For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a little hard to explain. ATHF has three members: Frylock, Master Shake and Meatwad. Frylock, an enormous floating order of french fries, is the brains of the operation while Master Shake, a man-sized milk shake, is the deliquent and Meatwad, a rolling ball of…meat…is the ‘tard of the team. They *are* teens, but the “Aqua” part of the name is pretty much a complete red herring. As for being a “Hunger Force,” welllll…. not so much. They just hang out in New Jersey and make life miserable for their neighbor, Carl, as you can see from the picture here as he gets anally raped by a two-legged mutant dog named “Hand Banana”. Yes, its name is Hand Banana. All he knows is “ball!” and “good!” ….. and “rape!” But I digress…

The fifth season of ATHF has a lot of the things that made the show really cool. But it’s also missing some things, too. Gone are the Dr. Weird and Spacecataz openings. And there’s no MC Pee Pants! Ok, ok, I didn’t really miss MCPP. One thing I do miss, though, is the laid back tone of the first few seasons. It really seems like they’re trying too hard sometimes here in season 5. The bit with Tera Patrick eating a corn dog in the episode Grim Reaper Gutters was beyond lame. I mean, I’m all for porn stars eating phallic objects on camera, but they way it was done here just sucked…no pun intended.

Despite these criticisms, however, there is a lot of brilliance here which is as expected. Unlike the past seasons, however, the negatives come too close to negating the good stuff. The end result is a 3-star effort.

NOTE: The extras on this set are just deplorable. There’s a lot of them but they are pretty universally lame so just do yourself a favor and just skip them entirely.

Tonight I indulged myself with Secrets of Egypt’s Lost Queen. The scoop here is that Egypt once had a queen named Hatshepsut and she was one seriously bad mamma-jamma. She was more powerful than even Cleopatra had ever been. The problem was that after she was gone, her existence was systematically erased from the records and histories of Egypt and, for decades, no one could figure out why…or what had happened to the body of this once powerful female Pharoah.

I have to admit that, after having been bitten in the arse many times in the past by shows of this nature that failed miserably to deliver answers to their respective mysteries, I went into this one with low expectations. I fully expected the conclusion of the show to be something like, “Well, we gave it our best shot but it’s been 3000 years and we just can’t be sure of anything.” Fortunately, I was way wrong!

Over the 100 minute span, they do an excellent job of answering the questions that had long surrounded this mystery and, unlike lesser shows, the answers don’t smack of random speculation. If this is your cup of tea, then consider this one to be worth four full stars.

Kong (Jacky Wu Jing) is a nice guy, a nice guy who is also on the Chinese Olympic kung fu team. When he’s not training for the Olympics he keeps himself limber by performing in low budget acrobatic shows, think Cirque du Soleil without the huge cast and stage. OK, he twirls stuff on stage, but he does it really really well! After one of his shows, some guys that run an underground fighting organization approach him and offer him $2000 to fight one match, win or lose. Kong is a nice guy though, and underground fighting is illegal, so he declines.

Enter Siu (Miki Yeung), a cute girl who shows an interest in Kong after he says no to fighting. Unfortunately for Kong, this girl is the definition of a controlling girlfriend. Not only does she encourage Kong to fight, but she keeps jumping in to the negotiations to get him more money.. though I suppose it’s a good thing, since he’s far too nice to handle business on his own.

Anyway, Siu talks Kong into trying out a fight, he does, and he wins easily. They want him to come back the next week, and with her encouragement he says yes.. and wins again. At this point his skills are obviously far above anyone he’s meeting, so the guy running the show starts to raise the stakes, getting better fighters and more money involved. After several rounds of this Kong starts to change.. a little. During the fights he’s getting meaner, but only when really provoked. And even when he does get “meaner” he doesn’t totally come unglued.

There’s other stories involved of course, the guy running the fights is trying to expand his territory, Siu is obviously trying to get Kong to make more and more money for her own reasons, she’s got a friend who’s a hooker that she gives life advice to, there’s “The Captain” (Ronald Cheng) who helps look after Kong and Siu and who has his own story of course.

But it’s all about the fights, and the fights are excellent. Yes, there are wires used on occasion, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. The battles look realistic and there’s no “let’s jump on the roof and run up and down walls” crap here. Picture martial arts street fighting, and this delivers that picture. I really like the way Jacky WuJing moves, he seems to act fairly well judging from his facial expressions (I don’t speak Cantonese so had the English track playing) and I could see him one day becoming a star in Hollywood assuming he learns English.

The story doesn’t suck (except the ending, which just blows) and there’s some good humor to go along with the action. It’s a solid 3 star movie, might have been 4 if the ending were different.

Charlie (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist and a good looking guy, who gets lots of women. He’s never found the “right” girl though, and always ends up breaking up for one reason or another. But there’s a twist, it seems that the girl will marry the very next guy she dates after breaking up with Charlie. Boil this down to the essence and it’s Boinking Charlie = finding Mr. Right. Once word gets out Charlie literally has them lining up to have sex with him. For the good of the women, Charlie goes with the flow.. after all, he’s just spreading happiness.

The root of this curse stems from a birthday party where an 8-year old Charlie was playing spin the bottle and ended up getting jumped in the closet by a 10-year old Goth girl. She takes off her shirt, showing that someone out there makes black leather training bras, and asks to see his penis. When he refuses, she rips open his shirt, scratches his chest and starts kissing him. Charlie escapes the closet (something I’m sure he regretted a few years later) and crawls back out into the room, and the embarrassed girl curses Charlie.. resulting in his unusual love life.

Two things go wrong for Chuck. First he realizes that he’s in love with Cam (Jessica Alba) and second he gets bored with all the humping sans relationship. I have to think that it’s Cam’s fault, cause Chuck is banging a ton of really hot women, women that don’t need to be wined and dined, they just want him to lay some pipe. Consider this a moment. Charlie literally can have a lunchtime boink, then an evening boink or two with an endless supply of hot women and never has to do any “relationship work” to make this happen. Better still, the women *all know about each other* so it’s not like he has to keep a secret. But I suppose it wouldn’t have been much of a romantic comedy if he didn’t fall for Cam, damn her.

If I’d seen this movie in theaters I would have given it 3 stars. It was funny at times, it only had one really slow section, and there’s a ton of nudity. But I saw this as the unrated DVD, and that’s getting it an extra star. Why? Well, I was able to do a frame by frame analysis of Jessica taking off her shirt and showing some side boob… when the romantic part kicked in, I was able to fire up the notebook to check email, and there’s a lot of extras worth watching. The extras included a “sex matrix” where you see extended sex scenes, a gag reel that’s funnier than the movie, some featurettes that themselves included lots of boobs, deleted scenes, and an ad lib section where you see just how much funnier the movie could have been.

Final result, it’s a 4 star DVD, toss it in your Netflix queue with confidence.

History and Comedy are two things you might normally consider hard to mix together, but the brits seemed to have discovered the secret: A dry subject like history should only be mixed with comedy that is also dry. Enter Python alum Terry Jones! Following in the footsteps of several of his Python brethren, he narrates (and editorializes) this nifty little series to great effect.

History, as it turns out, has always held a rather dim view of the “barbarian” hordes of Europe. Although Rome was always viewed as corrupt and rather vile at times, at least the Romans were always viewed as being … well … civilized. The wealth and technology available allowed the Romans to build the fabulous cities whose ruins still stand today. We know of their many remarkable achievements in art, medicine, architecture, politics and, yes, warfare. But what of their foes? Always portrayed as tribal, savage, and superstitious, historians on the whole gave them little regard. But now, thanks to some clever deductive reasoning as well as newly unearthed evidence of their cities and civilizations, we now know that long-held view of these Barbarians was simply a fabrication of the victors who vanquished them – the Romans.

The Celts, as it turns out, built the first intercontinental highway system! As well, they created a *very* precise astronomical calendar that is believed to be the first to ever of its kind. It was much more complex – and accurate – than anything the Romans ever devised. Many other very surprising accomplishments have been discovered about the Celts and they are covered here in this material. And the other three episodes include equally fascinating information about the Goths and other peoples.

And through it all speaks the inimitable Terry Jones. He does a great job here of explaining with dumbing down the material (much). And he infuses the whole series with some very nice commentary and dry humor, too. My only real complaints about the series are 1) it’s too short. I would like to have seen more than just 4 episodes…and 2) while they did a great job explaining the ‘what’, they spent very little time on the question of ‘why’. A bit more attention there would have been fantastic. But complaints aside, this is still 4 stars worth of material.

In that respect, this program delivers. You do get a small bit of pre-impact buildup and some immediate impact projections, but this was not something I minded. You need to give viewers a frame of reference for the meat of your material. In this case, some of the impact effects were covered in detail that I hadn’t previously seen; kudos for that! And when the program really gets going, it definitely delivers on the long-term after-effects that the planet (and humanity) will have to endure for survival. Also included, however, are the “dramatic” stories of several fictitious people. I really just did NOT care for this aspect of the program at all.

When I’m watching a program for hard-science, I don’t like for my time to be wasted with the poorly manufactured stories of people enduring the horrors that you’ve been hearing about in detail in a previous scene. If I want end-of-the-world drama, I’ll pop in a DVD of Deep Impact or Armageddon instead. In this case, though, I want facts, simulated results, and detailed observations. Inserting all this human interest stuff was good for a 2 star drop in my rating. I drop it 1 star just for it being there and then 1 more star for the science material that had to remain on the cutting room floor in order to for this melo-drama crap to be fit in.

In short, if you’re into the science, there’s good stuff here. Just be prepared to wade through the bad drama scenes to get to it.

This time around Jackie plays the role of a bad guy, a compulsive gambler who steals to keep his habit going. He and his two partners aren’t above stealing anything, from shark fins to cash, whatever it takes to make a payday. Early onFong (Jackie) shows he’s really a good guy when he risks his life to save a baby during a robbery of a hospital pharmacy. After the rescue Octopus (Louis Koo) andFong go about their normal thievery and the movie takes a detour to introduce us to the family lives of the main characters. I won’t do the same.

After Landlord (Michael Hui, and the third member and leader of the crew) is robbed himself, he accepts a new type of job, one that’s worth $7 million dollars. Since all of them need the cash, Octopus andFong say yes without even knowing what the job is.. and it turns out to be a kidnapping. Not an “evil” kidnapping though as they are just stealing the baby from his parents and giving him to his grandfather. I’m skipping some details of course. As fate would have it, this is the same babyFong rescued back in the hospital.. ahh.. fate, the best movie cliche of all.

What follows is the typical segment where Octopus and Fong go from hapless men who don’t want anything to do with the baby to loving caretakers who will do anything to protect it. An amazing transformation considering it happens over a couple of days. There’s also a new love interest thrown in, and more family details forFong. Robin-B-Hood really does try to hit every page in the lets-soften-the-action-star playbook.

This is a Jackie Chan movie though, and you’re only watching for the stunts and action sequences. I’m happy to report you won’t be disappointed, as Jackie shows once again that he’s nuts. Would you scale down a 10 story building by jumping between air conditioning units without a safety wire? How about a simple slide down a marble stair railing that’s 3 stories tall, with just some mattresses to break your fall if you screw up? Nuts. The fights aren’t his best work (he is getting a bit older ya know) but it’s still entertaining.

In the end Robin-B-Hood is mildly entertaining, really only suitable if you’re looking for a date movie with your wife and are ready to have a baby, cause she’s gonna want one after watching the one featured here. I’ll give it an average rating of 3 stars, but barely.

The movie starts off with a father and son gator hunting in the swamplands near New Orleans, but while there are alligators in the area they aren’t what’s really dangerous. After this duo is dispatched, we switch over to young ladies who like to show their boobs for beads, gotta love Mardi Gras. Here we meet Ben (Joel Moore) and Marcus (Deon Richmond) who are in New Orleans to enjoy the nightlife and the lovely sites. Well, Marcus is, Ben is trying to get over his recent breakup with his longtime girlfriend. Even the site of many many topless babes can’t cheer Ben up, so he decides to break from the group and go on a haunted swamp tour instead. Being the good friend, Marcus goes with him while complaining the entire time (as he should!)

They finally find a tour operator to take them into the swamp (along with a Canadian couple, a lone babe with her own reasons for going, and a porn producer with a couple hotties, one of which plays the part of the dumb blond to perfection) where things obviously don’t go as planned. The boat goes into a closed part of the swamp, wrecks, and our cast has to walk out of the swamp while being pursued by Victor Crowley.. the ghost(?) of a deformed child who was accidentally killed by his father, but still managed to grow up to terrorize people who get near his home. The movie tries to explain this, but there’s really no reason to, just go with the fact that Crowley is big, strong, deformed and apparently impossible to kill. Perfect!

The members of the tour get picked off quickly, and in very inventive ways. These are some of the best slasher death scenes I’ve seen in the last decade. Everything from getting split like a side of beef, to getting your head pulled apart.. it’s fantastic! What makes it so much fun is that it’s obviously done using latex effects and good camera work, no computers were harmed in the making of this movie. I’ve already mentioned they used buckets of blood, sometimes you could even tell they were throwing blood on a tree with a bucket, heh. That’s not a complaint at all, it added to the humor/horror effect that the movie was after and put a huge smile on my face.

One surprise was how good the acting was. The comic timing was dead on, and when they were supposed to be scared it came off as if they really were. A look at the bonus features on the DVD gave the answer to how that was done, Adam didn’t let the actors see what Crowley looked like until he jumped out at them while shooting, so the startled reaction he got was quite real. Brilliant!

Hatchet struck just the right chord with me, the attention to lighting (how is it that the swamp is so well lit at night?), the excuse to get girls naked (Mardi Gras, porn), the amusing older couple (Canadians, eh?) to the unstoppable Victor Crowley.. it’s awesome movie making, and worth every star I can possibly give it.

In the original John Carpenter movie we start off with a point of view shot of Michael as he watches his sister fooling around with her boyfriend, then as he gets a knife, puts on the mask and stabs her to death. It’s an effective opening, but doesn’t tell you anything about Michael. Rob Zombie takes a different approach, letting us see a bit of his family life (it really sucks) and his school life (also sucks) before he loses it and starts the killing. His sister also isn’t his first kill, in fact, she’s the 4th. That’s not counting the animals of course, cause all good sociopaths start off with animals.

Now you may be thinking that this is just a bunch of unneeded info, we know Michael is nuts so let’s just get to the escape from the sanitarium and let the killing begin. Well, you’d be wrong. Seeing a little of the background made me just for an instant root for Michael, after all, the first couple of victims certainly deserved a bit of punishment. We also get to see quite a bit of Michael in the sanitarium, and we learn more about his masks and why he keeps his face hidden. The overall effect is most excellent, so that when we finally see the adult Michael Myers in his own handmade mask, he’s just creepy as hell.

Zombie certainly made this Halloween based on his own vision, but he kept parts in that fans will approve of. The clown mask at the beginning, and the mask he made famous (which was a William Shatner mask modified a bit with larger eye holes) are there of course, and once Michael grows up he no longer speaks. He’s also quite strong, and it takes a lot to kill him.

The acting is overall much better than expected (Malcolm McDowell does a fine job) and the effects are spot on… plenty of blood, but not so much that it looks fake. The methods of killing are also as they should be, stabbing.. lots of stabbing. Tension? Check, Zombie put together some good hide ‘n seek moments with Michael and just the right amount of in-the-nick-of-time getaways.

It’s not perfect though, there’s a plot hole the size of a cineplex that still bugs me. Michael has been in a sanitarium for 17 years before he escapes, and when he does the first action he takes is to find his little sister. But how? Though she lives in the same town Michael grew up in, her identity has changed and he has no knowledge of her new name, where she lives, or what she currently looks like. Yet, he gets back to Haddonfield and immediately finds her. It just didn’t make any sense.

Other than that though, this movie is close to perfect. I still can’t believe the same man who made House of 1000 Corpses is responsible for this fantastic version of Halloween. Maybe I should try The Devils Rejects after all.

But…the whole time I was watching these programs I found myself wishing that it had been in HD. The subject matter just SCREAMS out for it. But I had to keep reminding myself that this was filmed back in 2001 (or earlier) and filming in HD was just not a realistic consideration. They only had about $10 million or so in the budget which, while enormous for a documentary, is dwarfed by the $25 million recently spent on the Planet Earth series.

Eventually I was able to adjust to the picture quality (or lack thereof) and just enjoy the series. And it is most DEFINITELY some fantastic stuff! If you are a Discovery Channel / TLC whore like me, you’ll love every minute of this series so go out and buy it today!

The lack of a fifth star here is purely due to the lack of HD. If thats not a concern to you at all, then consider it a full 5-star title. If you DO have HD at home…make sure to get this before you get Planet Earth or you, too, will end up feeling spoiled like me.

Many (I’d say most) people think negatively of a person covered head to toe in tattoos, or with their earlobes stretched, or with facial piercings beyond the usual. They either think they are stupid, or if of a religious bent think they are “evil”. I’ve personally been around folks like this, those who think that doing anything unusual with their bodies makes them a “vessel for evil” or some such crap. Amazing how intolerant some people are. Modify deals with issues like this, issues of acceptance and tolerance, prejudice and just plain stupidity, and does so in an intelligent way.

The vast majority of the modified people interviewed for the movie present themselves as very articulate and intelligent, proving that you really can’t judge a book by it’s cover… most of the time. There are a couple of people who after hearing them talk, they’re just idiots. Watch it, I bet you can spot them. For others though it’s very interesting to hear them discuss why they’ve made modifications to their bodies, whether it be for spiritual or sexual reasons, or just because they think it looks cool.

Now, about those modifications. If you have a weak stomach, you won’t be able to watch large chunks of this movie. There’s a surgical section about 15 minutes in that will get rid of most people as this is full blown plastic surgery shown at a rapid fire pace to some rock music. Plenty of blood and gore, plenty. If that doesn’t get you, watching a guy insert steel balls into his penis might, or, people putting giant hooks in their skin so they can be suspended on stage for people to gawk at. There a guy who flayed his penis. Picture what a hot dog looks like when you’ve left it in the microwave too long, and that’s what the underside of this guys dick looks like. To balance off the effect, he put in horizontal rod like implants on the top side. Just.. ouch.

Then there are those that actually look kinda cool. Tattoos can be quite attractive, and there are some stunning examples of the art here. And there’s the “laces up the back” look that’s done by putting in rings along the spine and lacing them together as if the skin was a corset. That’s the image I chose for this review, and it’s a rather artistic effect. You get to see it being done too.

There’s way too much in this movie for me to catalog here, but it’s all interesting in one way or another. If you’d like to see to what extremes some people will go to to make themselves stand out, be sure to give Modify a look. I’m only giving it 3 stars because it’s not something you’re likely to want to watch again, though showing it to some unsuspecting guests could have some rather amusing results.

If you never watch any of the Discovery Networks, and don’t have any friends who watch their networks then it’s remotely possible that you don’t know what this show is. Planet Earth is a big budget (around $25 million) documentary that was shot over 5 years using all HD equipment that takes a look at every corner of the globe. Mountains, oceans, caves, valleys, jungles, deserts… you get the idea. They also went to great lengths to capture rare animals on film, some for the first time. If anything this is my one complaint with the show.. being reminded “this was the first” or “our cameraman waited virtually motionless for 5 days to get this shot” all the time got a bit old. Though, I suppose you could make a drinking game out of this. Mmmmmm…

There are differences between the DVD release of Planet Earth and what you saw on Discovery Theater, the most obvious is with the narrator. The DVD is the original BBC production narrated by David Attenborough, which to my ear is superior to the narration by Sigourney Weaver that we heard on TV. He showed more emotion and lended more excitement to the series at the points where excitement was merited. Weaver wasn’t bad, but Attenborough is better.

There’s another difference that has to be mentioned here, and it’s not a good one. The DVD version of the series has far more material on it than the HD-DVD or Blu-ray versions. There’s a 10 minute making-of for each episode plus an entirely separate program called “Planet Earth – The Future” that were excluded from the more expensive versions. Why?! There’s PLENTY of space on the high definition formats for this material so I’ve only come up with one reason for them to have done this… marketing. If you have a HD-DVD or Blu -ray player then you will obviously purchase that version of the program. But then.. you’re missing material, so you might just decide to pick up the regular DVD as well. I doubt many people fell for this trick and I call shenanigans on the Discovery Channel for trying this.

Let me be clear, if you have HD-DVD or Blu-ray, don’t even consider getting the regular DVD format. After watching both HD-DVD and regular DVD, there’s no comparison to the quality. While each scene in HD-DVD just begs to be seen, the DVD version looks a bit soft and looses that “immediacy” that HD is known for. I’ve said before that a comparison between a Hollywood movie in HD and upscaled DVD can result in similar enjoyment, this does not hold true for Planet Earth. Much in the way that games like Halo 3 are system sellers for the Xbox 360, Planet Earth is a system seller for HD. The moment you see it for yourself you’ll be saying “gee.. I should get me one of these HD things.”

Obviously Planet Earth gets 5 stars, there’s just nothing else nearly as good in this genre. The DVD version reviewed here isn’t perfect, and thanks to the stupid marketing decision of the Discovery Channel the HD versions aren’t perfect either, but it’s still a must have. My suggestion is to buy the HD version that fits your system, then rent the regular DVD’s from Netflix so you can see the extras.

I’m 15 minutes into the DVD of Alien Siege and I had to hit pause to write this down and give my brain a break. What’s so bad? Pull up a chair…

The movie starts off with a montage of people and soldiers fighting and we learn that an alien race has come to Earth because they need our blood to survive. They aren’t vampires or anything, they just need our juices to make a serum to cure them of some disease. And they don’t need all of us, just 8 million. We learn that the nations of Earth have agreed to these terms due to the overwhelming firepower the aliens have, and that the U.S. share is 800,000 people. While some nations emptied out their prisons to fulfill their requirements (smart thinking!), we asked for volunteers… but only 650,000 people came forward. That leaves us short by 300,000 people, so the government started a national lottery to see who would have to be killed. Did my math bother you? It’s not mine, those numbers are from the opening of the movie! ACK! Public schools strike again!

OK, so we know mathematics wasn’t a strong point of the filmmakers, how about common sense. Dad picks up daughter at her work, telling her she needs to come with him right now but doesn’t tell her why. She agrees (and he gives her time to change clothes so it can’t be that big of a deal, right?) but keeps asking why why WHY!? Since the girl won’t get in the car without knowing he lets her know she’s been selected by lottery to jump in the juicer but that he won’t let it happen.Yada yada yada . They’re leaving town and he gets a flat tire, he jumps out to check it telling her to stay in the car (naturally she immediately opens the door and gets out) when he notices a Chevy Suburban with soldiers coming up the STRAIGHT road about 200 feet behind them. He tells her to run to the woods and hide, and don’t come out no matter what. So, she trots up a hillside in waist tall grass IN PLAIN SIGHT OF THE ROAD and crouches down about 50 feet away, way way way far from the woods. Of course the soldiers hop out of their vehicle and ask him where his daughter is. Apparently Army training didn’t teach these guys much since SHE WAS IN PLAIN SIGHT THE ENTIRE TIME. Sheesh.

One more and I’ll stop. Steven (the dad) is shown trotting out of his house to get in his truck while his neighbor and coworker Bill comes up to talk with him. “Move your car Bill, I’m in a hurry” says Steven. Some inane dialogue between these two when Steven says “I don’t care, move your car”. They talk some more giving us a few plot points about some inert material, a research facility and some lab they were working in. Steven has a heartfelt handshake with Bill, and drives off. Wait… wasn’t Bill supposed to move his car?! ARGH!

I’m at the 15:52 mark of this movie and I don’t know if I’m gonna make it.

45 minutes in, and it’s not getting any better. As a side note, the constant voice dubbing over actors who apparently mumbled their dialogue is also driving me nuts.

It’s over. I made it, do I get a medal? The movie didn’t improve in the slightest, with more stupidity and inane dialogue causing me to roll my eyes so many times I had to take a Tylenol.

I’m done ranting. Does this movie have any saving grace? Not really, the effects are what you’d expect from a weekly SciFi channel movie, and there wasn’t even any real humor to make it worth the time. There was a fair amount of blood and even a head shot or two in the many gunfights. Not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but you’d have to pay me to watch it again.

This is, as best as I can tell, what happened with the Sci-Fi Channel. The good thing for them (or at least their bean counters) is that there is a small core of science fiction fan-freaks who will watch *anything* sci-fi. Once the budgets for their movies get down below the revenue generated by this small hardcore knot of sci-fi fandom, they can once again turn a profit.

Meanwhile, mainstream sci-fi fans everywhere have long since abandoned the network that once provided quality programming but that now can only offer horrific dreck on most nights. But, they’re turning a profit, right? That’s all that matters, right? Yes, but only if you’re a bean counter. Before I rant further, please note that I’m not including the Sci-Fi channel’s original series or mini-series here; just their movies. Despite some controversial decisions and even some budget tightening, their series offerings and mini-series are still pretty good, as a whole.

And thus we are lead to Manticore. This movie, for lack of a better (worse?) description, stinks worse than rancid, moldy horse piss. The bean-counters thought they’d be clever and grab up some actors from older, much loved sci-fi shows and movies and use them to draw us into their web of feces. Such sci-fi icons (sic) as Robert Beltran (Star Trek: Voyager), Chase Masterson (Star Trek: DS9) and Jeff Fahey (Lawnmower Man & a couple dozen other B-rate flicks) dazzle us with their uncanny ability to distract us from the horrible script and special effects by use of their abominable acting skills.

Oh, and lets not forget Heather Donahue, the snot-nosed (literally) girl from The Blair Witch Project. She’s probably the pick of the litter here, acting-wise, and I’m sad to say this is a low point for her after having done the much loved Spielberg mini-series Taken. I really liked her in that but here…not so much. But I’ve ranted enough and should talk about the movie now.

First of all, as alluded to above, the dialogue and the behavior of the characters was beyond bad. The ultimate example of this would be the TV reporter. One moment she is holed up in the back room of a building, terrified beyond belief of the monster thats running around. But then, when U.S. Army soldiers arrive, she suddenly springs into action and has an urge to accompany them as they go to face the monster even though she has seen what it can do and knows that they likely can’t kill it. Yeah, that’s what a real person would do.

The acting was even worse. You’d probably have to do a documentary about a factory that makes cigar store indians in order to get more wooden figures on the screen at once. And the special effects? Just horrible. The first time I saw the monster on screen, I half expected Wallace or Gromit to step out from behind a corner and throw a hunk of cheese at it.

I can’t really continue this review as I’m about to run out of all my hyperbole for awfulness. Just suffice to say that everything about this one is just really, really bad. Don’t watch it. Don’t buy it for anyone except your worst enemies…and even then if you’re sure they can’t trace it back to you.

The DVD is a look at the best and worst cars.. of 2005. Or at least the best cars are from 2005, the worst are usually much, much older. In case you’re thinking that taking a look at cars that are now a couple of years old is boring, let me point out that we’re talking about Ferraris, an Aston Martin, a Maserati and more. These are not boring cars no matter their vintage.

Clarkson takes a look at each of the cars in turn, telling us in his own way why they are destined for heaven or hell. The best aren’t really presented in any sort of order except that the final vehicle one shown is his top pick. But really, the show is all about how amusing he manages to make both positive and negative car reviews. For example.. he drives the Ferrari Enzo, and while it is obviously destined for heaven, he really doesn’t like the car as it’s totally impractical to drive anywhere but a racetrack due to the complete lack of visibility from the rear. How does he demonstrate this? By having a woman stand behind the car and do a striptease while he attempts to watch.. and doesn’t see a thing.

He also has some amusing fates in store for cars he deems as destined for hell, including a mini-van made into a convertible, jousting, crushing, hanging and in one truly inspired moment, destruction via precision driving.

It’s not perfect though. For one thing, without the balance of Hammond and May, Clarkson can seem overly snarky at times. Also there’s an issue with the soundtrack. Remember Jan Hammer from the 80’s? Imaging if that type of music were being done by a wedding singer.. it’s just wrong, and doesn’t fit. Fortunately it’s not a constant thing, only appears at the beginning and once or twice during the show.

This isn’t the sort of DVD I’d purchase unless it were really cheap, but I highly recommend you rent it.

This movie is shot mostly using hand held cameras (or the appearance of hand held cameras) in order to give it an immediate and intense feeling, much like The Blair Witch Project. Where it differs is with the characters. With Blair Witch you could allow yourself to believe the fiction for the duration and if you did so, the results were very effective. In Jungle, it’s simply impossible to believe some of the actions of the people on screen are unscripted which yanks you out of the fiction constantly and forces you to see it for what it is, a non-scary low budget film that desperately wants to be treated seriously… and fails.

In 1961 Michael Rockefeller disappeared into the jungles of New Guinea, into an area known to be populated by cannibals. After an extensive manhunt he was declared dead, though no body was ever found. Rumors pop up now and then that an older white guy has been spotted living in the jungle, but no proof has ever been found. Enter our college age kids who hear from a friend of a friend who flies a helicopter that the mysterious white guy has just been spotted, and that this time GPS coordinates are available if they wanted to go check it out. They have video cameras and are looking for adventure, so why the heck not!

Our industrious campers rent themselves a minivan and drive to the border of Irian Jaya where they take off on a multiple day hike with only a couple of small backpacks which miraculously hold their clothes, their tents, their food and enough booze to keep 2 of them sauced at all times. None of these people are campers either, yet they manage just fine for a weeks worth of traveling before things start to go wrong. During that week tensions are high due to the Type A couple getting pissed at the drunk couple for slowing them down, etc. This is actually what kills the movie for me, the fighting and bickering just isn’t realistic under the circumstances and lets you know you’re either watching badly written lines, or some actors doing some bad improv.

There’s also no real tension in the movie. By the time the cannibals show up you just want them to hurry up and make dinner so the drunk couple will shut the hell up. Seriously, I found myself cheering when things go badly for the campers, and this isn’t suppose to be a horror/comedy.

On a side note, the blurb on the cover of this DVD says “Quite possibly the most terrifying film of the last decade.” and the back says “It’s ruthless and grabs you by you throat, shakes the hell out of you and rips your heart out…” I’m not gonna name names, but the guy who wrote that was either in a really good mood or saw a different movie than I did. At first I suspected one of those fake Sony quotes, but it appears legit… legit and confused.

Go ahead, rent this one then tell me with a straight face that it’s a good movie. I dare ya.

After an initial scene where we see Lester (Tobin Bell, that guy from Saw) digging for gold in a cellar, then a scene with Rene in a tub (no nudity), we’re introduced to Zane and Phil, with Zane being a rich-kid-but-only-if-he-graduates and Phil being the computer-nerd-who-helps-him-out. Seems Zane can’t keep it together long enough to get a degree and is looking to find the long lost treasure his great grandfather apparently had, and Phil is searching Google to help him find it. OK, so we now know that Zane is too stupid to use Google, that’s impressively stupid.

Rene is Zane’s kissing cousin (yeah, he wants her) and is also handling a couple of pledges for her sorority. In order to help scare the girls, Zane agrees to take them all up to his great grandfathers house in the desert.. this lets him dig for gold! Now, why he couldn’t just go up there anytime he wanted? Unexplained. In reality this is just an excuse to get a couple more babes on screen, and that’s all the excuse we need.

OK, Tobin Bell is the caretaker for this property, which turns out to be a hell of a nice house on 10,000 acres, and it doesn’t look that much like the desert to me with all the big trees lining the driveway.. but whatever. He’s a creepy dude who’s also looking for the gold.. and has been for years. Now, if you were looking for buried treasure and had had years to do it.. don’t you think the FIRST place you would have checked would be the cellar?! Man, the people in this movie are stupid.

When they arrive the first thing Lester tells them is to stay out of the cellar… so of course, the first place Zane goes is.. the cellar, where he discoversLesters digging. Ya know, all of this doesn’t really matter that much. Let’s skip ahead. Eventually they figure out that the place is haunted by great-granpa’s first wife, who was a Native American, and who really wants her necklace back.. one that Zane gave Rene (told you he wanted her.) Instead of going right for it she takes out a few of the kids first, for the heck of it I suppose.

This is all pretty standard fare for this type of movie, so what’s the problem? Well, couple things.. it’s a bit slow. There’s no “horror” until the last 30 min or so, with only a few chops before that. And more importantly, there’s virtually no nudity! Keep in mind this movie is marketed as “unrated” and states on the box “… packed with sex…” so obviously you’re expecting to see these sorority sisters get jiggly. Well, the blonde does show some boobage a couple of times, but other than a couple of butt shots, that’s it. For that matter, when the brunette has to run naked through the woods, she keeps her arm over her breasts and is actually wearing panties. Slow-mo and a line doubler reveals all folks. You’ve never heard of the actresses before, so how hard would it have been to find a couple who were willing to show it all?! Very disappointing.

The special effects aren’t so hot either, but that’s ok, I’ve grown tired of the constant one upping between horror franchises these days as they try to compete on who can show us more entrails. The old school effects employed in Buried Alive were quite refreshing.

So why did I give it 3 stars? The ghost is kinda creepy, and the simple methods they use to move her around the screen is quite effective. I’m not sure why a partially rotted old woman with an axe was creepy, but it was. In the end the movie was enjoyable if you’re in the mood for this sort of thing, just keep your expectations in line and you should have a good time.

The story takes place on an Earth-like planet on the verge of space exploration. The nations are constantly at war with each other, and the idea of spending money on a nonmilitary project doesn’t sit well with some members of the government. However, the Space Force is a pet project of the Emperor and continues to work on its project to put a man in orbit anyway.

The members of the Royal Space Force aren’t exactly up to NASA standards. Its apparent that most of them joined the service as a way to get out of more traditional military service, or perhaps as a way to draw a paycheck without doing any real work.

When one of them (Shiro Lhadatt) meets a girl handing out religious tracts in the street, he’s intrigued. He goes to a meeting to discuss the information in the tract he received, but he really just wants to get to know the girl. In attempt to impress her, Shiro volunteers to pilot the orbit-bound rocket when nobody else in the Space Force would step to the plate. The things guys do to impress girls…

The rest of the movie focuses on Shiro growing interest in the space program and in the religious beliefs of his new girlfriend. There’s some political intrigue thrown in to spice things up as well, leading to an overall satisfying movie experience.

If you want lots of explosions and scantily clad school girls though, you should look elsewhere.