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Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

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  • Title: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
  • IMDb: link

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire ChroniclesOver his career Tom Cruise has supplied audiences with his share of good, bad, and indifferent feature films. Released in 1994, and adapted from the works of Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles gave audiences Brad Pitt as a present-day vampire describing his history to a reporter (Christian Slater). Directed by Neil Jordan the film also stars Cruise as the vampire Lestat turned by Louie (Pitt) and a young Kirsten Dunst as a child turned into a vampire who will never age.

The movie, and Cruise’s character, still feels too whiny as Lestat bemoans his immortality eventually turning on other vampires and walking the Earth alone. It’s certainly an interesting looking film (earning an Oscar nomination for Art Design) and even a whiny Cruise is occasionally compelling in the role of Lestat, Pitt is effectively creepy, and Dunst offers glimpses of the actress she would become. The film suffers a bit after Pitt exits stage left to be replaced by a vampire coven including Thandie Newton and Antonio Banderas.

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Life is not a malfunction

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  • Title: Short Circuit
  • IMDb: link

“Number 5 is alive!”

Short CircuitRecently re-released on Blu-ray and DVD, 1986’s Short Circuit starred Police Academy star Steve Guttenberg as a scientist whose robotic invention became sentient after being struck by lightning. After wandering off the military base Number 5 (Tim Blaney) would eventually find his way to Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy) who befriends the machine and begins feeding its insatiable appetite about life and information.

I’ll admit to loving the movie as a kid and still having a soft spot for it (but not its sequel) years later. More likely to appeal to kids than parents, Short Circuit is memorable for a number of reasons including the robot itself (obviously the template years later for Wall-e), some very quotable lines (“Malfunction. Need input.”, “Nun soup?”), and the bizarre (and kinda racist) choice to have Fisher Stevens play an Indian scientist. It’s not a great film by any means, but it’s held up pretty well over the years and continues to offer fun family entertainment that does discuss the nature of life and debate whether or not a machine such as Number 5 could ever truly be alive.

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Quantum Leap – The Complete Series

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  • Title: Quantum Leap
  • wiki: link

Quantum Leap - The Complete SeriesTo prove his experiment worked quantum physicist Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) “stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanished.” Premiering back in 1989, Quantum Leap ran for five seasons placing Bakula at different time periods as he would “leap” into someone whose timeline needed a quick fix. Although audiences saw only Sam (except in an occasional reflection) those around him continued to see the individual into whose body Sam leapt into that week (who occasionally would turn out to be a woman). Stuck with a swiss-cheesed memory as a side-effect of the experiment, Sam would rely on the help of Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) who, from the future, would lock onto Sam’s latest leap and, appearing as a hologram only Sam could see and hear, provide him with the information needed that week.

Collecting all 97 episodes on 27 discs, the Complete Collection offers fans of the show the entire five-year run in a single set. Sadly you won’t find any added extra features as the set only includes the previously released season sets packaged together for the first time.

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Continuum – The Complete Third Season

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  • Title: Continuum – Season Three
  • wiki: link

Continuum - The Complete Third SeasonThe Third Season of Continuum is a promise fulfilled as the show’s central character finally begins to question the role in which she’s been assigned to track down terrorists from the future who hope to remake the world into something more than the corporate oligarchy where she comes from. Alliances would change, friendships would be destroyed, two Alec Sadlers (Erik Knudsen) fight for control of futuristic technologies, and Kiera Cameron‘s (Rachel Nichols) belief in her mission would eventually be shaken to its core.

Highlights of the season include Kiera turning on the Freelancers, an episode set in her past involving Kiera tracking down Kagame (Tony Amendola) and Liber8, the season finale which sets up an entire new set of problems for our heroine, the reveal of the true identity of Kiera’s new friend (Ryan Robbins), Dillon (Brian Markinson) choosing to use his daughter to infiltrate Liber8, the death of a major supporting character, and Kiera choosing which Alec to betray.

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Boyhood

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  • Title: Boyhood
  • IMDb: link

BoyhoodShot over the course of 12 years, Boyhood is one of the most ambitious projects any filmmaker has attempted to tackle. It’s also easily one of the best films of the year.

Starting the project at age 5 we witness Ellar Coltrane grow-up as Mason over the filming of Richard Linklater‘s latest film which began production in 2002 and finally arrived in theaters in 2014. Over its 165-minute running time Mason’s scripted tale delves into his relationships with both his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke), the complexities of modern-day extended families, and the journey of Mason from grade school to college.

Begun without a finished script, but with an established beginning and ending, Linklater adapted the story by the changes he saw in his cast over the years. Arquette and Hawke carry much of the early scenes of the movie while Coltrane takes over a larger part of the story as he grows as an actor.

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