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Person of Interest – The Complete First Season

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  • Title: Person of Interest
  • tv.com: link

person-of-interest-dvdWhat if you had foreknowledge of a crime before it happened? Person of Interest, much like Philip K. Dick’s short story Minority Report takes a look into the not-too-distant future where technology can be used to stop crimes before they happen. Far more grounded in reality that Dick’s story (and don’t get me started on Steven Spielberg’s awful film), Person of Interest gives us a mysterious machine with the ability to see patterns and threats hours or even days before they occur.

I’ll admit some of the First Season episodes are better than others (the baby episode is almost too cute for its own good), and the show certainly takes liberties where it needs to in order to broaden the suspense and appeal of the show at times. However, every episode is solid and show, at least so far, has stayed within the bounds of the rules it set forth in the show’s Pilot episode. The Machine may not exist in our world, but the concept is far less sci-fi than it would have seemed even a decade ago.

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Scandal – The Complete First Season

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  • Title: Scandal
  • tv.com: link

scandal-season-one-dvdCreated by Shonda Rhimes, Scandal stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a former White House communications director turned professional fixer. Over the course of the season Oliva and her associates (Henry Ian Cusick, Darby Stanchfield, Columbus Short, Katie Lowes, Guillermo Díaz) will save the President’s Supreme Court nominee from a sex scandal (John Getz), defend a millionaire’s son (Michael Cassidy) accused of rape, try to save the wife of a South American dictator (José Zúñiga), and deal with a White House aide’s (Liza Weil) affair with the President of the United States (Tony Goldwyn).

The First Season also fills in Olivia’s past relationship with the President and the drama involving the mysterious disappearance of Amanda Tanner (Weil). Washington is terrific as the strong, decisive woman out for justice, and the show has several great supporting performances, my favorite being Joshua Malina as Olivia’s contentious frenemy US Attorney David Rosen.

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Assassin’s Bullet

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  • Title: Assassin’s Bullet
  • IMDB: link

assassins-bullet-blu-rayAssassin’s Bullet is a dumb B-movie action flick starring Christian Slater as former FBI Agent Robert Diggs now assigned to the American Embassy in Bulgaria four years after the death of his wife. When a dormant assassin returns and starts killing several high-priority terrorists from America’s Most Wanted list Diggs is chosen to head up the investigation by the US Ambassador (Donald Sutherland).

Filled with far too many coincidences and awful ideas (like a multiple personality storyline that has Elika Portnoy playing three roles that, despite looking nearly identical, no one can tell apart) the script by Nancy L. Babine, Hans Feuersinger, and Elika Portnoy is a ridiculous mash-up of bad soap opera and forgettable action movie cliches.

Slater, Sutherland and Timothy Spall are all slumming it here. Available on both DVD and Blu-ray, extras include a short behind-the-scenes featurette (that does nothing to make the story more bearable or believable) and the film’s trailer.

[Xlrator, Blu-ray $26.99 / DVD $20.99]

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Community – The Complete Third Season

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Community – Season Three
  • tv.com: link

community-season-three-dvdThe Third Season of Community, and final season with show creator Dan Harmon as show runner, is highlighted by a video game episode that features 8-bit versions of the cast working to save Pierce’s (Chevy Chase) inheritance from the evil Gilbert (Giancarlo Esposito), the introduction of Inspector Spacetime, the Air Conditioning Repair School, the Dreamatorium and Evil Abed, the study group being told Greendale isn’t a community college but an insane asylum, an all-campus war between pillow forts and blanket forts, and a near-perfect Law & Order parody.

The season starts out a little slow with a handful of good, but certainly not great, episodes. However, things pick up “Remedial Chaos Theory” which shows us how a single roll of the die could alter the future of each character in both big and small ways. We also get another Glee-ful Christmas episode, Annie (Alison Brie) moving in with Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi), and a disastrous attempt to make a new commercial for the school spearheaded by Dean Pelton (Jim Rash).

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Margaret

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Margaret
  • IMDB: link

Completed and originally scheduled for theaterical release in 2007 Margaret, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan‘s film about a self-absorbed teenage girl (Anna Paquin) whose life is affected by a bus crash she witnessed (and inadvertently helped cause) was finally released in theaters last year to mixed results. Maybe it should have stayed on the shelf a little longer.

The Blu-ray of the film includes the theatrical cut of the film as well as a DVD with the director’s extended 186-minute version. Although the movie provides several strong performances, the extended cut features extended cutaways, random shots of New York set to an operatic score, often buries the conversation of the main characters among the bustle of New York City, and gives us several subplots that never really fit together, creating a pretentious mess that is often more maddening than entertaining.

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