The Show:

Reality shows continue to dominate the airwaves, largely from the standpoint that they've managed to attract audiences and keep the costs down for the network. However, at some point audiences will likely start to tire of the same old shows season in/season out, or networks milking franchises for all they're worth and then some (does "Storage Wars" really need yet another spin-off?)

Eight seasons in, "Duck Dynasty" manages to still get the occasional chuckle, but the formula has started to noticeably wear thin. The show follows the Robertson family, who started a business over 20 years ago when Phil Robertson started making duck calls out of Louisiana cedar trees. Years later, the duck call business has since exploded, and turned the family into millionaires. I'm waiting for the episode where the family rings the bell at the NYSE with a legion of ducks waddling around the...Read the entire review

There's the old adage, "there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes." Now, having been a collector of DVDs since the beginning of the format, I think a strong case could be made for adding a third certainty to that iconic phrase: when a new movie comes out count on History to re-release an old program as a cash grab. Originally airing in 2002 and 2004 respectively, Modern Marvels has devoted at least two 40-odd minute programs to the "tech" of the James Bond series. With the release of this year's "Spectre," a film which may be Daniel Craig's last at-bat in the shoes of the iconic superspy, History saw fit, yet again to slap these two, very-dated specials on a DVD, vaguely titled "James Bond Gadgets." Obviously, given their decade-plus old origins, they will have very little to do with not just "Spectre" but the world of Daniel Craig's Bond. Does that make them relics of a simpler t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

When I saw the American Hercules feature produced by Major League Baseball video and released a few months ago, I really liked the change in storytelling approach that was given to Ruth by writers, historians and mythologists. And up until I opened up this multidisc set titled Baseball Legends, I had no idea that they reprised this approach with similar baseball icons. Needless to say this was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that.

For those unfamiliar with the way MLB video handles these subjects, they use narration by Martin Sheen, and with the help of mythologist Ken Cousineau or contemporary admirers such as Deadspin's former editor Will Leitch or authors familiar with the subject matter, the discussion that correlates a baseball hero to a mythical her...Read the entire review

The Movie:
There's almost nothing people like more than a ghost story, and if it's a true story that's all the better. In an effort to bring a whole mess of "true" haunting and supernatural stories together, the History Channel has put out Poltergeists: Real-Life Hauntings, which has six documentaries totally about five hours that deal with poltergeists, Voodoo, ghosts, and more.

All of these documentaries are History Channel productions, some longer format TV docs, and some just episodes of History Channel shows that happen to touch on the supernatural. Not all of them relate to poltergeists, despite the title, and the quality is mixed, but there is some actually interesting material here.

Poltergeists and Hauntings are both episodes of The Unexplained, and are probably the weakest of the segments included. They cover their subjects pretty well, talking abou...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Most any American growing up as a kid has heard of Babe Ruth, the early 20th century baseball player, but more importantly, they learned of Babe Ruth's legend before finding out some of his baseball exploits, though his baseball exploits were legendary in and of themselves. 714 home runs, a "called shot," the Murderer's Row lineup, what have you. And you have likely seen scores of historical retellings of Ruth's life and times of his 53 years on this mortal coil. American Hercules knows you have, and then tells a different story.

The filmmakers brought out a big gun in Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) to handle the narration and, rather than use many authors and writers from the sports world as interview subjects, they used non-traditional ones like author Jane Leavy, ...Read the entire review

There are some shows on The History Channel where an argument can be made how much historical content they deliver - with Pawn Stars, one can point to the fact that the show's "characters" at least provide a good deal of detail about the information regarding all of the various items that find their way into the store. Still, while the History Channel has veered away from history more and more recently, it's still faring better when it comes to educational content than The Learning Channel, where no learning is taking place.

With "Swamp People", we get a title card before the episodes that informs us that "The way of life depicted in this series goes back 300 years." The way of life in this case revolves around a group of people living in the swamp who hunt gators. Hunting in general kinda goes back a ways, doesn't it?

Surprisingly there's not been a cross-over episode with "Swamp Loggers...Read the entire review

A collection of previous collections. History, via Lionsgate and A&E Video, no doubt to ride some of Europe's World War I centennial celebration fever that has gripped vast swaths of the American public (uh...), has released History Presents: The Definitive WWI & WWII Collection, a two-volume, 20-disc gathering of several series, miniseries, and isolated series episodes that originally aired on the History cable channel. Included here are 2014's The World Wars, WWI: The First Modern War, and D-Day in HD, 2012's WWII from Space, 2009's WWII in HD, 2001's The Color of War, and 2009's Patton 360, as well as episodes from past History hits Modern Marvels, Dogfights, Man, Moment, Machine, and Battle 360. All of these titles have been previously released on disc (some on Blu-ray, which trump...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

There is likely no other series I've had a bigger love-hate relationship than "Ancient Aliens." What began as outright rage at History for duping myself and what I'd assume to be countless others with the original 90-minute "documentary" special to sheer gall of the network to grab random discs from existing season sets and repackage them in a "best-of" package, "Ancient Aliens," has sent my emotions on the gamut from anger, frustration, confusion and outright sheer joy. Now entering it's seventh season, History gathers the first six seasons into one concise, twenty three disc package, for reasons unknown (until I found out there was a seventh season currently airing, I thought the show had been cancelled), in the aptly titled, "Ancient Aliens: The Complete Seasons 1-6."

I've been fortunate enough to not receive a lot of hate mail as a reviewer for the nearly half deca...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I recently saw the 2014 World Series film and enjoyed it enough to the point that I wanted to revisit some of the San Francisco Giants playoff run. Thankfully, A&E, Lionsgate and Major League Baseball video helped sate the appetite of this neutral of the Giants and Kansas City Royals and pored over the World Series Collector's Set diligently.

Like other multidisc sets that have been devoted to the Fall Classic, each game has its own disc which includes selection of inning if you wish and shows off all the drama associated with the Series. An eighth disc, highlighting the Giants' dramatic win over the St. Louis Cardinals with a walkoff home run by Travis Ishikawa that helped put the Giants into their third World Series appearance in five years.

Game 1 went as expected with an easy Giants w...Read the entire review

The Movie:

After World Series wins in 2010 and 2012, one could find little qualm from friends or foes if they pegged the San Francisco Giants for another appearance in the Fall Classic. And coming into 2014, they added veteran pitcher Tim Hudson and outfielder Michael Morse to a squad that still had catcher Buster Posey, third baseman Pablo Sandoval and pitchers Tim Lincecum, Sergio Romo and Madison Bumgarner. Perhaps most importantly, they still had manager Bruce Bochy. Bochy was a former catcher, playing a decade in Major League Baseball and his size 8+ hat was so large it was rumored you could put a six pack with ice into his helmet. But as baseball fans have learned in recent years, it may house one ...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

I'll confess, I've most likely watched the entire run of the original "Saved by the Bell," including the series' origins as "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" at least two or three times in my lifetime. Whether it were on NBC or reruns on TBS, "Saved by the Bell" was a common TV viewing fixture from my pre-teen years through high school. To say I was shocked by the recently viewing some strange meta episode on DVD wherein the wacky hijinks spread from the halls of Bayside High to the backlots of the studio where the show was filmed and the teenage melodrama wasn't just focused on Zack, AC Slater, Kelly, Lisa, Jessie, and Screech, but their real-life acting counterparts. My mind is still reeling from revelations including but not limited to: Zack and Lisa in a forbidden (by the network) romance and Screech falling down a road of vice thanks to one of Bayside's nameless background stu...Read the entire review

"A & E" has become something of a reality powerhouse in recent years. Despite arguments about the quality of programming heading South (which I'm not going to argue with, especially given how cable networks often seem as if their latest idea is to create carbon copies of prior ones - a new NatGeo show is called "Pond Stars" - apparently not enough creativity to call the show something that doesn't link it to the completely different History Channel show), cable channels continue to create hits like "Storage Wars" and "Duck Dynasty", which remain cheap to make and bring in the audiences that cable channels are looking for.

"Duck Dynasty" is the latest hit for A & E, and it's a rather amusing little series. The show follows the Robertson family, who started a business over 20 years ago when Phil Robertson started making duck calls out of Louisiana cedar trees. Years later, the duck call bu...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I understand that a lot of folks love Major League Baseball's New York Yankees and as a decidedly anti-Yankee fan I occasionally look forward to this virtual self-flagellation. And with New York Yankees Postseason Heroics, under a larger banner of Baseball's Greatest Games, I was mildly intrigued at the material selections inside. But gorram, I did not expect a bait and switch.

To put it more exact, this year Derek Jeter retired from baseball after playing with the Yankees for almost twenty years. Perhaps you heard about it. And in this set, this is basically four games (one to each disc) where Jeter was a star in each occasion. Really MLB Video and A&E? Just call this thing "Jeter's Postseason Achievements" and be a LITTLE more honest in your production. At least people can choose to skip this multi-disc set of an incredibly average shortstop surrounded ...Read the entire review

The Show:

Major League Baseball during the 1980s saw a variety of moments; it saw records broken, it saw an unsettled work environment for its players, it saw issues with its free agency and some substance abuse, but the highs and lows just in this decade alone were fascinating to experience at the time when I was a fan. Now that there is an MLB Network, seeing some of these events play out in a series called "Baseball's Seasons" was fascinating to a degree.

Narrated by Curt Chaplin, the folks at MLB Video, A&E and Lionsgate have compiled the episodes of "Seasons" in a straightforward format, including the hour-long episodes that chronicle the 1980-1989 seasons. With a mix of vintage footage and interviews from those figures who were part of the history, each segment is a pleasant look at the season it is focused on, going from Spring Training until the last out of the World Seri...Read the entire review

Content:
From the same network focusing on a reality show about the fan favorite family of rednecks, comes yet another reality show about a family from Boston, backed by the star power of the Wahlberg name. Focusing on the everyday problems of one of the non-famous Wahlberg brothers, Paul, this series takes an in depth look at his new restaurant chain, Wahlburgers, which is backed by the famous brothers, Donnie and Mark, along with their mother, Alma, the matriarch of the family.

First thing I want to get out of the way is Mark and Donnie. If you're watching this strictly to see Donnie or Mark (or both), you're probably going to be disappointed, as they're not in it much. In the first half of the season, Mark mainly appears at the tail end of each episode, his presence does get a bit bigger as the season goes on, but I'd say he never gets more than 5 minutes of screen time in an ep...Read the entire review

The Show:

Shows about survival in difficult conditions have been increasing quite a bit lately. The genre has always been a compelling one, given the tension and drama inherent in watching people trying to sustain themselves in difficult conditions as well as the educational aspects. Many outdoorsfolk have talked about being saved by tricks or tips that they learned while watching shows like "Survivorman" and "Man Vs. Wild".

The latest round of shows in the genre include Discovery's highly tense "Naked and Afraid" (as for that show, 21 days in the middle of nowhere with next-to-nothing, no clothes and with someone you never met - no way to earn additional items through challenges and no grand prize at the end just the potential of some mysterious entity raising or lowering your survival score), the return of "Survivorman" (which remains such a haunting, beautiful series) and "Moun...Read the entire review

Somehow this is the third time I've voluntarily listened to this story. The first time was when I read the V.C. Andrews novel. It's a classic I guess, or at the very least it intrigues people, so I'm not sorry for reading it even though it wasn't wonderful. The second time was when I watched the 1987 movie version. It wasn't good, but what else can you expect from a PG-13 film starring Kristy Swanson? And now, to complete the trifecta, I've watched the 2014 reboot. It originally aired on Lifetime in January, and is as good as you would imagine a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime would be. That is to say, it's no good at all, and I...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Lifetime, you had me at "Gina Gershon as Donatella Versace."

Prior to checking out this fluffy 2013 made-for-television biopic, I vaguely knew of Ms. Versace as the brusque, scary looking leather-skinned woman who took over the Versace fashion brand after the shooting death of her designer brother, Gianni. According to House of Versace, the pressure for Donatella to continue the Versace brand's success caused her to slip into drug addiction, alienating her family and longtime colleagues.

In other words, this is exactly what you'd expect from a Lifetime movie based on a real-life famous personality. The dialogue is as hokey as ever, the plot holds zero surprises, yet astonishingly Gina Gershon actually tones it down - managing to make Don...Read the entire review

There are some shows on The History Channel where an argument can be made how much historical content they deliver - with Pawn Stars, one can point to the fact that the show's "characters" at least provide a good deal of detail about the information regarding all of the various items that find their way into the store. Still, I suppose at least one can say that there's more history on the History Channel than there is learning on the Learning Channel (TLC), right?

With "Swamp People", we get a title card before the episodes that informs us that "The way of life depicted in this series goes back 300 years." The way of life in this case revolves around a group of people living in the swamp who hunt gators. Doesn't hunting in general go back quite a ways?

Surprisingly there's not been a cross-over episode with "Swamp Loggers", but "Swamp People" did - not surprisingly, given what reality sho...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Wrigley Field in Chicago has become a mecca of sorts for any broad-based fan of American sports. If you go to Chicago for any reason and have any sort of spare time during it, you will want to go by 1060 West Addison in Chicago to see the relic that is Wrigley. To commemorate the centennial anniversary of the groundbreaking of the stadium, a feature-length look at the stadium titled 100 Years of Wrigley Field was produced to honor it. By mixing of footage of various notable events through Wrigley's life with interviewing some attached to the building currently we see the highs, lows, past and future of the park.

The older video and stills are fun to see, as we learn that Cubs owner William Wrigley (he of the chewing gum empire) bought the team and built the stadium, and the additions to and around the stadium through the years such as the ivy on the walls. The team'...Read the entire review

"Pawn Stars" certainly has become a huge hit for the History Channel, not only collecting solid ratings for the network, but spawning a series of shows both entertaining ("Counting Cars", "American Restoration") and amusing but uninspired ("Cajun Pawn Stars"). History isn't done yet trying to squeeze more juice out of "Pawn", staring a UK version at the end of 2013.

"Pawn" follows the Harrison family - Richard ("Old Man") Harrison, Rick Harrison, Corey Harrison. They're joined by Corey's childhood friend, Chumlee, and other cast, er - employees. The series follows the employees as they encounter customers who bring in rare and exotic (and sometimes weird) items to sell. When the employees run into difficulty regarding knowledge of an item, they call on a series of experts - in the case of cars, they call on Danny Koker, of the Vegas auto restoration shop, "Count's Kustoms".

The series is ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The 1984 Detroit Tigers season seemed to be preordained from greatness from the jump. They won their first nine games and a simply incredible 35 of their first 40 and never looked back. Managed by Sparky Anderson, no stranger to success of formidable teams with the Cincinnati Reds, the Tigers had won 92 games the previous year, finishing a half dozen games behind the eventual World Series Champion Baltimore Orioles. But the Tigers made a couple of moves in the offseason which helped put them over the top.

The first was the acquisition of Designated Hitter Darrell Evans to the lineup. Evans was coming from the San Francisco Giants where he hit more than 30 home runs and was added to a lineup which included perennial All-Stars Lance Parrish at catcher and shortstop Alan Trammell next to second baseman Lou Whitaker. While Evans struggled at times, hitting .232 with 16 homers,...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

It seems as the years past the output from "History" seems to get worse and worse. I won't, yet again, go into my general disdain for their current programming (*cough*"Ancient Aliens"*cough*), nor will I espouse on my nostalgia for the days of their more "dry" educationally themed offerings. Instead, I'm going to keep this review incredibly brief, for one reason: deceptive marketing. I recently had issue with their "best-of" releases of "Ancient Aliens" and "The Universe" being nothing more than random discs from various seasons being slapped with new cover art; it was a questionable, but at least buyers knew what series they were getting and that the episodes would be nothing new. "History's" latest release, "Greek Gods, Heroes and Monsters" takes this production choice to a whole new low, promising consumers "Eight tales of Hercules, Zeus, Hades, Medusa, Odysseys and mor...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In the year 2000 (not the Conan song), the New York Yankees had plenty of motivation and celebration during the season. It was the 100th year of the Yankees existence (if their time in Baltimore was included), but the team was also defending their World Series titles from 1998 & 1999 and hoping for the three-peat. The team's effort during the regular season was spurred on offensively by their captain Derek Jeter, who led the team with a .339 batting average. Outfielder Bernie Williams had a .307 average with 30 home runs and 121 runs batted in, and catcher Jorge Posada chipped in 28 homers of his own. Pitching wise, Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera were still…Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera, and combined with Andy Pettite's 19 wins and a late season trade for Denny Neagle, the starting pitching was formidable.

While the team performed well, taking over first place o...Read the entire review

Read a book instead. History and Lionsgate have released Bonnie & Clyde: The Real Story, a pairing of two "movies" (that's what they call them on the DVD cover...) that are actually crappy old episodes from A&E and The History Channel documentary shows: 1996's Love and Death: The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, from A&E's Biography series, and 2005's Hunting Bonnie and Clyde from History's Man, Moment, Machine series. No doubt dragged out to capitalize on 2013's biggest non-event (at least in terms of quality) in television--A&E Network's much ballyhooed miniseries, Bonnie & Clyde, with Emile Hirsch and Holiday Grainger--Bonnie & Clyde: The Real Story's episodes are alternately dull and repetitious, making for bad history. No extras for these fullscreen transfers.

I'm not going to was...Read the entire review

Content:
A mere two years after a similar "ultimate" collection set was released. Robotech is once again being put on shelves by A&E. For fans of the show, the main question is "does this set warrant an upgrade from the previous set?" For those who have no knowledge of the show going into it (like myself), now is the perfect time to jump into this fantastic franchise.

For those who are not familiar with Robotech, it's a pretty big deal, it was one of the revolutionaries for Japanese Animation in the United States. Sure, Japanese Anime in the West wasn't a grand slam hit until Dragon Ball Z or Pokemon came around in the 90's, but series' like Robotech certainly paved the way for those to even happen in the first place.

Robotech has a little bit of everything for any fan of anime. The series consists of epic mecha fights, sci-fi elements, gre...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Few names in literature are more widely known than Frankenstein. Powered by the success of Mary Shelley's books, hundreds of plays, and dozens of film adaptations, there are few people who couldn't give you at least a passing description of the basic story of Frankenstein and his terrible creation. For those who want to know more this fictional personage, The History Channel has helpfully provided this disc, Frankenstein: The Real Story.

Included on the disc are actually three features: In Search of the Real Frankenstein at forty five minutes, Frankenstein at just under forty four minutes, and It's Alive! The True Story of Frankenstein at ninety six minutes.

The first feature, In Search of the Real Frankenstein spends the most time talking about what true events might have inspired Shelley when she was writing the book. Mostly, these were el...Read the entire review

The Movie:

On the merits of baseball vs. football Thomas Boswell once wrote, "Baseball means that spring is here. Football means that winter is coming." By no means am I siding on one side or the other on that decades-long discussion, in fact I have no rooting interest in the race. But it feels like minus-13 degrees outside at the time of my writing this and a little spring would be nice. Also, in the interest of full disclosure I will mention that I recreated hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series when I was a kid, like many other kids did. That some baseball players were actually able to replicate this in a real-world setting on the sport's biggest stages is a source of some envy.

Which brings us to the 25 Greatest Postseason Home Runs, an hour-long feature presumably produced by Lionsgate for the Major League Baseball television network and A&...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

It seems these days History or its sibling network, H2 can't turn around without getting blasted for running far less programming reminiscent of the "good old days" of the networks origins, instead filling modern timeslots with reality schlock such as "Pawn Stars," pseudoscientific horse hockey like "Ancient Aliens," or one of many sensationalized special events intended to enlighten the lowest common denominator among viewers through flashy graphics, repetitive talking points, all while being low on actual mental sustenance. Originally debuting in 2007, "The Universe" seemed to be a quiet exception to this growing trend, offering viewers CGI-enhanced but generally substantial educational programming in a prime time setting. Seven seasons in, a question begs answering, does it hold up? And I say, no it does not hold up. (Avid History viewers will get the reference there). ...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

I'm not going to lie, I was as shocked writing it, as many of you may be when reading the following sentence. "The Best of Ancient Aliens" is a fantastic teaching tool. I'll expand more on that in a moment. First things first, History was obviously capitalizing on the extreme popularity of its "Ancient Aliens" series, now in its sixth season, when it decided to release a two-disc best-of DVD release. Surely that means all your favorite episodes focusing on the alien connections between modern civilization, Hitler, DaVinci, the Founding Fathers, the dinosaurs and Bigfoot are included, right? Well, you do get your standard ancient civilization connections and even some alien/Hitler connections, but that's only because "The Best of Ancient Aliens" chooses to merely reliable two random discs from the original season two and three releases, in move that may be the laziest mos...Read the entire review

"Pawn Stars" certainly has become a huge hit for the History Channel, not only collecting solid ratings for the network, but spawning a series of shows both entertaining ("Counting Cars", "American Restoration") and amusing but uninspired ("Cajun Pawn Stars"). History isn't done yet trying to squeeze more juice out of "Pawn", staring a UK version at the end of 2013.

"Pawn" follows the Harrison family - Richard ("Old Man") Harrison, Rick Harrison, Corey Harrison. They're joined by Corey's childhood friend, Chumlee, and other cast, er - employees. The series follows the employees as they encounter customers who bring in rare and exotic (and sometimes weird) items to sell. When the employees run into difficulty regarding knowledge of an item, they call on a series of experts - in the case of cars, they call on Danny Koker, of the Vegas auto restoration shop, "Count's Kustoms".

The series is ...Read the entire review