Before Monk was conquering the cable ratings (and then going back for leftovers on ABC), first-time director Jake Kasdan (Lawrence’s son) gave us an even more defective detective in Bill Pullman’s mercurial Darryl Zero. The DVD version of Zero Effect – a movie I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about in our Movie Reviews section – isn’t exactly loaded with freatures; indeed, a lot of its material about the making of the movie is in text form. (more…)

This set has pretty much been living in my DVD player since I picked it up last week. Granted, my young daughter really likes the music videos, but even without her influence, these discs stand up to heavy re-viewing. (And heavy reviewing, as the length of this piece should indicate…) I’m assuming, of course, that you liked Attack of the Clones in the first place; otherwise, even the entertaining and informative behind-the-scenes features won’t do much for you. (more…)

By comparison to most of the earlier Doctor Who stories released on DVD, there was a wealth of material available to BBC Video when it came time to release the first Sylvester McCoy-era DVD, and this disc may make the most of it by giving us only the best of it, and not necessarily everything.

Some fans might be a bit shocked to find not much more than some trailers, outtakes, and a couple of alternate angle sequences, but one has to look at it in hindsight: yes, Remembrance Of The Daleks was the first story of the show’s 25th anniversary season in 1988, and yes, it featured the seventh Doctor’s first brush with the perennially popular Daleks (who themselves had been absent from the show for three years), and yes, it was the show’s turning point into a new renaissance that was cut short by the BBC the next year. But by this time, Doctor Who was in decline, losing massive chunks of the general viewing audience to Coronation Street, a popular soap on rival ITV. Where Doctor Who’s 20th anniversary celebration drew widespread media attention, its 25th was hailed by dead silence from the media, if not necessarily the marketing licensees. (more…)

I’ve never really spent much time on this site talking about music videos, and yet many, many years ago, it was one of my favorite mediums. Back before Michael Jackson and John Landis introduced the music biz to the idea that you could throw millions of dollars at the video for one song. Back when Crowded House was still together.

I’ve gone on and on about Crowded House a lot in my music reviews of their albums, but not about their videos, and that’s because they really are two separate things. I don’t like bringing videos up in music reviews because I think it’s all about the songs, and the videos should be an afterthought. But this new DVD, put together somewhat on the cheap by EMI/Capitol Records’ video wing, finally gives me an opportunity to crow about Crowded House’s underrated visual performances. (more…)