Highly Recommended Friends have been raving to me about Downton Abbey (2010-present), the British (and partly American-financed) television drama contrasting the lives upper- and servant-class residents of a large manor house in post-Edwardian England. I had been meaning to catch up with it eventually and gradually but, perfect timing, along comes PBS’s release of Downton Abbey: Seasons 1, 2 & 3 …
Highly Recommended Nevermind how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; how many soldiers can you fit on the flipside of a bottle cap? Quite a lot, as it turns out
Recommended THE FILM: While Curse of Chucky shares a director – Don Mancini – with Seed of Chucky , the previous sequel in the Child’s Play series, it mostly drops the black humor of that film in favor of returning to the franchise’s horror roots. This direct-to-video sequel is actually much better than expected, and it moves the story forward in an interesting way. Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif …
Rent It The good [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] news…? Blue Underground is back! The bad news…? Um, Snuff
Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: Roman Polanski’s Carnage begins at what appears to be the end. Two pairs of parents, the Longstreets (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) and the Cowans (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), have met at the former’s apartment because their two sons have had a fight
Recommended “It was Avatar who fought alongside my father against the first mutant attack. So, now we have our messiah back again
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from promotional materials provided by Sony Pictures Classics, not the Blu-ray edition under review. It happens to the best of them, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m talking about the “maturing” of some prominent, long-running filmmakers–John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, David Cronenberg–who started out as …
Highly Recommended As sometimes happens, I’m reviewing the British (and Irish) mystery series George Gently (2007-present) out of sequence. I examined Series 2 , a DVD release, in May 2010, and then took a gander at Series 3 , on Blu-ray, in June 2011