DVD Collectors Online

Three Stooges: Disorder in the Court, a review by addicted2dvd

The Three Stooges: Disorder in the Court
The Stooges are key witnesses at a murder trial. Their friend, Gail Tempest, who dances at the Black Bottom cafe where the Stooges are musicians, is accused of killing Kirk Robin.

My Thoughts:
A true classic Three Stooges short. I found it to be one of their better shorts that I have seen so far.



(From November Movie Marathon: Classic Comedy Greats on November 8th, 2017)

The Enforcer, a review by Jon

The Enforcer
3 out of 5



When Detective Harry Callahan stops a liquor store hostage standoff in his own no-nonsense way, he gets busted back to personnel.  But not for long.  When terrorists rob an arms warehouse and go on a blood-soaked extortion spree, San Francisco's leaders quickly seek out Callahan: 'The Enforcer'.
Clint Eastwood takes dead aim again in this third of his five 'Dirty Harry' films.  Presaging her four-time Emmy-winning stint as half of TV's 'Cagney and Lacey', Tyne Daly co-stars as Harry's new partner, who has two jobs:  nailing the terrorists - and winning hard-boiled Harry's confidence.  Stoked with brisk humour and hard-hitting mayhem, 'The Enforcer' carves another winning notch in the handle of Harry's .44 magnum.

Despite a great start that sees Harry getting properly angry again and a well staged ending, this plods something rotten in the middle section. It feels like a TV movie, complete with seriously crap music! But while women's lib was always going to be too easy a target, Tyne Daly gives it some life, cutting a nice balance between plucky and scared. Of course, Clint Eastwood is dependable as ever, though seems to be lacking a proper catchphrase: in Dirty Harry we had "Do you feel lucky?"; in Magnum Force "a good man's got to know his limitations", but here, just a running joke with Daly. Still there's plenty of other Harry-isms, like "seven-point suppository..." delivered to his snivelling boss with the trademark growl! The villains are predictable caricatures, but the leader Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren Bookwalter) is a truly vile piece of work and certainly enough to piss off Harry and us, which I think Magnum Force lacked.

Despite the middle section lacking vitality, there's still plenty of action, with poor old Daly trying to keep up (almost getting a faceful of rocket at a test site was funny, as was the run through San Francisco). Albert Popwell pops-up again! Here he plays Mustapha, a suspected gang leader Harry cuts a deal with, and he finally gets a solid speaking part. If you haven't recognised him, he was the bank robber in Dirty Harry ("Hey man. I gots to know...") and the pimp in Magnum Force (killed the prostitute with drain cleaner). 

Overall it's passable fun and better as a sequel than Magnum Force. The weird thing is -and don't laugh- but from about halfway through, I couldn't get the similarirites with Robocop of all things out of my head! I said, don't laugh.



(From Dirty Harry Marathon on March 1st, 2010)

Friends: The One With All Ten Seasons, a review by DJ Doena

In opposition to the early adopters I've always been more of a late adoper. Especially when it comes to trends and hypes. Every time a hype is rolling I am against it per se. And to be honest in most cases the hype doesn't last long and it was a good thing I wasn't being involved in that crap.

Something like that happend with Friends. It was running on TV all the time but I haver felt any connection to that flat sharing community from New York. Over the years I watched a few episodes but I had never the urge to zap in the next week. Since a few months, Friends is running again on the german TV station Kabel 1 and I watched a few episoded again.

When we talked about this show at work, a friend of mine recommended this show wholeheartedly. He watched it during its original run and additionally with the original soundtrack (usually movies and shows are dubbed in germany).

Thus I made the decision to buy this show three years after it ended. And I decided to buy the entire show at once. Unfortunately the german box
And what can I say: I was fascinated from the first episodes on. The facial expressions and the gestures of the actors and the jokes are awesome.

But the most important element of the show is a continuing story telling. As I have stated before, TV shows must have a continuing storyline to be interesting. I grew up in the 80s and (being born in east germany) I watched a lot of "Westfernsehen" (TV stations from west germany). I watched everything the TV stations deemed worthy of broadcasting: Star Trek, The Fall Guy, Riptide, MacGyver and so on. But somewhere in the history of making TV shows they switched to continuing stories. Examples for this are Babylon 5 and later on also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both shows, as well as Emergency Room and Friends started in the years 1993/1994. In my opinion these shows had a lasting impact on TV shows.

Some say that Friends was corny and contained many soap elements (especially the Ross/Rachel story and the season cliffhangers) but they always spiced it up with a great pinch of humour.

But let's look on other comedy shows in comparison: Married With Children, Home Improvement and King of Queens. All sitcoms in the classical fashion with a certain set of places (first and foremost the living room) that remain constant throughout the years. The difference is that the characters only change slightly or not at all. Granted, the children get older but other than that very few things change. If you watch an episode of the first or seventh season becomes only clear through the age of the actors. That's my personal reason why I stopped collection these shows. There is no need to watch the next episode. You've had a few good laughs but when the next episode begins everything has been resetted.

On Friends there is the additional element of the relations between the characters. This is through the chosen setting (6 friends). Almost all characters are "combinable", while the classic sitcoms is based upon a family and thus the characters have defined relations among each other.  Just the combinations of who is roomie with whom and situations based on that are simply not doable in other sitcoms.

The next thing is the ensemble. No one of the six is perfectly normal but that is not unusual among sitcoms (Al Bundy, Steve Urquel, Dharma Freedom Finkelstein-Montgomery) but in this show everyone is a bit of a weirdo. And they are well-balanced. Nowadays Jennifer Aniston may be the well-knownst actress but I had never the feeling  one of the characters  was missed out. No character outshone all others nor was anyone over-shadowed. Granted, Joey had the least character developement of all (although he made a great leap forward over the last two seasons) but that doesn't mean the others outshone him.

So I watched The One Where It All Began for the first time on October, 18th and in the night from November 1st to 2nd The Last One

(From Friends: The One With All Ten Seasons on November 2nd, 2007)