DVD Collectors Online

The Road, a review by Jon

The Road
4 out of 5



Academy Award® nominee Viggo Mortensen leads an all star cast including Guy Pearce, Academy Award® winners Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron and an incredible debut performance from Kodi Smit-McPhee. THE ROAD is a thrilling and deeply moving tale of survival as a father and his young son journey across a barren, post apocalyptic America. Respectfully adapted from Cormac McCarthy's hallowed novel, THE ROAD boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of — a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.

As post-apocalyptic stories go, there are no films quite like The Road. For one thing, we have no idea what caused the apocalypse or why it was so devastating. The world is completely dead and broken and there is no infrastructure at all. It doesn’t seem remotely retrievable. Survivors are just that and nothing more. There are no aliens to regroup against and fight; no Nirvana of a hippy commune to get to where a crude society is rebuilding. The man and his son keep moving (heading for the coast is their loose aim), scavenging for food wherever they can and avoiding the gangs of cannibals who are brutal and ruthless.

John Hillcoat, directing an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bestseller (as he did for McCarthy’s The Proposition), delivers a relentlessly bleak looking film that is brought to life by the performances of a dedicated cast. It’s a strong realisation of a dying world...

[Please read the rest of the review at Find-DVD.co.uk]

(From Jon's Alphabet Marathon 2010 on July 24th, 2010)

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Year: 2000
Director: Curt Geda
Rating: NR
Length: 76 Min.
Video: Full Frame 1.33:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, French

Stars:
Will Friedle
Kevin Conroy
Mark Hamill
Angie Harmon
Dean Stockwell

Plot:
The sleeker, deadlier and seemingly immortal Clown Prince of Crime is back with his own unique brand of havoc and mayhem. While trying to uncover the Joker's secrets, the new Batman, Terry McGinnis, discovers the greatest mystery in the life of the original Caped Crusader: what happened the night he fought the Joker for the last time. When Bruce Wayne is almost killed in one of the Joker's latest attacks, Batman vows to avenge his mentor and put the Joker to rest forever.


Extras:
Scene Access
Audio Commentary
Trailers
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Production Notes
Interactive Games
Music Videos
DVD-ROM Content
Closed Captioned
Animation Tests

My Thoughts:
I personally like what they did for a futuristic Batman. I really enjoy the series they made this movie from... and they did a good job on the movie itself. I like how this movie combined the original Batman with the new Batman through flashbacks. I thought how they explained the Return of the Joker was a good and entertaining way to do it. Before watching this movie (for the 3rd time now) I didn't realize that Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) lent her voice to this movie. She did the voices for the twin girls in the Jokerz gang (Dee Dee) that dress similar to and act to remind you of Harley Quinn. Not only is this a good movie... with a good quality DVD... this release comes with a nice selection of extras.



(From Weekend Movie Marathon: Multi-Themes on January 17th, 2010)

Tom's Random Reviews, a review by Tom

The Vampire Diaries: Season One (2009/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Warner Home Video (United Kingdom) Length: 889 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Subtitles: Dutch, English, Swedish

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Plot:
Dark, brooding, pulsing with bloodlust and transcendent with romance, The Vampire Diaries - which started as a series of must-read novels by L.J. Smith - has become a must-watch television hit. Season One offers unforgettable characters, living and undead. They are vampire brothers Stefan and Damon, one good and one evil; Elena, a double for the beauty both brothers loved some 150 years earlier; plus Jeremy, Bonnie, Matt and more denizens of Mystic Falls, VA. All are caught up in a spellbinding web of secrets, passion and terror.

Extras:

• Commentary
• Deleted Scenes
• Featurettes
• Outtakes

"Dawson's Creek" goes vampire. This is about the basic premise. It even is created by the same guy. At first glance, it looks like a Twilight TV series (although I have seen Twilight, I only can go on my impression on it). But it is based on a 1991 trilogy of books (pre-dating Twilight). But it was obviously made to cash in on Twilight's success.
Overall I enjoyed this series. Even though you do not really feel this series is something special, you cannot help to continue watching it.
This season's cliffhanger makes me want to continue with season 2. Although I am unhappy with a character's death in the finale
There is something which really bothers me, which doesn't really have to do with this series. Recently Microsoft pushes their product placement. That on itself doesn't bother me. Apple has done it for years. I first noticed in when I recently watched the ninth season of Smallville, where instead of seeing Apple logos on all notebooks we suddenly see Windows logos and the Watchtower computer all running with a fresh install of Windows 7. Then I saw Room in Rome, where they really pushed Microsoft Bing and a Google Earth like application. And in this series, all the characters are using the search engine Bing. So far so good. But one scene did go too far and pulled me out of the series. One character proclaimed, that she "binged" it, with the camera closing in the Bing website, so that you knew what the hell she was talking about. It was quite obvious that they are trying to bring this verb into the vocabularly of the viewers to compete with the success of "to google".

#	Episode	Rating
01	Pilot
02	The Night of the Comet
03	Friday Night Bites
04	Family Ties
05	You're Undead to Me
06	Lost Girls
07	Haunted
08	162 Candles
09	History Repeating
10	The Turning Point
11	Bloodlines
12	Unpleasantville
13	Children of the Damned
14	Fool Me Once
15	A Few Good Men
16	There Goes the Neighborhood
17	Let the Right One In
18	Under Control
19	Miss Mystic Falls
20	Blood Brothers
21	Isobel
22	Founder's Day

(From Tom's Random Reviews on February 13th, 2011)