Bursting forth in bold color, and with a cool new opening credits montage (what kid didn't want to throw that hatchet and split that log?) Daniel Boone: Season 2 improves on Season 1 in every way (please click here to see my review for Daniel Boone: Season 1), moving comfortably into a second solid season of colorful adventures for the whole family, while deepening its messages of racial tolerance, respect for other cultures, and above all, the rights of an individual to live his or her life their own way.

Although season one of Daniel Boone hadn't cracked the Top 30 in t...Read the entire review

To my older brothers, Fess Parker will forever be Davy Crockett. So much has been written about this Baby Boomer phenomenon that it's easy to forget that to a later generation, Fess Parker was more closely allied with another legendary American hero, Daniel Boone. The massive influence of Crockett (based on a relatively scant five TV specials from the 1950s Disney program) on the popular culture, along with Fess Parker's set-in-concrete identification with the role, tends to overshadow the fact that he again found widespread success in the mid-to-late 1960s playing Daniel Boone on television. For six successful seasons (1964 - 1970), Fess Parker appeared, week after week, in one solid, entertaining story after another, for NBC's Daniel Boone. And for years after Daniel Boone's initial run, kids like me who weren't born during the relatively brief Davy Crockett craze -- and w...Read the entire review

The Movie

A few years before I discovered the dark magic of Stephen King and Clive Barker, I read a lot of goofy stuff. From One-Minute Mysteries to Encyclopedia Brown to The Incredible Hulk, my tastes were pretty geek-lectic. And I also had a whole lot of fun with the Choose Your Own Adventure series. They even had numbers on the spines so you could collect 'em all and put 'em on a shelf! Neat!

The gist of the series was this: Let's say Choose Your Own Adventure #44 was "The Case of the Seriously Unpleasant Poltergeist." You'd start on page one and get a pretty standard set-up: The local mortuary is haunted by a ghost and you have to find out why before suppertime. So into the mortuary you go...

--If you'd like to enter the front door of the mortuary, turn to page 6.

--If you'd like to rustle around the bushes and enter through any secret passages that you...Read the entire review

Initially proposed and broadcast as a 13-episode series for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom (1996-2005) earned a televised resurrection roughly six years later and went out with a bang. Those familiar with hit shows like The Office (both the US and UK programs) and older favorites like The Larry Sanders Show will find The Newsroom's documentary-style format refreshing but pleasantly familiar...not to mention its dry, scathing portrayal of an office environment and the neurotic folks that work there. Revolving around the exploits of George Findlay (Finkleman) and his unfortunate staff, The Newsroom aims its razor-sharp eye at television production---or the lack thereof---in the same vein as Sidney Lumet's Network, so unsuspecting a...Read the entire review

Initially proposed and broadcast as a 13-episode series for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom (1996-2005) earned a televised resurrection roughly six years later and went out with a bang. Those familiar with hit shows like The Office (both the US and UK programs) and older favorites like The Larry Sanders Show will find The Newsroom's documentary-style format refreshing but pleasantly familiar...not to mention its dry, scathing portrayal of an office environment and the neurotic folks that work there. Revolving around the exploits of George Findlay (Finkleman) and his unfortunate staff, The Newsroom aims its razor-sharp eye at television production---or the lack thereof---in the same vein as Sidney Lumet's Network, so unsuspecting a...Read the entire review

Initially proposed and broadcast as a 13-episode series for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom (1996-2005) earned a televised resurrection roughly six years later and went out with a bang. Those familiar with hit shows like The Office (both the US and UK programs) and older favorites like The Larry Sanders Show will find The Newsroom's documentary-style format refreshing but pleasantly familiar...not to mention its dry, scathing portrayal of an office environment and the neurotic folks that work there. Revolving around the exploits of George Findlay (Finkleman) and his unfortunate staff, The Newsroom aims its razor-sharp eye at television production---or the lack thereof---in the same vein as Sidney Lumet's Network, so unsuspecting a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

There's nothing I like more than a good stand-up comedy performance, but when you've watched so many of them, you tend to want something new, something different. There's so many topics that have just been played out over the years - how women are different from men or how blank is different than blank. The best stand-ups get into the absurdity of the little things of everyday life and combine insightful, sharp material with their own unique delivery (Lewis Black, for example.)

"The Kims of Comedy" offers stand-up with an Asian flavor, splitting the time between performers Bobby Lee ("Mad TV"), Kevin Shea ("Jimmy Kimmel Live"), Steve Byrne ("Chappelle's Show") and Dr. Ken Jeong (an actual doctor, not just a stage name. Of the performers, most are likely familiar with Lee, who has been one of "Mad TV"'s best performers over the years and is now one of the few remaining co...Read the entire review

The Movie:

There's nothing I like more than a good stand-up comedy performance, but when you've watched so many of them, you tend to want something new, something different. There's so many topics that have just been played out over the years - how women are different from men or how blank is different than blank. The best stand-ups get into the absurdity of the little things of everyday life and combine insightful, sharp material with their own unique delivery (Lewis Black, for example.)

Jeff Cesario is one of the producers of TV's "Last Comic Standing", "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Dennis Miller Live" and had a writing gig on the latter two shows. The first show may not exactly be the best bit of resume material to convince that the stand-up is funny, but thankfully, the performance here sells itself pretty well.

While Cesario's performance may not rank up with some of th...Read the entire review

Every time you think that they've covered all of the basics for Reality TV a show comes along to change your perception. We've all seen Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Amazing Race, but how many of us sat down to watch Last Comic Standing? Well, judging from the fact that the show was cancelled during its third season, I'm going to assume the answer is "not many".

Due to low ratings NBC pulled the plug on Last Comic Standing and the last season was never made fully broadcast. If you followed the show and knew the contestants on it, then you probably remember ANT from all three seasons. He never won the prize, but he performed a great stand-up routine that was both funny and fresh. His new DVD America's Ready is no different and it gives a good look at his brand of humor. Let's just say that his approach to comedy is inte...Read the entire review

Every time you think that they've covered all of the basics for Reality TV a show comes along to change your perception. We've all seen Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Amazing Race, but how many of us sat down to watch Last Comic Standing? Well, judging from the fact that the show was cancelled during its third season, I'm going to assume the answer is "not many".

Due to low ratings NBC pulled the plug on Last Comic Standing and the last episode never made it to the airwaves. If you followed the show and the contestants on it, then you probably know that Alonzo Bodden was actually the winner and scored the $250,000 prize. That's not really much of a shock really because he actually was first runner-up in the show's second season. Bodden starts out his DVD Tall, Dark, and Funny by joking about how NBC cancelled the show b...Read the entire review

Savant tries to stay clear of independent filmmakers asking for their DV films to be reviewed, as it's difficult being blunt and honest when you're rooting for the underdog. They Shoot Movies, Don't They? is a documentary about the desperate cons and ego-crushing defeats that go into trying to make it big in independent filmmaking, and even when it isn't entirely convincing it touches on a number of great topics: The nature of 'reality' video and the reality of altruism, ambition and cluelessness in Los Angeles.

That last paragraph is sort of a sneak, because They Shoot Movies, Don't They? is a bit of sneak as well. It's not a documentary but a very good mock-documentary, shot on Beta-SP late in the 1990s. It followed the enormous mock-umentary horror film The Blair Witch Project, with which it has many similarities, and ma...Read the entire review

The Movie:

A fascinating and very entertaining documentary series, "Long Way Round" follows around actors Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor as they ride motorcycles through Europe, Russia and then go through Alaska before finally ending up in New York and reuniting with their families before ending up in NYC. This isn't a vacation - the two go through some very rough terrain and dangerous areas, with one cameraman filming them and each with their own camera. A small support crew follows a ways behind, but essentially, the two long-time friends are on their own as they encounter a number of different cultures as they travel through places like Mongolia. Overall, the two end up traveling more than 20,000 miles.

The series opens with the two trying to go through a long preparation process, which includes visiting with representatives from the countries that they're planning to visit a...Read the entire review

The Series:

For those not familiar with Long Way Round, basically its a document of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding around a large part of the world on BMW motorbikes. The two actors met on the set of The Serpent's Kiss and became fast friends, and found they shared a mutual love of two wheeled fun and decided to set out on the road trip to end all road trips. Now, on the surface, this sounds like a textbook example of a vanity project, right? Right. Thankfully, it's anything but. Yes, the two leads are noted actors, McGregor particularly as he's famous all over the world thanks to Star Wars and Moulin Rouge, and it's possible that this celebrity status helped them get the sponsorship that they needed for the trip, but it more or less ends there.

Throughout the seven episodes on this set we witness the trip from its beginnings as an idea in their ...Read the entire review