CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Blu-Ray Review: Hilarious ‘South Park: The Complete Fourteenth Season’
CHICAGO – If you haven’t kept up with Eric, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, fear not TV fans — “South Park” can still be DAMN funny. I’ll admit that I don’t keep up consistently during the regular season and so sometimes wonder if the quality has dipped. With the 15th season having premiered this week on Comedy Central, the 14th was just released on Blu-ray and DVD and it’s pretty great, especially in HD.
Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
Trey Parker and Matt Stone may be getting more headlines for the incredible raves they’ve received for their Broadway play “The Book of Mormon,” but they still clearly put a lot of heart and soul into their Comedy Central baby. Once again, “South Park” pulls no punches creatively. What I love most about the show is the complete unpredictability in subject matter. The season premiere was a brilliant take off on the Tiger Woods scandal (featuring one of my favorite Kenny deaths ever) and the next episode was a left turn into a commentary on banned books featuring Morgan Freeman reading “The Poop That Took a Pee.” Medical marijuana, a brilliant Facebook/Tron blend — You never know where the comedy is coming from.
South Park: The Complete Fourteenth Season was released on Blu-ray and DVD on April 26th, 2011
Photo credit: Comedy Central/Paramount
Many “South Park” seasons have been hit-and-miss (although every single one has had more hits than misses) but this one is consistent nearly all the way through. Even “The Simpsons” was pretty far off its peak by the 14th season and the less said about the inconsistency of “Family Guy” in the last couple years, the better. “South Park” is still completely hysterical. It’s impossible to say that it’s better than ever because I’m not sure it’s as culturally relevant but the most important thing is whether or not it’s funny — this season of “South Park” is very, very funny.
And the Blu-ray release is perfect, featuring excellent HD video accompanied by Parker & Stone’s great mini-commentaries. The boys are always refreshingly honest and fascinating to listen to on every episode. No one knows this program better than its creators and it’s great that they take the time to give a gift to the fans with every season release. They know they’re still knocking it out of the park more often than they’re not with the still-great “South Park.”
Special Features:
o Mini-Commentaries on all Episodes
o Deleted Scenes
o Bonus Episode #1302: “The Coon”
By BRIAN TALLERICO |