Pick of the week:  Easy Virtue (6/10):  For lack of anything better.  It’s a decent movie, and at moments (most of them involving Colin Firth) it’s hilarious.  But Jessica Biel just doesn’t work as the star.

  TV pick of the week:  Brotherhood, Final Season (8/10):  This was one of the most underrated TV shows while it was on.  Now it’s canceled, and this third season was the last.  Too bad.

  Blu-Ray of the week:  Star Trek, Season Two (8/10):  Still some of the best transfers, best addition of detail, and best special features in the Blu-Ray television universe.  Not just for the nerds.

  Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (3/10):  Will Matthew McConaughey ever star in a movie that’e even halfway decent?  (A Time To Kill doesn’t count.)  As long as he looks like this with his shirt off, my guess is no.

  The Very First Alvin Show (2/10):  The very first episode, from 1961, that introduced Alvin and the Chipmunks to the world.  I guess, for the historic nature of the program, for the people who care…or not.

  Alvin And the Chipmunks Go To The Movies: Star Wreck (2/10):  A silly take-off on Star Trek that is absolutely painfully irritating.

  The Silence (5/10):  A very well made Australian cop mystery thriller.  That has a terrible script, a terrible resolution, and a lot of reliance on silly coincidences.  Could have been great.

  Mitch Fatel is Magical (7/10):  Mitch Fatel is very funny.  This is an hour of dirty stand-up about sex.  It loses steam toward the end, because how long can you listen to a stand-up comic talk about the same thing?

  Ghost Whisperer Season Four (4/10):  Jennifer Love Hewitt is so hot I can cry, watching this show.  Her boobs are magnificent, and she is gorgeous all over.  I have no idea what the show’s about.

  CSI: Season Nine (7/10):  They added Laurence Fishburne, and lost Gary Dourdan and William Peterson.  They also added a hot blonde.  I think the series came out ahead.

  Also out today:

Observe And Report
Lymelife
Next Day Air
Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana
Jonas, Vol. 1: Rockin’ The House
Edges of Darkness
30 Rock: Season Three
O’Horten
The Mentalist: Complete First Season
Slaughter
Tulpan
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Complete Second Season
Ugly Betty Complete Third Season

  On Blu-Ray today:

Adam Resurrected
Clive Barker’s Book of Blood
The Complete Monterey Pop Festival
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
Godzilla (Gojira)
The Haunted Works of El Superbeasto
Highlander: Season One
Hoop Realities
Hot Fuzz
Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake! Otis at Monterey
Lymelife
Monterey Pop
Observe And Report
Pierrot Le Fou
Rapahel: Art and Music Expressions
Scooby-Doo The Mystery Begins
Shaun of the Dead
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VIII: First Contact
Star Trek Next Generation Movie Collection
Star Trek Original Series Season Two
Streets Of Blood
Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season Two
Terra
Wallace And Gromit Complete Collection

  Out next week:

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Away We Go
Management
Shrink
The Girlfriend Experience
Flood
Superman / Batman: Public Enemies
Bob’s Big Break
Clive Barker’s Book of Blood
Conjurer
Tuesday
A Muppets Christmas: Letter to Santa
Steam
The Unit Season Four

  On Blu-Ray next week:

Away We Go
Billy Jack
Burst Angel box set
The Dark Crystal
Facing the Giants
Fireproof
300 Years of St. Petersburg: The Gala Concert
The Girlfriend Experience
Glenn Gould:  Hereafter
HD Moods: Hawaii
HD Moods: Trains
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
How I Met Your Mother Season Four
Labyrinth
Lies and Illusions
Management
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Naitonal Geographic Ultimate High Definition Collection
The New York Ripper
Objectified
Puccini: Edgar
Romeo And Juliet
Screwballs
Secrets of the Cross
Snakes on a Plane
Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Tchaikovsky: Sleeping Beauty
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Twin Spirits: Sting Performs Schumann
UFC Ultimate Knockouts 7
The Unit Complete Fourth Season
The Universe Megaset
The Universe Complete Season 3
Wagner: The Ring Cycle
The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition
Yellowstone: Battle For Life

“Love is magic comfort food for the weak and uneducated.”

Year:  2009
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Michael Douglas, Breckin Meyer, Robert Forster, Jennifer Garner
Eye candy:  Emma Stone, Lacey Chabert, Anne Archer, Noureen DeWulf, Rachel Boston, Camille Guaty, Amanda Walsh, all kinds of other hotties who appear far too briefly
Director:  Mark Waters
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There is one good thing about Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, out September 22nd from Alliance Films.  And that is Michael Douglas.  After that, there is nothing.  After all, this is a movie starring Matthew McConaughey, and true to form for all McConaughey movies, it is absolutely dreadful.  The script is awful, McConaughey is awful, even Jennifer Garner, who is usually at least a little bit reliable, is awful.  Not one scene in the film rings true, except for a couple with Douglas.  And even then, he’s the only vaguely believable character in the whole thing.

     I also like Noureen DeWulf, who plays McConaughey’s personal assistant.  But she is criminally underused in the movie, and asked to do some truly senseless and silly things.  Just like all the other actors.  McConaughey plays a photographer who is a serial one-night-stander.  At the beginning of the film, we get to see how callous and shallow he is when he breaks up with three women at once via video conference call.  This is supposed to be funny.  And it’s supposed to show how virile and manly and Casanova-y he is.  But really, it’s just creepy and makes my skin crawl.  And I have no problem with promiscuous folk.

     We learn that McConaughey has learned everything he knows about seducing women from his lothario uncle, Michael Douglas.  When we see Douglas teaching the young boy everything he knows about women, it’s believable.  We see Douglas working his “magic” with some women at a bar, and elsewhere, and I can completely buy him as a playboy.  But we never see McConaughey putting any of this advice, or these moves, into use.  The few lines he does toss out are cheesy and ridiculous, and the women he does sleep with just throw themselves at him.  He never has to do any work to sleep with anyone.  I know he looks like Matthew McConaughey and all, but that’s a lot of a stretch.

     So as far as I know, he has no game at all.  He’s simply a sex magnet that somehow manages to have every woman he ever meets launch herself at him.  Fine.  Through these same flashbacks, we learn that it was a young Jennifer Garner who broke his heart and (sort of) made him the way he is.  And she has Always Been The One, even though he has forgotten this.  And – amazingly – she somehow still has the hots for him despite the boorish, loserish, loutish and offensive behaviour he puts on display during every frame of the film.  If she really was the smart, put-together woman she is supposed to be in the film, she would have forgotten McConaughey even existed years ago, and she would never give this loser the time of day now.

     But of course, he needs to realize he loves her, which is accomplished by a bunch of ghosts a la Christmas Carol, and they will obviously jump right back into love and all will be fine and work out nicely.  After all, it’s a McConaughey movie.  But first, he must fall down and break a cake (haha), and say some decidedly unclever and uninspired mean-spirited words about the institution of marriage and love, and generally behave like a boor and a jackass.  (It’s important that he is a jackass at the beginning of the film, because then he has somewhere to grow!  Like in every other movie he has ever made.)

     And that’s where the movie leaves me.  Feeling like I have just watched Every Matthew McConaughey Movie Ever Made, this time with Jennifer Garner instead of Kate Hudson, which isn’t much of an upgrade (but it is an upgrade).  It’s stupid, it’s not funny, it’s barely watcheable at best.  So, it’s one of his better films.

“It’s so exciting.”
“Not nearly as exciting as crossing your mother.”

Year:  2008
Countries:  United States, UK
Language:  English
Starring:  Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Barnes, Kimberley Nixon, Katherine Parkinson
Director:  Stephan Elliott
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Easy Virtue, out September 22nd from Alliance Films, is based on a stage play by Noel Coward.  Which means it’s witty, it’s quick, it’s erudite and it’s cleverly funny.  The biggest problem with the film is that Jessica Biel, the star, is not terribly witty, or quick, or erudite.  Or funny.  Whenever she needs to use a big word, like “fatuous”, or “demoralizing”, or “universally”, she absolutely chews on it.  It’s just not her – she seems so thrilled to be in a movie that uses words bigger than “gun” or “God” that she just seems totally out of her element.

     That being said, she accomplishes most of what she needs to accomplish with her character.  She is tough, she is very American, she is a little uncouth and she is rough around the edges.  And her character is meant to be spectacularly hot.  Check.  She plays Larita, who has just married a British man named John Whittaker (Ben Barnes).  He brings her back to his family’s massive estate in England to meet his family.  And of course, she is going to rub his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) the wrong way.  And there will be fireworks aplenty.

     Scott Thomas is excellent – wound as tight as they come, she appears to be one deep breath away from bursting entirely.  But the heart and soul of the movie is provided by Colin Firth, as her sardonic, utterly apathetic husband.  He hates the estate, hates his life, hates his wife, and just doesn’t care any more.  And it’s hilarious.  Ben Barnes is basically useless to the film, providing the reason to get the two women in the same room so they can hate each other.  But then he sort of disappears and becomes irrelevant.  His sisters are more central to the plot, and they are both young and innocent and capricious and well-played by Kimberly Nixon and Katherine Parkinson.

     The thing is, clever though the script is, and there are some very funny moments, a lot of this movie feels trite and derivative.  The scene where Biel sits on the tiny family dog and kills it feels like a moment from Meet The Parents.  And as the feud between Biel and Scott Thomas escalates, I felt like I was watching some of the worst moments from Monster In Law.  Of course, this movie is far better than Monster In Law, but the fact that I even thought of that dreadful movie while watching this one gave me pause.

     Overall, Easy Virtue (out September 22nd from Alliance Films) is quite good, and the best moments outweigh the worst considerably.  But Biel feels miscast, and certain moments where she is supposed to provide the comedy (the motorcycle scene during the fox hunt) drag the movie to a crashing halt.  One thing I really like about the film though – none of the characters really grow or change, at all, over the course of the movie.  Barnes learns something about himself and about the world.  Firth is inspired to make a decision he should have made years ago.  But they haven’t really changed.  Because they don’t have to.  That alone makes Easy Virtue different, and worth renting.

“And here’s the star of the show…Alvin…Alvin…ALVIN!”

Year:  1961
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Run time:  74 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Was this really the very first show?  The one that started it all?  The first Chipmunks show from 1961 that spawned year after year of series and movies and songs and albums and so on and so forth?  I guess so.  The DVD says so.  And I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the back of this DVD.  What I do doubt, however, is the taste of audiences in 1961, who apparently liked this enough to make it a cultural institution.  At least I can understand the voices of the chipmunks a little better than I could in later years.  But wow, is this show ever tiresome!

     In this first show, the chipmunks, who are never really introduced, except in the intro, try to teach a bird how to fly.  And the bird keeps crashing.  And eventually learns how to fly and becomes a far happier bird.  The end.  Oh – the bird is an eagle.  But it doesn’t eat the chipmunks.  That’s implausible.  But it’s far from the worst thing about this show.  Dave is the worst thing about this show.  Early Dave is easily angered, which is upsetting.  He doesn’t pay attention to the chipmunks, and when he does, he doesn’t believe their stories.  What shoddy parenting.  What a shoddy show.  However, if you’re a big-time Chipmunks fan (and I’m sure there are at least four out there), then you’ll want the show that started it all.  And it’s on DVD September 22nd from Paramount Home Entertainment.

“Captain’s log. … Star date 2816.9.  … We are…responding…to a call…for help…from the planet…Alderon.”

Year:  1990
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Run time:  66 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Despite the involvement of such classic tunes as “Bad Moon Rising”, Alvin And The Chipmunks Go To The Movies: Star Wreck is almost a total waste of time.  It’s staggeringly half-assed.  It appears that almost no effort has gone into writing or making the central episode on the disc, the one where the Chipmunks do a parody of Star Trek.  With accidental references to Star Wars things.  Like the planet Alderon.  Because no one really cared.  So the three chipmunks appear as Kirk, Spock and McCoy.  And Alvin does a William Shatner impression, where he says one…word…at a…time.  Which is vaguely funny for the first six seconds.  And impossibly irritating by the end.

     Because the chipmunks are almost unintelligible at the best of times, I can’t tell whether they are really named Kirk and Spock, or whether they are coming up with a parody by calling themselves Burk and Schlock.  But then, I don’t care.  Three minutes into this awful, awful episode I had lost my will to watch the final 63 minutes.  It just plain smacks of lack of effort.  And considering I have already put in more effort, myself, simply by watching this, I am going to stop putting any effort into typing this review.  It’s over.

“She’s my mother.”

Year:  2006
Country:  Australia
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Roxburgh, Essie Davis, Alice McConnell, Emily Barclay
Director:  Cate Shortland
Run time:  104 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Australian director Cate Shortland does some impressive things in The Silence, out September 22nd from Alliance Films.  She gets solid performances out of her actors, she maintains a tense atmosphere throughout, and she has some stylistic flourishes which are pretty cool.  This means that The Silence is a very well made movie.  It does not mean that it is a good one.  Because it’s not.  The biggest problem is the script, which is all over the place and has some major holes.

     There are two big problems with the movie.  First, there is a reliance on coincidence that really strains credulilty.  Richard (Richard Roxburgh) is a cop who has been involved in a frightening incident where an informant was murdered.  He has been re-assigned, for some reason, to a police museum where he is now in charge of preparing photos for a display on true crime.  He notices the same woman appearing in several of the photos.  And he decides to investigate.  We eventually figure out (although it’s never pointed out) that her appearance in these photos is nothing but an enormous coincidence.  So is her identity, and the mystery that ensues.

     The second big problem is the ending.  For a movie that has been so taut, and tense, and suspenseful, the ending is sadly obvious.  And it wraps the entire plot up into a neat little package, where everyone bad gets what’s coming to them, and everyone good lives happily ever after, and all the questions are answered easily, and Richard doesn’t have to make a difficult decision between his girlfriend and the woman he’s now all about.  The movie has been gritty and challenging up until this point.  But it lets us off way too easily.

“I don’t want to have a fat girl do a hand stand while I pee all over her.”

Year:  2009
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Mitch Fatel
Run time:  64 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Mitch Fatel’s comedy special Mitch Fatel Is Magical, out September 22nd from Paramount Home Entertainment, is 64 minutes long.  It is 64 minutes on sex.  And girls and sex and girls.  That’s it.  There is no other material.  Fatel talks about how great panties are, and the etiquette of an orgy, and how sad he is that hand jobs are out of fashion, and so on and so forth.  It is a great testament to his skill, and his unique delivery, that he manages to make this funny.  For 55 minutes.  The special loses a lot of steam at the end, for me, because after 55 minutes, I am simply tired of sex talk.  I feel like a little less of a man because of it, but there it is.  55 minutes.  My limit.

     Thankfully, the special goes on for only nine more minutes.  Which means that I thoroughly enjoyed 86% of Fatel’s special.  And, thanks to the magic of DVD, I might be able to return tomorrow, watch the final nine minutes again, and find them as hilarious as I did the first 55.  I’ll find out tomorrow.  Until then, I recommend Fatel and his Magical DVD, it’s very funny, he has a very unusual delivery, and his material is, for the most part, very good.  Maybe watch it in two installments.  With someone who enjoys sex talk, and dirty sex talk, as much as you do.

“They won’t go away.”

Years:  2008, 2009
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Camryn Manheim, Christoph Sanders, Jamie Kennedy, Jay Mohr, David Conrad, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs
Eye candy:  Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Love Hewitt
Creator:  John Gray
Run time:  16 hours, 55 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     As you can maybe tell by the number of links I put to hot pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt above here, I am a big fan.  She’s something of an actress, in that she can walk and speak and emote when necessary.  And she certainly is talented enough to carry a series like Ghost Whisperer.  But let’s not kid ourselves.  She is the star of this show because she is spectacular, she is one of the prettiest women ever to live, and she has phenomenal boobs.  I would complain that she is wearing a dress way too often on this show.  Jennifer Love Hewitt (there’s another link) is sensational no matter what she’s wearing.  But in jeans and a T-shirt she is far better.

     In a dress, I would still drink her bath water.  In jeans and a T-shirt though, I might actually sit through her show.  Just a thought.  I sat through a fairly large portion of her show when I picked up Season Four of Ghost Whisperer, on DVD September 22nd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  And it’s OK, when it’s not silly and maudlin.  But I have one big problem with the series.  That isn’t the dress thing.  It’s that Jay Mohr has been on this series for years.  He is a comedian, and a very funny one.  And yet, on this show, he is powerfully unfunny.  He’s not even supposed to be funny.  He’s just another actor.  Why not add a little humour to the otherwise straight as an arrow program?

     So this season, Mohr is leaving.  He takes off in the first episode, and gets replaced by…the very funny Jamie Kennedy.  Who, true to form, is not at all funny on the show.  He is, once again, not even supposed to be funny.  I think.  (If either of these guys were supposed to provide comedy and laughs on Ghost Whisperer, they have the worst writers in the world.)  I wonder, why bother?  Why not have these guys do something entertaining.  I can only watch fabulous boobs for so long.

“Colin’s as much a son to me as you are.”

Year:  2008
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jason Isaacs, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish, Fionnula Flanagan, Kevin Chapman, Fiona Erickson, Brian F. O’Byrne, Ethan Embry
Creator:  Blake Masters
Run time:  7 hours, 6 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

    I am still upset that Brotherhood never got the recognition that was given to The Sopranos.  Not that Brotherhood is that good.  It’s terrific, but it isn’t The Sopranos because nothing is that good.  But it was certainly good enough to have a nice, long run on television.  I was totally into this show.  I was desperate to find out what happened at the end of Season Two, and I was therefore thrilled when I received Season Three on DVD, out September 22nd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I sat down with my girlfriend, as I did for Season Two, and watched the whole thing beginning to end.  The thing is, this time the end of Season Three was also the end of the show.

     And because it was canceled after the end of Season Three, there is no real closure.  I have read a lot on the internet suggesting that the people making the show knew it would be canceled and therefore they created a sense of closure to the show.  In the sense that Colin has now run off with Michael’s girlfriend, and Tommy has been named Speaker of the House, perhaps.  But I got the sense that a lot more was going to take place.  The dynamic between Freddie and Michael shifted in a huge way over the course of the third season, with Freddie now becoming subordinate to Michael.  But toward the end of the season, Freddie appears to be making a play to get back on top, and Michael is self-destructing with violent insane behaviour.

     I felt as though this was merely a lead-up to some crazy action that was to take place in a potential fourth season, and I would have been very excited to see that fourth season had it aired.  But it didn’t.  And if the producers did know that the series was about to end, they did a pretty poor job of wrapping it up.  It wasn’t even an open-ended, make-of-it-what-you-will Sopranos ending.  It was just the ending of a season story arc.  The culmination of one story line, and the beginning of another.  But it doesn’t matter now, does it?  What remains is this third season, which is as excellent as the rest of the show, and stands up there with the best TV has to offer.

“Tribbles.”

Years:  1967, 1968
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, Walter Koenig
Creator:  Gene Roddenberry
Run time:  21 hours, 50 minutes
Blu-Ray distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     For a review of the actual Season Two of Star Trek, click here.  This is a review of the Blu-Ray, which should appeal to all the techno-geeks out there.  And the techno-geeks love their Star Trek.  So it works great.  There really is a higher standard that must be applied to Blu-Ray editions of Star Trek seasons, because the nerds hold the show to that much higher a standard than do fans of other series.  And thankfully, the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series on Blu-Ray have delivered.  The Blu-Ray transfer is impeccable, the added detail and enhanced content is terrific, and the show really does look a lot better in both Season Two and Season One. 

     It’s the special features that matter, however, and those are hit-and-miss.  I still have no idea how that Tribbles episode managed to become the most famous of the Star Trek canon.  I am so sick of the Tribbles episode.  I thought it was cute once, but cute doesn’t hold up over time, unless it’s E.T. cute.  And the tribbles are not E.T. cute.  Yet, the Season Two Blu-Ray of Star Trek comes with an entire bonus disc devoted entirely to tribbles.  Including cartoons and commentary and so forth.  Seriously, Star Trek.  Enough with the tribbles.  The Starfleet Access Mode remains pretty cool, though, and should delight the geek world who revel in their Star Trek.

     OK, I have now run out of links to place with the words “Star Trek” in this review.  So that’s over.  And so’s the review.  This is a wicked Blu-Ray, but enough with the tribbles.  It was forty years ago.  Let it go.

“You know, we have a job opening.”

Years:  2008, 2009
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Laurence Fishburne, George Eads, William Petersen, Eric Szmanda, Gary Dourdan, Robert David Hall, Wallace Langham, Paul Guilfoyle
Eye candy:  Marg Helgenberger, Jorja Fox, Lauren Lee Smith, Taylor Swift (guest star in “Turn Turn Turn” episode)
Creator:  Anthony E. Zuiker
Run time:  17 hours 22 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     CSI has come a long way since it first hit the air.  Sort of.  It has also remained remarkably stagnant.  Sort of.  The show is still exactly the same.  A lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, a lot of crime solving, a lot of crime scene investigators inexplicably carrying guns, arresting people, interrogating people, and basically doing the job of a cop.  And there are still little pieces of behind-the-scenes drama – this guy is hot for that girl, who enjoys the company of this other guy, and so forth.  But it’s mostly about science and crimes and so on and so forth.  The only thing that has changed, really, is the cast.  William Petersen, who has played Gil Grissom for nine seasons, is now gone.  He left, halfway through this season, to be replaced by Laurence Fishburne.

     At the end of last season, Gary Dourdan left the cast, shot in the neck by a dirty cop.  So he remains around, on videotapes and in memories, for at least the first episode of this season.  He is replaced by Lauren Lee Smith, who is very attractive but not used a whole lot.  Jorja Fox, who played Sara Sidle for most of the show’s run, shows up again to take Grissom away.  And that’s where we’re at with all these characters.  Really, the only one who can’t come back is Warrick.  Having been shot in the neck and all.  Everyone else has just moved on.  And from what I understand, Lauren Lee Smith left at the end of Season Nine anyway, so that’s where we are with all these characters.

     Of course, the first episode in Season Nine is a maudlin, cheesy “Goodby Warrick” episode, where people cry and say nice things about him and discover that he has an infant son.  Then they move on to the cast carousel.  Fishburne is terrific, as always, and a great addition to the cast.  In fact, I like him quite a lot more than I liked Grissom.  But that’s personal taste and all.  And Lauren Lee Smith is hotter than Gary Dourdan, so that’s OK too.  I guess.  But the star eye candy here is, and always has been, Marg Helgenberger, who is, I believe strongly, the hottest woman over 50 in the world.  Spectacular.  But she’s getting a little thin here in Season Nine.  Eat some donairs or something.  I’m worried about you.

     The special features on Season Nine are mostly gimmicky nonsense.  Or just half-assed.  Or both.  For example, some episodes have a “CSI” feature.  Like, a pop-up feature, where we get to learn interesting things about real-life CSI scientists.  Like, the fact that often CSIs will carry a jacket or a sweater in their car.  In case of inclement weather.  Seriously.  That’s fascinating.  The other things we learn are too technical for anyone to remember, or care.  Unless you’re starting your very own CSI lab in your basement.  I hope you aren’t.  But with the addition of Fishburne and Smith, CSI got better in Season Nine, and I hope you watch it.  It comes out September 22nd from Paramount Home Entertainment.

  Pick of the week:  Full Battle Rattle (8/10):  Really interesting documentary about a bizarre fake-Iraqi village set up in the California deesert to help soldiers prepare for Iraq through role-playing.  It’s funny, even though it shouldn’t be.  Crazy.

  TV series of the week:  One Step Beyond Season One (7/10):  Totally cheesy.  And gloriously so.  This “true events of the paranormal” series debuted in 1959, and the first season comes out today.  Such wonderful cheesiness.

  Blu-Ray pick of the week:  The Ultimate Force of Four:  I know, on a week where Casablanca and Army of Darkness are being released on Blu-Ray, I could have gone with something more standard.  But this box set, featuring four of the greatest kung-fu movies of all time, will be spectacular.  Iron Monkey, Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Hero and Legend of Drunken Master are four of my all-time favourites, and all are a feast for the eyes.

  X-Men Origins: Wolverine (5/10):  A pretty poor “prequel” to the X-Men series.  Nothing but action, which can be OK, but the action isn’t great and the story is tedious.  Women will like all the flexing though.

  Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends (4/10):  One of those annoying compilations of kids’ TV series, one episode at a time.  Loosely connected by the involvement of animals.

  Dora The Explorer Saves The Crystal Kingdom (4/10):  Don’t let the title fool you.  This has nothing to do with Indiana Jones.

  Diego’s Mega Missions (4/10):  You know that Diego kid who used to hang out with Dora?  Yeah, these are his “Mega-Missions”, collected in three volumes onto one convenient DVD box set.

  Diego’s Arctic Rescue (4/10):  Might be fun on mushrooms.  Possibly not.  I am almost positive, however, that polar bears rarely eat fish.  They eat seals.  Man up, Diego, and show them eating seals!  Stop lying to kids!

  Bonanza Season One, Volume One and Volume Two (8/10):  This show was pretty cool!  I understand a lot of people are familiar with Bonanza?  Paramount has kindly released both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 on the same day here.

  The Modern Con Man Collection (5/10):  Todd Robbins, purported to be “America’s Greatest Con Man” (as voted on by nine-year-olds, no doubt), creeps me out at bars and does some pretty lame card tricks.  Not worth it.

  VeggieTales:  Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella (5/10):  Aside from a song about a sippy cup and a few great lines, this is a weak entry from VeggieTales.  More preachy than usual, also.  I’m pretty sick of God.

  Old Jews Telling Jokes (7/10):  Just what the title says.  Non-professional, non-comedian, old Jews.  Telling jokes.  In front of a white screen, for 45 minutes.  45 awesome minutes!  I love this film.

  Backwoods (3/10):  Some decent eye candy that never gets naked.  Some backwoods hicks that can’t decide if they’re a religious cult, meth producers, or a survivalist militia.  And a corporate paintball retreat that goes horribly wrong.  It’s as bad as it sounds.

  Also out today:

Camille
Blood And Bone
Grace
Grey’s Anatomy Season Five
Barbie and the Three Musketeers
Canvas
Bionicle: The Legend Reborn
H2O Extreme
Bodyguard: A New Beginning
Nick Jr. Favourites: Celebrate Family!
The Strawberry Shortcake Movie:  Sky’s The Limit!
Ugly Betty Complete Third Season

  On Blu-Ray today:

Amadeus
An American Werewolf in London
Army of Darkness
The Battle: Cinco De Mayo
Camille
Casablanca
Child’s Play
Crash Complete First Season
Deep Impact
Grace
The Hannibal Lecter Collection
Hero
Iron Monkey
The Legend of Drunken Master
Misery
My Name Is Earl Season Four
The Ultimate Force of Four (Zatoichi, Hero, Iron Monkey, Legend of Drunken Master)
Van Helsing
Varsity Blues
The Wonder of it All
Wrong Turn
Wrong Turn 2
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman

  Out next week:

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past
Easy Virtue
Observe And Report
Lymelife
Next Day Air
Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana
Jonas, Vol. 1: Rockin’ The House
Edges of Darkness
30 Rock: Season Three
O’Horten
The Mentalist: Complete First Season
The Silence
Slaughter
Tulpan
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Complete Second Season
Ugly Betty Complete Third Season

  On Blu-Ray next week:

Adam Resurrected
Clive Barker’s Book of Blood
The Complete Monterey Pop Festival
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
Godzilla (Gojira)
The Haunted Works of El Superbeasto
Highlander: Season One
Hoop Realities
Hot Fuzz
Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake! Otis at Monterey
Lymelife
Monterey Pop
Observe And Report
Pierrot Le Fou
Rapahel: Art and Music Expressions
Scooby-Doo The Mystery Begins
Shaun of the Dead
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VIII: First Contact
Star Trek Next Generation Movie Collection
Star Trek Original Series Season Two
Streets Of Blood
Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season Two
Terra
Wallace And Gromit Complete Collection

Year:  2009
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish, etc.
Starring:  Jake T. Austin, Caitlin Sanchez
Series:  Dora The Explorer, Go Diego Go, Wonder Pets, Yo Gabba Gabba, Blue’s Clues, Ni Hao Kai-Lan
Run time:  147 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Animal Friends is much like the Nickelodeon All-Star Sports Day I inexplicably reviewed in March.  In that it features episodes of popular kids shows, all sort of based on a common theme.  The sports theme was a stretch, and it was a pretty half-assed connection.  The animal collection is a little better in that each episode obviously does involve animals.  But then, doesn’t every single episode of Diego see that kid saving some baby animal of some kind?  And doesn’t every episode of the Wonder Pets see them saving some baby animal of some kind?  And doesn’t every episode of…well anyway.  You get the picture.

     So, this is a DVD cobbled together to see if people will purchase sample packs of TV episodes for infants based on their belief that all kids, always, like animals.  It could actually work.  Animal Friends! (the exclamation mark is another strong selling point) comes out September 15th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

“Do you see the yellow crystal?”

Year:  2009
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  92 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I’m pretty sick of Dora the Explorer by now.  I mean, I have to participate to enjoy her show, and after a while I get really annoyed because she can’t see the things that appear totally obvious to me, and by the time the episode ends I have spilled my beer and thrown the empty at the television.  But I took a flier on Dora Saves The Crystal Kingdom, because after a few beers and some boredom I thought that maybe there would be aliens, car chases and an aging Harrison Ford involved.

     I was wrong.  There is no Harrison Ford.  There are no nuclear explosions, no one is saved by a fridge and there are very few nazis.  Or communists.  Instead there’s a dragon, and a butterfly, and a magician kid, and a selfish and greedy king who can somehow fly.  You see, there is this crystal kingdom, where a series of crystals provide all the colour in the area.  But the greedy king decides that he wants all the crystals for himself, and so he steals them and hides them in other stories.  Like the dragon story.  And the butterfly story.  Which makes little sense to me.  If he’s greedy to the point of wanting all the colour in the kingdom to himself, why hide the crystals in other stories?  Why not actually keep them?

     Then I realized I was thinking way too much about Dora the Explorer.  And I watched to the end, made sure the king got what was coming to him (which was apparently…nothing…) and that the colour returned to the crystal kingdom.  Well done, Dora.  Dora Saves The Crystal Kingdom comes out on DVD September 15th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

“Look!  In the helicopter!  It’s Dora!”

Years:  2007, 2008, 2009
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Jake T. Austin
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  285 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The box set Diego’s Mega Missions comes out September 15th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It’s three discs – one from 2007, one from 2008, and one from 2009.  The first disc is Safari Rescue, where Diego “rescues” elephants, prairie dogs and hawks.  How, exactly, he “rescues” these creatures is not always 100 percent clear.  I suppose that if the animals are better off after meeting Diego, that counts as a rescue.  In the second DVD, Moonlight Rescue, young Diego deals with flightless birds, pumas and baby sea turtles.  It’s always babies.

     Then, the third DVD is Diego’s Arctic Rescue, which is available individually on DVD September 15th as well.  Click the link for a more in-depth review of that one.  I appreciate the earnestness of Diego, in both English and Spanish, and I would likely have found his sister Alicia quite hot when I was five.  But it’s too much.  Between Diego and the Wonder Pets, how many baby animals in the world need saving?  Good grief.