DVD Review: The Wiggles: You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
The Wiggles are an international phenomenon. Formed in 1991 when three of the original members were studying early childhood education, the Wiggles connect with their preschool audience using light humor, simple songs with interesting lyrics, and lively dance steps. The supporting cast of characters includes a pirate named Captain Feathersword, Wags the Dog, Dorothy the […]
TV Review: Army Wives – “Would You Know My Name”
I didn’t watch Army Wives at all last season. I watched it for the first time about ten days ago, when I received a review copy of Army Wives: The Complete First Season. I was initially intrigued by the show because I had been a big fan of JAG and I thought with Catherine Bell […]
DVD Review: Mama’s Boy
Diane Keaton has made some great films in a career that has spanned almost forty years. She won a Best Actress Oscar in 1978 for her role in Annie Hall and has been nominated for the coveted award on three other occasions. While Jon Heder lacks the Oscar pedigree of Diane Keaton, with Napoleon Dynamite […]
DVD Review: Bernard and Doris
Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchannan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. When Doris’ father died in 1925, he left roughly $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), to Doris. This lead to her being referred to as the “richest girl in the world,” […]
DVD Review: Margot At The Wedding
Writer/director Noah Baumbach seems to enjoy exploring the dark underbelly of family dynamics and relationships. Baumbach wrote the 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, in which the father (Jeff Daniels) of an intellectual, if slightly eccentric Brooklyn family claims to have been a great novelist but has settled into a teaching job. When his […]
DVD Review: No Reservations
Watching a remake of the 2002 German film Mostly Martha, No Reservations is like getting up at midnight and raiding the fridge – it feels good while you’re doing it, but you wouldn’t dream of telling your friends about it the next day. Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is the master chef at the upscale New York […]
DVD Review: Pioneers of Television
In this age of 500 channel, cable, satellite and HD TV, it’s easy to forget that television itself is just over eighty years old. Originally invented by Philo Farnsworth in 1927, television took more than twenty years to become a staple in American homes. In 1945 there were fewer than 7,000 working television sets in […]
Music Review: Mary J. Blige – Growing Pains
From the time of her first album back in 1992, Mary J. Blige digs into the deepest corners of personal emotion on every song. She takes listeners through her struggles with addiction, depression and finding love. Now, happily married and content with her place in life, Blige has a new well of emotions to draw […]
Music Review: Chris Cornell – ‘Carry On’
Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden and a poster child for the 1990’s grunge music scene out of Seattle, is now a sober solo artist in his forties living in France with his family. How times have changed. On the cover of Cornell’s latest album Carry On, straggly hair and a flannel shirt has been […]
DVD Review: Frasier – The Complete Ninth Season
Frasier was like the Energizer bunny of television shows. The darn thing wouldn’t go away; it just kept running and running. Entering the show’s ninth season, the Frasier staff was rocked by personal tragedy when David Angell, the series’ executive producer and co-creator was killed on American Airlines flight 11, which struck the World Trade […]