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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Year: 1961, 1962
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Eric Fleming, Sheb Wooley, John Ireland, Paul Brinegar
Producer:  Ben Brady
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

Volume Two of the Fourth season of Rawhide comes to DVD November 8th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It still stars Clint Eastwood, which means it’s still worth watching.  It’s got guest stars like James Coburn, Cesar Romero and Mercedes McCambridge.  And it’s still all about this never-ending cattle drive led by Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates.

You’d think, after four seasons, the cows would have reached their destination.  But then, a lot of crazy stuff could happen on these old cattle drives.  (I know because I saw John Wayne in one of the greatest westerns of all time, Red River.)  In that movie, it took about an hour and a half of screen time to get the beef (or “beeves”, as they call them) from one state to another.  Rawhide could maybe learn something from that kind of progress.  Then again, there is always something that comes up to delay the march.

In Season Four Volume Two, the delays are as varied as ever.  A bunch of hot women destined to be mail-order brides to (presumably) upstanding ranchers are kidnapped by some unscrupulous outlaws who intend to make the women into brides for a bunch of unscrupulous outlaws.  The women are hot, and so need rescuing by Clint Eastwood.  Then some rancher tries to take away (adopt) the trail boss’s children.  Gil Favor (and his two girls) are gonna have none of that.  That one’s creepy, because it initially seems like the rancher is interested in Gil’s super-hot sister-in-law.  But it turns out he’s really after the children.  Then the drive has to pause so they can avert bloodshed between a fort full of soldiers and a Pawnee tribe desperate for freedom.  Not only is Clint Eastwood not around at all for that one, but they also lose one of their key trail hands to military service when it’s all over.  No wonder the cattle drive never gets anywhere on time!

I still like Rawhide, one of the classic TV series that I can put on any time and enjoy.  But the reason to pick up Season Four Volume Two remains Clint Eastwood, who was just starting his film career at this time, with the spaghetti westerns that made him a superstar.  Instead of just another cast member of a better-than-average western TV show in the 60s.  One with the best theme song of all time.  Oh yeah – there’s another reason to pick this up – keep them doggies rollin’….

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck, Maribeth Monroe, Jillian Bell, Edward Barbanell, and a guest appearance by Clint Howard 
Creators:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Penis pictures have been in the news a lot lately.  Brett Favre, Antony Weiner, Justin Timberlake.  And then there are the naked self-portraits from Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities who have had their phones hacked.  (By the way – did you see that the guy who hacked into their phones could face 121 years in prison?  That’s the United States I guess…tough on computer crime and weed.  Speaking of weed…well, stay tuned.)

     We’ve talked about that a lot in the last few weeks – why would you HAVE a naked picture of yourself on your own phone in the first place?  And what woman in the world would come to your house and hop into bed with you because you sent her a picture of your junk?

     The very first scene of the first episode of the first season of Workaholics answered this question for me right away in about eighty seconds.  It’s stoners who get tricked by their friends into doing it.  See, Anders is dating a girl, and his friends trick him into thinking she’s sent him a picture of her nipple.  (Which is of course impossible.  If Anders knew he was on TV, he would know that they could never show a picture of a nipple of a girl, and therefore it MUST be a man’s nipple on his phone.) 

     And then they convince him that the obvious next step is to send HER a picture of his penis.  Which of course then gets sent to everyone he knows.  And I was hooked.  Season One of Workaholics comes out October 11^th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s hilarious.  One of the funniest shows on television.

     The basic premise: Three stoners (Blake, Adam and Anders) work in a telemarketing office, with a vicious but hot boss (Maribeth Monroe) and a bunch of VERY funny co-workers (big ups to Jillian Bell, who is amazing!).  Then they come home and take a whole lot of drugs.  Each show has a crazier premise than the last, going from a workplace drug test to a strike over the holiday of half-Christmas, to a camping weekend inside the office with burglars breaking in. 

     But they all work, there are no weak scenes in the show at all, and I have a hard time remembering the last show that made me laugh as much as Workaholics.  And maybe the best thing about it – although an awful lot of it is about drugs and drinking and all that bad stuff – is that it isn’t the typical stoner comedy where just getting high is assumed to be funny enough.  Instead this is a truly funny comedy where the protagonists just happen to be on drugs most of the time.  Pick this one up, please!

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 have figured out the morality that exists in Gunsmoke.  It took me a while to get a handle on it – five seasons, in point of fact.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases Season Five Volume One on DVD October 11^th, and it’s full of morality plays, all contained neatly in one episode at a time.  James Arness, as always, is the arbiter of that morality, never questioning a decision and apparently never making a wrong one.

     Here’s how it works (I think).  If you’re greedy, you die.  That is, if you murder for money or personal gain.  If you murder for a passionate reason, on the other hand, like the love of a woman, you get arrested and go to jail for a (presumably) long time.  If you rustle cattle, you die.  If, on the other hand, you steal horses, you usually just get beaten up and go to jail. 

     If you’re a woman, (see video above) you are protected at all times no matter how unpleasant you are.  If, on the other hand, you are a murderous woman, you are treated gently on your way to jail.  That applies even to the ugly serial killer sniper woman who murders her husband and tries to murder another man just so people might think men are fighting over her.  Marshall Matt Dillon handles her gently, because he knows she’s just a weak-hearted woman who doesn’t know any better.

     Season Five Volume Two is on the way before Christmas, and I’m sure it will feature more of the same.  Cattle rustlers will be shot, horse thieves will be caught, and more justice will come from the marshal’s pistol than from the hangman’s rope.  The jail in Dodge City will remain empty.  There’s never anyone in the jail, you’ll notice – they’re either shot and dead, or they didn’t do anything bad enough to warrant being locked up.  That’s the morality of Gunsmoke.

Year:  1961
Genre:  TV series, Western
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker
Creator:  David Dortort
Director of note:  Robert Altman
Run time:  13 hours, 12 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I don’t know how much there is to say about Bonanza, with this fourth DVD being released October 11th by Paramount Home Entertainment.  Two volumes of season one, two of season two…and it’s Bonanza!  This one opens with Hoss and Joe robbing a bank.  But don’t worry – this is the Cartwrights, and they of course robbed the bank for the best of reasons, and won’t end up in prison or shot or anything. 

     So…a reason to get this DVD, other than the fact that it’s Bonanza and you like old classic TV.  Or you’re 80 years old and it brings back warm fuzzy memories of childhood…Sometimes, when you watch a really old TV show on DVD, you get a chance to pick up some really cool things (if you’re a movie buff).  For example, a very young Kurt Russell appears in an episode during the last volume of The Fugitive.  The third season of Rawhide had an episode where acting legends Peter Lorre and Clint Eastwood shared the screen for the first time ever.

     But in Season Two, Volume Two of Bonanza, there is a new twist for the film buffs out there.  Sure, there are some neat guest stars here and there, like Harry Dean Stanton and George Kennedy.  But the biggest star on the DVD never appears on the screen.  It’s legendary director Robert Altman, who directs the very first episode, “Bank Run”. 

     Robert Altman, who had no film credits to his name yet in 1960.  Robert Altman, who went on to direct some of the greatest movies ever made, like MASH, Nashville, The Long Goodbye, Gosford Park.  The same Robert Altman who has a lifetime achievement Oscar.  And he’s directing an episode of Bonanza!  Actually, he directed a couple more on this DVD as well.  I think three in total.

     When I think about it, it’s not THAT cool or unusual.  Every great director had to start somewhere.  I’m just trying to give you a reason to pick it up.  Otherwise, all I’ve got is hey – it’s Bonanza!  Hoss and Ben and Little Joe and Adam Cartwright and the Ponderosa.  Not that those aren’t good reasons to get Season Two Volume Two.  I love Bonanza.  But dude, Robert Altman!

Year:  2011
Genre:  Documentary, TV series, History 
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Voices:  Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Waterston, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt, Adam Arkin, Patricia Clarkson, John Ligthgow, Blythe Danner, Paul Giamatti, Josh Lucas, Amy Madigan
Director:  Ken Burns
Run time:  6 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     If there is one DVD I can convince you to buy on October 4th, I fervently hope that it’s Prohibition, the Ken Burns PBS documentary that comes out today.  I truly, truly hope you’ll buy it, and watch it, and then watch it again.  Or, at least, watch it on PBS, as it’s running right now.  Tonight.  But you’ve already missed the first hour.

     The main reason I want you to watch Ken Burns’ Prohibition is, of course, that it is amazing.  Ken Burns always does amazing work, and this tale of politics, drunkenness, temperance and womens rights is as fascinating as anything he’s ever done.  The gangsters are interesting, and of course a lot of time is devoted to Al Capone and his Chicago mob, but there were so many other interesting bootleggers. 

     The lawyers who quit practising law to build vast empires through the sale of illegal booze.  The politicians who voted to outlaw alcohol while still indulging their own vices behind closed doors.  The incredibly powerful lobby groups, many of them led by women, and the connection between the right of women to vote and prohibition itself. 

     Oh, of course there’s more.  There’s a ton more, because it’s Ken Burns and he doesn’t do anything by half measures.  But in this case, Prohibition is (relatively) short!  Just three discs, rather than the imposing monster sets that make up his Baseball, Jazz and Civil War documentaries.  And that’s another reason I hope I can convince you to pick up Prohibition today.  It’s a gateway documentary. 

     Sure, you can sit down for six hours and watch something this awesome.  But it might be so amazing, and so fascinating, that you are THEN willing to sit down and watch TEN hours about the civil war.  Or TWENTY hours about baseball or jazz music.  And if you do THAT, then my job is done.  And I am happy.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases Prohibition on DVD today.  Please go buy it.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Creator:  Mike Judge
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I laughed harder than I have in a long time while watching the new Beavis and Butthead DVD, out October 4^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Mike Judge’s Most Wanted is a collection of classic Beavis and Butthead cartoons, to help promote the return of the show to MTV at the end of October.

     Now, when I say I laughed harder than I have in a long time, I don’t mean while watching the cartoons.  I find very little funny about the show itself, and the episodes about some chicks who take the idiots’ money at a movie theatre, and the one where they draw some terribly violent cartoons in film class, and so on and so forth, are boring to me. 

     I always liked Beavis and Butthead, but only when they commented on music videos.  And, when they started, MTV showed music videos.  Now, MTV is a reality show network with precious little musical content – which is actually perfect for Beavis and Butthead.  The belly laughs I got came from the special features, which offered a sneak preview of the upcoming show. 

     And watching them comment on Jersey Shore was one of the funniest things I have EVER seen. I killed myself laughing.  That’s why I put that bit up at the top of the review here on the video.  If you bust a gut laughing when Butthead says “that’s how she answers the phone”, you’re just like me.  Maybe you have to know a bit about Jersey Shore first.  Maybe not.  All I know is that this is the best laugh I’ve had in a while.

     The old stuff on this DVD doesn’t really appeal to me.  I just can’t get into frog baseball or two morons destroying a house trying to kill a fly.  But that one-minute preview of the upcoming season was absolutely perfect, and I will be looking forward to THAT in a big way.