Like it or not, “Scott Pilgrim” is very representative of the current movement of a hipster generation that’s all about Asian/Canadian heavy pop culture, Diablo Cody, kitsch, classic video games, Michael Cera, Ellen Page, Juno, pseudo-eighties, Moldy Peaches, punk rock, and the like that’s suited for the geeks and freaks of the world and I’ve managed to full embrace it. Generation X is over and gone, and that was a movement I despised more than anything. I happen to love the feel of the modern films that promote the geeky hipster lifestyle with the outrageousness of a new culture that’s not afraid to be wacky or cooler than thou.
Category Archives: Collector’s Den
Red Skelton Whistling Collection (Whistling in the Dark / Whistling in Dixie / Whistling in Brooklyn) (1941) (DVD)
The Warner Archives have brought movie buffs of all kinds together to bear witness to the immortal Red Skelton and his “Whistling” trilogy, the 1941 comedy series that brought Skelton together with co-stars like Eve Arden and Virginia Grey. Restored and featured in three separate discs, the “Whistling” collection is ultimately a mixed bag of Skelton comedies that are all fairly flawed with some dated zingers that fall flat on numerous occasions, but when they shine, they manage to draw some genuine laughs thanks to Skelton who is sometimes too goofy to enjoy, and other times seem too funny for the material he’s handed.
Dark Blue: The Complete First Season (DVD)
I wish I could have loved “Dark Blue,” I really do, but as I’ve learned over the many many years of television addiction, finding an entertaining show about police officers working against the conventions of the law is often about as fun as watching paint dry. “Dark Blue” truly tries for grit and edge but is often much too polished to buy such a pitch. TNT has pretty much banked on creating television series that are just branches off of more successful franchises and “Dark Blue” is a mix of “The Shield” with some “CSI” for good measure. While it does make its money on being a procedural, it also manages to have an actual arc to it.
Family Matters: The Complete First Season (DVD)
Before Michael Cera and “The Big Bang Theory,” Steve Urkel made it cool to be a geek. And not just an uber-geek but a mega-geek, someone so unashamed to be himself that he was hip, and we loved him. I won’t deny it. When I was a kid watching this series, everyone including me loved Urkel, and we thought of him as the supreme nerd to idolize even prompting the Urkel Dance to be imitated over and over. As I’ve said before: kids are stupid and we were. Watching “Family Matters” many years later, it was interesting to see the evolution of this series that started out its life in “Perfect Strangers.”
While the show does begin as a sort of new age “The Cosby Show” with a middle class, honest, loving African American family, its premiere on TGIF on the ABC network here in America was pretty boring. And I think after a while even ABC began to realize that deep down this was just a lackluster and forgettable retread of “The Cosby Show” that tried its best to muster up interesting characters and storylines and bombed big time.
March of the Penguins (Limited Edition Giftset) (DVD)
Parents looking to experience the lifespan of a penguins with their kids would do best to realize that Luc Jacquet’s wildlife documentary is anything but a sugar coated film. What it really is is a gut wrenching and very realistic look at the plight of the penguins attempting to survive in the wilderness and what lengths they will go through to ensure the survival of their species in the midst of harsh weather, natural predators and genuinely difficult hurdles known as life and death. What is so special about “March of the Penguins” is that though it is intended for younger viewers it never sugarcoats the cruel reality of nature and how hard these animals have to work to live another day.
Justice League: The Complete Series (2009) (DVD)
Though marketed as “The Complete Series,” the Justice League complete sets provides fifteen DVD’s that actually boasts two highly different television series’. I say that because the creators eventually reached a limit to what they could do with one version of their show and eventually provided a second series that was obviously an extension of the show but approached the source material with a different tone altogether. So while reviewing the show I had to take in to consideration that I was reviewing two series based on a single idea stuffed in to a very beautiful boxed set that is protected by a dazzling tin display case.
With the plethora of special features we get to see “Justice League,” a show based around the comic books dressed in Bruce Timm’s signature art style and storytelling. Here we follow seven of DC’s flagship heavyweights who take hold of the first series through epic storylines based around two parter episodes that are often more epic than most of the animated series ever made.
Liberty's Kids: The Complete Series (DVD)
Like every bit of American history, it’s good to know that “Liberty’s Kids” tells its core audience only one part of the story and never the full details on what, when, and why. For one thing, the series focuses on only a quarter of American history with a sometimes artful dodging of aspects like slavery, illness, and the bloody events that were the wars. However there is a considerable acknowledging of slavery as one of our main characters, an African American, battles on the forefront of the Civil War in order to escape slavery. Sadly, the episode that focuses on the Native American experience only depicts us as inadvertent dominators of the land, not the evil villainous barons who strong armed a race out of their motherland.