Pads & Panels

Title: John Carter

Format: Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directed by: Andrew Stanton

Written by: Andrew Stanton, Mark Andrews, Michael Chabon

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Willem Dafoe

Studio: Walt Disney Home Entertainment

Film Rating:

Blu-ray 3D Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

John Carter may be best known in retrospect as a bad business decision. One that saw a lot of money spent and not nearly as much made. And that comes, I think, primarily from its source material.

John Carter is the kind of fiction that has attained a certain cult status – an incredibly loyal contingent of followers staunchly stand by the Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi adventure – but may be entirely unfamiliar to general audiences. And ultimately what happened is a group of those loyal followers pushed to get this made, and the mass audiences just weren’t there.

But that doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of the film. Financial success doesn’t always speak to quality, of course, but in this case there does seem to be a connection. What John Carter struggles with most is finding, or creating, an identity for itself. By the end of 132 minutes, we’ve all seen a lot of fantastic things but are left caring about very little of it. (more…)

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Title: Cowboys & Aliens

Format: Blu-ray + DVD +Digital Copy

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Directed by: Jon Favreau

Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Paul Dano, Noah Ringer

Studio: Universal

Film Rating:

Blu-ray Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

The premise of Cowboys & Aliens is infinitely appealing. It’s a merging of two huge movie genres. It’s a battle between old gunfights and space-age weaponry. It’s James Bond and Indiana Jones. It’s got the potential to be played as a B-movie or the summer blockbuster that it was. It can be funny and it can be serious. And it’s got Jon Favreau at the helm. Unfortunately, it’s a little less Iron Man and a little more Iron Man 2.

That is to say, Cowboys & Aliens has a lot of spectacular things flashing on the screen and big name actors, but it lacks any real substance, a good story and characters that actually engage us. Instead, it’s another mess of a summer blockbuster that had too many cooks in the kitchen, leaving audiences with a half-baked cacophony of filmmaking. It aims for serious, but fails to make us care about either the cowboys or the aliens, and in the end we’re left with flashy lights that fail to engage us. (more…)

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Title: Stargate Universe: The Complete Final Season

Format: DVD

Created By: Brad Wright, Robert C. Cooper

Starring: Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferreira, Brian J. Smith, Elyse Levesque, David Blue, Alaina Huffman, Jamil Walker Smith, Ming-Na

Studio: Syfy, MGM Television

Season Rating:

DVD Rating:

Review By: Thomas Braaksma

The Season

There are not many writers that would expect to be writing a review for a series that is a distant relative of a Kurt Russell film named Stargate. This is even more unbelievable considering the fact that he saw it back in 1994, in a seedy Madison, Wisconsin theater. That theater has long been shut down, yet the Stargate name has survived through television series, animation, and straight to DVD movies, all the way up to 2010 with the final season of Stargate Universe. (more…)

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