DVD Collectors Online

Miss Congeniality, a review by addicted2dvd

Miss Congeniality
Legs waxed. Lips glossed. Gun ready. Special Agent Gracie Hart is going undercover as a hopeful eager to be the next Miss United States. But Gracie doesn't have a beauty-pageant bone in her body.

Sandra Bullock stars as an operative posing as a pageant contestant in order to ferret out a terrorist targeting the event. Michael Caine deliciously plays the frustrated consultant hired to turn Dirty Harriet into a poised beauty. And Benjamin Bratt, Candice Bergen, William Shatner and Ernie Hudson also score points for hilarity in this box-office smash. From big laughs to sly quips, 'Miss Congeniality' hits.

My Thoughts:
I believe I said it before... but I am going to say it again. I noticed this one gets a pretty bad rap on a lot of sites.. but I have always enjoyed it! After all this is the 3rd time I watched this movie just since upgrading to the Deluxe Edition DVD. God only knows how many times I watched the standard edition I had first. I find this movie to just be a lot of fun. There is several parts of this movie that I literally laughed out loud on. Sandra Bullock really has a great style in this movie. Shows that she can really hold her own when it comes to comedy.

(From Weekend Movie Marathon: Sandra Bullock on August 23rd, 2008)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, a review by Dragonfire

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

I went to see this on opening day.  I've already seen it a second time.  I really enjoyed the movie and think it is one of the stronger movies in the series.  The adaptation is better, though there are still a few explanations that are missing.  I do wonder how some things are going to work in the last movie since they haven't been set up properly.

This is the seventh movie in a planned eight movie series.  This one definitely builds on things that happened in the previous movies, so people really should see the previous movies first.  People who have read the books but not seen the first movies could still follow what is going on in this one I think.  Read the books..see the first movies..then see this movie.

A lot happens over the course of the movie.  I don't think it would have worked right as a shorter movie.  I definitely think it was a good idea to split the final book into two movies.  There is just too much in the final book to squish it into one movie and do the story justice.  Action does turn up in some scenes, though I wouldn't call this one action packed.  That doesn't bother me, though I have seen and heard some reviews from people - who haven't read the books - who felt that nothing happened in the movie. Several things are dealt with in the movie.  Magic stuff is in the movie again, though at times, it does seem that some of the magic stuff has been removed.  There are no talking and movie pictures shown in this one.  Hogwarts isn't shown and really isn't even heard about.  In the book, a few things about it are at least mentioned. 

The characters have grown a lot over the course of the series, and that continues in this movie.  They face new challenges while trying to find the horcruxes.  Ron really goes through a lot, and Rupert Grint gets a bit more to do than he has in previous movies.  Ron is more than just comic relief which is nice.  I'm so glad that the cast has stayed the same for all the movies.  Some characters are only briefly seen or are missing, though some of them should be around a bit more in the final movie.  Doby is finally back and he looks wonderful.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one.  I'll be seeing the final movie in the theater as well, though I do wonder how a few things will be dealt with.

I did get a longer review posted on Epinions.  The review doesn't have any spoilers.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1


(From Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on December 3rd, 2010)

I Love Lucy: The Complete Series, a review by addicted2dvd

Season Discs:
- Flubs
On every disc of the set that contains episodes they have this feature. The bulk of the episodes was recorded live in front of an audience. Because of this some mistakes made it to air. This feature points out many of these mistakes. It is a fun extra. One of my favorites... and one I felt I had to watch on every disc.
- Lost Scenes
- Deleted Scenes
- Featurettes
- Original Series Opening
- Original Animated Sequences
- Script Excerpts
- Production Notes
- Lucy Radio Series: My Favorite Husband (Several Episodes)
- Guest Cast Info
- Promotional Spots
- Original Cast Commercials
- Desilu / Westinghouse Sponsor Presentation
- Audio Commentary on episode Lucy and Superman, Lucy does the Tango & Country Club Dance

Bonus Disc
- Colorized version of "Lucy Goes to Scotland"
pretty obvious what this is. They colorized an episode from season 5 for some reason
- I Love Lucy:  The Movie
In 1953 with the TV show being so successful, Desilu decided to create a theatrical movie by stitching together three episodes from the first season (The Benefit, Breaking the Lease, and The Ballet.)  Some extra material was filmed to join the episodes together and an intro was created. The movie was never released, since studio execs thought it would hurt the box office results of Lucy and Desi's film The Long, Long, Trailer, which was in release at the time.  Shelved, the movie was forgotten until it was discovered 50 year later.
- A three minute Kinetescope excerpt from The Ed Wynn show
The first time Desi and Lucy appeared on TV together was as guests on The Ed Wynn show  in 1949.
- Phillip Morris introduction to First Episode
The disc concludes with the Phillip Morris introduction, by John Stephenson on the set of the show, to the first episode of I Love Lucy.


The Packaging:
The first thing you notice about this set is how it is packaged. Which while it is a fun thing... you don't feel too confident that the disc themselves are safe the way they are stored. Being in a multiple disc cardboard envelope I worry about the possibility of the discs getting scratched. I really like the good hard outer box... but instead of those accordion style cardboard envelopes... I would of preferred something more like THINpak cases for the discs protection. No I haven't had any problems with these discs. But I do worry a bit and feel the need to be extra careful.



The Show:
This sitcom really is a timeless classic. I absolutely loved the seasons 1-6. These were the original concept I Love Lucy half hour episodes. There was many... many episodes that I literally laughed out loud watching. To many great, hilarious moments to even attempt to list here. Though I will mention one of my favorite episodes being where Superman comes to Little Ricky's Birthday Party.

When the show went to hour length and named changed to the Lucy Desi Comedy Hour I felt  it went a bit downhill. I don't really feel that it could handle the hour long format as well as it did the half hour format. Sure I still enjoyed it. But it just seemed to lose some of the charm it had in the half hour version.

One thing this series became famous for is getting big named guest stars... most the time playing themselves. Some of the big names that showed up in this series includes....

- William Holden
- Eve Arden
- Ross Elliott
- Cornel Wilde
- Rock Hudson
- Harpo Marx
- Richard Widmark
- John Wayne
- Charles Boyer
- Bob Hope
- Orson Wells
- Claude Atkins
- George Reeves
- Cesar Romero
- Betty Grable
- Danny Thomas
- Red Skelton
- Milton Berle
- Ernie Kovacs

Half of these people I never heard of before myself.. but they seemed to be big in their time. Between the 2 versions of the series there is 194 episodes in this set to enjoy. Not to mention the tons of extras listed above. This set is definitely a lot of bang for the buck!


Over-all this is an excellent release for a great classic sitcom. I bought this series back in May of 2009... as I bought it as an early birthday present to myself. It took me till today to finish watching all the episodes. And there is still a ton of extras I still have to watch. The quality of the episodes looks great. though a couple of the extra I looked at could have used some more cleaning up. But this is a set I definitely would recommend if you were a fan of this series.



(From I Love Lucy: The Complete Series on July 22nd, 2010)