I, Claudius is a masterpiece for all time, a vast work of art that renders names like Claudius, Marcellus, Octavia, Tiberius, Augustus, Caligula, Nero, and others vividly, making them utterly human, maybe uncomfortably so. Some of us are that perverted, some of us are that…
Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. I’ve done that with Ratatouille on DVD. My sister has done that with Ratatouille on DVD. In this household, that’s all I know of Patton Oswalt, that he was the voice of Remy in Ratatouille. I knew that there…
In Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there is only the end result, the creations made real. Never did we see Willy Wonka toiling over ideas, figuring out what would work, what textures were necessary. Now we can see…
Before I was born, further back than directly before, I think, I remember being in a line of people. There was dim lighting, and the counter in front of the line looked like one that belonged to an airline at an airport, except it was…
The sole problem with DVD reviewing is that sometimes we can’t write the review we wish to write. It’s not a matter of editorial oversight, but of time. We have to watch either the feature film or documentary and any accompanying extras to the point…
Despite my bafflement on a retail level toward the Fan Favorites: Best of Frasier DVD in my previous Dark Shadows review, I see its value in libraries, much like these Dark Shadows compilations. They are useful tour guides into unfamiliar worlds, and especially worthwhile on…
The final season of Frasier was released on DVD in late 2004 BF, Before Facebook. Spurred on by the advances in social marketing, Paramount asked fans to vote for their favorite episodes of the series, and compiled them in a single DVD called Fan Favorites:…
When Aaron Sorkin created Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, producing what was truly one of the best pilots in television history, he should have studied television history in the early ‘90s from Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of Designing Women. Not long after its debut, Studio…
Every weekend, C-SPAN 2 becomes Book TV, airing talks by, and interviews with, nonfiction authors. Some Fridays, while looking at the schedule on Book TV’s website, I go overboard, recording nearly every program set to air, first the books I recognize as having in my…
This is the valley. Santa Clarita. A mere 30 minutes north of the metropolis the formidable Jack Webb called home, but isolated enough by mountains and freeways to make it an escape valve for those who work in Los Angeles but don’t want to live…