DVD Collectors Online

Starsky & Hutch, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: Starsky & Hutch
Year: 2004
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: PG-13
Length: 100 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, French: Dolby Digital: 5.1, Commentary: Dolby Digital: 2-Channel Stereo
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Stars:
Ben Stiller
Owen Wilson
Snoop Dogg
Fred Williamson
Vince Vaughn
Juliette Lewis

Plot:
HERE COMES THE FUZZ! Starsky takes the wheel, Hutch rides shotgun and comedy runs wild in this hilarious twist on the landmark buddy-cop TV show.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson bring a playful chemistry to the roles of undercover detectives Starsky and Hutch. Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip) directs this '70s groove in which our guys are stripped of their badges, duped by a drug kingpin (Vince Vaughn) and totally ripped off in a disco contest. So, yeah, they got some scores to settle. Snoop Dogg is in fly funkadelic mode as urban coolster Huggy Bear. And Juliette Lewis and others make for nonstop fun. If inducing laughter is a crime, they're all guilty as charged!

Extras:
Scene Access
Audio Commentary
Feature Trailers
Bonus Trailers
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Outtakes/Bloopers
Closed Captioned

My Thoughts:
Felt like a little action/comedy next. And I wanted to give this one a go because I recently blind bought the season 1 set of the TV Series... which I watched the first disc of so far and enjoyed. The series don't have nearly the amount of comedy in it that the movie does. Though it is more of a being silly style of comedy then a laugh out loud type. I found that I enjoyed the movie... but really expected a little more from it. I liked both Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson in the title roles. And I don't think I could imagine anyone doing Huggy Bear better then Snoop Dogg. I mean he hit the role just right going by the few episodes of the series I seen so far. It is a fun watch... but it could have been done better. Maybe doing it more like the series... and taking it more seriously would have helped... I don't know.



(From Unwatched Comedies Marathon on March 13th, 2011)

Departures, a review by Antares

Departures (2008) 84/100 - An emotionally exhilarating film which showcases the ancient Japanese ritual of nōkan (encoffining), where a mortician prepares the body of a deceased relative, through a series of choreographed techniques in front of the family. This ceremony allows family members and friends to view the deceased one last time and to say their goodbyes. It is the nōkansha's duty to try and recreate, through cleansing and make up, what that person looked like in life, giving the family one last glimpse of the person that they shared their lives with. When the film is focused on these ceremonies, it is a moving and thought provoking process on death and how different families deal with the loss. But it also tends to dwell on scenes which don't really add much to the story and it has a few too many predictable twists in the storyline. But it's all worth viewing because of some of the strong, emotional scenes that take place in the homes of clients of NK Agency. In one scene, they arrive five minutes late for the beginning of the ceremony and the husband of the woman who has died, is visibly upset. But as Sasaki is preparing the body, which you can tell must have suffered through some sort of prolonged illness, for the make up adding part of the ceremony, he looks behind him at the picture of the smiling woman, radiantly alive before her illness, and he goes to work. The camera pans back and forth from the deceased, to Sasaki working, to the family members watching on. Slowly, methodically and with a tenderness which years of experience have mastered, Sasaki recreates her cold, lifeless face into a perfect replication of the picture behind him. The pain of loss flows from the family alongside a gratitude towards Sasaki for giving them one last moment with the woman, adorned in all her glory. One of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced in a film. Had the rest of this film stayed on this path, I probably would have deemed it a masterpiece, but there's a useless montage of Daigo playing his cello in various outdoor locations, which kind of disturbs the rhythm of the film and to a degree, feels manipulative and cheesy.

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 March 8th, 2014)

The One Where It All Began: The Pilot Marathon, a review by DJ Doena

What's the show about?
At some point in the future the computer system Skynet will become self-aware and start a nuclear assault on mankind. Only a few people survive this holocaust and fight against Skynet and its machines (e.g. the Terminators). The leader of that resistance is John Connor. But that is then, this is now. Now John Connor is a teenage boy who tries to survive attacks before the war has even started. At his side fight his mother, Sarah, and the reprogrammed Terminator called Cameron and together they try to destroy Skynet before it's activated.

What happened before?
The series takes place two years after the second movie and ignores the third one. It also shifts the time-table forward, making Terminator 2: Judgement Day take place in 1997.

"Pilot"
It's 1999 and Sarah and John Connor have once again moved to a new town. They live under the alias "Reese" but that's a fatal mistake since that's the name of John's birth-father and the Terminator called Cromartie finds them this way. Luckily for John one of his new classmates, a beautiful young girl named Cameron is also a machine and he protects him. But they have to flee and it's not a matter of where but of when. Cameron initiates a time travel and they find themselves in the year 2007, four years before Judgement Day.

My Opinion
I began to watch this show open-minded. I was never too invested in the Terminator saga, so a series that ignored a movie was not a problem for me. And I also liked all the major actors from both seasons (after which it was cancelled). But there were some plot issues I couldn't cope with. There was no time travel logic at all - i.e. even less than in the movies. People and Terminators travelled from the future whenever they wanted, no biggie. Still, at some point I seem to have accepted this because I didn't notice it that much in the second season. But the second season had this unsatisfactory three-dots-arc I didn't care for and in the end the only thing that wanted to make me watch a third season was the cliffhanger. But that's not enough.

(From The One Where It All Began: The Pilot Marathon on September 16th, 2009)