4k-UHD/TV Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica

 

This is a TV movie version of the three-part premiere (the pilot episode and the two-part Saga of a Star World) of the original 1978 Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica, starring Lorne Green, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Maren Jensen, Jane Seymour, Terry Carter, Laurette Spang-McCook, Rick Springfield, and Ed Begley Jr. (the latter two in smaller roles). This is essentially an edited version of the pilot episode of the TV series titled Saga of a Star World, with an alternate ending from what was shown in the series. The series would have been quite different if the movie ending had been used. It is set in a distant galaxy and involves a war between twelve human colonies and a race of robots called Cylons. The Cylons present a peace offer, and representatives of the twelve colonies and several Battlestar ships arrive for armistice talks. Commander Adama (played by Green), the commander of the Battlestar Galactica, suspects a trap, which the Cylons spring, destroying most of the fleet and killing the council of twelve. Adama uses the Galactica to rescue as many humans from the colonial worlds as possible. Then they set off to find the legendary 13th human colony, Earth, all while battling (and trying to avoid) the Cylons. 

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc (the original Blu-Ray version of the movie released in 2013). Both discs have the same content, just the movie and no bonus features. The video quality of the UHD disc is excellent. It does have some film grain, but the video is crisp and clear (mostly), which is sometimes a detriment because the special effects back in the late 1970s were not great (at least by today's standards). In general, the shots set on the planets and ships look fantastic, while the space battles did not look as good. Many of the costumes and makeup for various aliens look very cheesy, and you can tell how fake everything was when you see it in 4k resolution. The audio is okay, but not great. The same 2.1-channel surround track created for the 2013 Blu-Ray release is on the UHD disc and was not upgraded for the 4K release.

Ultimately, I would say the movie is okay but absolutely dated. If you have watched the 2003 reboot, you will recognize elements from the plot that were incorporated into the pilot episode for the rebooted series. While I have not watched the entire original series yet, this is definitely not as good as any of the episodes in the rebooted series. Part of that is, of course, due to the limits on special effects at the time. CGI did not exist in 1978, and even practical effects and makeup were more limited back then than they are now. Even so, this is a Sci-Fi classic, and if you liked the 2003 series, this is worth watching, if nothing else, to see the differences between the original series and the reboot.

DVD/TV Movie Review: The Client List

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Blu-Ray/TV Movie Review: Prison Break The Final Break

 

+++Warning, This will contain spoilers from the fourth season of the show as well as a minor spoiler for the fifth season/event series that aired in 2017. ++++

The Final Break is an hour-and-a-half-long TV movie that aired a few weeks after the series finale of Prison Break (on May 27, 2009), showing the events that occurred during the time that passed in the time jump in the series finale where it was revealed that Michael was dead. The basic story is that Sara is arrested for the murder of Michael's mother and thrown into a women's prison in Miami. The General sets up a hit on Sara, and Michael finds out and springs a plan to break her out. Most of the major characters that appeared in the fourth season (Sucre, Malone, Lincoln, and T-bag) also appear in this. Jodi Lynn O'Keef also reprises her role as Gretchen and gets a better sendoff than she got during the "main" episodes of the fourth season. Lori Petty plays the main antagonist for Sara in the women's prison. There is not really any setup for the storyline that would play out in the event series where it is revealed that Michael faked his death, aside from the fact that his death is never shown on screen.

The Blu-Ray is fairly bare-bones. The A/V quality is akin to the series releases; the only extra is about four minutes of deleted scenes. There is no making-of feature, no commentary track, etc. That knocks it down a star for me, but overall, it gives a decent but somewhat unnecessary alternate ending to the original series run. Personally, I think the fourth season's ending was a fine ending without any further explanation, regardless of whether the event series was ever made.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Sherlock: Seasons 1-4 & Abominable Bride Gift Set

 

This set is just the packaging of all four seasons, plus the special episode that bridged seasons 3 and 4, The Abominable Bride. You get all the same blu-ray packaging and content that you would have gotten if you purchased the seasons individually. There are no special extras for getting this set.

Sherlock was a series that aired on BBC from 2010 to 2017. It starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectively. It ran for a total of four seasons that consisted of essentially three hour-and-a-half-long movies per season and had one stand-alone episode that bridged seasons three and four. Each episode told modified stories from the books. Except for the stand-alone episode "The Abominable Bride," set the stores in modern-day England. The Abominable Bride was the only episode with the story (mostly) set in the late 1800s. The show sported a great cast, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman at the head as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, respectively. The two had great chemistry, bringing to life the relationship between Holmes and Watson set out in the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adapted by the series' writers. The series gets progressively darker over time, which not everyone that is a fan of the show likes. The writers do an interesting job with the character of Moriarty, who is, of course, Sherlock's main adversary. He is used relatively sparingly throughout the series, really only being the focus of one episode, but in the background of almost all of them. Andrew Scott does a great job with the character and definitely makes him a worthy adversary for Sherlock.

The Blu-ray extras are more extensive in seasons one and two than in seasons three and four. They generally include commentary tracks, as well as behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes. There are no deleted or extended scenes. For season one, the show's original pilot is included, which was remade when the network decided it wanted longer episodes. Overall, the series is very good to great. It, of course, made Cumberbatch and Freeman breakout stars. Still, the entire cast, whether they were series regulars like Rupert Graves, Una Stubbs, or Louise Brealey, or recurring or one-off characters like Mark Gattis (who was also the co-creator of the show), Andrew Scott, or Lara Pulver, was always wonderful.

As others have noted, the first set I received was really beaten up, with all the cases broken or cracked. I did a return and replacement and the second set was fine. So, definitely check out your set immediately because it seems like a bad batch of them out there.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Sherlock Season 4

 

The fourth and (likely) final season of Sherlock aired in January 2017. The season includes a lot of twists, characters being killed off, new characters being introduced, and a fracture of the team. I will not say too much to avoid spoiling it for anyone who has not seen it, but the show definitely took a darker turn this season, even more so than some of the dark elements of the prior seasons. The show does definitively confirm Moriarty is dead, even though they have had Sherlock say he was in the prior season, it was always seen as fairly open-ended, especially with the ending of season three. That is especially since they kept finding ways to fit him into the storylines. But, we learned that he had essentially teamed up with someone even worse who has ties to Sherlock and wreaks havoc in the final episode.

The Blu-Ray set is a two-disc set. The show looks and sounds great in the HD format. For extras, there are three twenty-minute or so behind the scenes features on the three episodes, one for each episode. Then there is about another 30 minutes worth of behind the scenes material that span the course of the season. One interesting tidbit is that the showrunners do not totally foreclose the possibility of further seasons. Still, given that it is getting harder to schedule Freeman and Cumberbatch, they ended the season in a way that it can be a series finale without any cliffhanger.

Overall, I enjoyed the season. It definitely took a turn in tone from the first couple of seasons and went even darker than the ending of season three. I cannot say that anyone who had been a fan of the show up to the fourth season will like or love it, a perusal of the reviews show that is not the case. That said, I think the acting and writing were top-notch, and I personally liked the darker tone, especially the final episode.

Blu-Ray/TV Movie Review: Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

 

The Abominable Bride is a single episode of Sherlock that aired in January 2016. It is, in part, a "what if" episode set primarily in the late 1890s. It shows what the series would have looked like if it had been set in the late 1800s instead of the modern day. It also serves as a bridge between the third season and fourth seasons of the show. So, it sort of jumped back and forth between time periods as each part of the story played out. I will not go into too much detail to avoid giving things away, but the writers managed to tell a good, "one-off" story, advance the modern-day story, and use Moriarty despite his death.

The Blu-Ray's A/V quality is excellent, as the show looks and sounds great in the HD format. The extras include some making-of and behind-the-scenes material, but there is no commentary track on the episode. Good for what was included, but not a ton of bonus material. Overall, if you are a fan of the show this is a must-see special event. Whether you consider it the end of season three, the beginning of season four, or just a special event, it is enjoyable, pays homage to the books while still putting its own spin on the story.

DVD/TV Series Review: ALF: The Complete Series (Deluxe Edition)

 

ALF: The Complete Seris is a DVD box set containing the live-action sitcom Alf, which aired for four seasons on NBC from 1986 to 1990, and the two animated Saturday morning cartoons that were spun off of the main series: Alf: The Animated Series and Alf Tales. The live-action series was created by Tom Patchett and Paul Fusco about an alien from the planet Melmac named Gordon Shumway (but always called ALF, short for alien life form), whose ship drifted in space for a year after his planet blew up and then crashed into the garage of a family in Los Angeles. Fusco created the character of ALF, voiced him in the series, and acted as the puppeteer. The series also starred Max Wright, Anne Schedeen, Andrea Elson, and Benji Gregory in the leading roles as the Tanner family members with whom ALF lives. John Lamatta and Liz Sheridan play the most prominent supporting characters in the series, Tanner's neighbors, Trevor and Raquel Ochmonek. The Animated Series aired from 1987 to 1989 and was a story-of-the-week cartoon about ALF's life on Melmac. Alf Tales aired from 1988 to 1990 and spoofed Fairy Tales such as Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, etc., often infusing them with pop-culture references such as movie references like The Godfather or 80s personalities like Sigfried and Roy and Johnny Carson. 

The DVD set is a 24-disc set. The final disc is a bonus disc that contains a series retrospective featuring interviews with Fusco and Patchett, the 1996 TV movie Project ALF, which resolved the cliffhanger that the parent series ended on, and a handful of episodes from the series with Patchett and Fusco (mostly in character as ALF) commentating on the episodes as bubbles with facts about the series or jokes pop up on the screen. Overall, this is a nice box set, especially for people who were kids in the 1980s watching the show when it aired. The live-action series is the best of everything included in this set. It was mainly wholesome and family-friendly, but occasionally, it would sneak a more adult joke in. The series had quite a few recognizable character actors from the 1980s who appeared, along with a couple of well-known guest stars like Ed McMahon and David Odgen Stiers. The only drawback is that the series ended on a massive cliffhanger. If you watch the bonus material, you will discover that NBC had not decided on the series' fate as the fourth season ended. The producers agreed with NBC that they would end the season on a cliffhanger, and if the series was not renewed for a fifth season, they would make a TV movie to wrap up the story. Unfortunately, NBC backed out of that agreement, so the ending went unresolved until 1996 when ABC agreed to do the TV movie Project ALF.

While it was a decent ending to the story, it did not include any of the cast members from the main series, so it was not a proper series finale. The two animated series were fine but were definitely geared 100% for kids, so they are not as enjoyable for adults. Ultimately, ALF was a fun show. If you lived through the 1980s, it will be a nostalgic blast from the past. One thing some may enjoy is that there are a couple of shots taken at donald t***p, proving that the orange genital wart was just as big a joke back then as he is now. Of course, Americans would be stupid enough to elect an idiot who was a punchline for 80s sitcoms and cartoons as President. The show is dated and a bit cheesy but holds up well and is worth the time to watch.

DVD/TV Movie Review: Project ALF

 

Project ALF is a 1996 TV movie starring Paul Fusco, William O'Leary, Miguel Ferrer, Jensen Daggett, Scott Michael Campbell, John Schuck, Liz Coke, and Martin Sheen. There are also some great cameo and extended cameo appearances by recognizable actors such as Ray Walston, Ed Begley Jr., and Charles Robinson. It serves as a finale to the series ALF, which ran from 1986 to 1990 but ended on a massive cliffhanger with ALF being caught by the Alien Task Force when he was on his way to rendezvous with the ship coming to pick him up. In the movie, the government is trying to decide what to do with ALF. A general (played by Sheen) secretly plans to kill ALF, and two Air Force scientists (played by Daggett and O'Leary) help ALF escape.

The DVD is very bare-bones, just including the movie itself. When the fourth season of ALF was coming to an end, NBC had not decided whether to renew the show for a fifth season. There was, however, a tacit agreement between the network and the producers that they would end the season on a cliffhanger, and if the show was not renewed, NBC would allow them to make a TV movie to resolve the cliffhanger. However, NBC canceled the show and backed out of the agreement to produce a movie, so it was not until ABC approached the producers years later that they could finally get a TV movie to wrap the storyline up. Thus, we get Project ALF. 

It is an okay wrap-up to the series, but because so many years had passed since the series's end, aside from Fusco (who voiced ALF and controlled the puppet), none of the other actors from the series appeared. The Tanner family was written out as having gone into the witness protection program and were living in Iceland. The movie has a slightly different feel than the TV show, but the character of ALF remains mostly the same, and thus, the brand of humor does, too. While it would have been nice if the actors from the TV show had been involved so that the series could get a proper finale, the movie, while a little cheesy, does wrap up on a good note. So, if you were a fan of the show, this is definitely worth the time to watch.   

DVD/TV Movie Review: Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding

 

Hawaiian Wedding is the 2003 TV movie that (finally) put a nail in the coffin of the Baywatch franchise.  It mostly brought back cast members from the parent series, including David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Angelica Bridges, Nicole Eggert, Carmen Electra, Jeremy Jackson, John Allen Nelson, Gena Lee Nolan, and Billy Warlock however, Jason Mamoa, Brandie Roderick, and Stacy Kamano from Baywatch Hawaii did appear, as did Michael Bergin, who starred in the final couple of seasons of the parent series and the two seasons of Baywatch Hawaii. They also found a clever way to bring back Alexandra Paul, whose character was killed off toward the end of the run of the original series. Notable absences included Donna D'Errico, Erika Elaniak, Angie Harmon, Greg Allen Williams, Brooke Burns, David Charvet, David Chokachi, Parker Stevens, Jason Brooks, and Kelly Slater. 

The movie is just over an hour and a half long. It did not get a major restoration like the Blu-Ray releases of the original series and Baywatch Hawaii, so the A/V quality is nowhere near as good as those. The DVD does not have any extras specific to the show or movie but does have promo reels for two series, The Sheild and the Baywatch spoof, Son of the Beach. Like most of the episodes of the various shows (Baywatch, Baywatch Nights, and Baywatch Hawaii), the storyline is terrible, and the acting is not much better. Still, it does provide a proper series finale for the original series and Baywatch Hawaii (it ignores that Baywatch Nights ever existed), which neither series received. It has horrible plot holes, including handwaving away how Mitch survived the blast that ended season 1 of Baywatch Hawaii and a lame explanation for why Court can still see. It brings back a bad guy from season two, Mason Soto (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), who is bent on revenge against Mitch and everyone Mitch cares about because Mitch helped put him in jail. There is also a stupid plotline involving the characters of Jason, Kekoa, Leigh, and J.D. that makes no sense and essentially invents something that never happened in the show to develop a love rectangle. But, then again, Baywatch was never big on sticking with storylines or providing continuity. There are a couple of musical interludes/montages that show clips of the various characters from their time on the show (and one showing Anderson rolling around in a bikini), and there are some callbacks to things that occurred over the run of the franchise. I would not call it a must-watch, but it provides some nostalgia for people stuck with the show from the beginning.

DVD/TV Mini-Series Review: Stephen King's The Shining (1997)

 

This is the version of The Shining that Stephen King really wanted to be made, so much so that he wrote the screenplay and was an executive producer on the miniseries. Depending on what you read, he either was highly disappointed by or outright hated the Kubrick movie, mostly because he felt that it did not interpret the story correctly, and he thought Jack Nicholson was too crazy to play Jack Torrance the way he envisioned the character. And, he felt that Kubrick wrote the character of Wendy (and had Shelly Duvall play her) as too much of a pushover.

This version, which aired on ABC in 1997 stars Steven Weber (who is best known for the series Wings), Rebecca De Mornay, Courtland Mead (who did a great job as Danny), and Melvin Van Peebles. It is a more faithful adaptation of the book than the movie was, in large part because it was 4.5 hours long versus the two hours, so it could show Jack going crazy over a longer period of time than the movie could. I think that alone helps tell the story better because about 40 minutes into the movie Nicholson was already morphing into the "nuts" version of Jack. And, the series can flesh out the family relationship more than the movie ever did. The tradeoff, of course, is that the series had to tone down the blood and gore that the movie was famous for, so it is much more of a thriller than it is a horror movie.

The DVD set comes on two discs, with parts 1 and 2 on the first disc, and part three on the second. There are commentary tracks (including the director, Stephen King, Steven Webber, and a couple of other cast and crew members) on each part. The commentary tracks are selectable from the disc menu, although, for the commentary track for the second part,  I could not get it to play from the DVD menu. I had to start part two, then switch the audio track to Track 2 to hear it. The commentary tracks for parts 1 and 3 played just fine from the menu. It is a bit of an odd commentary track in that not all the participants were in the same room discussing it. The tracks were recorded separately, and then they cycle through who is talking. King was pretty diplomatic regarding the Kubrick movie and mainly focused on this version. The commentary tracks are the main bonus features but, on the second disc, there are some deleted scenes.

The A/V quality of the DVD is bad. In some spots, it looks the same as a VHS-quality video. The special effects were not the greatest, given that it was made in 1997, but there was no big effort to enhance them for the DVD release. Overall, I would not call this a must-see, unless you are a huge fan of the book and want to see it adapted the way King wanted it to be. It is different from the movie, and it was meant to be so. Thankfully, none of the actors try to recreate the performances of the actors in the movie. They made it their own, and that made it work.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome

 

Blood and Chrome is a 2012 TV movie that is a prequel to the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series. This tells the story of a young Adama (played by Luke Pasqualino), and one of his first missions after being assigned as a pilot on Galactica during the First Cylon War. The story takes place after the events of the Caprica series and long before the Battlestar Series picks up. You get some insight into what Adama was like in his youth, but you only get a portion of his backstory. The movie portrays him as a hothead who is always looking for a fight and not the more measured leader he grew into. At this point, the Cylons are still just the chrome versions, although see the beginnings of the "skin job" versions at the very end.

The A/V quality of the blu-ray is very good and is on par with the blu-ray release of the series. The disc does have a couple of extras, but they are not extensive. The extras include deleted scenes and a short feature on the visual effects. It seems that people's feelings fall into a couple different categories when it comes to this story. Much like the Caprica series, people seem to either love the movie or really hate it. It seems like the people who hate it do so mostly because it does not include any other characters from the series. I liked the series but was not so devoted to seeing just those characters that any kind of spin-off would be awful. This movie is really just an extension of the new Battlestar universe. It is like a long flashback episode of the series that tells a single story involving Adama. It has a similar feel to the parent series and does have some twists and betrayals going on much like the series had. No, you are not going to get Edward James Olmos's version of Adama, but the point of the story is to show how that character changed from his youth. If you can get past that and just enjoy the story and the fact that you are getting a new Battlestar story, then this is worth the time to watch.

DVD/Movies Review: The Librarian Trilogy

 

This is a two-disc set containing the three Librarians movies, starring Noah Wyle in his first major post-ER role. Wyle stars a Flynn Carson, a perpetual student with a multitude of pretty useless degrees and no life. Flynn receives an invitation to apply for a job as the librarian at the New York Metropolitan Library. He discovers that the Librarian collects and protects magical and supernatural artifacts like Excaliber, Pandora's Box, and The Ark of the Covenant. In the first movie, The Quest for the Spear, the Spear of Destiny is stolen from the Library, and Flynn and his Guardian, Nicole Noone, (played by Sonya Wagner) have to recover it. In the second movie, Return to King Solomon's Mines, Flynn and an archeologist named Emily Davenport (played by Gabrielle Anwar) must find, and guard the secret of King Solomon's Mine. The third movie, Curse of the Judas Chalice, is set in New Orleans and has a storyline that involves vampires and their version of the Holy Grail. 

The movies are basically Indiana Jones knockoffs with even more supernatural elements than Indiana Jones, mixed with a love story. In each movie, Flynn ends up falling in love with the female lead (Wagner in the first movie, Anwar in the second, and Stana Katic in the third). None of the movies had a huge budget, so the special effects could be a bit cheesy, but I think cheesy was the vibe they were going for. 

Each of the movies has some extras including deleted scenes and some behind-the-scenes featurettes. The extras run about 15 minutes or less per movie, so none of the movies have an extensive amount of bonus content, but it is there for you.

I'd say that the movies are good, but not great. They do have strong supporting casts including Jane Curtin, Bob Newhart (both of whom reprise their roles in the spin-off TV series The Librarians), Kelly Hu, Kyle McLaughlan, Olympia Dukakis, 

Blu-Ray/TV Movie Review: Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe

 

If you are a fan of the TV series Burn Notice, you will know that the character of Sam Axe, a retired Navy Seal played wonderfully by Bruce Campbell, has a ton of stories about things that he has done in his past. This was a tv movie (directed by the star of Burn Notice, Jeffrey Donovan) that tells one of those stories. It is not really an origin story for Sam, per-se, but we do get the origin of the alias Sam often uses in the show, Chuck Finnley. It is mostly a story that is told with tongue firmly planted in cheek and is not really meant to be realistic or accurate. There are a lot of plot holes and things that would not occur in real life (really much like the parent show itself) but if you are good at suspending disbelief, it is fine.

The A/V quality of the Blu-Ray disc is very good, much better than the couple of seasons of Burn Notice that were released on Blu-Ray, which did not get a good transfer at all. The extras include a very good commentary track on the movie with Bruce Campbell, Jeffrey Donovan, and the creator of Burn Notice, Matt Nix. Then, there is a fun faux-making-of-featurette called The Fall of Jeffrey Donovan. Then there is a portion of the 2010 Comic-Con panel and a couple of deleted scenes. If you are not a fan of Burn Notice then this is not going to do anything for you. If you are, it is a good, fun, and kind of silly Sam-centric story that is worth checking out.