Tag Archives: DVD

Adam Lambert – Glam Nation Live!

This week saw the release of Glam Nation Live! – a CD/DVD recording of Adam Lambert’s recent Glam Nation tour – and provides perhaps his best recordings yet in my opinion!!

I was a bit of a fan before, however having listened to the CD on Spotify, I have to confess to having most of the album ‘starred’ as a favourite, and Mr Lambert has now shot right up to the top of my ‘must see perform live’ list! (no mean feat given the amount of live gigs that I end up going to, and how dulled to seeing my idols that I’ve started to become!).

His live version of ‘Whataya Want From Me’ is AWESOME!

Favourites from the tour include:

 

 

 

For anyone interested in listening to music recording from the entire gig, you can do so on Spotify.

Tron: Uprising – First look

Although billed as a ‘first look’ on the Tron: Legacy DVD/3D & 2D BluRay sets that are coming out in the UK on April 18th (whoop whoop!!!); it seems that the internet has already picked up on the trailer and promotional material for Tron: Uprising, and so it is now a case of ‘first look, provided you don’t ever use the internet’ hehe! :P

(There are arguments as to whether this was intentional marketing or not, people seem unsure of the original source – I’d suggest not, as it makes sense to target the actual fans first!).

This looks to be thoroughly epic and you can bet that I am totally going to start bugging my housemates to let us get Disney XD so that I can watch this next summer heh! Forget the 2012 Olympics, I am mega excited for Tron: Uprising hehe!!

Oh, and don’t even get me started on how excited I am that Bruce Boxleitner is voicing Tron!! hehe! :P

Tron: Uprising will begin airing on Disney Xd (that’s like Disney Channel for Boys) during the Summer of 2012 and it sports an impressive voice cast including Elijah Wood, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Mandy Moore, Paul Reubens, Nate Corddry, Lance Henriksen and Bruce Boxleitner, who will reprise his role as Tron. There’s also a 10-part micro-series in the works that will premiere in the Fall. We’ve now learned a bit more about the cartoon series, including where it starts and will end.

FlashForward

I have just finished watching FlashForward, Season One , Episode 22 (FutureShock) and I really really loved the episode which, conversely, has now made me really angry with the whole series (and I never get angry, especially over TV!!).

I went into this episode knowing full well that the show had been cancelled weeks earlier, however what you come away with is a load of hooks that have you excited begging(!) for the second series, when you know full well there’s not going to be one!! I wish that ABC would at least commission another two episodes, just to try to tie up a few of the looser ends, leave some less-raw hooks to the storyline and to give a few more answers/a sense of resolution.

Without doubt, a really marvellous episode that made me appreciate the series as a whole. The alignment was really beautifully done, and I did shed the odd tear here and shout the odd ‘OMG’ at the TV there heh.

Here’s the last two minutes of the programme:

——– SPOILERS ——— SPOILERS ——— SPOILERS ———

If, like me, you’re loving the music, it’s The Funeral by Band of Horses.

Finally, a bit of ‘Did you know?‘ trivia – there’s an image contained in the title credits for each episode that gives some clue as to what each episode is about! :D

FlashForward will be released on DVD in the UK at the end of September 2010 – many online retailers are already taking pre-orders, and are retailing around the £35 price point.

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(500) Days of Summer

I’ve just got around to watching (500) Days of Summer and, I have to say, it was every bit as marvellous as I was expecting it to be.

For an Independent film, this really has done magnificently, and perhaps shows that you don’t need big corporate Hollywood movie bucks when it comes to making a decent film about relationships.

I’ve been a big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt for quite a while (since his appearance in one of my favourite movies, Latter Days (2003)) and it was marvellous to see him taking the lead on this film. I instantly fell in love with his character and his ‘way’, and so don’t be surprised if you see me nicking some of his outfit combinations from the film, I really digged those too heh.

A marvellous little film, it’s only ninety minutes long, but doesn’t get mired down in any of the usual clichés and you’ll find yourself easily wishing that this was an extra thirty minutes or so longer – it’s really easy to get caught up in.

In addition to the wonderful visuals of this film, there is a phenomenal soundtrack – I don’t think there’s even one song on it that I dislike. So atmospheric and wonderful, it really makes the film perfect for me. Please click here to see my blog post on the soundtrack and to listen to it for yourself.

Definitely a film that I am going to be watching time and time again, as I found it really easy to identify with and it really connected with me.

Now that the ‘serious ‘ stuff is out-of-the-way, here are a few images to help us appreciate the talent that is Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who I *may* have a *small* man-crush on heh!) :P

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Ugly Betty – CANCELLED!

Oi, Betty, NOOOOOOOOO! :(

Sad times!

It’s not often that I buy a DVD box set of a TV show, however Ugly Betty was the first TV series that prompted me to do this, and I am absolutely gutted that it’s been cancelled as, for me, it was one of the best TV shows there’s ever been!

I’d only just managed to get Greg into this too…

Boo!

I am already planning to stage a renegade version of the show, based in London, so that we Ugly Betty fans can keep the dream alive heh! Greg is going to play Betty, and I have dibs on Wilhelmina (naturally!), but we still could do with a Hilda, a Mark and a Daniel for our fantasy make-believe show :P

The below article on the cancellation is taken from the L.A. Times’ blog:

It’s the end of the Mode: ABC’s ‘Ugly Betty’ will wrap its run in April

January 27, 2010 |  1:28 pm

“Ugly Betty” has gone out of fashion.ABC has decided not to continue the show beyond its current fourth season, Variety reports. The cast and crew were informed of the bad news this morning. The series finale will air in April.

With four episodes still left to produce, executive producer Silvio Horta said they will be able to send “Ugly Betty” off in style.

“We’ve mutually come to the difficult decision to make this Ugly Betty’s final season, and are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion,” Horta and ABC Entertainment Group chairman Steve McPherson said in a joint statement. “We are extremely proud of this groundbreaking series, and felt it was important to give the fans a proper farewell.”

The news is hardly shocking: After ratings began to cool during the show’s third season, ABC moved “Ugly Betty” to Fridays last fall, where viewership plummeted. At the beginning of the year, the network gave the show a final chance to perform, sticking it on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. The last-ditch effort didn’t help. This season, “Betty” has averaged 5.3 million viewers, a big drop from the third season’s 8.1 million viewers.

In its later years, “Ugly Betty” had toned down the outrageous storylines that had been its signature. When it premiered, the show was the surprise success of ABC’s 2006-07 fall lineup, creating buzz by scaling new melodramatic heights week after week. The series even won an Emmy for star America Ferrera. But the upkeep of the multiple super-soapy storylines soon became overwhelming, and Horta and ABC executives felt as though “Ugly Betty’s” original conceit — a Queens, N.Y., girl with journalism dreams works her way up from the bottom at cutthroat fashion-mag Mode — had been lost in all the intrigue.

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Desperate Housewives – Seasons 1 thro’ 5 Box Set

HURRAH!

The 31 DVD disc set of Desperate Housewives that I treated myself to has arrived!

Can you see just how in awe I am?! :P

It’s absolutely mammoth, I cannot get one hand around it, I have to use both hands to be able to comfortably hold it around the sides.

I rarely buy DVD box sets, and so I am slightly surprised that I’ve splashed out on a huge set like this, but that said, I absolutely adore this show! Even more than Neighbours…maybe! Plus I get a lasting copy of Jesse Metcalfe, Ryan Carnes and Shawn Pyfrom to forever stare at heh!

Jesse Metcalfe

Ryan Carnes

Shawn Pyfrom

To give you a few stats, it’s 31 discs, which equates to 4,632 minutes, or 77.2 hours, or around 3 and a half days worth of back-to-back viewing!

Better get my post redirected to Wysteria Lane….see ya’ll on Thursday heh! ;)

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Kylie – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head

I was watching “Kylie, Live In Sydney” last night, which is a DVD copy of her ‘On A Night Like This’ tour from 2001, which was  pre-Fever album.

I was taken by the fact that nobody even batted an eyelid when she introduced them to ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ – a then unknown song, which we all know then went on to take the World by storm!

It was really weird to see the song performed without the hysteric reactions that the song draws these days… eerie even!

Tim Burton’s ‘Corpse Bride’ [2005]

Last night, in the midst of a marvellous storm, I sat down and watched ‘Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride’ for the very first time.

corpse_bride

Straight up, I think that this is one of the best films that I have seen!

There are just so many perfect elements to it; not to mention the awesome soundtrack by Danny Elfman! The scripting is especially strong, lots of clever little jokes and puns, and I adore the use of imagery used throughout the film; especially that of the blue butterfly (linked with European folklore and the reincarnation of women who are murdered in especially brutal circumstances).

Absolutely everything I was expecting and much, much more!

I especially love the two piano pieces:

It made me realise how much I’d love my own personal theme and for it to start playing whenever I had a film-style moment in life heh! Victor’s theme is probably my favourite of any character’s theme that I’ve come across; including those used in Doctor Who. I shall certainly have to hunt out the sheet music for it!

One of the extras on the DVD is a version of the film with only the soundtrack laid onto it – they take out everything but the music. Last night, after watching the film, I immediately rewatched the whole thing with just the audio track on – absolutely marvellous, though it would, in my opinion, be better if they re-introduced the voices during the songs themselves…

Now, away to buy some of the figures for my desk at work!

A Short Stay In Switzerland

When this aired earlier this year, I have to say, I was greatly moved by it!

Julie Walters is truly one of our finest actors and what she brought to this performance was phenomenal I thought! I was in floods by the time that I’d finished watching it, and it really did get under my skin.

Anyway, I am briefly blogging about the programme to highlight that it is coming out on DVD on Monday 27th July ’09 – hurrah!!!

A Short Stay In Switzerland

[inspired by the story of Anne Turner]

Having just witnessed the death of her husband Jack from an incurable neurological disease, Anne Turner (Julie Walters) is diagnosed with a near identical illness.

With determined rationality, Anne’s answer is that once her illness has reached a critical point, she will take her own life. And she needs her children’s support.

But the more her son and two daughters struggle to gain consensus over their mother’s desire to die as they struggle to find another way through, the further they pull apart.

From Jessica’s silent recriminations to Sophie’s stubborn practicality, the magnitude of the situation threatens to tear the family to pieces.

Anne must also face the fury of her best friend Claire – whose opposing views bring them into direct and vocal conflict.

Writer Frank McGuinness adds: “As a doctor Anne Turner lived and worked by her principles, and she chose to die by them. This film recognises that rare courage.”

Source

Princess Mononoke / Spirited Away

Over the last two weeks I have been getting re-acquainted with some of the more popular Studio Ghibli films, notably Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away (both by Hayao Miyazaki).

Princess Mononoke

Spirited Away

If you have not yet had chance to see these films, I really would recommend them! Spirited Away is a good entry level film and was presented in the West by Disney (though don’t expect Disney content!), whereas Princess Mononoke is a much more raw/traditional film I feel. Both are excellent.

The soundtrack of Princess Mononoke is especially wonderful. If you have surround sound at home, make sure that you use it, as the sweeping soundtrack  absolutely fills the room!

Symphonic suite of music from Princess Mononoke, conduced by Joe Hisaishi (who scored the film)

Oh, and I want me a kodama (obviously!) – though the Studio Ghibli kodama do differ slightly from folklore kodama (these look more cutesy heh)

kodama