DVD Collectors Online

Wings of Desire, a review by Antares

Wings of Desire (1987) 3.5/5 - I actually watched this film about a month ago and forgot to write a review on it. Now that four weeks have passed by, I am at a loss to think of anything in this film that was truly memorable. As I was watching it, it held my curiosity and there were some truly beautiful scenes, but as a whole, I will probably never watch it again. Bruno Ganz was great as can be expected, and I loved looking at Solveig Dommartin. It's a shame she died so young. Sorry if there's not much written here, but the film just didn't grab me. I liked it, but barely.

(From Antares' Short Summations on December 21st, 2011)

Yankee Doodle Dandy, a review by Antares

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) 80/100 - It must have been such a refreshing tonic to a beleaguered populace in the early days of World War II, to see such a rousing, patriotic piece of propaganda exalting the virtues of a nation founded upon personal liberty. In the time it took to make this film, we had suffered the disaster of Pearl Harbor, the loss of Wake Island, Guam and Douglas MacArthur was riding a PT boat to Australia as the Philippines was soon to fall. There would be many patriotic films made in the next few years, but none would strike the chords that this film would. George M. Cohan was no saint, and his story is somewhat whitewashed, but he did more for national fervor than any other entertainer, or politician for that matter. The values he extolled in his songs now seem dated and naive, but there was a time when this nation stood for something and looking back now on this film, it makes me sad how far we have fallen. As for the film itself, it is a bit long and I now see the advantage of watching this so many years ago with commercial breaks on UHF television. There are those who find it corny and overly sentimental, but as I've said before with films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, allow yourself to drift away to a much simpler time and you'll be rewarded tenfold. I'd still take a film like this over any of today's CGI laden explosion pulp which seems to be cranked out ad nauseum. If this film doesn't make you feel even the slightest bit patriotic, then you have no sense of history and how crucial our role was in it.

Teal = Masterpiece
Dark Green = Classic or someday will be
Lime Green = A good, entertaining film
Orange = Average
Red = Cinemuck
Brown = The color of crap, which this film is

(From Antares' Short Summations on May 1st, 2015)

Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews, a review by Tom

VOY 7.19 Author, Author
Writer: Phyllis Strong (Screenwriter), Mike Sussman (Screenwriter), Brannon Braga (Original Material By)
Director: David Livingston
Cast: Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway), Robert Beltran (Chakotay), Roxann Dawson (B'Elanna Torres), Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Tim Russ (Tuvok), Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine), Garrett Wang (Harry Kim), Richard Herd (Admiral Paris), Barry Gordon (Broht), Joseph Campanella (Arbitrator), Lorinne Vozoff (Irene Hansen), Juan Garcia (John Torres), Robert Ito (John Kim), Irene Tsu (Mary Kim), Dwight Schultz (Barclay), Brock Burnett (Male N.D.), Jennifer Hammon (Female N.D.), Heather Young (Sickbay N.D.), Majel Barrett (Computer Voice (voice))

This episode starts out as pure fun, with a new holonovel the doctor has written about his life. He based the novel on Voyager and its crew, but very out-of-character of all involved (it could almost count as an Voyager mirror-universe episode. Tuvok even has a beard like the evil Spock ). Though I must say, that the portrayed Janeway is not too far from the truth in my opinion
Towards the end this episode becomes Voyager's "The Measure of a Man" episode (a TNG episode which is about Data's rights as a person). A trial begins, if the doctor has a right on his novel like a normal person. In the end it is decided, that the doctor has the rights as an artist, but they didn't want yet to decide on the fact if he should be considered a person in general. This is a question which is left unanswered in Voyager.

P/T moment:
One story-line in this episode is about the crew being able to have real-time communication with the Alpha Quadrant and thus their families for the first time.
B'Elanna and Tom are talking to her father, who wants to make amends.

Rating:

(From Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews on October 3rd, 2009)