The Show

It's deja vu all over again for Generation X'ers such as myself, as everything that was old is new again. Simply wander into any "trendy" store, such as Hot Topic, and you'll find yourself confronted with memories such as Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, and Fraggle Rock. Another oldie that has made its way back into the spotlight is "My Little Pony", both in the way of new toys and a DVD release of My Little Pony: The Complete First Season, bringing back the animated TV show from 1986.

As mentioned above, the My Little Pony show was based on a line of toys, aimed mostly at girls, which appeared in the mid 1980s. The show deals with a group of, yes, you guessed it, little ponies, who live in Ponyland. The ponies came in many colors, sizes, and varieties, as some as simply ponies, some are unicorns, and some are "Flutter Ponies", who can fly. The ponie...Read the entire review

The Movie

The jam band Phish decided to call it quits in 2004, which naturally elicited a mournful cry from the general direction of the hacky sack nation. Of course, the Vermont natives couldn't just hang up their guitars without throwing one of their trademark festivals - despite the bittersweet air it had prior to kickoff, the "It" festival, held over two days in August 2003, was one of the band's final hurrahs (their last concert was a two-night stand at the Coventry Festival the following August). "It" was captured for posterity and the resulting concert film/documentary Phish: It, was broadcast to bewildered nursing home residents everywhere on PBS late last year.

The film, directed and produced by Mary Wharton, charts the buildup to and chaos during the "It" festival; the fellas literally design a world which more herbally-minded Phish-heads probably see in their dre...Read the entire review

Aside from numerous 70's documentaries about bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and the Bermuda Triangle , I also grew up with a steady diet of martial arts docs, including one of my faves Fighting Black Kings, which was a US blaxspoitation-friendly edit of director Hisao Masuda's The Strongest Karate. Masuda was the also director of Budo: The Art of Killing (1979) which was overseen by mono-minded Brutes and Savages producer Arthur Davis.

Budo: The Art of Killing focuses on martial styles developed in Japan. The film takes the very basic documentary approach, dividing its scenes between different martial styles, some beautifully staged, some simply observing training sessions, with an omnipresent narrator occasionally adding some color. For instance, in the karate segment, we get various scenes of a karate master honing his skills, hitting sandbags with his fingers,...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Looking for a Thrill is the end result of a very simple question – 'when did you realize this is what you wanted to do with your life?' Posed to one hundred and twelve different musicians by the filmmakers, the movie is a lengthy but interesting collection of stories and anecdotes about how these musicians came to be who they are, and why.

The reasons, or moments as the case may be, are as varied as those who are interviewed, and it is this diversity that makes the movie interesting. They've assembled an interesting and eclectic assortment of talent in front of the camera (though most of them tend to be of the 'indie rock' variety for lack of a less cliché term) and each and everyone one of them have a different and unique story to tell. Some interviewees are pretty well as established and influential such as Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the Minutem...Read the entire review

For any of those thrilled by the opening shot of Taylor Hackford's overrated, Oscar nominated Ray, be prepared for chills while watching O Genio: Ray Charles Live in Brazil.

Like Hackford's Ray, it opens with Ray Charles most famous song, "What'd I Say" only this time around you're watching the real Ray, 32 years young and live. Yes, underscore live five times and you'll understand how truly talented musicians used t...Read the entire review

We usually look back on a famous filmmaker's early films to find overlooked gems, or perhaps just to celebrate their early struggles. Brian De Palma has had a checkered career to say the least, but back in the middle seventies he was in the running as one of the most promising film school prodigies, right beside Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas.

Although it enjoys a favorable reputation The Wedding Party is neither a howling success nor a very good picture. A knockabout comedy built around the nutty preparations for an upscale Long Island wedding, it mostly falls flat on its face due to a thin script and a fatal overdose of unfunny improvisations. The curiosity angle will be the picture's main draw, as a very young Robert De Niro (billed as Robert Denero) and Jill Clayburgh feature in the cast. Disc producer Troma splashes their na...Read the entire review

The Movie

How could any male who grew up in the 1980s not love the Transformers; Giant robots from another planet who fight one another, and to top it off they can change form to suit their needs, ranging from the humanoid form to a tractor trailer or even a boom-box! But that was back then.

To try and bring Transformers back into the limelight would either severely taint the memories of thousands of fans, or it could possibly create a new found fascination with these enormous robots in disguise. What was attempted here with Transformers Armada is the latter; create a new mythology but use some of the same design as Transformers Generation one, and even use some of the same character names but roll it up into an unique story.

The premise for Transformers Armada is an uncomplicated one; Eons ago, a mysterious ship crashed on Earth and scattered a race of smaller transforme...Read the entire review

The Series:

Lidsville hit the nation's airwaves in 1972, courtesy of those wacky brothers, Sid and Marty Kroft, creators of such classic (albeit, trippy) kids shows as Land Of The Lost and H. R. Pufnstuf. If you thought those shows were odd, and they were, well Lidsville was even stranger. In short, it was the koo-koo-kookiest.

The basic idea behind the series is this:

A young man named Mark (Butch Patrick, better known as Eddie Munster from TVs The Munsters) decides to look inside a magician's hat after witnessing a magic show. The hat grows, and he falls inside of it and is whisked away to the strange land of Lidsville. In Lidsville, everyone is a hat except for an evil magician named Hoo Doo (Charles Nelson Reilly… this man needs no introdction and if you don't know who he is you're simply not doing your homework). Hoo Doo causes all sort...Read the entire review

The Australian rock group known as Jet came to prominence thanks to a throwaway iPod advert, soundtracked with their catchiest single, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" (otherwise known as the greatest stripper anthem AC/DC never wrote). A shaggy quartet equally capable of a straightforward, balls-out rock song or a tenderly composed ballad, Nic Cester and company enjoyed a tremendous year in 2004, adding another couple singles to the pile ("Cold Hard Bitch" and "Look What You've Done") from their popular platinum-selling debut, "Get Born."

Jet - Family Style, the group's first live DVD, is a bit uneven. The main attraction is an hour-long concert, filmed in London in 2004 before a packed house. Running through the bulk of "Get Born," the band also throws in a couple covers – Elvis Presley's "That's All Right, Mama" and the Chocolate Watchband's "Sweet Young Thing." The wildly adoring crow...Read the entire review

2004 was the year of the politically motivated documentary, with partisan shots fired across the bow and quickie DVD replies fired back. Somewhere into the barrage of Bush-related diatribes shuffled How Arnold Won The West, Alex Cooke's look at the Governator's bizarre capturing of the state governorship after an acrid recall of embattled governor Gray Davis.

The campaign (which featured as many as 135 candidates including Gary Coleman, porn star Mary Carey and a host of other characters) was a true circus of modern American political theater. The understated Davis, caught in an avalanche of state problems at least partially caused by federal problems, was swept away in what cannot possibly be considered a rational, serious political campaign by anyone. Cooke's perspective - that the recall was actual a coup d'etat - is influenced by the fact that the recall was spurred on by...Read the entire review

Almost any band in America that makes it through ten years of albums is on the cover of magazines. The disposable nature of our music culture makes it so that we cannibalize artists; either the pressure gets to them, or the market becomes so watered-down with cheap knock-off imitators that the original loses its luster.

That's never been a problem for England's Tindersticks. The band walked a line somewhere between the guitar effects-laden Brit-pop acts of the 90s (Blur, James, Oasis, and even some bands with two words for names) and a heavy folk lean. The easiest comparison is to Nick Cave, around the time of "End of the World," but without the flair for the dramatic.

Tindersticks – Bareback is a compilation of nine "companion films" to Tindersticks songs directed by U.K. cinematographer, filmmaker and director Martin Wallace. These shorts play out like music videos, but are m...Read the entire review

Themovie

It always amazes me how many different renditions of Christmas carolsand popular holiday songs there are. In fact, at this point finding a"traditional" collection of Christmas music is like lookingfor a needle in a haystack. Linda Eder's concert collection ChristmasStays the Same balances on the line between traditional andmodern versions of holiday music; whether you like the resultprobably depends mainly on how much you like Linda Eder.

The 90-minute program is a filmed version of Eder's 2001 live concertat the Mohegan Sun Arena, and was originally broadcast as a "BravoTV Special." A total of 20 songs are performed, with Ederproviding a bit of an introduction to the crowd before each one.

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The Movie:
Dangerous Seductress is a rather tame horror schlockfest about a voluptuous blonde possessed by the spirit of a witch who seduces then kills men. So just how tame is this film for lovers of sex and gore?

The Story:
Susan (Tonya Offer) has a really sexy boyfriend, who gives her a gorgeous ring—and then basically rapes her while punching her senseless. So she takes off to Japan to stay with her sister Linda (Kristin Anin), a model who soon heads to Bali to do a photo shoot, leaving Susan alone. Within minutes, Susan reads a spell from a book she finds, and awakens an immortal enchantress of men (Amy Weber) who possesses Susan's body so she can go out to clubs and pick up guys to have sex with and then kill. At the same time, Linda has her own side story. She witnessed a car accident that involved a group of thieves, so a detective is now spying on her home—but ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

From the bowels of late eighties era Chicago, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was spawned. Originally conceived as a film project that was never completed, Buzz McCoy and Groovie Mann took their strange fixation on Satanic imagery, horror movie looks, and industrial/disco dance beats, ditched the film idea and started a band. Over fifteen years and a few different record labels later, the band is still plugging away and while their glory days seem to have died since the release of 1994's Thirteen Above The Night, their videos are still interesting and full of quirky evil sexy visuals that compliment the devil's disco in a strange but somehow appropriate way.

The Kult Kollection gathers nine of the band's promotional videos, nine live tracks, and a few assorted odds and ends in the form of a promotional segment and more onto one DVD. The disc is laid ...Read the entire review

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Peter Gabriel has always had a special affinity for the music-video medium, exploring a plethora of special film and video techniques in the interest of infusing his music with a manic visual energy. His solo career has always held my interest, and I credit not only his strong, worldly sense of progressive pop-rock but also his visual inventiveness during the era when music videos were just coming into their own. I have strong memories of my first viewings of such videos as Shock the Monkey and Sledgehammer, which wowed me from out of a crowd of bland, stagy concert clips from other bands.

Peter Gabriel: Play collects all of Gabriel's music videos and throws them randomly together in a package that boasts—above all—supreme audio quality, and a nice array of modest supplements. At first, I wished that the videos had been presented here chronologi...Read the entire review

 The Program

Ted Knight was a comedic genius, but I suppose that's hardly news to anyone who saw more than three seconds of the original Caddyshack. His masterfully searing slow burn as the unctuous Judge Smails provided for the perfect counterfoil against Rodney Dangerfield's obnoxious hilarity and Chevy Chase's glib smugness. That's where I fondly remember the man, but I suppose most would highly cherish his role as Ted Baxter on The Mary ...Read the entire review