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Hail the Conquering Hero, a review by samuelrichardscott

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) R2 United Kingdom

Overview:
This, the last film Preston Sturges made for Paramount, is another great satire on the American penchant for hero worship. It stars Eddie Bracken as Woodrow Truesmith, a soldier who, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, never actually went to war. His attempts to keep his secret are scuppered when his home town has him repatriated for a civic celebration of his exploits. In this sentimental comedy, many of Sturges' regular repertory of character actors give the performance of their lives.

My Thoughts:
This is actually my first foray into Preston Sturges' filmography (as director at least) so I wasn't sure what to expect outside of what the cover said. I have to say that it's a film I'm glad I picked up. Eddie Bracken is very good as the soldier who never went to war due to a serious bout of hayfever and is so embarrassed he decides to not go back to his hometown... that is until a group of soldiers he buys a drink for tries to fix his problem against his will by phoning his mother and telling her that he will be coming home. He goes home and one thing leads to another until he is put forward as a candidate for mayor. He tries to come clean but as the stories from the other soldiers get more involving and his 'hero' status in his hometown gets higher it becomes harder and harder for the truth to come out. The film works well and has a good cast and above average script making me more interested in picking up more of Sturges' films when I see them real cheap. 3.5/5

(From Never Ending Movie Marathon (short reviews) on June 27th, 2010)

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, a review by GSyren

Title	Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan
Year	2011
Director	Gilles Penso
Stars	Ray Harryhausen, Randy Cook, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Phil Tippett and many others
Overview
My thoughts	If you don't know who Ray Harryhausen is, you need to buy this title. If you do know who Ray Harryhausen is you need to buy this title. Ok, maybe that's a bit extreme, but the fact is that Ray Harryhausen is an extraordinary person who has had a HUGE impact on visual effects. If you are the least bit interested in visual effects you should learn about Ray Harryhausen. Today most effects are created with computer imagery, and there are often hundreds of people involved. Ray did it all himself. He was a one man visual effects studio. He was mainly a stop motion animator, and truly a great stop motion animator. His films inspired generations of stop motion animators. Without Ray we may never have seen Wallace and Gromit, Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline and ParaNorman. But he also inspired lots of other visual effects people. You can hear them tell how Ray's work was the thing that inspired them to go into the business. Ray Harryhausen is one of the very few technicians who has been elevated to a position above the directors of the films they worked on. If you ask people who made The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts, they'll most likely say Ray Harryhausen, not Nathan Juran or Don Chaffey. Me, I'm a long standing Harryhausen fan. I've got all his films on DVD (and some now on BD), almost all books published about him, and still I learned new stuff from this film. Unfortunately, this title seems to be region locked to region B. Sorry Achim! ;-) It's available from Amazon UK on DVD as well, but the DVD is actually more expensive than the BD.
Rating

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on March 28th, 2013)

Charmed: The Final Season, a review by addicted2dvd

Charmed: The Final Season (2005/United States) Get ready for the ultimate ride in supernatural entertainment! In Charmed: The Final Season, the magical Halliwell sisters Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and Paige (Rose McGowan) face their biggest challenges in love, life and death as they try one last time to fulfill their destiny! Join them in their fight to protect Leo from the Angel of Death, and witness their devastating battle when demons conspire to take over the Underworld! Charmed: The Final Season's 6 discs deliver 22 episodes of nonstop thrills, suspense and a climactic finale! The Charmed Ones are ready. Are you? EPISODES: 1. Still Charmed & Kicking 2. Malice in Wonderland 3. Run, Piper, Run 4. Desperate Housewitches 5. Rewitched 6. Kill Billie: Vol. 1 7. The Lost Picture Show 8. Battle of the Hexes 9. Hulkus Pocus 10. Vaya Con Leos 11. Mr. & Mrs. Witch 12. Payback's A Witch 13. Repo Manor 14. 12 Angry Zen 15. The Last Temptation of Christy 16. Engaged and Confused 17. Generation Hex 18. The Torn Identity 19. The Jung and the Restless 20. Gone With The Witches 21. Kill Billie: Vol. 2 22. Forever Charmed

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Stars:
Alyssa Milano as Phoebe Halliwell
Rose McGowan as Paige Matthews
Holly Marie Combs as Piper Halliwell
Brian Krause as Leo Wyatt
Kaley Cuoco as Billie

Extras:

• Audio Commentary
• Bonus Trailers
• Featurettes
• Closed Captioned

Here it is... the final season of Charmed. I went through this season so fast... in just a few hours over a day. Come to think of it... I went through the entire series pretty quick... 8 seasons (178 episodes) in exactly 3 weeks. That averages out to 8 and a half episodes per day! This is my 4th time watching the series... and I loved the entire run this time as I did the first time I saw it.

Good new this set (is the only one that) has extras! There is a few commentaries as well as several featurettes. Including a featurette where they actually interview fans of the series. A strange thing about this set is that they did not use the theme song for the opening of the episodes. They have for every previous season... but they don't for the last season? Oh well... I always skip the episode openings anyway. One thing that bugs me about all the sets of Charmed is that there is no play all function. I know how difficult is it to click the next episode once it goes back to the menu...but it can be a pain. Especially when you keep forgetting where you set down the remote... like I did many times!

This season Kaley Cuoco is added to the cast. She is well known for playing Penny on The Big Bang Theory. Kaley plays a young witch that The Charmed Ones take in and teach the craft to. This is one time I just can not pick favorite episodes... as I loved every minute of them all. I especially loved how they ended the series. Episodes like Forever Charmed is how all series should go out. It gives a great sense of closure for the series. No unanswered questions. Just a sad goodbye. If there is anything I would change if I could. It is how the final episode brought back so many familiar faces from previous episodes/seasons... but they couldn't get Shannen Doherty to make an appearance. The final shot of the episode was of a bunch of family pictures on the wall as they followed an Piper and Leo up the stairs... and they couldn't even use a picture of her on the wall!?! It is a shame.

Over-all I can't say enough good about it... loved every second. After watching all 8 seasons I actually find myself a little sad that I don't have any more to watch.




(From Addicted2dvd's Random TV Series Watched on April 21st, 2012)