Wednesday, September 07, 2005

TV On DVD - September 6, 2005 - Part 2

Here's the second half of the DVD listing. I'm slightly ticked at a couple of things, one to do with the list and one because of the list. As sometimes happens Amazon.ca has different release dates for some of the DVDs on the list and in a couple of cases they don't even have them listed. You'll know those when you see them, but it's a bit of a pain.

As for what has me ticked off because of the list, I usually play an online poker tournament at the Full Tilt Poker site (I have delusions of adequacy as a poker player). Sign ups for the tournaments I play in are filled fast - within a minute fast - and because I was working on the first half of the list I missed signing up by 30 seconds. Naturally it was the one night in almost a year when a big name pro - Chris "Jesus" Ferguson - decided to play in a freeroll.

Goosebumps: Chillogy
Goosebumps: Scary House
Goosebumps: The Ghost Next Door

- The Goosebumps series of scary stories for teens, written by R.L. Stine was produced in Canada and aired on Fox for three years. There doesn't appear to be very much on any of these DVD's - the Amazon.ca website doesn't even indicate if there's more than one episode per disk. Be warned.

Stephen King Presents Kingdom Hospital: The Beginning
- It must have seemed like a good idea at the time; get Stephen King, one of the best selling authors ever, to create a horror TV series for network TV. The only problem was that it didn't attract many viewers - certainly not the legions of fans who make even his bad books best sellers. There's already a box set which collects the entire series, but this is one of those cases where I recommend that people buy these individual sets even though the cost will be higher. The reason is that there seem to be more extras in these sets - starting with The Beginning and going through Making The Rounds and Post Mortem - since the finished product will consist of six DVDs as opposed to four in the original set.

Last Chapter: The Complete Series
- Produced by CBC and Radio-Canada, The Last Chapter is a fascinating study of a motorcycle gang's effort to expand out of into Ontario, the last area where they have yet to gain a foothold. The series was simultaneously shot in English and in French (except for Michael Ironside who felt his French wasn't up to the task). There are other sets available but this is labelled as "The Complete Series". It isn't clear to me if this means that it is the complete first mini-series or includes both mini-series.

Lost: The Complete First Season
- Lost was one of the series that made the 2004-05 TV season so interesting. While the concept might sound like a combination of Gilligan's Island and Survivor the series quickly went well beyond that. (People who write stuff like that probably forget a show that Lost resembles at least a little more than either of the other two, The New People). Despite a large cast of 14 major recurring characters the producers have managed to assemble not just a coherent storyline full of twists and turns and unanswered questions, but have also managed to give each of the characters a personality and a background. Best of all is that the mysteries of the island and the people on it hold your interest. If anything the DVD might make some of the stories clearer by allowing viewers to follow individual stories throughout the series without extraneous material. Probably worth buying for that alone.

MacGyver: The Complete Third Season
- The Man, The Myth, The Verb is back. By Season 3, Mac was fully ensconced in working for the Phoenix Foundation. It's not easy to differentiate between seasons of this series, although Season 3 was the last that they'd shoot in Los Angeles. It was also the year in which The Phoenix Foundation added a second - female - agent named Nikki Carpenter, played by Elyssa Davalos

Millennium: Season 3
- I loved this series. My only regret (well one of them) is that they were forced to end it on a single episode of The X-Files. Lance Henriksen is letter perfect as Frank Black, the profiler who finds himself involved in the Millennium Group. The question is, are they a force for good or ill. By the third season it seems clear that The Group is evil, but with them you can never tell. Sadly, Millennium's third season wasn't able to hold my interest at the time; it was a major change from the second season which was mostly in the hands of Glen Morgan and James Wong which I thought - rightly or wrongly - was something of a high point for the show.

Power Rangers: S.P.D.: Vol. 2 Stakeout
Power Rangers: S.P.D.: Vol. 3 Wired

- My mother always said that if you can't say something nice you should say nothing at all. With regards to yet another release of a Power Rangers related DVD - nothing at all.

SaddleClub, The Vol 3: The Mane Event
- I've never heard of the Saddle Club series. From the looks of things it is yet another series for pre-teen girls.

Saturday Night Live: Live From New York - The First Five Years
Saturday Night Live: The Best of John Belushi
Saturday Night Live: The Best of Gilda Radner
Saturday Night Live: The Best of Dan Aykroyd
- Have you ever noticed how some performers on Saturday Night Live just sort of standout. I mean I doubt that you'll ever see a "Best of Garret Morris" or a "Best of Laraine Newman" disc, and as for Jane Curtin, well she's better known for sitcom like Kate And Allie or Third Rock From The Sun. The first five years of the show were probably high points of the series' history in large part because of Belushi, Radner, and Aykroyd, but still they didn't do it alone. The individual DVDs feature some of their most famous sketches. The First Five Years disk on the other hand is not a set but rather excerpts from the show's first five seasons.

So Little Time Gift Set
- Five words sum this DVD up: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. Unless you are a tween girl or are buying for one, avoid this like the bubonic plague.

Ponce De Leon - Tall Tales and Legends
Annie Oakley - Tall Tales and Legends
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Tall Tales and Legends: The Complete Series

- This was Shelley Duvall's follow-up to her well received Faerie Tale Theatre series. These shows weren't quite as well regarded as the earlier work, and only nine episodes were produced. All nine are now available on individual DVDs but as usual you're probably better off to buy the complete set...if you can get it (Amazon.ca doesn't list it).

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