DVD Collectors Online

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, a review by Danae Cassandra

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Year of Release: 2009
Directed By: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Cambell, Mr. T
Genre: Comedy, Animation

Overview:
When Flint Lockwood's (Bill Hader) latest contraption accidentally destroys the town square and rockets up into the clouds, he thinks his inventing career is over. Then, something amazing happens as delicious cheeseburgers start raining from the sky. His machine actually works! But when people greedily ask for more and more food, the machine starts to run amok, unleashing spaghetti tornadoes and giant meatballs that threaten the world! Now it's up to Flint, with the help of weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) and Steve, his talking monkey assistant, to find some way to shut down the machine before the world is covered in super-sized meatballs!

My Thoughts:
This was an entertaining and funny movie. The animation is great, it's bright, vividly colorful, and super sharp, absolutely perfect for the subject. The characters are interesting and quirky, even the minor ones have a little something to set them apart. Not only is it amusing and inventive, it also has quite a few good points to make - about over-consumption, waste, and how being smart is undervalued. It's also a good father/son film, and would likely look spectacular in 3D. Recommended for any fan of animation or anyone with kids. Lots and lots of fun.

Bechdel Test: Fail

Overall: 3/5

(From Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on June 7th, 2014)

Assassins, a review by GSyren

Title	Assassins (Disc ID: 3A65-7065-A4AB-C7DF)
Director	Richard Donner
Actors	Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, Julianne Moore, Anatoli Davydov, Muse Watson
Produced	1995 in United States
Runtime	133 minutes
Audio	English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, German Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital Dolby Surround, Portuguese Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles	Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
Overview	Robert Roth (Sylvester Stallone) is the best hitman around, but the code and sense of duty once part of his deadly career are lost in a post-Cold War world of freelance guns. He wants out. Not so Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas), a driven killer who knows how to claim the top spot of his shadowy profession: eliminate Roth. Julianne Moore turns up the heat as a wily hacker swept into the duo's running battle. Co-written by the Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix) and Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) and directed by Richard Donner (the Lethal Weapon series), this awesome action tale plunges you into a world where what counts isn't making the first move, but surviving the last.
My thoughts	Sometimes you forget almost everything about a movie except a key scene. I had such a vivid memory of a key scene in Assassins that I was convinced that I has seen it. But no. When I just watched it on BD I realized that I had never seen it before, after all. I must just have seen the trailer. So I'm glad I got it in the Stallone box set. This may not be the best film that Richard Donner ever has directed, but it's a good enough action movie. Banderas is really good in it. Julianne Moore has done better roles, but I like her anyway. And Stallone is Stallone. Like most action movies, this one requires a little bit of suspension of disbelief, but not too much. There aren't any real roll-your-eyes moments. Well, at least not unless you stop to question how you get $16,000,000 in bills into a hand held bag. And I didn't, until afterwards. That's 160,000 $100 bills. Or if it's easier to visualize then in bundles of 100 bills each, that's 1,600 bundles. But that's part of the Hollywood myth, right? Ridiculous amounts of money take hardly any space at all. It's right up there with cars exploding like a bomb if they're driven over a cliff, or bodies flying backwards when shot by a shotgun (or even a pistol). So we let it go, even though we know it's hokum. So to sum it up, this is a better than average, but not really great, action film. A little bit too long for my taste, but at least it never gets boring.
My rating

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on April 24th, 2014)

Tom's TV Pilots marathon, a review by Tom

Hyperdrive: Series One & Two (2006/United Kingdom) IMDb | Wikipedia 2 entertain Video (United Kingdom) Length: 351 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Subtitles: English

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Plot:
It is 2151. Britain has launched a fleet of spaceships to protect her interests in a changing galaxy. Amongst them is the HMS Camden Lock, with a crew who will risk everything and stop at nothing to bring harmony to the galaxy, while encouraging aliens to relocate their businesses to Peterborough.

They are led by the inappropriately optimistic Commander Henderson, a glorious hero in the eyes of himself, and his First Officer, York, not just a brilliant scientist and tactician, but also a borderline psychopath. The rest of the crew comprise love-struck Diplomatic Officer Teal, who burns several boxes of candles for the Commander; manic depressive Nagivator Vine; insubordinate Technical Officer Jeffers and enhanced human Sandstrom - whose body and mind were modified in exchange for the Space Force paying off her student loan. Together they experience the highs and lows of space travel and inter-galactic diplomacy: big swivelly chairs, anoying talking doors, and, of course, the alien wars that threaten the survival of life in the universe...


Hyperdrive
1.01 A Gift From the Glish
Writer: Kevin Cecil (Writer), Andy Riley (Writer)
Director: John Henderson
Cast: Nick Frost (Henderson), Kevin Eldon (York), Miranda Hart (Teal), Dan Antopolski (Jeffers), Stephen Evans (Vine), Petra Massey (Sandstrom), Paterson Joseph (Space Marshal), Richard Katz (Male Glish), Katherine Jakeways (Female Glish), Laurence Howarth (Fasmoff), Remi WIlson (Piretti), Joe Marshall (Wade), Waen Shepherd (Captain Helix), Stephanie Dooley (Beautiful Space Lady), Morwenna Banks (Announcer), Computer Voices), * Maggie Service ( (voice)), * Ewan Bailey ( (voice))

Not as funny as I hoped. But probably something I hopefully will finish watching in the future. If it would have been better, I probably would have watched the whole series today before continuing on in this marathon.

Rating:

(From Tom's TV Pilots marathon on June 3rd, 2012)