Back Seat Producers

In my quest to find a fight film to unseat Raging Bull as the greatest movie of all time (everybody take a drink—podcast joke people, come on!) I stumbled upon the 36th Chamber of Shaolin.
Originally titled “Master Killer” when it was released in the USA on VHS at some point after its Asian theatrical release [...]

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I relish the golden age of cinema we live in.
Many may disagree, longing for the 60’s or 70’s. But honestly, where else can you get the ultimate vision of every director for almost any film you’ve ever taken seriously? The answer is only in DVD-land.
As a result, we now have Lucas’ THX 1138 in its [...]

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A while ago, I saw a trailer on a DVD for Ladrón Que Roba a Ladrón and immediately thought, “That looks like a Latino Ocean’s 11.” Turns out I was wrong. It’s more like a Latino Ocean’s 13. For me, that’s a very good thing.
The plot revolves around two thieves in L.A., Emilio, [...]

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Remove the live concert footage and the nonessential (I hesitate to call them gratuitous) sex scenes, and 9 Songs ceases to be a movie and becomes a film short.  There’s not a lot of story here.  I can’t even call it a character study, because we barely learn anything about Matt and Lisa, the [...]

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Written by Carol Doyle and Mary Agnes Donoghue, Directed by Joel Schumacher 
Bravery is shaping up as my theme of the week over at Girls with Glasses.  And this woman tops them all, hands down.  Joel Schumacher (“Lost Boys” and “Batman & Robin”) directs and Jerry Bruckheimer (“Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Pearl Harbor”) produces this serious, [...]

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Howdy!  To all regular (and not-so-easily-categorized) readers of “Back Seat Producers,” I send greetings!  Tony and the gang have invited me, Melanie Young, on as an estrogen-heavy contributor of DVD reviews.  I’ll be attempting to post here a couple times a week, though I also post daily over at my regular blog: http://glassesgirls.blogspot.com - which I [...]

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Randy “The Ram” Robinson is a pro wrestler who’s best days are 20 years past, and now he ekes out a living doing small local shows and working for a store. At one of his shows, he sustains a load of brutal injuries and then has a heart attack and suddenly starts to realize his [...]

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As an old woman named Daisy lies in her deathbed, she relates to her daughter, the story of the most important man in her life, a fellow named Benjamin, who began his life in the oddest of ways, displaying all of the effects of old age on an infant’s frame. As Benjamin grows older, [...]

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Gonna Change Your Way of Thinking
Joel Gilbert’s documentary on Bob Dylan’s sudden conversion to Christianity is an authentic, detail-oriented and thought-provoking work. It is a must see for fans and casual viewers alike. The subject-matter alone is fascinating and remains, thirty years from its occurrence, a little told story about the already mythic and mysterious [...]

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It’s 1882, and the small town of Appaloosa in the New Mexico territory has fallen under prey by a ruthless rancher by the name of Randall Bragg. After Bragg cold-bloodedly kills the sheriff and two deputies while they try to apprehend two of his men for crimes committed against the townspeople, the town is [...]

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In New York City, a fluff news TV reporter and her cameraman are assigned the task of riding along with a group of firefighters for an evening. As things are looking to be a routine evening, an alarm goes off and the fire crew and the TV people head in, along with a couple [...]

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Children’s movies normally aren’t my thing. I’m not a kid (although some people might disagree), I don’t have any kids, I don’t hang out with any kids, so the movies aren’t marketed towards me. I hold no disdain towards kids movies, but normally the films I watch demand more from me as a viewer.
Nim’s Island [...]

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In Plain Sight is the newest member of the family of the USA “Characters Welcome” family. It is a very welcome addition, and is an intriguing and fun show to watch!

The show centers on Mary Shannon (Mary McCormick), a US Marshall working with the Federal Witness Protection Program (WITSEC). She is a [...]

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Indiana Jones. The name alone brings up images of whip-swinging, leather hats, and religious artifacts. 30s pulp at its peak. The newest film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (what a mouthful), is set twenty years into the future, in the late 1950s. The change is rocky, and doesn’t succeed in my [...]

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It’s 1957, and in the Nevada desert, a covert Russian military force has captured the archaeologist adventurer Professor Indiana Jones to find one of his finds to serve their own needs. Jones, with his usual aplomb, manages to make his escape, but not without consequence to himself. Because of what happened, and because [...]

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