Tuesday, March 29, 2005

TV On DVD 4

Another rather smallish list with one or two curiosities.

America's Next Top Model: Cycle One
- Oh there are some dog food jokes I could use based on the decision tocall this "Cycle One" rather than first seson, but I will keep myself from using them. Can we say that this is American Idol for the tall anorexic and possibly talentless?

Astro Boy The Complete Series
- Well not really. Amazon.ca tells us that this is in fact the complet series of the 2003 version produced by Sony which as the Editorial Review says is far more lavish than the 1963 original or the 1980 colour remake.

Clutch Cargo Cartoon Collection Volume 1
- Okay, I officially don't get it. Season 1 and Season 2 I understood but what is the need for this?

Due South The Complete First Season
- Has been available for a couple of years so I don't know why TV GeekSpeak is talking about it now. Never mind, any chance to talk about the show is welcome. The pilot episode started out as a relatively straight "fish out of water" show but became increasingly quirky as time went by. Season 2 is actually the better one in my not so humble opinion simply because it introduced a love/hate interest for Fraser in the form of his new commanding officer Meg Thatcher and the incredibly inept Constable Turnbull. Imagining what might have been if CBS had actually kept the series for its third/fourth season (in Canada the show was split into two 13 week seasons while the BBC and TNT showed it as a single third season) when things really got wierd.

The Lone Gunmen The Complete Series
- A series almost as quirky as Due South and probably would have been quirkier if had lasted longer. Byers, Langly, and Frohicke were the three geeks who occassionally aided Mulder & Scully in The X-Files. In their own series they were joined by Yves Adele Harlow (whose name is an anagram for ....) and dimwitted doofus "Jimmy" Bond. The show was in the Friday "death slot" where many series had entered but none stuck after The X-Files moved to Sundays. In truth it was probably too subversive for certain people today. The governmental plots they invesitgated then seem almost tame in today's climate. Interesting to note that while the actor who played Byers was an experienced actor, the guys who played Langly and Frohicke had done comparatively little acting before The X-Files and Tom Braidwood (Frohicke) was actually the second unit director on the show.

Twilight Zone Season 2: The Definitive Collection
- The original Twilight Zone has been collected on DVD before but the "Definitive Collection" is probably the way to go simply because it collects the episodes by season.

The Saint: The Early Episodes Set 1
- I'm going to go out on a limb and state that Roger Moore playing Simon Templar "...the Saint (do doody o do wah dah)" was not only cooler and sexier than Moore as James Bond and on a par with Connery's Bond. We know that Ian Fleming's first choice to play Bond was Roger Moore. The Black & White episodes are the better ones in my opinion, before the series took a turn towards the more secret agent type scripts.

1 comment:

The Brooklyn Blowhard said...

Any idea where I can find "Hector Heathcote" and "Crusader Rabbit" cartoons?
Great site by the way.