DVD Collectors Online

Taking Chance, a review by Rich

Title: Taking Chance

Runtime:78
Certificate:TV-PG
Year:2009
Genres:Drama, War

Plot:The remarkable true story of one soldier's death in battle, another soldier's journey of discovery and a nation's reverence and gratitude toward its war dead. After hearing of the heroic death of a young Marine in Iraq, veteran officer Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon) volunteers to escort the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps back to his hometown, where he embarks on an unexpected emotional journey.
In this drama, Kevin Bacon stars as a high-ranking military officer who takes on a surprising mission: he escorts the body of a PFC home to his family.

My Review:
Very short film, which is basically a sentimental and moving tribute of how the services escort home and honour their fallen heroes, from battlefield death to the funeral service. This was written by the serviceman who volunteered to escort home a soldier who was KIA in Iraq, and the extras on the disc cover this. It has political undertones, but is deliberately non-controversial and the focus is mainly on the dead serviceman, and the office based marine who goes through a myriad of guilt feelings as he escorts the soldier back to his family.
From a non-US citizen, it always amazes me that a country that can honour it's dead, with such compassion and dignity, and displays such huge respect and unity with its armed services, can have such social problems with guns, drugs, violence and murder? Is that contradiction what they call an oxymoron??


(From DCO third annual November Alphabet Marathon - discussion/review/banter thread on November 11th, 2009)

Time Traveller, a review by Tom

Time Traveller (2010/Japan) IMDb | Wikipedia Panorama Corporation (Hong Kong) Director: Masaaki Taniguchi Writing: Tomoe Kanno (Screenwriter) Length: 122 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85 Audio: Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Subtitles: Chinese, English

---

Stars:
Riisa Naka as Akari
Akinobu Nakao as Ryota
Narumi Yasuda as Kazuko
Masanobu Katsumura as Goro
Kanji Ishimaru as Kazuo

Plot:
Japan, 2010. High-spirited student Hasegawa Akari (Naka Riisa) finds she's succeeded in getting into Shotoku University's pharmacy department where her mother, Yoshiyama Kazuko (Yasuda Narumi), is a professor. Kazuko has a reputation for being mildly eccentric from her hobby of collecting coins from 1972; but her real secret is a liquid she's developed that can make its drinker travel back through time. When an old friend, delivery man Goro (Katsumura Masanobu), gives her some old photos he's found, her memories of her first love, junior high school classmate Fukamachi Kazuo, are re-restrengthened and she determines more than ever to travel back to find him. When Kazuko is suddenly hospitalised by a car accident, Akari offers to go in her place and give Kazuo a message. However, by mistake Akari ends up not at Setagaya Junior High in April 1972 but at Shotoku University's science lab in February 1974. Trying to track Kazuo down, Akari ends up staying with scifi geek-cum-amateur filmmaker Mizorogi Ryota (Nakao Akiyoshi), who believes her story that she's from the future. But Kazuo proves difficult to track down, for reasons Akari is gradually to discover.

Extras:

• Scene Access

This is kind of a sequel to the original "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" novel. Like the great anime was. Only this time it's the daughter of the girl from the novel who makes a time jump, not the niece. Also there is only one time jump, when she travels back to 1974. This movie is more like a sequel than the anime was. The anime was more like a spin-off.
I enjoyed this movie, although not as much as I did the anime. Fun fact though is, that the same person who voiced the main character in the anime also stars in this live-action movie as the girl travelling through time.

Rating:

(From Tom's Time-Travel Movie Reviews on February 20th, 2011)

Tom's TV Pilots marathon, a review by Tom

The Addams Family: Volume One (1964/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (United States) Length: 564 min. Video: Full Frame 1.33:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 1 Subtitles: English, Spanish

---

Plot:
They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, and now for the first time, they're on DVD! The Addams Family, America's first family of ghastly giddiness, are here in all of their ghoulish glory in the original TV series based on the delightfully demented imagination of Charles Addams. Tarantulas, torture racks, and tombstones have never been so much fun! Join Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Cousin Itt, and the rest of the gang for a fiendishly funny and altogether ooky experience. It's time to pay a call on...The Addams Family!

The Addams Family
1.01 The Addams Family Goes to School
Writer: Seaman Jacobs (Writer), Ed James (Writer), Charles Addams (Original Characters By)
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Carolyn Jones (Morticia), John Astin (Gomez), Allyn Joslyn (Mr. Hilliard), Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester), Ted Cassidy (Lurch), Blossom Rock (Grandmama), Lisa Loring (Wednesday), Ken Weatherwax (Pugsley), Madge Blake (Miss Comstock), Nydia Westman (Miss Morrison), Rolfe Sedan (Postman), Itself (The Thing)

I always enjoyed this series when I caught it on TV. But it is not a series I can watch many episodes after another. This is why I still have my volumes 2 and 3 unwatched.
The canned laughter was especially annoying here. I am already quite used to series without laugh track.

Rating:

(From Tom's TV Pilots marathon on March 25th, 2011)