Saturday, July 28, 2007
Mini-DVD Review: Tales from the Crypt - The Complete 6th Season (July 24); Solomon's Weekly Rant: Summer Sucks on TV Land and Nick at Nite
Tales From The Crypt -- The Complete Sixth Season (Warner, $39.98) brings the Cryptkeeper back to tell fifteen more spine-tingling stories that are guaranteed to give you nightmares (well, if that kind of stuff actually scares you, that is). The set contains the 15 episodes of the series that aired on HBO in the 1994-1995 season on a three disc set. Among these episodes include tales of a predatory lawyer learning a rough lesson, psychiatric patients that are being treated unfairly getting their justice, wives getting a little bit of revenge, harvesting the souls of the dead, and more. And the guest stars are pretty impressive, including Catherine O'Hara, Rita Rudner, Isaac Hayes, Hal Williams, Debbe Dunning, Wayne Newton, Corey Feldman, Hank Azaria, Ben Stein, and John Lithgow. And if that isn't enough, Alfred Hitchock and Humphrey Bogart mysteriously come back to life to do an episode... well thanks to computers... in the episode "You, Murderer." I also love this episode because of the introduction to the episode, where the Cryptkeeper becomes "Fearest Gump" and offers Alfred Hitchcock a "shockalet" while sitting next to him at a bench!
The set comes in double slimcases and the video and audio quality are perfectly fine, with English subtitles to go along with the episodes. The runtimes for the episodes are all over the place, going as low as 20 minutes to as high as 27 minutes, but this kind of fluctuation is somewhat normal for premium cable programs. The set doesn't exactly go all out when it comes to the special features, but there is one: a Virtual Comic Book special feature of "Whirlpool." Basically, this is a 15 minute story from the original comic book that the series was based upon, which could have potentially been boring, but isn't because the Cryptkeeper actually reads the story and gives an introduction, just like an episode of the television series. It is actually kind of fun to watch. I think all of you boils and ghouls will just scream about this set!
-- Reviewed by skees53
(4/5 stars)
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Solomon's Weekly Rant
Saturday, July 28, 2007
"Summer Sucks on TV Land and Nick at Nite"
By Solomon Davis
I recently watched the latest episode of TV Land's new original series Back to the Grind this past Wednesday night featuring actors Marla Gibbs and Sherman Hemsley doing the actual job they did on the sitcom The Jeffersons.
Before the show started, I asked myself, "Why is Sherman Hemsley being featured?" I wondered that because he was never really seen working at his job on The Jeffersons and not only that he was the owner of the chain of dry cleaners and never worked at the cleaners. TV Land didn't know this before putting this program
together? Even with the goof of having Hemsley featured on this show, I found it to be flat out boring because once again people at TV Land can't think out the box and entertain its viewers. Wouldn't it have been FUNNIER if they featured Sherman and Marla Gibbs not being able to do their fictional jobs? At least that would have created some water cooler talk like, "wow I thought Sherman would do well working at a dry cleaners." So the fact that we know Marla Gibbs can do housekeeping and Sherman can work in a dry cleaners now what? TV Land needs to go back to the DRAWING BOARD and come up with another original programming idea because this show just didn't make sense.
Nick at Nite's Wall to Wall Summer Marathons are really a REPEAT-THON since the last half of the marathon is a repeat of the first half which means that if you start watching at 9pm make sure you grab the remote at 1am because it will be nothing new to see. Why does Nick at Nite have to repeat a 4-hour marathon when the network can just have a 9pm to 1am marathon and air regularly scheduled programming? Nick at Nite's marathon style is like going out to dinner and a movie with friends from 9pm to 1am and then turn back around and go to the same restaurant for dinner after having going there earlier in the evening. Are they thinking about the people in this country who work the 3pm to 11pm shift and feel that they would be more interested in watching TV from 1am to 5am? So maybe the first half of the marathon is for the viewers who work 9am to 5pm because they figure it's no way we would be awake after 1am. So if that is the case then what about Friday nights when the day shift viewers are OFF the following day? That's something else they didn't think about when coming up with the idea of this wall to wall "pointlessthon."
So basically both Nick at Nite and TV Land is not doing a good job this summer in pleasing the viewers and we will just have to see what happens in the fall because both networks have given us nothing to smile about this summer season.
TV Land's original programming was just the worst and fell a couple of notches down on the entertainment scale since airing the Mr. T self-help series, I Pity the Fool. That series kept viewers tuned in for 30 minutes unlike the TV Land's Back to the Grind which keeps viewers tuned out. And the Nick at Nite repeat-thon is something we will have to deal with the rest of the summer by just tuning in at 9pm or 1am so we won't see a repeat schedule. They should change the title of the marathon weeks to "Back-to-Back Marathon Week: The Repeat Edition." And TV Land should rename its original shows "Waiting for the Fall
Programming."
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Sitcoms Airing Tonight / Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows
Tuesday, November 5
none scheduled
Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows (Week of November 4)
Tuesday, November 5
- Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg (Two and a Half Men/Jenny) - E! News has an interview with Jenny at 11pm on E!.
- Ted McGinley (Shrinking/Hope & Faith/Married with Children/Happy Days) - Ted returns to preview the new season of Shrinking on Live with Kelly and Mark, so check your listings.
- Valerie Bertinelli (Hot in Cleveland/Café Americain/Sydney/One Day at a Time) - Valerie is joining Drew and Ross Mathews for an all-new Drew's News on The Drew Barrymore Show, so check your local listings.
- Renée Elise Goldsberry (Girls5eva) - Renée and Lynn Whitfield talk about their upcoming new film, Albany Road, on Sherri, so check your local listings.
- Chris Spencer (Born Again Virgin/Significant Others/The Jamie Foxx Show) - Chris stops by to tell Sherri about his Vice TV series, Black Comedy in America, on Sherri, so check your local listings.
- Kendrick Sampson (Insecure) - Kendrick is a guest on ABC's GMA 3: What You Need to Know at 1pm.
- Dylan Sprouse (The Suite Life on Deck/The Suite Life of Zack & Cody/Grace Under Fire) - Dylan discusses his film Aftermath on The Talk on CBS at 2pm ET/1pm CT-PT.
- Liz Gillies (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll/Victorious) - NBC's Today has a Citi Concert Series with Liz and Ferry Towners in the 9am hour.
New on DVD and Blu-ray
09/10 - Rick and Morty - The Complete Seasons 1-7
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09/10 - Ted - Season One (Blu-ray) (DVD)
09/17 - The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet - Video Scrapbook
09/17 - Top Cat - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
09/24 - Friends - The Complete Series (4K UHD)
09/24 - Young Sheldon - The Complete Seventh Season (DVD) / The Complete Series (DVD) (Blu-ray)
10/08 - Curb Your Enthusiasm - The Complete Twelfth Season / The Complete Series
10/22 - Veep - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
11/05 - I Love Lucy - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
11/12 - The King of Queens - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (2024 Release)
11/19 - SpongeBob SquarePants - The Complete Fourteenth Season
11/26 - Looney Tunes Collector's Choice - Volume 4 (Blu-ray)
12/03 - Angel (1960-1961) - The Complete Series, Volume 1
12/17 - Seinfeld - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (4K UHD)
02/04 - Bewitched - The Complete Series - 60th Anniversary Special Edition (Blu-ray)
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