Title	Excerpt	Author	Date	Total Comments	Recent Comment
Legend of the Seeker: Complete First Season	Sam Raimi & Co., producers of the wildly popular Xena and Hercules franchises of yore, head back to the lush hills and green valleys of New Zealand for a more straight-faced fantasy adventure series, with plenty of swords, magic, and good-looking folk who still look good no matter how many…	JE Smith	11/03/09	0
People Like Us: The Complete Series	It is a sad truth, in television especially, that innovation is often missed at first by general audiences, until something else comes along, copies it, and then reaps great success using basically the same ideas. American viewers have embraced The Office (both the UK original and the U.S. remake), but…	JE Smith	11/02/09	0
Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin	Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but the fourteenth season of Doctor Who remains my very favorite. With four stories I would consider all-time classics, and only one sorta-stinker, this year in the life of Who is the very definition of “firing on all cylinders.” It features Tom Baker at…	JE Smith	11/02/09	0
Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (Director’s Cut)	Despite the general putridity of its last two broadcast series, hardcore fans have been clamoring for a return of the crew of Red Dwarf since it went off the air in 1999. A proposed feature film was in the planning stages for years, but never quite materialized, and the cast…	JE Smith	10/27/09	0
Doctor Who: The Next Doctor	In his first post-Donna Noble adventure, the Doctor lands the TARDIS in a remarkably clean-looking Victorian England, and almost immediately finds himself replaced by an apparent successor (David Morrissey) who calls himself the Doctor, has a pretty assistant called Rosita (Velile Tshabalala) and even a sonic screwdriver. Is it a…	JE Smith	10/21/09	0
Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen	At the end of Season 21, with Peter Davison abdicating the title role of Doctor Who, producer John Nathan-Turner took the unusual decision to reserve the last story of the year for the new incoming Doctor, in the guise of Colin Baker. In most previous cases, the Doctor’s regeneration had…	JE Smith	09/01/09	0
Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection (Blu-Ray)	Launched a mere decade after the demise of the TV series, 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture set into motion the most beloved and enduring TV-to-film franchise in history. These six movies proved the flexibility of the Trek format, varying noticeably in content, tone, and yes, quality. They played with…	JE Smith	08/31/09	4	09/02/09
Sunshine Cleaning	Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are two of the best and most appealing actresses in Hollywood today, and the mostly decent Sunshine Cleaning is a good vehicle for their talents. With a superb supporting cast and an interesting central conceit, SC is entertaining and well made without being particularly memorable.…	JE Smith	08/19/09	0
Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead	It will interesting to see, ten years or so down the road, how the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who is ultimately remembered. Davies was largely responsible for shaping the series’ 2005 revamp, and has been the guiding force behind it ever since, and there’s no arguing that he…	JE Smith	07/21/09	0
Elsewhere	Elsewhere is an old fashioned-y kind of thriller that relies on time-honored storytelling techniques over flashy gore and other exploitation elements. It’s the kind of movie I wish I could rave about because it is so atypical of the current film climate, and very smartly done in many ways. But…	JE Smith	06/08/09	0
Designing Women: The Complete First Season	Welcome to Sugarbaker & Associates Interior Design, the Atlanta-based firm staffed by a quartet of sassy, fast-talking ladies who brought style and panache to the all-too-barren landscape of 1980s sitcoms. Anyone who watched the series on its initial run likely remembers the characters as well as the actresses who played…	JE Smith	06/02/09	1	10/28/09
The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series / The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation	There’s nothing like a franchise reboot to bring pointless tie-in merchandising to market, and with a shiny new Star Trek in theaters nationwide, the always-shameless Paramount Video dips into their archives once again for another release of the same old stuff. Seriously, unless you’re completely new to the Trek universe,…	JE Smith	05/15/09	0
Incendiary	Adapted from the debut novel by Chris Cleave, Incendiary is a tale of terrorism in the UK, and its impact upon a young mother whose loss is compounded by her own actions at the moment of the attack. Although not as heart-rending and revolutionary as it clearly wants to be,…	JE Smith	05/13/09	0
Star Trek	No doubt about it, Star Trek is going to evoke different reactions depending on the level of your geek-loyalty to this franchise, or lack thereof. The fiercest reboot in movie history, not only is this “not your father’s Star Trek,” but apparently it’s all a big “paralell universe” thingy, so…	JE Smith	05/08/09	0
LOOK	There’s a fine line between “innovation” and “gimmick,” and while the 2007 festival favorite Look – just now getting a DVD release – often treads that line a little too closely, it does emerge as an engrossing and worthwhile endeavor. There’s a million stories in the naked city, and Look…	JE Smith	05/05/09	0
Bled	There’s certainly no shortage of vampire movies at your average Blockbuster these days, but Bled is something we haven’t seen for a while: the vampire movie as “art” film as well as – wait for it – drug allegory. If you’ve seen The Hunger more than once, Bled may just…	JE Smith	04/29/09	0
Barney Miller: The Complete Third Season	Some TV shows are instantly brilliant from episode 001, and others take a couple of seasons to really kick into high gear. While the early days of the seminal ‘70s cop-com Barney Miller are certainly outstanding, better-than-average TV, the show really hit its stride in this, the third season (1976-77),…	JE Smith	04/21/09	0
Splinter	Mix two parts The Thing (John Carpenter version), one part Night of the Living Dead (the basic holed-up-in-one-location scenario), garnish with some excellent performances, then stir for eighty minutes, and you get the endearingly frantic Splinter, a perky little monster movie that delivers the goods without overstaying its welcome. It’s…	JE Smith	04/20/09	1	04/20/09
Night Court: The Complete Second Season	Night Court is a pleasant memory from the 1980s, and a cut above the dreck that generally passed for a “hit show” in the Al Franken decade. Blessed with a top-notch cast and reasonably good scripts, NC holds up better than many more popular shows of the era (Family Ties,…	JE Smith	04/15/09	0
Doctor Who: The Key to Time (7 Disc Special Edition)	“The Key to Time” is a phrase that strikes an instant chord of recognition with all but the most casual of Doctor Who fans, though their actual critical reaction may vary wildly depending on a number of factors.  The classic series’ first season-long story arc (comprising all of series 16,…	JE Smith	04/13/09	0
Amusement	Hybrid horror rears it’s ugly head with Amusement, a rather tepid scare flick that gives us three genres for the price of one, and doesn’t provide a whole lot of entertainment along the way. Don’t be drawn in by the Scary Clown on the box cover – he’s only in…	JE Smith	03/03/09	0
Eden Lake	It never ceases to amaze me that so many film directors today still seem to regard nihilism as something revolutionary, innovative, and immediate; even after all the Hostels and Saws and hockey-mask-slasher remakes, the utter destruction of (relative) innocents is still seen as the ultimate in cinematic horror. It isn’t.…	JE Smith	03/02/09	0
Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series	The fourth season of the revamped Doctor Who can be summed up in two words: Donna Noble. Not since Billie Piper won the sidekick role in the debut 2005 series (a pop star! Say it ain’t so, Joe!) has there been such an uproar over the casting of the companion.…	JE Smith	12/15/08	0
Trailer Park of Terror - Unrated	Pretty girl Norma (Nichole Hiltz) just wants to escape from her white trash upbringing and run away with her new beau, but the rednecks that inhabit the trailer park where she lives ain’t havin’ none a’ that, and so they kill the boy and make their moves on the girl,…	JE Smith	12/10/08	0
Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius	“The Brain of Morbius,” originally broadcast in January 1976, during Tom Baker’s second season in the title role, is generally known in fan circles as “the Frankenstein one.” It’s also a bit of a divisive story, and it’s not hard to see why: the script itself is not particularly compelling,…	JE Smith	12/08/08	0
Star Trek: The Original Series Season Three - Remastered Edition	Notorious among hard-core fans, the third season of Star Trek is where it all goes horribly wrong, and this decline and fall is chronicled in the third and last of the Remastered DVD season sets. Continually fighting with the NBC suits over low ratings and the always-looming threat of cancellation…	JE Smith	11/19/08	1	10/24/09
Dark Floors	Halloween is just around the corner and, as usual, DVD companies have begun a rush to glut stores with horror titles of every variety. Lionsgate – hardly the bastion of quality programming in this area – has beefed up their “Ghost House Underground” imprint with a fat package of terror…	JE Smith	10/29/08	0
The Last House in the Woods	Lionsgate strikes again with another lousy release under their “Ghost House Underground” imprint. Last House in the Woods is a ghastly low-budget Italian film from 2007 that is little more than a sleazy stew of previous genre classics, marinated in gallons of day-glo blood, and regurgitated onto DVD, just in…	JE Smith	10/29/08	0
The Substitute	Released under Lionsgate’s “Ghost House Underground” imprint, The Substitute (original title: Vikaren) is a nifty Danish science fiction thriller from 2007, brought to you by Ole Bornedal, director of Nightwatch. The Substitute is far more straightforward and accessible than the Watch series, and is one of the better entries in…	JE Smith	10/29/08	0
The Legend of Bloody Mary	Pretty young thing Ryan (Paul Preiss) has recurring nightmares of the night his sister was killed under mysterious circumstances, so his girlfriend Rachel (Irena Costa) calls in Father O’Neal (Robert J. Locke), a priest/archeologist with whom Ryan is acquainted. Cue a bunch of flashbacks in which we see that Ryan’s…	JE Smith	10/22/08	0
Nympha	A troubled young American woman named Sarah (Tiffany Shepis) arrives at the “New Order” convent in Italy on the advice of her bishop. She wants to renew her faith, but quickly learns that the practices of the red-robed sisters are quite harsh: she is isolated and given little food, and…	JE Smith	10/08/08	0
Star Trek: The Original Series Season Two - Remastered Edition	More than forty years after it debuted on NBC television, the original Star Trek still commands a deep and abiding loyalty from millions of fans. Having spawned a successful series of feature films and at least one too many TV spin-offs, the colorful, exciting, and vividly drawn adventures of Captain…	JE Smith	09/29/08	0
Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time	“The Invasion of Time” (1978) was the closing story of Doctor Who’s 15th season, and the final story for fan-favorite companion Leela, played by Louise Jameson. It is also a sequel of sorts to the classic “The Deadly Assassin,” in which the Doctor returns to his home planet Gallifrey and…	JE Smith	09/29/08	0
Doctor Who: The Five Doctors 25th Anniversary Edition	“The Five Doctors” is a milestone in Doctor Who history, in may ways: a celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary, it was the first Who to be created and broadcast as a 90-minute “movie” rather than in 25-minute episodes (it was later carved into chunks for syndication to other countries);…	JE Smith	09/12/08	0
The Big Bang Theory: The Complete First Season	The producers of The Big Bang Theory should just admit defeat and re-name their series The Sheldon Show. Not since Happy Days has a character so effortlessly dominated a sitcom, and when fussy, endearingly self-absorbed Sheldon Cooper is not on screen, everything gets a bit more mundane. Fortunately, Sheldon is…	JE Smith	09/02/08	0
Spaced: The Complete Series	In this internet-filesharing-bit torrent-downloadable age, items of quality rarely go “undiscovered” for very long, and the whole world of visual media seems to wait at the touch of a keyboard. In the good ol’ days, we were vaguely aware that Colin Baker had been replaced by some funny-looking bloke on…	JE Smith	08/24/08	0
Food Fight	Growing up in the 1970s, my family would sit down together every night for dinner, and every night I would watch my dad salt and pepper his food before he even tasted it. Not being a big fan of spices myself, I could never quite understand this. We (my sisters…	JE Smith	08/12/08	0
The 4400: Fourth Season	Over the last four years, I have developed a deep and abiding loyalty to the scruffy little science fiction series know as The 4400. Though it made a bit of a splash with its debut six-episode mini-series in 2004, the show was quickly overshadowed by overhyped major-network offerings like Lost…	JE Smith	08/12/08	0
Doctor Who (4.13) - Journey’s End	The gang’s all here, fighting Davros and his pepperpots, but somebody’s gonna die… and after this finale, some fans might wish it was Russell T. Davies. Plot Points – The Daleks reveal their masterplan: to wipe out everything, everywhere, leaving them “the only life forms in existence.” Meanwhile, the Doctor…	JE Smith	08/02/08	2	06/07/09
Doctor Who (4.12) The Stolen Earth	Epic finale, year four. Plot Points – Earth vanishes, removed to the Medusa Cascade by a revitalized army of Daleks, as well as their creator, Davros. The Doctor and Donna give chase, while on Earth the gang’s all here: Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness & Torchwood, Martha Jones, and of…	JE Smith	07/26/08	0
The X Files: I Want to Believe	I’m an old-school fan of The X Files, but the loyalty is tempered: for maybe four seasons, TXF was a sublimely creepy series about wayward FBI agent Fox “Spooky” Mulder (David Duchovny) and his no-nonsense partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who came face-to-face with the supernatural and the extraterrestrial on…	JE Smith	07/24/08	3	07/28/08
Doctor Who (4.11) Turn Left	This year, the “Doctor/Companion-lite” story gets split into two episodes; Donna got the week off in “Midnight,” while the Doctor is largely absent from “Turn Left.” Plot Points – On the planet Shan Shen, Donna visits a seer who asks what events led to Donna’s meeting the Doctor. Some mysterious…	JE Smith	07/19/08	0
Doctor Who (4.10) Midnight	Russell T. Davies pens this year’s “bottle” show – basically a one-set thriller in a disabled travel bus that succeeds in being extra, extra-creepy. Plot Points – On the planet Midnight, the Doctor takes a land-rover tour to see a crystal waterfall, while Donna stays behind to sunbathe. En route,…	JE Smith	07/12/08	6	07/22/09
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army	Apparently “less is more” is not an axiom that writer/director Guillermo del Toro embraces. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is bigger, longer, louder, more complex, and decidedly show-off-ier than its predecessor and, while entertaining, can’t help but call to mind yet another oft-heard cliché, “just because you can do something…	JE Smith	07/10/08	1	07/13/08
Doctor Who: The Sea Devils	There was a time, early on in my own personal obsession with Doctor Who – which is to say, before I hooked up with any kind of collective fandom, organized or otherwise – that the Jon Pertwee era of the 1970s seemed very exotic, at least from a distance. This…	JE Smith	07/03/08	2	04/15/09
Doctor Who (4.9) Forest of the Dead	More dangerous than the Dewey Decimal system, the Vashta Nerada continue to chow down in the biggest library in the cosmos, while Donna plays house. 4022 saved, with no survivors. Plot Points – Now incorporated into the computer mainframe, Donna experiences a “reality” of a happy life with a handsome…	JE Smith	06/28/08	2	07/16/08
The Chair	Awash in a horror film market filled with creepy-kid Asian remakes (and their originals), flaccid, overproduced PG-rated “shockers,” and grisly, snuffy torture porn, The Chair is a refreshingly old-fashioned horror film that takes the time to get us involved with its characters, and amasses its unnerving ambiance brick by tingly…	JE Smith	06/22/08	0
The Lost (2005)	Are rampage killers born or manufactured? Certainly, when we first meet Ray Pye (Marc Senter), with his slicked-back hair, goth eye-liner, and cocksure attitude, he already seems unduly damaged, and within five minutes of the opening credits he’s shotgunning two young women at their hiking camp in the woods, because…	JE Smith	06/22/08	0
Doctor Who (4.8) Silence in the Library	Terror in the stacks as deadly shadows make their presence felt in the biggest library in the universe. It’s this year’s Steven Moffat episode(s) and that’s always reason to rejoice. Hey! Who turned out the lights? Plot Points – Responding to a call on the psychic paper, the Doctor and…	JE Smith	06/21/08	2	04/12/09
Doctor Who (4.7) The Unicorn and the Wasp	It’s a garden party in 1926, and this week’s special historical guest star: Agatha Christie. Game of Clue, anyone? Plot Points – The Doctor and Donna invite themselves to a do at the home of Lady Clemency Eddison (Felicity Kendall), who is hosting the famous novelist Agatha Christie (Fenella Woolgar).…	JE Smith	06/14/08	2	06/26/08