The Film:

The Movie:

Most sports documentaries are produced with the fans of the sport in mind. However, there are those exceptions that manage to tell universally relatable stories that transcend the confines of the sport. Examples like Senna, Tyson, and of course Hoop Dreams come to mind. The technical details of the sports depicted take a back seat in these films in order to establish personal and powerful stories of inspiration, drive, tragedy, and redemption. A rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags story that happens to be centered on skateboarding, All This Mayhem is bound to attract hardcore fans of skateboarding, but should be seen by anyone looking for an equally inspiring and heartbreaking story.

The Movies:

With the list of stand-up comedians through the years that are still around, one almost forgets that there are some who continue to trudge along and perform, or do movies or what have you. We have been losing some of them like David Brenner, but guys like Richard Lewis still soldier on, and this two-disc set of lost and/or forgotten works of Lewis, dubbed Bundle of Nerves, is a testament to this.

With an introduction from the man himself, we see some of the stuff he helped cut his teeth on through the years, things that may be seen for the first time in years, either on DVD or at all. Things start with "Diary of a Young Comic," a 1979 film that aired during an off-week of Saturday Night Live. Lewis plays Billy, a guy who goes from New York to Los Angeles in order to fulfill his dream of being a comic but realizes that things are tougher than even he anticipa...Read the entire review

Portlandia is like a safe haven for sketchcomedythat comes gift-wrapped in a suave cool white bow tie. It's aconfident,topical, and entertaining program that knows it's one of the bestseries aroundat this time. (After all, it's not like Portlandia has a lot ofcomediccompetition to deal with these days). The series was created by andcontinuesto be written by stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, along withJonathanKrisel (who is the series director for each episode).

Of note is that Portlandia is fromexecutive producerLorne Michaels (Saturday Night Live), and that the seriesactually managesto out-funny the once great SNL (which has creatively struggledover thepast several seasons). K...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Still keeping Portland weird

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Sketch comedy
Likes: Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein
Dislikes: Hipsters
Hates: That I've never been to Portland (or many other places)

The Story So Far...
Fred Armisen didn't constrain his sketch-comedy output to SNL, and the result was the IFC series Portlandia, a collaboration with Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Four seasons have aired on IFC, and the three previous seasons have been released on DVD and Blu-ray. DVDTalk has reviews of two of the three releases.

The ShowRead the entire review

Nick Cassavetes is better known as a director of crappy movies. He's appeared in his fair share of films and television shows: Mask, Face/Off, The Astronaut's Wife, Matlock, L.A. Law, Quantum Leap. And I guess you could call him a 90s guy; that's when he did his best work and he really hasn't done much since. But it's in the 2000s that he made his mark, albeit in a negative way. Some of the movies in his directorial repertoire are as follows: John Q, The Notebook, Alpha Dog, and My Sister's Keeper. At least three of the four are horrible, and his newest project (The Other Woman) shouldn't be much better. So...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

Full disclosure, not only am I native lifelong resident of Portland, I also know, personally, at least one person who has appeared on "Portlandia." That aside, I didn't until recently, become a fan of the show, having major issues with a debut season sketch, "Coffee Land" that I still find crossing the line of mild racism. It was last season's epic "Brunch Village" episode that inspired me to go back and give what I missed a chance, resulting in a discovery of some very solid parody as well as a share of segments that fall flat. The third season of "Portlandia" starts with a Christmas special that is a fairly solid encapsulation of what one could expect from the upcoming season, but it's the second and third episode, "Take Back MTV" and "Missionaries" that highlight the series' captivating sense of humor and will...Read the entire review

The Show:

Having been to Portland three years ago for an albeit brief trip, it was a place I feel in serious like with, and when the opportunity presented itself to go again last year, I encouraged my wife to come with me, which she did and thus, another person developing a crush on the Cascadian bridge town (Note: Last three words may not be entirely accurate). Nevertheless, Portlandia aired before the second trip my wife went on, and her response after coming back was more or less that the show seems so click all the more for her now after spending some time there.

The show, now in its third season, stars recent Saturday Night Live alumnus Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney/Wild Flag singer and guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Together with Jonatha...Read the entire review

Another rare glimpse into early live television's ghostly past. Video Artists International (who specialize in this type of fare) has released Babes in Toyland, a single disc offering that features black & white kinescopes of two live TV stagings of Victor Herbert's beloved operetta, originally aired on NBC in 1954 and 1955. Produced and directed by Max Liebman, and starring Dave Garroway, Dennis Day, Wally Cox, Jack E. Leonard, Karin Wolfe, Ellen Barrie, the Baird Marionettes, Bambi Linn, Rod Alexander, and Jo Sullivan ('54) and Barbara Cook ('55) as ingénue Jane Piper, these two holiday-themed "spectaculars," as they were known then on NBC, are certainly invaluable historical records for anyone interested in that particularly fascinating period. They're also quite charming little entertainments for the small fry this holiday season (that would be six months late or early, depending ...Read the entire review

In 2009, UK author Graham Jones wrote Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops?. Jones drew on his experience working in the industry as a label representative, recounting his experiences going from shop to shop trying to get them to pick up stock of the latest albums and witnessing the decline first-hand. By 2011, however, the outlook for some mom-and-pop record stores -- the ones that were left, anyway -- was starting to improve. The invention of Record Store Day and recognition by the industry that some people still buy physical albums have helped to lift stores out of the doldrums. In early 2012, Jones and director Pip Piper shot interviews with record store owners and vendors around the UK, turning the book into a 60-minute documentary with the more optimistic subtitle The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Independent Record Shop.

I'm not much of a record collector myse...Read the entire review

The TV Special:

With Bloomer Girl, the folks at Video Artists International (VAI) unearth another interesting, obscure artifact from the early days of live TV. Originally aired as an episode of Producer's Showcase on May 28, 1956, Bloomer Girl re-mounts one of the stirring, message-heavy musicals that came about as a result of Oklahoma's precedent-setting success from a decade earlier. The stage musical enjoyed a good-sized run in 1944-46, so the live TV version would have made sense. What the producers at the time didn't realize is that Bloomer Girl (unlike Oklahoma) would never have another revival on Broadway again. Aside from the original cast recording album, this performance - preserved on this DVD as a black and white kinescope - remains the only visual record of this one-time stage hit.

Based on the evidence on this DVD, the entertaining yet ...Read the entire review

The TV Special:

The lavish live TV mounting of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Yeomen of the Guard stands as a good example of what the so-called "Golden Age of Television" was all about. This April 10, 1957 presentation of Hallmark Hall of Fame has a terrific cast, fluid direction and all the earmarks of a classy production. Audiences of the day were probably more inclined to tune in to wrestling or Father Knows Best, but I'd like to imagine that those who did choose to watch found themselves thoroughly entertained by this candy-colored treat. The DVD editon from Video Artists International (VAI) uses a black and white kinescope of the program, which mutes some of the visual splendor but none of the frothy music score or delightful performances.

Set in Shakespearean England, The Yeomen of the Guard's story mainly concerns Colonel Fairfax (Bill Hayes), ...Read the entire review

THE SPECIAL:

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short is funny and smart--borderline brilliant, even--and no one is more surprised than this viewer. For a good couple of decades, Quinn seemed a lesser talent who'd peaked with MTV's Remote Control; his stint as anchor of SNL's "Weekend Update" was painfully laugh-free, and his Comedy Central series Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was an awkward and ugly attempt to replicate Politically Incorrect. But then came the Jerry Seinfeld documentary Comedian, with Quinn appearing both in the film and on Seinfeld's DVD audio commentary track, and he did something he hadn't done in years: he made me laugh. Working with Seinfeld, he was sharper and funnier; he brought his A-game. Now comes this HBO recording of his Broadway show--directed by Seinfeld. He appears to have found his ideal collaborator.

Developed by the...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Reporting from the Funny Northwest

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Sketch comedy
Likes: Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein
Dislikes: Hipsters
Hates: That I've never been to Portland (or many other places)

The Show
Somehow, on a staff where approximately 98% of the writers either live in, have lived in or have at least visited the City of Roses, Mr. Long Island Living got the opportunity to review the first season of Portlandia, a comedic paen to PDX from SNL's Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Fortunately, an intimate knowledge of Portland's idiosyncrasies is not required to enjoy the show (though one gets the feeling from watching that it wouldn't hurt ...Read the entire review

Alas, no.

I couldn't resist when this DVD turned up in our screener pool. I mean, Trek Stars Go West? And just look at that DVD cover art - ingenious! It's a wonderfully amusing, appealing concept, and given the obsessive-collector nature of many Star Trek fans, this would seem the sort of thing that might very well sell at fan conventions for years and years - and with no need to licensing anything from Paramount Pictures to boot.

The two-disc set is a hodgepodge of public domain material each featuring one regular cast member from the original Star Trek (1966-69). Most of this material consists of episodic TV Westerns from the late-1950s and early '60s, though one entire feature film is included, the mind-bogglingly awful White Comanche (also known as Rio Hondo, 1968), starring William Shatner in a dual role.

Most of this has been available from public dom...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Leonard Cohen's Lonesome Heroes is an academically minded documentary that seeks to root out the main inspirations the famed troubadour brought together to make his signature style. A poetic lyricist known for his gravelly delivery and often dour subject matter, Cohen is an incomparable talent, singular in his point of view, a man whose art is his struggle to understand the modern human condition. Lonesome Heroes gathers a group of scholars, critics, and admirers--among them singer Judy Collins and Cohen's mentor in Zen Buddhism, a monk named Kigen--to try to deconstruct all of that and understand Cohen's message by uncovering what fuels it.

The movie is broken down into specific topics, with a heavy focus given to Cohen's formative ye...Read the entire review

THE SHOW:

The concept behind Elvis Costello's Spectacle series is so simple, I can't believe no one has thought of it before, and so smart, you almost have to marvel that anyone is putting it on TV. The Sundance Channel series consists of fifty-minute programs with Costello and special guests sitting around and discussing music interrupted by marvelous performances with Elvis' band, the Imposters, collaborating with those guests on tunes. So, right from the get-go, you get Elvis opening with the Elton John number "Border Song," then discussing Leon Russell with Elton, followed by Elton playing a Leon Russell song in Russell's style.

See? Absolutely obvious, and absolutely brilliant. I've oft advanced the theory that Elvis Costello is to music what Martin Sco...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

I make no secret of my love of the Who and their album Quadrophenia. This site alone has multiple testaments to such, with my reviews of various live shows and of the outstanding documentary Amazing Journey. The latter looms large whenever looking at something like the unauthorized The Who, the Mods, and the Quadrophenia Connection. What can you show me that I haven't seen before?

Very little, as it turns out. One would hope that the focus of a documentary like The Who, the Mods, and ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Beatles: Composing Outside the Beatles: Lennon and McCartney 1967-1972 is that rarest of independently made rockumentaries: It's actually very good. Smart, incisive and enthusiastic, the documentary is invaluable viewing for diehard Beatles buffs -- and informative for the casual fan.

Clocking in at 137 minutes, Composing Outside the Beatles drills deep into the solo work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the seven years that followed release of the Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That album, as the film notes, signaled the beginning of the end of the Fab Four. McCartney and Lennon, the Beatles' principal songwriters, were moving quickly in different directions, both artistically and personally. By the time of 1968's The White Album, the Beatles were clearly becoming a band in name only. McCartney remained...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

It's a great time to be a Beatles fan, that's for sure. Followers of the Fab Four have all sorts of ways to spend their hard-earned coin this month: there's the all-Beatles version of Rock Band, the long-awaited CD remasters of the entire discography (in both stereo and mono), and... um... well then there's The Beatles: Rare and Unseen, a new "unauthorized" documentary from the folks at (I'm not making this name up) Weinerworld Limited, an outfit specializing in these grade-Z music discs (their catalogue includes the previous Beatle cheapies Magical Mystery Tour Memories and The Beatles: Destination Hamburg, as well as all those horrible Read the entire review

The Product:
From her teenage years dancing in nightclubs (with her mother as chaperone) to the devastating diagnosis of MS in the mid-'80s, Lola Falana was, and remains, a superstar. She was a Broadway regular, a nightclub personality, the Queen of Las Vegas, and a '70s TV institution - and that doesn't even begin to outline her accomplishments. Discovered by Sammy Davis Jr. while performing on a New York stage, she quickly became a Great White Way regular, an Italian movie star (?!?), and a TV fixture. Guest starring on every talk show this side of Johnny Carson, she was a true pop culture icon. So it's no surprise that the networks would come calling, offering her a chance to star in her own weekly series. Fortunately, Ms. Falana opted out of the daily grind, believing her talents would be better served by a series of specials (her previous uncomfortable experience working on the Summer r...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Only diehard devotees of Green Day are likely to be intrigued enough to check out not one, but two documentaries of the chart-topping punk-pop band. Indeed, the two-disc Green Day: The Boys Are Back in Town is less an exploration of the group as it is a celebration of their music. While the tone and pace are pleasant enough, the biggest handicap here, and it's a formidable one, is that one of the docs features no music from the Berkeley, California-based trio.

Such are the evident travails of being an unauthorized biography. The makers of The Boys Are Back in Town inform you right up front that the rockumentary (isn't that just a fun word to use?) will not feature any Green Day music or original interviews with the band members. Nevertheless, an honest disclaimer doesn't necessarily translate into compelling filmmaking. Just as one cannot imag...Read the entire review

The Product:
Somewhere between the underground and the pop charts, the industrial surge in the '70s - '90s and the megaton media stardom of the last ten years sits Trent Reznor and his surrogate band, Nine Inch Nails. Like Prince, another multitalented hyphenate who practices one genre (soul) while exploring the rest of the musical medium, the dishy doom and gloom poster boy with a penchant for melody mixed with noise has always been enigmatic and hard to define. One moment he's pumping out atonal tributes to bondage and blood rituals. The next, he's crafting classic ballads and full blown dance trance tracks. In an attempt to decode this seemingly undecipherable personality, Sexy Intellectual Home Video has released a two hour plus take on Reznor, his career, and the creative forces that came before, setting the stage for the movement and the musician's eventual rise to late 20th century pr...Read the entire review

The Movie:

"The life of a part-time wrestler is no laughing matter." These are the first lines of Andy Kaufman's peculiar hour-long 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie, an oddball send-up of My Dinner with Andre in which he meets up with retired wrestler "Classy" Freddie Blassie at a Sambo's restaurant in Los Angeles (yep, there was still one left) for breakfast and awkward conversation. The new "commemorative edition" DVD is being released, according to the box copy, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Kaufman's "(supposed) death," though it also lines up with Criterion's June DVD release of My Dinner with Andre. Coincidence? Perhaps. Either way it goes, it's a nice bit of symmetry.

The film itself, a low-budget, shot-on-video affair, was conceived and directed by rockabilly musician/filmmaker/wrestling manger Johnny Legend and Linda Lautrec. While all of th...Read the entire review

The Product:
He was part of the '80s era of popular music noted for the arrival of the super producer, a name like Steve Lillywhite, Mike Thorne, Mutt Lange, or Martin Hannett that almost instantly guaranteed a band's immediate relevance and commercial potential. For many, he remains the mascot for the MTV-ing of commercial culture, his one hit wonder "Video Killed the Radio Star" accurately predicting the end of dinosaur reign of rock. But there is much more to Trevor Horn than amazing albums, smash hit singles, and a legacy that includes such diverse acts as Yes, Lisa Standfield, Seal, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. His self-effacing manner, matched with his skilled technical prowess, is more or less gone from today's DIY home studio mentality. With the rise in technology, someone as gifted as Horn is inadvertently taken for granted, his invention and originality now able to be mechanically...Read the entire review

THE MOVIES:

To begin, caveat emptor: though Morrissey: From Where He Came to Where He Went--which has the further subtitle "With and Without the Smiths," if you really want to get unwieldy--may be a new product, but it does not contain new programming. What the packaging and the general marketing copy does not tell you is that this two-disc set contains two previously released documentaries, Morrissey: The Jewel in the Crown and The Smiths: Under Review. Knowing how obsessive Morrissey fans can be, I am sure the hope is that people who already have either of these discs will buy this reissue/repackage to satiate their need without realizing they've already bought both and feel deceived.

And if you just got that, then you're probably one of...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Not that this should come as much of a shock to anyone, but there's a certain cultural elitism when it comes to centers of higher education, probably no more apparent than if your degree is in one of the arts (I happen to be a musician). If you're a classical musician, there's no finer pedigree than Juilliard, for jazz you might want to go for Berklee or North Texas. So you may "feel my pain" when I tell you I have been greeted with stares of disbelief when I've divulged that my undergraduate degree came from the supposedly lowly University of Utah. This despite the fact that, in the classical realm, Salt Lake City is home to arguably the finest (and inarguably one of the finest) large choral ensembles in the world (The Mormon Tabernacle Choir), and certainly one of the most august "state" symphonies in the nation (whose conductor during my childhood, Maurice Abravanel, u...Read the entire review

The Product:
All artforms have their specific subcategories. Horror has its comedies and torture porn, while R&B can claim soul, funk, New Jack Swing, and hip-hop, just to name a few. So it's not surprising to see heavy metal mutate from its Black Sabbath/Led Zeppelin formative years through the British reinterpretation (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest), speed, thrash, and the ever-puzzling fusion known as "nu". Now we have a documentary, partially pitched by recording label Cleopatra Records, which hopes to uncover the truth behind the most odd and sinister of all musical subgenres. Inspired by a hatred of Christianity and love of Nordic mythology, the Scandinavian driven Black Metal scene has become more infamous for issues outside the music than anything contained on any record. And as the intriguing film makes clear, conviction and strong beliefs are not the only reasons why murder and mayh...Read the entire review

The Product:
Back at the beginning of the '70s, everyone was looking for the next "Beatles". Of course, given the Fab Four's creative and cultural influence, such a task was foolhardy at best. And in reality, those in power weren't looking to actually recreate the lads from Liverpool. Instead, the marketing men wanted a genial group they could feed to the masses without much pop life indigestion - oh, and if they had any acting chops, that would add immensely to their variety hour variables. It worked with the Monkees, after all. Often referred to as rock's answer to the Marx Brothers, the Hudson Brothers seemed to fill the necessary Madison Avenue ideal. Their sunny shtick and Lennon/McCartney lifts were enough to gain them a replacement slot for a vacationing Sonny and Cher. When they failed to click in prime time, a Saturday morning kids concept was announced. Thus The Razzle Dazzle Sh...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Clocking in at around three hours, Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution is probably as comprehensive a history of late 20th-century German experimental music as you're ever likely to need. The fact that the documentary only starts to get to the band that is supposed to be its main focus after almost an hour should tell you something about how gargantuan and glacially paced this movie is. I am holding out for a prequel that takes us back even further to the invention of the light bulb and the piano, because I'm not sure we've yet gotten enough of a foundation for where electronic music comes from.

Yes, I'm being facetious. For fans of krautrock, drone, ambient, and electronic music, Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution is a fasci...Read the entire review

The Documentary
Imagine going to the grocery store and they're totally out of milk. You don't want to leave empty handed, so you decide to wait around until you can talk to the manager. The nice person informs you that the store won't get any more milk in until the next morning. Having just wasted a whole 15 minutes of your life trying to find a gallon, you make the crazy decision to drive five minutes away and find some milk at a gas station. Would you say that your actions were desperate? Were you desperately seeking milk? No, I don't think so either, but the search for the handsome Beatle in the documentary Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney is on par with your shopping trip in excitement.

The doc opens with actual news footage from 1965 when Ruth Anson-Sowby interviewed Paul McCartney for ABC News. He jokingly proposed to her, catching everyone off guard. Desper...Read the entire review

Lydia Lunch Video Hysterie: 1978 - 2006:
An extra feature in this set of mostly live videos of Lunch's work tells the tale. During a brief snippet of a radio interview, Lunch bemoans the many who comment that Courtney Love has taken on her mantle. Lunch with the takedown - Love copped some of Lunch's look and some of her moves, but Lunch doesn't play dumb, three-chord post-punk songs written by her husband. Plus, she's righteously mad that folks don't seem to have absorbed her message that she's worked hard for decades to lay down. That's America for you.

I'm probably in that group Lunch rails against. I'm mostly familiar with her from her movie work with Nick Zedd and Richard Kern - two of the New York Underground's notable directors. But Lunch's claim to fame really began in the late-'70s with her No Wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. From the stuttery, rhythmic atonal squonks of that...Read the entire review

The Movie:

After he finished his critically acclaimed road movies Roadkill, and Highway 61 (a trilogy that would later be completed with Hardcore Logo) director Bruce McDonald decided to focus on something a little less travel oriented and a little more community oriented. The result was 1995's Dance Me Outside, a movie that's part comedy, part drama, part revenge thriller and part political statement.

The film takes place on a reservation in a remote area of Northern Ontario. Two friends, Silus Crow (Ryan Black) and Frank Fencepost (Adam Beach), meet up with Gooch (Michael Greyeyes), a pal who has just been released from the prison where he's just spent the last three years of his life and who is keen on reuniting with his old flame Ilianna (Lisa LaCroix), who just so happens to be Silus' older sister. Unfortunately for Gooch, Ilianna has moved on and is n...Read the entire review

Punk Rock was always meant to be a flash in the pan.  The Sex Pistolsnever intended to be playing concerts in their 60's, they wanted to makethe world sit up and take notice so they could flip it the finger. That's pretty much what happened to the Pistols, recording only one album,albeit a classic one, in their short career.  Another influentialpunk band that only lasted a short while was the Dead Boys.  Startingin Cleveland in 1975 but soon moving to New York (at the urging of JoeyRamone) the Dead Boys took the Big Apple by storm and quickly gained fameand notoriety in the world of Punk Rock.  Four years and two albumslater they would disband.  In 1986 the group reunited for a HalloweenNight concert at The Ritz in New York which was recorded.  While notat the absolute top ...Read the entire review

"More of the same" is the operative word, in this case a good thing, with regard to Robson Arms - Season 2, a two-disc set that includes all 13 shows from the 2007 season, plus a bounty of extra features. As noted in this reviewer's comments on season one, this Canadian "dramedy" boasts clever writing, uniformly terrific performances and, best of all, refreshingly adult stories told in a frank and honest manner all but unknown on American network television. When your season-opener is titled "Ordinary Assholes" and early episodes amusingly grapple with unpleasant paraplegics, erections and masturbation, and ravenous workplace groping among sexually frustrated employees, you know this isn't the stuff of Full House.

Frankly, there's not a whole lot one can add to that Season 1 review, partly because this second set of 13 epi...Read the entire review