DVD Collectors Online

Destry, a review by Antares

Destry (1954) 66/100 - Had I never saw the original made in 1939, I would have liked this and rated it better than I have. But you can't get the original out of your head. Audie Murphy knew he wasn't a great actor, and to ask him to play a role made famous by James Stewart was probably more daring and difficult for him, than his machine gun action in Holtzwihr which won him his Congressional Medal of Honor in 1945. So because it's pretty much a scene by scene remake of the original, by the same director, one can only compare performances. So, to start, Murphy doesn't do that bad of a job as Tom Destry. Like I mentioned earlier, if I had watched this first, I would have been impressed by how much he had grown as an actor in just six years. Brain Donlevy > Lyle Bettger, Bettger plays his usual slick, but in the end cowardly bad guy and he never comes across as anything but weak. Marlene Dietrich = Mari Blanchard, Dietrich is the better actress and her fight scene and final kiss scene with Destry are the highlights of the original. Blanchard gets kudos from me as a better singer and after reading about her struggles in her youth with polio, for being able to dance that well, having been afflicted and recovering on her own from that paralyzing disease. Charles Winninger > Thomas Mitchell, usually I really like Mitchell, but I've seen this kind of performance from him in the past, and it seemed old and stale. Samuel S. Hinds > Edgar Buchanan, I'm sorry, but Buchanan will always be Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction, and Uncle Joe was an annoying character that I just can't get out of my mind when I see him in something other than the TV show. Mischa Auer >>> Wallace Ford, this was a no-brainer. Auer was the funniest part of the original and changing his character to a doctor, who is incredibly hen pecked just falls flat. Finally, the songs in the original fit the western town setting much better than the songs here. At times, I thought they would have been better suited for 50's burlesque house.

Teal = Masterpiece
Dark Green = Classic or someday will be
Lime Green = A good, entertaining film
Orange = Average
Red = Cinemuck
Brown = The color of crap, which this film is

(From Antares' Short Summations on July 11th, 2020)

The Changeling, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: The Changeling
Movie Count: 51
TV Ep Count: 15
Time Started: 8:30am
Plot:My Thoughts:
This is another I bought blind for this marathon. I bought it because I have had several friends rave about this movie for quite a while... and finally decided to take a chance on it. Unfortunately I think my expectations was a bit too high on this one. Even thought this is a good haunted house movie... I found it to be only slightly above average. First of all it is a bit slow for my taste... plus it seems that even though they did try hard with the atmosphere of the movie... for me at least... they fell a bit short. I did however enjoy the scenes with the wheelchair in the attic.



(From My Month Long Horror/Halloween Marathon: 2008 on October 14th, 2008)

"Battlestar Galactica" Marathon (1978-2009), a review by DJ Doena

                   


Synopsis: Many years ago the Humans in the Twelve Colonies of Kobol build themselves advanced machines that would work for them. But these machines developed and one day they began a war against their masters.
40 years has it been since the war has ended and the Cylons disappeared. Now they are back and they want the total annihilation of mankind. They have hacked into colonial defences and disabled it. The attack comes swift and deadly. Only a handful of ships under the lead of the Battlestar Galactica survives this holocaust. Now they want to find the mystical thirteenth colony of Kobol: Earth.

My Opinion: When I heard that there would be a new Battlestar Galactica series, I was excited. This series is nothing like the old one except for the basic story. Some of the characters have changed gender and/or skin colour, their names have become call signs and Adama is no longer the lone leader of the fleet. He's now a military commander who was about to retire. The role of the civilian leader was taken by President Laura Roslin who is a counterpoise to Adama. Also, the characters aren't so upright anymore: Lee "Apollo" Adama dislikes his father because of what happened to his brother, Kara "Starbuck" Thrace hits "superior assholes" once in a while, Colonel Tigh is a drunk, Baltar is the egocentric scientist who inadvertently let the Cylons into the defence mainframe and Sharon "Boomer" Valerii is a Cylon sleeper agent. Ah yes: And some Cylons look like Humans now. Of these 12 human models we know 4 so far.
What I like about this mini-series and the following series was that they didn't overdo the Sci-Fi elements. When they use FX it looks great but they decided to don't make everything futuristic. The interior and the normal stuff looks pretty much normal. No fancy laser pistols, no communicators, no spacy music instruments.

(From "Battlestar Galactica" Marathon (1978-2009) on April 25th, 2009)