DVD Review

CHICAGO – The DVD Round-Up is back! Did you miss us? HollywoodChicago.com’s intermittent column designed to serve as a safety net for releases that may otherwise fall without notice is back with a motley crew of titles that have nearly nothing in common. Classic TV, drama, horror, copious sex, and Justin Timberlake. You make the connections.

CHICAGO – All seven season of the Emmy-winning, groundbreaking “The Shield,” easily one of the best programs of the ’00s, have been collected into one absolutely gorgeous set for “The Shield: The Complete Series Collection”. This time of year usually produces several complete series sets to essentially re-sell already available programs to holiday shoppers. This is one of the best.

CHICAGO – When I first heard about Will Ferrell’s one-man Broadway show in which he would deliver a nearly-90-minute monologue as outgoing President George W. Bush, I was both excited at the potential and nervous as to how on Earth the talented comedian could keep it interesting for its full running time.

CHICAGO – As Veterans Day approaches on November 11th, the generation that fought in World War 2 are dying off with each passing day. “The 95th: The Iron Men of Metz” profiles those few good men left, so that they can tell their story.

CHICAGO – There simply wasn’t space on television for both “Fringe” and “Eleventh Hour”. As soon as I saw them, I knew one or both of the fall 2008 shows would have to go. With the strong lead performances by the great Rufus Sewell and beautiful Marley Shelton, I thought “Eleventh Hour” had the edge, especially after it did pretty well in its first season.

CHICAGO – Legendary TV shows deserve legendary DVD sets and the “Ultimate Edition” release for the beloved “Blackadder” truly lives up to the often over-used “ultimate” title. Giving fans everything “Adder”-related that they could possibly ask for, this is the perfect gift this holiday season for fans of British television.

CHICAGO – Though graphic novels may read like great movie storyboards, they often fail to translate into compelling cinema. From “Sin City” to “Watchmen,” filmmakers have tried replicating graphic art with a reverence more suffocating than exhilarating. Images that reverberated with power on the page become coldly calculated on the big screen. No matter how tightly structured a film may be, it must give viewers the illusion of spontaneity. And there’s nothing more tiresome than a horror film in which all the scares feel telegraphed.

CHICAGO – Many editions of the DVD Round-Up have featured a different genre and focus for each title within it. This week seems a little more thematically linked as we have a trio of foreign horror films and a few more independent films than usual. Of course, there has to a holiday comedy to spice things up.

CHICAGO – “Left Bank” centers on` a woman whose apartment appears to be above a black hole, or a pit or something dark and deep like that. The Belgian horror outing (which has gone straight to DVD in the United States after playing in Chicago at the EU Film Fest) isn’t nearly as dumb as that synopsis makes it out to be, but in the end, that’s actually more of criticism than a compliment.

CHICAGO – A lot of classic TV comedies are often pointed to as being “ahead of their time”. The quirky, weird, and memorable “It’s Garry Shandling Show” wasn’t really ahead of its time because there’s nothing quite like it on the air. The groundbreaking cult classic is now available in a gorgeous 16-disc set from Shout Factory and it’s just what Shandling fans deserve.