winchell.  And a couple with Carol Burnett and Vivian Vance.  There’s even an amazing episode featuring John Wayne, the Duke himself, which for me almost makes the entire DVD set worthwhile.  But the episodes with the guest stars are too few and far between, and I got tired of Lucy and Mr. Mooney long before I got to John Wayne.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Clancy Brown
Director:  Paul Tibbitt
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     More than nine hours of Spongebob hilarity are packaged together on the Complete Seventh Season of Spongebob Squarepants, out December 6th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Nine hours of Spongebob, 50 episodes!  And it even contains three, four…maybe even FIVE episodes that I have yet to see!

     Let’s see…there’s the episode where Plankton dresses in Sandy’s fur so he can steal the Krabby Patty formula…seen that one…there’s the one where Squidward gets a new neighbour who plays the bassoon and falls in (nonsexual platonic) love…seen that one…

     Patrick learns karate…yep…Spongebob invents a hot dog krabby patty then regrets his invention…Spongebob gets a job as a kitchen sponge model (GREAT episode)…Squidward tries to take Spongebob’s place at a dance audition…Squidward tries to clean up enough garbage to get a statue built of him like Squilliam…seen ‘em all! 

     The thing is, I have already watched The Great Patty Caper, Blast from the Past, Spongebob’s Last Stand, and Legends of Bikini Bottom this year.  In fact, just two weeks ago I saw Spongebob Hallowe’en, Spongebob Christmas, Spongebob Miscellaneous Holidays and Tales From the Deep.  Now, if youève managed to avoid buying all of THOSE DVDs this year, then Spongebob’s Seventh Season is a great pickup!  Cause it’s Spongebob.

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Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, Ken Curtis
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
Run time:  8 hours 43 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I guess Gunsmoke can’t always follow the same formula.  It’s can’t always be some bad guy who rides into town looking to kill someone, and Marshall Matt Dillon gets in his face and dispenses some old west wisdom and then the guy doesn’t listen and the marshall shoots him.  But SOME of that formula really works.  I do like to watch James Arness shoot folks.  Folks who just won’t listen to reason, or folks who just plain have it comin’.

     And in the Fifth Season, Volume Two of Gunsmoke, out December 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment, I didn’t get to see ANY of that formula until at least the fifth episode!  First, there’s no murder at all, just a big misunderstanding.  Second, it’s CHESTER who shoots the bad guy.  Third, it’s another misunderstanding involving cattle drivers.  Fourth, it’s MISS KITTY who has to kill a dude. 

     And then finally Matt Dillon actually participates in a gunfight in the fifth episode.  (He kills a guy, but he’s at least sad about it.)  Then it’s back to the misunderstandings as the marshall and Chester end up doing all of a farmer’s chores for him instead of arresting him, for a crime it turns out he never actually committed anyway.

     So if you’re looking for Marshall Dillon to shoot a bunch of people, you can pick up any of the DVD sets from Season One Volume One to Season Five Volume One.  That’s nine sets to choose from.  If you’re looking for misunderstandings, comedic con jobs and for the killing to be spread out a little, Season Five Volume Two will be on DVD just in time for Christmas.

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Year:  1946
Genre:  Classic, Christmas, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Blu Ray 
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
Director:  Frank Capra
Run time:  130 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     A year or two ago, I reviewed a two-disc special edition of the classic It’s a Wonderful Life.  It came in a box with a little bell, and had some great special features like a making-of documentary hosted by Tom Bosley, and a tribute to Frank Capra narrated by Frank Capra Jr.

     On November 1^st, Paramount Home Entertainment releases a new two-disc special edition box set of the classic It’s A Wonderful Life.  This one comes with a little bell and some great special features like a making-of documentary hosted by Tom Bosley, and a tribute to Frank Capra narrated by Frank Capra Jr. 

     So, what’s the difference?  Well, this one is a Blu-Ray.  And I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking…a classic black-and-white movie on Blu-Ray?  What’s the point?  Does black and white look any better in super high definition?  Well, the answer is no. 

     The reason, I think, for the Blu-ray treatment here is the second disc, which features the colorized version of the movie.  That process in the old days of film where they ADDED colour to black and white movies so modern low brow movie watchers (like my sister) would find them more palatable.

     I am not one of those movie watchers.  I find colorizing a classic like It’s A Wonderful Life to be akin to blasphemy, and I won’t be watching it.  And so for me, there is absolutely no difference between the NEW It’s a Wonderful Life box set with a bell and the older one with a bell.  Except that the blu-ray is the only box set on the shelves right now.  And you NEED It’s A Wonderful Life in your collection.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Clancy Brown
Director:  Paul Tibbitt
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Paramount Home Entertainment releases a 3-disc gift set called Holidays With Spongebob on November 8^th.  Awfully early for Christmas, awfully late for Hallowe’en. 

     Of course there’s a Christmas disc, which contains only one true Christmas episode, where Santa doesn’t show up on Christmas morning and Spongebob goes all crazy, (as Spongebob tends to do).  The rest of the disc uses winter as a substitute for Christmas, and it’s full of snowball fights and Sandy the squirrel hibernating and things of that nature. 

     The Hallowe’en DVD has, similarly, only ONE actual Hallowe’en episode, then fills up the rest of the disc with Plankton wearing disguises, Squidward’s ghost, and Spongebob turning into a snail and taming a seahorse.  Among other, even-less-related-to-Hallowe’en episodes.

     The third DVD has nothing to do with Christmas or Hallowe’en.  Or any other holiday for that matter.  I guess that for some reason they felt like they needed three discs to make this a real box set.  The third disc is called To Love A Patty, and contains seven random episodes including the one where Spongebob crafts the perfect crabby patty then refuses to part with it.

     And that’s it – that’s what you get in the Holidays With Spongebob gift set.  Exactly TWO holiday related episodes, and twenty-four randomly selected episodes with tenuous connections, (if they exist at all), to those holidays.  I think the biggest problem with the box set is the name.  If, instead of calling it Holidays With Spongebob, they had called it Spongebobès Latest Cash Grab, it would have at least made sense.

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Year:  2011
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Clancy Brown
Director:  Paul Tibbitt
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On November 8th, the same day Paramount Home Entertainment releases the three-disc Holidays With Spongebob gift set, they are also releasing a single Spongebob disc called Tales From The Deep. 

     It appears that releasing three Spongebob DVDs a month has been SO profitable that they have decided to up the dosage and release four at once.  As I said about the holiday DVDs, there are really TWO holiday episodes and then about 22 random episodes that have nothing to do with the rest. 

     Similarly on the Tales From the Deep DVD, there seems to be no unifying theme at all to the disc, it’s just nine random episodes, most of which I had seen before.  The one where Spongebob tries to get Squidward to eat a Krabby Patty, the one where he goes into Sandy’s underwater biodome for tea, and the one where he and Patrick try to get Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy to come out of retirement have been on many of these compilation DVDs before.

     Then there’s the Valentines’ Day episode.  How come the HOLIDAY gift set had a Hallowe’en DVD, a Christmas DVD, and then a totally unrelated disc called To Love A Patty, when the Tales From The Deep DVD, released the SAME DAY, has a Valentine’s Day episode.  I hate to be cynical here…except that this is Cynical Cinema…but could it be, just maybe, that no one who put these Spongebob DVDs cared at all and it’s just another in a series of increasingly frequent cash grabs with Spongebob’s face on them?

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Year:  2010
Genre:  Kids, Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Victoria Justice, Leon Thomas III, Matt Bennett, Elizabeth Gillies, Ariana Grande, Avan Jogia, Daniella Monet, Eric Lange
Creator:  Dan Schneider
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

The DVD cover of Season One Volume Two of VicTorious advertises FOUR HOURS of content, including the crossover episode of iCarly called iParty with VicTorious.  That’s fine, but had they released the first season in just one volume, it could have been EIGHT hours of content and I wouldn’t have to buy two different box sets.  You know…for my kids…

At least both volumes feature the magnificent Victoria Justice, who I think will be the next huge star when she leaves behind the kiddy shows and Nickelodeon and starts doing movies and grown-up TV.  I like VicTorious, it’s one of those well-packaged shows starring a bunch of triple-threat kids who sing and dance and act and have clearly been groomed since birth to do all three.

Of course, it’s all sanitized for kids, no real issues are tackled, and the show has a polished gleam that prevents it from being deep, or powerful, or great.  But the kids are likeable, the songs are pretty good, and I can look past all the ironic plots – like the episode where the kids do a show for kids dressed up as hamburgers and pizza slices, and complain because they’re above all this kiddy music.  Umm…are you being self-referential and intentionally ironic, or have you just missed the point here?  Or the one where they get cast in a reality show only to discover that it’s not really REALITY at all, and they are simply pawns being groomed for stardom at the whims of producers.  The SHOCK of it all!

The best thing about the DVD IS the iCarly crossover episode (song included above), where all these talented kids get together and seem to be having a really good time.  And both shows are the same exact template really – sanitized, shiny stories starring sanitized shiny children, and despite the lack of substance it proves to be entertaining.  And sometimes that’s good enough.  In this case, I think it is.

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