Title	Excerpt	Author	Date	Total Comments	Recent Comment
Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen	In general, I love Doctor Who. It’s my favorite television program. It can cheer me up when I’m sad, it’s comforting if I’m sick in bed with the flu, and it can be just what I need after a long day at work. I can often forgive its foibles; this…	Sarah Hadley	11/16/09	0
HERO: Special Edition	It’s very hard to impress – really, truly impress me - with a film these days. I’ve seen so many, and the tropes of a particular style or genre become so prevalent, that it’s almost impossible to really take me by surprise. I can only think of two occasions as…	Sarah Hadley	11/03/09	0
Fawlty Towers: The Complete Collection Remastered	What can I say about Fawlty Towers that hasn’t been said before? The show consistently makes fan lists of the best situation or British comedies; it is routinely seen in rotation across (at very least) Europe and North America; and despite the type of non-politically-correct humor that Americans often claim…	Sarah Hadley	10/27/09	0
The Mysterious Cities of Gold: The Complete Series	Does anyone remember Nickelodeon as it used to be? No, I don’t mean back when they ran ‘60s shows during Nick at Nite. I don’t mean SNICK and the Big Orange Couch. I mean before that – back when Nickelodeon was a haven of, well…badly-dubbed anime. I remember this era…	Sarah Hadley	10/22/09	0
L’Innocente	L’Innocente, released in 1976, is the final film of the acclaimed Italian director Lucino Visconti. You may never have seen one of his works, but a couple of them are known in casual circles; his 1963 The Leopard, starring Burt Lancaster, has been released in multiple versions as part of…	Sarah Hadley	09/30/09	0
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: Paramount Centennial Collection	When you think classic Westerns, you think “John Wayne and John Ford.” At least that’s what the experts tell me. Although I’m not averse to the occasional Western, it’s never been one of my top genres, and the examples I enjoy tend to be either terribly obvious or completely left-of-center.…	Sarah Hadley	09/24/09	0
Doctor Who: The Rescue / The Romans	Doctor Who does not work in the one-hour format, unless its focus is the establishment of a single character or threat. This is my personal theory, one I have seen justified by numerous episodes of the new series – “Dalek,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” “Midnight,” even “Boom Town.” All…	Sarah Hadley	09/17/09	0
El Dorado: Paramount Centennial Collection	In my review of the Paramount Centennial Collection release of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (day-and-date stablemate with this release), I mentioned that I have never been overly fond of John Wayne Westerns. Conversely, one of the few great Westerns I really do like is Red River, a 1948…	Sarah Hadley	09/17/09	0
The Day the Earth Stood Still (3-Disc Blu-Ray)	Weird admission: I don’t like most sci-fi movies. I’ll go see them in the theater, and often they’re moderately entertaining, but there are relatively few I really want to buy and put on my shelf. I love the Star Trek movies for the characters, not the science fiction aspect (though…	Sarah Hadley	09/16/09	0
Johnny Got His Gun	If you’ve never read Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, here’s my advice for you: get off your computer and go read it right now. I make no exaggeration when I say it is a modern classic, a seminal work, and one of those rare pieces everyone should read –…	Sarah Hadley	09/10/09	0
Synecdoche, New York	The above is the realization of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) toward the end of Synecdoche, New York. Up to and including that point, he has been attempting to stage his life – indeed, everyone’s life – as a giant piece of theatre, complete with actors playing all of the…	Sarah Hadley	09/10/09	0
Nickelodeon / The Last Picture Show	Nickelodeon is a terrible film. There, I said it. Director Peter Bogdanovich’s love letter to the silent movie days was, I’m sure, supposed to light up the screens in 1976 with its madcap, zany comedy, its (intentionally) awkward romance, and the sight of Burt Reynolds in a hideous, yellow check…	Sarah Hadley	09/09/09	0
A Little Princess	When I was about six or seven years old, there was a program on public television called Wonderworks. It didn’t last very long – as far as I can tell, from no wider an era than the mid-80s to 1990 – but in that time, its remit was to broadcast…	Sarah Hadley	09/07/09	0
To Catch a Thief: Paramount Centennial Collection	Today, when people think of Alfred Hitchcock movies, they tend to think of a specific, brief period of time: roughly 1954-1963, incorporating such films as Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, and several more. Less than ten years to represent a man who had a tremendously successful…	Sarah Hadley	09/03/09	0
The Odd Couple: Paramount Centennial Collection	The Odd Couple is one of the rare modern stage plays to have broken through its original medium, on into a film, and straight into the public consciousness. It’s one of the few plays almost anyone can name straight off the top of their head – practically the only one…	Sarah Hadley	09/03/09	0
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: The Complete Series	Once in every blue moon, you come upon a situation comedy with something new to say. So it is with The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, a justly famous BBC sitcom from 1976-79, revolving not around family life, roommates, neighbors, or friends, but about a man stuck in a…	Sarah Hadley	09/03/09	0
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas	I’ve seen too many films about Nazis. Haven’t you? In our modern climate of relativism, where only the most naïve can see world politics as pure black and white, the Nazis offer – disturbingly – a safe, even comforting vision of evil: simple, uncomplicated, thoroughly bad. Put a Nazi in…	Sarah Hadley	08/12/09	0
Enchanted April	My mother has been waiting for this DVD ever since we bought a player – approximately 12 years ago. She is a fan of what you’d probably call “costume drama,” and it’s an apt term, because she not only looks forward to the drama, she likes the costumes, too. And…	Sarah Hadley	08/12/09	0
Pride and Prejudice	I think I have mentioned before that I have never read any Jane Austen. Such an oversight would be considered unfortunate for any committed reader, but for an English graduate student, it smacks of carelessness. (And that’s a horribly mangled Oscar Wilde quote, no less.) The truth is, like The…	Sarah Hadley	07/21/09	0
Follow That Bird	Can you remember a time when Sesame Street didn’t include Elmo, the furry, fuzzy, scarlet-red usurper so many of us have come to loathe? I can. He was just being introduced when I was a little kid, and mostly, he just showed up in a couple of small segments. He…	Sarah Hadley	07/02/09	0
Return from Witch Mountain	An admission: I actually watched Return from Witch Mountain before the original film. Sacrilege, I know. But I had a friend over, and we had a pizza, and we knew Bette Davis was in it, and we wanted something silly to watch… The funny thing is, of course, that we…	Sarah Hadley	06/24/09	1	06/24/09
Escape to Witch Mountain	I was an incredibly cowardly kid when it came to movies. I had an over-active imagination, and just about anything the least bit scary could either keep me up all night or send me into waves of nightmares. My parents, therefore, had to be cautious about what I watched when…	Sarah Hadley	06/24/09	0
JCVD	I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an entire film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. I’m not I certainly know who he is: I’ve seen the clips, I’ve heard the jokes. When I was briefly living in Buenos Aires, I remember seeing huge subway-size movie posters for Timecop, which had presumably just…	Sarah Hadley	06/17/09	0
Last Chance Harvey	Last Chance Harvey is the sort of film that will only appeal to you if you like A) Dustin Hoffman, B) Emma Thompson, or C) both. Fortunately, I fall into the latter category (though with some preference for Thompson), so when the posters for this one started to appear I…	Sarah Hadley	06/15/09	0
Slumdog Millionaire Blu-Ray	I’m sure anybody reading this review knows of Slumdog Millionaire by now. It’s the little movie that could: shot in two different languages, financed by the British, and for a time, doomed as a direct-to-DVD release before it was rescued by distribution, placed in cinemas, and became a breakout hit.…	Sarah Hadley	06/15/09	1	07/03/09
Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 1	“…To boldly go where no man has gone before.” Forget the grammar. Forget gender politics. This is quite possibly the most famous set of words in English-language television. And rightly so, too: Star Trek didn’t get its stripes just because Mr. Spock had pointy ears, Dr. McCoy made little quips,…	Sarah Hadley	06/08/09	1	06/09/09
Walt Disney Animation Collection: Volumes 1 - 3	It’s easy to forget, in an age when Disney is (and has been, for many years) driven almost entirely by feature films, that the company, the man and his famous mouse all gained their fame through the production of original, animated shorts. From Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the ‘20s…	Sarah Hadley	05/19/09	0
Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord	The Prosecution Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution’s argument is quite simple: in 1986, the classic series of Doctor Who finally jumped the shark, bought the farm, kicked the bucket, sold it all and moved to Birmingham. In short: it died – not, perhaps, literally, but in all regards that one…	Sarah Hadley	04/16/09	0
The Films of Michael Powell	Powell and Pressburger: not a familiar pair of names if your only interest is current, American movies, but if you stretch back to the classic cinema and a more worldly view, you’ll find their names trip off the tongues of enthusiasts like “eggs-and-bacon,” “ham-and-cheese,” “coffee-and-cigarettes.” They are two of the…	Sarah Hadley	04/15/09	0
Out at the Wedding	Oh, I hate girls in the throes of their weddings: they primp and they preen and they get all excited about a giant, noxious party filled with a giant crowd of noxious people. (You can tell I’m one of those “small, intimate ceremony” types.) So I completely sympathize with a…	Sarah Hadley	04/06/09	4	08/19/09
Body of Lies	I was pretty amazed when Body of Lies came out and no one went to see it. I thought, “How is that possible? It’s directed by Ridley Scott, it’s got two strong American lead actors in it, and it’s a thriller. The American public loves thrillers.” I planned to see…	Sarah Hadley	04/01/09	0
This American Life: Season Two	This American Life: Season One has probably been my single biggest surprise in almost 100 DVDs reviewed. I was blown away by the program, and had the extra features been something more to write home about, I’m sure it would have taken the coveted five-star rating (which, to date, I…	Sarah Hadley	03/24/09	0
I Served the King of England	I Served the King of England is the kind of film that is absolutely impossible to judge from the trailer. Seriously, take a look at it: you get a vague sense that it might be told in flashback, that it takes place before and during World War II, that it…	Sarah Hadley	03/17/09	0
Our Man in Havana	It’s amazing, when you think about it, how certain terms and idioms enter the language. “The Twilight Zone” and the first few notes of its titular theme tune are commonplace cultural idioms that pretty much everyone in the United States understands, whether they’ve seen the actual TV show or not.…	Sarah Hadley	03/13/09	1	03/13/09
Elegy	There has almost never been a more appropriately titled film than Elegy. Based on Philip Roth’s novella The Dying Animal (itself an intriguing designation), this is the story of a man transitioning to old age neither with anger nor grace, but with a sense of bereavement. He is mourning himself,…	Sarah Hadley	03/12/09	0
Gumshoe	There’s something very peculiar to me about spoof film noir. It’s a one-note joke that doesn’t let up, and rarely has any sort of subtlety; you put a guy in a hat and a trenchcoat and you have him spout a lot of lines about “dames” and “molls” and “the…	Sarah Hadley	03/09/09	0
Studio One Anthology	I’ve never seen much in the way of live television. We’ve all watched sitcoms that are taped “in front of a live audience,” and maybe we’ve seen occasional experiments like the live episode of E.R. or the latter-day Fail Safe broadcast, but regular, live drama is something that has simply…	Sarah Hadley	03/04/09	0
She Likes Girls	A friend of mine saw this DVD on my coffee table, and laughed at the title. “Well, no kidding, Sherlock.” That’s the sort of immediate contempt something like She Likes Girls inspires: put a pair of women together in bed on the cover of your DVD, and you hardly need…	Sarah Hadley	03/03/09	0
Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video	It’s surprising how often long-running TV shows – the kind that really become beloved by the public – have forgotten, overlooked, or simply unsung heroes. They’re the people who were there to get the ball rolling, to put ideas and traditions in place, and then either left for pastures anew…	Sarah Hadley	03/02/09	0
Dennis Potter: 3 to Remember	Lately, I’ve been trying my hand at the stageplay. As a graduate English student with a long-time interest in the stage, this probably isn’t much of a surprise to anyone. What’s somewhat more unusual is my choice of inspiration. Don’t get me wrong: I love Shakespeare; O’Neill’s brilliant; Orton’s super…	Sarah Hadley	02/24/09	1	07/23/09
This American Life: Season One	I admit to having ignored National Public Radio most of my young life. When I was young, my parents listened to Morning Edition during the early-morning drives, and to All Things Considered on the afternoons home. The British import My Word was a staple of Saturday mornings, and I’m of…	Sarah Hadley	02/17/09	0
Doctor Who: Four to Doomsday	I have this little theory about the nineteenth season of Doctor Who - a totally unsubstantiated theory, mind, but worth repeating all the same. For the eighteenth season in 1980 new producer John Nathan-Turner made it his goal to completely revamp the show. He replaced the entire regular cast, changed…	Sarah Hadley	02/11/09	0
Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer	I pride myself on having a large and fairly encompassing knowledge of Western cinema. I have my certain areas of interest of course – ‘30s and ‘40s pictures, science fiction and fantasy films, and so on – but I like to think that you can name just about any era…	Sarah Hadley	02/02/09	0
Doctor Who: The War Machines	One of my personal joys in watching Doctor Who trickle out on to DVD over the past decade has been getting the chance to reassess the 1960s stories. Although never as polarizing as the late 1980s, ’60 Who on VHS tended to have its odds stacked against its favor. Ropey,…	Sarah Hadley	02/02/09	0
Columbia Pictures: The Best Picture Collection	Repackaging stock is not a new trick, especially when it comes to home video. Even as a kid, I remember “special” collections of actors’ lesser-known or public-domain films, sets of old sci-fi movies arranged by whether or not they featured alien invasions, time-travel or space wars, and most particularly, “best…	Sarah Hadley	12/29/08	0
The Visitor	I loved The Station Agent. I saw it completely on a whim when it came out in 2003, and it has since become one of my favorite modern movies. It’s a subtle and endearing piece, with characters that are easy to relate to, and it poses a couple of very…	Sarah Hadley	12/17/08	0
Dollars	This movie is not actually named Dollars. According to the opening of the picture, as well as its original posters, the title is simply $. That’s right, $. If that sounds like an ill-considered, uninterested title for a heist film, well, you’re right. But then again, it’s an ill-considered, uninterested…	Sarah Hadley	12/17/08	0
The Garment Jungle	Earlier this week I reviewed Affair in Trinidad, a 1952 “B” picture directed by Vincent Sherman, with cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc. At the time, I found their work serviceable, though the picture itself didn’t have much of a script and was clearly released to capitalize on its stars. This…	Sarah Hadley	12/17/08	1	10/08/09
Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy / K-9 and Company	At the time of writing, I have seen every single Doctor Who story that still exists in the visual format, with the exception of just six half-hour episodes (or, in simple terms, one and a half stories). That said, there are a few – chiefly lesser-regarded stories from the Pertwee…	Sarah Hadley	12/15/08	0
Affair in Trinidad	So there’s this dame, right? She’s a club singer in Trinidad, and she is, as they say, smokin’ (well, she’s Rita Hayworth, to be more precise). Her husband is murdered – cue the dramatic music – and she’s called in for questioning by the police. Meanwhile, an old friend (Glenn…	Sarah Hadley	12/10/08	0