FAMILY GUY {Complete Seasons 1-6} (DVD Review) - 27/5/08

Having seen a couple of episodes of "Family Guy" on BBC2 I noticed the current Boxset for sale at HMV with a pair of Bonus Discs of Special Features so decided to splash out! Steadily ploughing my way through to the end I suddenly realised that the disparity between the UK versions and the US are totally different in the context of the Series labelling. So the different versions have the US on Season 8 and the UK on Season 7 all listed differently. Fox has not helped by treating the DVD Movie "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story" as 3 separate back-to-back episodes (Which are not in this set!) and not adding them to their count of episodes. They have also treated "Blue Harvest" as 2 separate episodes wherever that falls in their listing system? Either way none of this matters - I found myself laughing numerous times at the sheer absurdity of it all and how anyone and everything is treated like a target from the first series onto the last. Totally offensive and completely outrageous this more than pushes the envelope - It kicks it in the nuts then runs away! So eagerly looking forward to the next season when it's out on DVD!

Spread across the whole Boxset is a vast collection of Special Features with Commentaries & voluminous Deleted Scenes. A couple of the later sets have a large selection of Extras with Featurettes & Animatics. One good thing about this set is that the covers (As below) clearly list the episodes on the Disc with a little blurb about the story next to a small photo from that episode. Most entertaining in so many ways!

INDIANA JONES 4 Film Review - 25/5/08

The fourth in the series and to give it it's full title "Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull" gets a worldwide release in thousands of cinemas across the planet. Starting off rather slowly with a creaky old Indiana & set in 1957, we get a whole parcel load of references to things gone before in the previous 3 films. Tuning into a number of fifties references such as Communism & the McCarthy witch-hunts where everyone was a "damn Commie" plus the A-Bomb Testing & a number of other points I can't say as they will give the plot away! Eventually upping a gear the film goes into treasure hunt mode and the race is on between the "evil" Reds and the supposed Good Guys both after one of the fabled crystal skulls from the South Americas. Weaving a tale between fact & fiction this starts to wander into "X-Files" territory but at least this was entertaining and you could understand it! Big screen spills & thrills abound as Harrison Ford brings down the shutters on his timeless creation and leaving the door open for future films but in a way you won't see until you have watched the film? So glad I managed to get hold of a British Quad Poster for the film - They will be worth an absolute fortune once the film has done the cinema rounds and will probably be hard to get hold of soon!

Unfortunately missing a couple of the main characters from the other films - We do get a returnee plus some new faces. When the second half of the film goes into overload it's a breathless chase from one place to another as the heroes attempt to get ahead of the bad guys from one action packed scene to the next. Kudos to the whole Production in finally completing the saga of Indiana Jones with a fair amount of grace & style, cliffhangers & punch-ups, set pieces & destruction!

STARGATE ATLANTIS {4th. Season} (DVD Review) - 9/5/08

Unfortunately this Season Four of "Stargate Atlantis" is a very sticky, gooey, sickly confection feeling very much like 'the same old, same old' kind of stuff. We lose a major character due to behind-the-scenes aggravation with the Producers, gain a new major character and get a few appearances from some old familiar friends & enemies. Apart from a number of bottle shows and a couple of good standalone episodes, a lot of this Season Four was excessive padding - At least we didn't get an awful clips show this series! A few episodes were that tiresome I just fast forwarded them because the writing was so awful! Ending on the usual cliche of a dire cliffhanger (Yawn!) this Season was extremely disappointing - Better luck on the Fifth Season hopefully?

This 5-disc Boxset has some pretty good Special Features spread out across the set. You get a Blooper Reel plus a large selection of Deleted Scenes. "Mission Directive" Featurettes and various Audio Commentaries plus Photo/Production Design Galleries. Also available is a handful of smaller Featurettes. Audio: 5.1. Dolby with English, French & Spanish Subtitles. Widescreen Anamorphic with Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1.

IRON MAN Film Review - 5/5/08

Wanted to see this but didn't know if I was in the right mood for it? Or maybe I'm just jaded by FLASH-BANG-WALLOP explosions, state-of-the-art cutting edge graphics & CGI? Maybe if I'd left my brain in the bucket by the cinema foyer door I would have enjoyed it more? Who knows? Having spent nearly a tenner at London prices no wonder cinema attendance is falling once more or is that failing? Anyway cue "Iron Man" big bad arms industrialist goes to horrible Afghanistan and shows off some pretty weapons. Gets kidnapped, builds suit of armour after heart operation and escapes home. Suddenly decides to become a good guy which doesn't suit corporate management so they set him up. Chuck a flirty tentative romance into the works, a couple of fight scenes and a punch up with the naughty person who betrayed him from the beginning. Bung in another nice cameo from Stan Lee (and doesn't he deserve it after putting so much effort into the genre all these years) Big superhero wins out - story ends! A pastiche of film footage strung together for a couple of hours that wasn't even that entertaining. The cast valiantly pulled off a fantastically good job and I'm sure it will make millions and certainly cover it's production costs with profits to spare - But not my cup of tea unfortunately!

THE 4400 {4th. Season} (DVD Review) - 5/5/08

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to grab hold of a TV Executive by the collar and firmly slap him back and forth across the head. If anything annoys me more it's when a loyal fan following and general audience for a series get's shafted like this - In this case the cancellation of "The 4400" in it's Fourth Season. With the recent Writer's Strike (And I don't blame them for going on strike) in the US it was a perfect excuse for the moronic TV Exec's and Money Suits to sit round a table and cancel a whole package of shows (Another casualty being Season Six of "The Dead Zone" it's Final Season) and say "Hey, let's screw the audience again!!". I know how expensive TV filming is - But it really pisses me off that you leave everything unresolved for story arcs, characters and plot-lines. At least with some shows you get a reckoning such as " Stargate SG1" which at least rounded off the series with 2 TV films and gave everyone some resolution to the plots. Why they have even managed a "Dead Like Me" TV film to tie up the first 2 Seasons and if it's enough of a hit they will possibly bring it back?

So enough of the ranting - Well just a little more then! With the cancellation of "The 4400" we get a show that's overall story arc is not sufficiently dealt with, plot points in the Fourth Season are not covered properly and raise more issues than answers and then we get a few (Which feels rushed) tacked on points in the last episode in a vain attempt to give a person"Hope" with the ending, which you can take several ways? Enough of a cliff hanger to carry on if they want to and enough supposed "resolution" if they don't! Various plot points fragment and send the cast off on different adventures and different trials. I enjoyed this Season immensely and want more - It isn't going to happen - So I'll spend my money with another TV Company instead - Your loss!

The Special Features on this 4-disc set cover a pile of Deleted Scenes and Audio Commentaries. A Season 4 Blooper Reel, 2 Featurettes and the Final Episode which has a Director's Cut Version - And so it end's with a whimper instead of a bang.......