CliqueClack

Fitz and Olivia is the least interesting relationship on Scandal

ABC’s Scandal is having a pretty incredible run. The ratings in its first season were solid, but not spectacular. The second season saw those ratings rise significantly. The season finale had 25% more viewers than the series premiere did. That might not sound like a great deal on paper, but considering how many viewers shows generally lose from the premiere, it is pretty impressive.

I think Scandal succeeds in spite of Olivia/Fitz, not because of them. There are many great relationship dynamics on the show that far outstrip the primary one. I would much rather focus on those. Continue reading 'Fitz and Olivia is the least interesting relationship on Scandal' »

Bad Grandpa is a hilarious serving of Irving

If you’re a fan of the Jackass franchise, then you have more than likely seen Johnny Knoxville covered in old age prosthetics to portray the dirty old man Irving Zisman. Irving is known for making lewd comments to unsuspecting ladies, crashing through plate glass windows and generally causing some kind of mayhem for the hidden cameras. It’s like an R-rated version of Betty White’s Off Their Rockers.

Now that the Jackass crew has gotten a bit older and more fragile — and the death of Ryan Dunn still hovers over the group — they may have decided to stop torturing each other with insane practical jokes, but that hasn’t stopped Knoxville from bringing Irving to the big screen in his own feature film, Bad Grandpa. In the movie, which actually has a bit of a plot rather than a random stringing-together of stunts and pranks, Irving’s wife has just passed away, his daughter is off to jail and grandson Billy needs transportation to North Carolina to live with his dad. The only affordable transport is Irving, so they put grandma in the trunk and head eastward, causing various forms of mayhem along the way.

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Toy Story of Terror was a scream

Last week, ABC premiered the first ever episode-long short from Pixar. Aptly named Toy Story of Terror, the Halloween special followed a few of the Toy Story characters (Hamm, Mrs. Potato Head and most of the newer toys were mentioned but absent) as they and their owner were forced to stay the night at a creepy and possibly haunted motel. And surprise — it turned out to be one of the better executed holiday specials I’ve seen in a long time.

Sure, some of it has to do with the fact that it’s Toy Story and Pixar just has that world and it’s characters down pat. I heard Pixar was doing a Toy Story TV special and I was sold … way before hearing the premise, actually. They also managed to get the voice actors back for their roles, including Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Wallace Shawn and Kristen Schaal (who now voices Louise on Bob’s Burgers and Mabel on Gravity Falls and I just adore her). And then we have silk voiced Timothy Dalton as toy thespian Mr. Pricklepants (introduced in Toy Story 3), who is also a horror film enthusiast and gleefully points out the classic scary movie tropes happening around them — flat tire during a storm, impromptu stay at ominous lodgings, friends disappearing one by one and of course, the gang splitting up to cover more ground. Continue reading 'Toy Story of Terror was a scream' »

The Legend of Smurfy Hollow is 22 smurfin’ minutes I can’t get back

Maybe my expectations for The Legend of Smurfy Hollow were a tad high considering I’m an adult and this is clearly a new DVD release from Sony Pictures Animation intended for children, but the premise seemed very promising to me. This was a DVD combining two things I’ve loved since I was a child growing up in the 1980s: The Smurfs and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

The Smurfs remain a large part of my youth. Their blue, smiling faces aligned my shelves and their cartoon series always held a special place in my heart. Upon occasion, I still get their annoying theme song stuck in my head. (La, la, la, la, la … there, now it’s stuck in your head too. You’re welcome!)

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The Counselor looks nice but is a muddled mess of mixed messages

As Shakespeare never said, what’s life without a little risk? And what’s life without movies filled with dreary philosophical arguments about inevitability and bizarre sexual asides? It’s not my life, apparently. In general, we all take risks, as I’ve talked about before, but such things tend to be tempered with sense. At least you’d hope so. But there are those that choose to take risks with their lives, hoping to achieve absurd gains instead of dying younger than they’d prefer. Sometimes these are nihilistic folk, but most people tend to have something or someone they care about above all else. A family or a house or an heirloom, or a prized Chia Pet. Yes, we all take risks, of different levels and degrees of severity. In my review of Runner Runner, which nobody saw and which nobody should see, I mentioned that life is filled with risks, both minor and major, for really just about everybody. But despite our best efforts, we are all victims of chance and reality. Sometimes even when it’ll totally work perfectly, it can’t because someone got hit by a train.

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Two films for Halloween that fail to deliver the scares

Welcome, kiddies! It’s time for another Halloween edition of Throwback Thursday. This week we’ll be taking a look at two “classic” films from the Warner Archive Collection: Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and The Frozen Dead. These films have all the genre tropes to make for some spooky viewing – graveyards, madness, a haunted house, reanimated corpses, a disembodied head, and Nazis! But to these parts add up to some good scares?

Starting with the “classier” of the two movies, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death is a movie I seem to remember from TV, probably the ABC Movie of the Week which brought us such gems as The Night Stalker, Moon of the Wolf, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Trilogy of Terror. I was surprised, however, to discover that Jessica was actually a theatrical film released in 1971.

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TV on DVD October 22: Nikita, Primeval: New World, Kindred: The Embraced

It’s slim pickins for this week’s TV releases on home video, but the biggest title of the week has to be the penultimate season of The CW’s Nikita, which is getting a very truncated final season to wrap up the storyline. The popular BBC series Primeval got a less-than-welcome spinoff, Primeval: New World, which was cancelled before it even aired on the Syfy Channel (it ran in Canada prior to its US debut). DC’s (Comics, not Washington) Super-Villains take the spotlight in a new release while Barbie, Veggie Tales and Transformers round out the family fare. Classic TV fans who don’t want to invest in full series sets can now get best of’s for The Mothers-in-Law, The Doris Day Show and Family Affair. These and more are available October 22 on DVD and Blu-ray. To see all of the week’s releases, have a look at our shopper’s guide and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase.

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Ghosts, ghouls and Vincent Price come to home video for Halloween

It’s getting to be that spooky time of year and the home video market can be counted on to deliver a few treats for the season (and some tricks as well). This week’s home video releases include the terrific haunted house movie The Conjuring, a restored version of the classic The Uninvited, and a box set tribute to the Master of Horror, Vincent Price. In the non-horror genres some big Hollywood films are also hitting home video, including The Internship, The Way, Way Back, and Before Midnight. White House Down and Turbo are among the titles getting early digital only releases, and the notorious, infamous Snuff makes its Blu-ray debut. To see all the titles being released on October 22, have a look at our handy shopper’s guide, and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase. And remember, any purchase made through a link here will help support our efforts to keep you informed and entertained!

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Dancing With the Stars 17: The road to semi-finals

Well, can you believe we’re at the halfway point on Dancing With the Stars season 17 already? The new once-a-week format has made the time fly by, but I did notice that with this week’s show we’re starting to see a bit more padding to fill out the two hours than we had when the show was fully cast and had to zip along to cram everything in. They really should cut the show back to 90 minutes at this point like they used to do back in the earlier seasons. But I guess it’s easier for ABC to fill two hours rather than trying to find a new half-hour show to fill the gap between DWTS and Castle.

But, now that we are at the halfway point, it’s time for Kim and I to make some predictions and look back at our original post to see if anyone we had high hopes for has left the building prematurely (and I can safely say the answer to that one is yes).

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Get spooked again with The Conjuring on Blu-ray

Halloween is fast approaching and I can’t think of a better way to spend the holiday than watching some good old-fashioned haunted house movies. Slasher flicks are more modern fare for Halloween, but the season is really about ghosts and spirits and that sort of thing. The only problem is … it’s hard to find a good old-fashioned haunted house movie these days that doesn’t have to rely on cheap scare tactics — over loud music or sound effects cues, a cat jumping through a window — to give the viewer chills up and down their spine.

Most of the great haunted house movies came about between the 40s and 70s with films like The Uninvited, The Innocents, and The Haunting being among the best. The fear of possession and the Devil manifesting himself on earth took hold in films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen, but the early 80s saw a return to ghost stories with the excellent The Changeling, the all-star Ghost Story and, of course, Poltergeist. Where most of these haunting movies relied on atmosphere and restraint, using the “less is more” approach to spooking an audience, Poltergeist set the stage for special effects extravaganzas taking over for imagination. The most egregious offender was the horrendous remake of The Haunting which starred Lili Taylor.

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