I don’t know very much about the life of John Lennon; it’s KC who’s the big Beatles fan. I was interested in seeing this more because Christopher Eccleston (the first modern Doctor Who) plays the lead, and when I first saw the DVD cover, I didn’t recognize him, he’d done such a good job of projecting the artist. Lennon Naked is a BBC production that recently aired on PBS. The film is about 80 minutes and opens with a disclaimer: […]

Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics is an hour-and-a-half documentary covering the history of the company and their most famous characters. It’s narrated by Ryan Reynolds, who has a nice (if plain) voice, but much of the time, it lets some of DC’s best-known creators speak for themselves. That includes those no longer with us, as the package incorporates some surprising archive footage. Anything that opens with Alex Ross art of the Justice League looking down on us, as […]

Review by Johanna and KC Carlson The 25th Anniversary Trilogy edition of Back to the Future totally justifies the purchase of our Blu-ray player. The excellent picture quality (newly restored for this release) made me feel like I was watching it for the first time. As for special features, the set is so comprehensive it’s almost overkill. You have the movies on both Blu-ray and DVD. You have all these extras (some redundant, but extra points for being complete). You […]

KC and I went to see The Social Network last week. You can probably tell how much I enjoyed it by considering that it took me this long to get around to writing up my thoughts. I don’t regret seeing it, but it wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped. The Social Network is a Citizen Kane for our time, looking at a media mogul — in this case, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, played by Jesse Eisenberg — who is […]

I hadn’t seen this Victorian action movie in theaters, so I was glad to see the DVD come out only three months later. I knew there’d been lots of debate over whether this version was really Sherlock Holmes or not, and I wanted to see for myself. The movie doesn’t play much on what Holmes has come to mean as a brand, but since it’s billed as a “bold reimagining”, fair enough. The Sherlock Holmes film is faithful to the […]

Ponyo is the newest Studio Ghibli movie to come to DVD in the U.S. Thanks to Ed’s laptop, I was able to sample this in Blu-ray. (Although we had a bit of trouble getting the thing to talk to my television. I thought it would be as simple as plugging in the cable to the HDMI port, but it seems that you have to disable the laptop screen to get the TV image to show; otherwise, the software gives you […]

She’s Out of My League opens on Friday, but I was lucky enough to see a preview earlier this week. I recommend it. When it comes to R-rated comedy romances, I’m never sure what to expect. Some of them are raunchfests or expect you to find laughs in watching a bunch of potheads kill time. This one takes a different direction. While quite funny, it also has a sense of heart. Fundamentally, it’s an ugly duckling love story, the tale […]

I like a good romantic comedy, even if I know what’s going to happen, but I strongly dislike movies aimed at women that insult my intelligence and engage in sexist stereotypes. Unfortunately, The Accidental Husband is one of those in the second category. A woman can want to be in love without being idiotic, childlike, or a criminal, although you wouldn’t know it from this. There are many spoilers below because I can’t make my point without discussing how the […]