All posts tagged Television

DVD Review: Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club Presents: Annette

By Kassidy in Cable, Television · November 19, 2008 · No comments

Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club Presents Annette DVD Box Art Movie Info:
Writer: Lillie Hayward, Janette Sebring Lowrey
Director: Charles Lamont
Cast: Annette Funicello, Tim Considine, David Stollery, Jymme Roberta Shore, Doreen Tracy, Richard Deacon, Sylvia Field, Rudy Lee, Judy Nugent, Sharon Baird, Cheryl Holdridge, Doris Packer, Tommy Cole, Bonnie Fields, Barry Curtis, Steve Stevens, Shelley Fabares, Ralph Dumke, Irving Bacon, Mary Wickes
Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Disney Home Entertainment

Release Info:
DVD Release Date: November 18, 2008
Online Availability: Amazon for $24.99

Whether you were here for the Mickey Mouse Club or like me, you were too young for it, you probably are aware that Annette Funicello was one of the stars of the show. Funnily enough, I learned this as a child in the 80s. During the 80s classic Stand by Me, the four boys are sitting around talking about The Mickey Mouse Club and whether or not Annette’s chest has gotten larger. This was my first experience with Annette. Over the years I have seen bits and pieces of her work on the Mickey Mouse Club and her infamous beach movies, though I have never sat and watched anything all the way through. This would end up being the first time for me and it was quite an experience!

Annette was given plenty of exposure thanks to this interesting and irreverent show. I don’t want to call it a train wreck, but if I were to do so, I would also say that it’s one of the best marketed train wrecks that I have ever seen. This is a show with mediocre acting, absolutely ridiculous story lines, and the inability to carry over years later. Still knowing everything came out bad and fruity in a number of ways, I still kept watching. I admit it! I couldn’t stop watching. Despite there being nothing impressive to see Mickey Mouse Club had me hooked. Maybe I was just waiting to see the next outlandish thing that they would do. Whatever it was, I was like a deer in headlights and I couldn’t stop watching until the very end.

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DVD Review: Kenny vs. Spenny Uncensored: Volume One

By Chuck in Cable, DVD Box Sets, Network, Television · August 12, 2008 · No comments

Kenny vs. Spenny DVD TV Show Info:
Writer: Kenny Hotz, Spencer Rice
Director: Kenny Hotz, Spencer Rice
Cast: Kenny Hotz, Spencer Rice
Rating: Unrated
Studio: Comedy Central

Release Info:
Original Air Dates:November 2007 – Present (2002 in Canada)
Season Air Dates: 2007-2008
DVD Box Set Release Date: August 12, 2008
Online Availability: Amazon for $17.99, Wal-Mart for $17.86
Episodes: the first half of the first season

Considering the fact that I am not familiar with Canadian television, like most Americans I had no clue about this show until it hit Comedy Central last year. Had I known that you could make a show by being a gross guy I would be a millionaire by now. My friends and I used to have a show like this, but we called it life. We would dare each other to see who could do the most ridiculous things only to force the loser into awfully humiliating tasks. It was great fun. Our competitions ranged from eating contests to things at work that I can’t even talk about, to little silly things like who could spit the furthest. We took them seriously though. Hell, I even practiced! So, it is nice to see such an interesting show land on my desk.

The rules of the show are simple. Kenny and Spenny (Spencer) are roommates that live together. These contests occur frequently. The loser is forced to go through with some humiliating task, usually picked by the winner of said competition. Depending on the competition, the rules include an agreed upon time period and special rules in case they are necessary. The show is not funny just because of the outrageous competitions they put themselves in, but because of the personalities of Kenny and Spenny. If I wasn’t laughing at the contest I was laughing at one of the two guys. It makes for a great show, assuming it’s in the right demographic, which it seems to be doing just fine with the Comedy Central crowd.

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DVD Review: 7th Heaven: The Sixth Season

By Kassidy in DVD Box Sets, Movies, Primetime, Television · June 13, 2008 · 1 comment

7th Heaven Writer: Various
Director: Various
Cast: Barry Watson, Jessica Biel, Stephen Collins, Catherine Hicks, David Gallagher, Mackenzie Rosman
Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Paramount
Release Date: June 10, 2008

It’s time again for another season of the semi-clean drama, 7th Heaven to be released. Last season, I commented on how great the show was and I still feel pretty much the same way. It has its moments of greatness, offering some fun times and plenty of talking. Despite having a preacher for a parent, this household sure holds its share of drama. There is a soap opera feel to it that certainly allows people that wouldn’t find interest in a religious family to get involved with this one.

I watched the show through the majority of its run when it was on television. It wasn’t my favorite show, though when I connected with it during my last review it reminded me of why I watched it in the first place. Aaron Spelling, the producer of this show, along with such popular options as Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, and even Charlie’s Angels certainly knew how to pick projects where the characters would be appealing to the audience watching them. 7th Heaven is certainly not going to be a show suitable for everyone, though it is important to note that there is much more here than the average person will be expecting.

Release Information:
7th Heaven had an extremely long run of eleven seasons, which is rare for most television dramas. The show began in 1996 and only recently ended in 2007. The show was not meant to go through eleven seasons. Actually it was canceled in the tenth season, but the final show received such good ratings it ended up being extended for another season. These box sets, released by Paramount and CBS offer all of the hour long episodes with minor, if any, editing.

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DVD Review: Comedy Central: Home Grown

By Dominicus in Cable, Television · June 12, 2008 · No comments

Comedy Central Home Grown Writer: Various
Director: Various
Cast: Sarah Silverman, Amy Sedaris, Dave Chappelle, Lewis Black
Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Paramount/Comedy Central
Release Date: June 10, 2008

Comedy is a good thing. Everybody needs to take a minute or two and get away from things and have a good laugh. Comedy Central should be notorious for providing those laughs in a television setting, though they are often hit or miss. Shows like South Park, The Sarah Silverman Program, and Lil Bush provide some pretty good laughs, while other shows have been more miss than hit. Comedy Central Home Grown is one of the newer “experiments”, as they put it, to filter through the network. Given a supposed-to-be-amusing twist of weed, you end up with a sampler disc meant to promote the network as a whole and all the good things that are on it.

This DVD contains five episodes of various network shows alongside some sketches, shorts, and other items. They all have one thing in common and that is weed. Whether this is funny to you or not will depend. Whether it’s worth the money or not is highly debatable. This is mainly for people that have little to no experience with the network and the shows that are currently airing. As it is, many of these episodes either have been, are, or will be on other DVDs and in other sets. In that case, the only pull to this DVD is that they are all on the same disc. I fail to understand why that makes this DVD important or worth money.

Release Information:
Comedy Central Home Grown was released by Comedy Central and Paramount on June 10, 2008. The 5-episode DVD has a run-time of 180 minutes and is not rated. The packaging involves a single standard case like any movie would be placed in. You should be able to pick this DVD up just about anywhere that DVDs are sold. Amazon has Comedy Central’s Home Grown available for $16.99 and Walmart is offering it for $16.99, as well, but with a different box cover.

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DVD Review: Make Room for Daddy: Season 6

By Dominick in DVD Box Sets, Television · March 13, 2008 · No comments

Make Room for Daddy DVD Writer: Various including Garry Marshall and Bob Fisher
Director: Various including Sheldon Leonard and William Asher
Cast: Danny Thomas, Rusty Hamer, Marjorie Lord, Angela Cartwright, Penny Parker, June Hagen, Sid Melton,
Rating: Not Rated
Studio: S’more Entertainment
Release Date: January 22, 2008

Make Room for Daddy seems to be yet another show that is perceived to emphasize the misogynistic 1950s lifestyle. I don’t necessarily find that lifestyle misogynistic merely because the wife had her fair share of duties and the husband had his. Just because she wasn’t out in the workforce doesn’t make it misogynistic. It’s just slightly dated. This is back in a time when one parent could work and did. Still, that doesn’t mean there was anything necessarily wrong with that. It’s just the way it was. Besides, Kathy Williams made sure to enter the workforce when she wanted.

Make Room for Daddy is a wholesome family show. I had heard for years how great Danny Thomas was, having grown up in Toledo, which is a place where Thomas is revered. I hadn’t really watched reruns of Make Room for Daddy though since they didn’t seem to be on much in the 1980s, at least not in my house. I knew that the show, also known as the Danny Thomas show, was of a similar vein to shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, but this was the first time I was really able to appreciate a show, which makes me ache for such great writing and good storytelling in a time when reality television reigns supreme.

Release Information:
Make Room for Daddy ran for 11 seasons from 1953 through 1964. Thomas’ on screen children pretty much grew up on the series. The first season premiered on September 29, 1953 and every season had at least 30 episodes in them. The sixth season, which is what this review covers, has 32 episodes and all of them are included in this five disc set. The sixth season of Make Room for Daddy aired from Fall 1958 through Summer 1959. This is when the show was considered to be in its prime.

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TV Box Set Review: Dr. Who Season 2

By Guest Bloggers in DVD Box Sets, Television · February 15, 2007 · No comments

Guest Post by: RPalladino

For those of you who have no idea who or what Dr Who is, then it’s a little difficult to explain. The Dr of the title has been a semi-regular fixture on BBC TV for some 44 years. The series started with the first Dr, played by William Hartnell in 1963, with the first ever episode airing the day after John F Kennedy’s assassination, and has drifted in and out of the British public’s viewing consciousness ever since.

In the UK, towards the end of its original run of success (around the late 80s), Dr Who was the epitome of Cheese. Ever-decreasing audiences would tune-in to watch stuntmen in rubber alien suits, hackneyed storylines, ridiculous plot-twists and awful acting. It wasn’t long before the BBC called time on the sadly floundering series.

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