DVD Collectors Online

The Serpent and the Rainbow, a review by KinkyCyborg

Title:The Serpent and the Rainbow
Year: 1987
Director: Wes Craven
Rating: R
Length: 98 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround, Spanish: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround, French: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Stars:
Bill Pullman
Cathy Tyson
Zakes Mokae
Paul Winfield
Brent Jennings

Plot:
Wes Craven (The People Under the Stairs, Shocker) directs this terrifying story of one man's nightmarish journey into the eerie and deadly world of voodoo.

A Harvard anthropologist (Bill Pullman) is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder that is said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses.

Based on the true life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.

Extras:
Scene Access
Feature Trailers


Inspired by the true story of a doctor who traveled to Haiti to investigate alleged 'Zombie Powder' and it's potential medical applications.

Wes Craven vividly embellishes that story and turns it into a great Voodoo movie.  An early movie for Bill Pullman who I thought did great but the real star of this is Zakes Mokae whom I've always admired as an actor. His portrayal of a 'collector of souls' is brilliant. I saw this movie a couple of times over the years and it still fascinates me.

It's surprising that the active ingredient in the powder, textrodotoxin, which was discovered many years ago hasn't been explored and exploited more since then. It's apparent capability to cause a type of paralysis that can emulate death borders on the fantastical and is likely the closest thing there is to real 'black magic'.

KC


Rating:

(From KinkyCyborg's Random Reviews 2010 on September 28th, 2010)

Down Periscope , a review by Dragonfire

Down Periscope



Veteran skipper John Dodge (Kelsey Grammer, TV's "Frasier") will never be a textbook officer, but he's a brilliant seaman who's always wanted to command a nuclear submarine. Instead, he's given the helm of the Stingray, a diesel-powered World War II sub crewed by a collection of maladjusted, mistake-prone misfits (Lauren Holly, Rob Schneider, Harrry Dean Stanton), then ordered to take on the U.S. Navy's best in a crucial war game. Batten down the hatches for unmistakable hilarity that takes 200 years of naval tradition and throws it all overboard!

My Thoughts

I first saw this movie when it originally came out.  I fully admit that the movie is silly, but I think it is fun and entertaining.  The plot is rather simple and not that realistic, but it manages to be entertaining.  The silly stuff does add a good amount of humor to what is going on.  Some of the jokes are a little on the gross or crude side.  The humor won't work for some viewers.  Most of what happens is predictable, but the movie still manages to be entertaining.

The character are interesting, especially Dodge.  He knows what he is doing for his job, but he's made a few questionable choices in the past that are still held against him.  I think Kelsy Grammar does good with the part.  He may have ended up with more of a film career if this movie had done better.  Pretty much every character has some sort of quirk.  Those things do make things more entertaining and interesting. 

The DVD doesn't have any extras.  As far as I know, the movie isn't available on Blu-ray.

Even though the movie is very silly and predictable, I still think it is fun and entertaining.  Fans of the cast might find something to like.  This one isn't going to appeal to everyone though.



I did get a longer review posted on Epinions.

Down Periscope




(From Down Periscope on January 18th, 2011)

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)