DVD Collectors Online

The Santa Clause 2, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: The Santa Clause 2
Year: 2002
Director: Michael Lembeck
Rating: G
Length: 104 Min.
Video: Full Frame 1.33:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, French: Dolby Digital: 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital: 5.1
Subtitles: English

Stars:
Tim Allen
Elizabeth Mitchell
David Krumholtz
Eric Lloyd
Judge Reinhold
Wendy Crewson

Plot:
Walt Disney Pictures presents an all-new comedy adventure overflowing with holiday cheer. Tim Allen reappears in 'Santa Clause 2' , the hilarious sequel to everybody's holiday favorite. Scott Calvin (Allen) has been Santa for the past 8 years, and his loyal elves consider him the best one ever. But Scott's got problems. His son Charlie landed on this year's "naughty" list, and if Scott doesn't marry before Christmas Eve - one very, very short month away - he'll stop being Santa forever. Embracing Chrsitmas and the magic of family with heart, warmth, fun and charm, 'Santa Clause 2' is classic holiday entertainment everybody will enjoy again and again.

Extras:
Scene Access
Audio Commentary
Feature Trailers
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Interactive Games
DVD-ROM Content
Closed Captioned
THX

My Thoughts:
This is a pretty good sequel. I enjoyed it quite a bit. But this one was not as good as the first one. I think the only real problem I have with it is the whole Toy Santa storyline. That part just didn't feel right to me, personally. Other then that I enjoyed every minute of it... and watch it every year. I did like the whole must find a wife storyline though.



(From Addicted2DVD's 25 Days of Christmas Marathon: 2010 on December 20th, 2010)

The Beast of Hollow Mountain, a review by GSyren

Title	The Beast of Hollow Mountain (8-427328-750219)
Director	Edward Nassour, Ismael Rodriguez
Actors	Guy Madison, Patricia Medina, Carlos Rivas, Edward Noriega, Julio Villarreal
Produced	1956 in United States
Runtime	79 minutes
Audio	English Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles	French, Spanish
Overview	An American cowboy living in Mexico discovers his cattle is being eaten by a giant prehistoric dinosaur.
My thoughts	Willis O'Brien, the man behind the animation and effects in King Kong, had an idea for a film with cowboys and dinosaurs. He never got to make that film, but his idea spawned two films; The Beast of Hollow Mountain and The Valley of Gwangi. Beast was first out, and is definitely the lesser of the two. And it's the one with the least dinosaur footage. Aside from a very short sequence, we're almost at the one hour mark of the 1:19 runtime before any real dinosaur action takes place. Before that it's a pretty routine cowboy movie. The animation isn't very good. It would be a compliment to even call it second rate. The only exception is a few walking and running sequences that - according to Neil Pettigrew in his book "The Stop Motion Fimography" - is made with replacement animation. That entails making a set of fixed models that represent a walking/running cycle and using them one at a time over and over. This makes for a smooth animation, but looks a bit fake since there is no variation at all, every steep looks the same. The Beast of Hollow Mountain was supposedly the first stop motion film to be shot in CinemaScope and color. Using back projection in color adds a level of problems, and several scenes show problems with color matching and fuzzy backgrounds. When Ray Harryhausen was asked to do 7th Voyage of Sinbad in color two years later, he hesitated and only gave in after much experimentation. Possibly he had seen the trouble they had in Beast. If you have the chance, you should watch The Beast of Hollow Mountain followed directly by watching The Valley of Gwangi, and you will appreciate the greatness of Ray Harryhausen's animation. While Gwangi is certainly not a perfect movie, it's definitely better than Beast. The Beast of Hollow Mountain is not easy to find on DVD, and if you're not a stop motion fan, it's hardly worth the trouble. The DVD I found is a Spanish region free PAL release. It's not anamorphic. The picture quality is just acceptable, and with one exception the print used is free from damage. It's certainly better than watching it online, though.
My rating	2.5 out of 5

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on July 31st, 2013)

Tom's Glee Marathon, a review by Tom

Glee
Season 1.19 Dream On
Writer: Ryan Murphy (Created By), Brad Falchuk (Created By), Ian Brennan (Created By), Brad Falchuk (Writer)
Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Dianna Agron (Quinn Fabray), Chris Colfer (Kurt Hummel), Jessalyn Gilsig (Terri Schuester), Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester), Jayma Mays (Emma Pillsbury), Kevin McHale (Arty Abrams), Lea Michele (Rachel Berry), Cory Monteith (Finn Hudson), Matthew Morrison (Will Schuester), Amber Riley (Mercedes Jones), Mark Salling (Noah "Puck" Puckerman), Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina Cohen-Chang), Neil Patrick Harris (Bryan Ryan), Jonathan Groff (Jesse St. James), Idina Menzel (Shelby Corcoran), Molly Shannon (Brenda Castle), John Michael Higgins (Russell), Iqbal Theba (Principal Figgins), Naya Rivera (Santana Lopez), Paul Vogt (Herb Duncan), Heather Morris (Brittany Pierce), Harry Shum, Jr. (Mike Chang), Dijon Talton (Matt Rutherford), Molly McCook (Sophomore Singer), Wendy Worthington (Woman Auditioning)

Brian, an old rival of Will's, shows up, played by Neill Patrick Harris. I enjoyed this episode.
Also in this episode Rachel finds out, that Shelby (the coach of the rival Glee club) is her biological mother. This storyline has been chosen by the producers because fans have been saying that Idina Menzel (Shelby) and Lea Michele (Rachel) look a lot alike. They were not wrong as you can see in one of the music clips below. Menzel has starred in "Wicked" on Broadway. I only knew her from the movie version of "Rent" before this.

Tina-Watch:
She has some great scenes with Artie.

Notable music:
There was a short rendition of "Piano Man" sung by Brian and Will, which I enjoyed.
Another song I enjoyed was "Safety Dance", a dream sequence in which we see Artie out of his wheelchair for the first time. Before this I wasn't aware that the actor playing Artie wasn't paralized in real life:


Another song I really enjoyed in this episode is Brian (Neill Patrick Harris) and Will singing Aerosmith's "Dream On". And I also enjoyed Artie singing "Deam a Little Dream of Me".

My favorite song in this episode is sung by Shelby and Rachel. "I Dreamed a Dream" from LesMis. Sadly I only found a clip for it where the spoken parts are dubbed in Spanish:



Rating:

(From Tom's Glee Marathon on September 18th, 2012)