Home Video

She was a ghoul in her village, doing all right. Then she became American overnight.

The latest little lady to take over the Disney Junior programming  is new to American culture. In fact, she's new to human culture. She's Vampirina Hauntley (ISABELLA CROVETTI), and she's just immigrated from Transylvania to Pennsylvania, along with her father Boris (JAMES VAN DER BEEK, DAWSON'S CREEK) and mother Oxana (LAUREN GRAHAM, GILMORE GIRLS), and a few household friends like the ghostly Demi (MITCHELL WHITFIELD, TRANSFORMERS: ROBOTS IN DISGUISE) and stony gargoyle Gregoria (WANDA SYKES).

There were several comics titles out there that showcased the unique retro style of Darwyn Cooke, but JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER was definitely his crowning achievement. His signature look was tailor-made for the late-50s, early-60s era of comics, and worked perfectly for his graphic novel. The DC Animated Universe has had some misses in its history, but adapting the graphic novel to the animated movie, while absolutely nailing Cooke's style, was a Grade-A bonafide hit!

The setting for JL:TNF is just after the disbanding of the Justice Society due to McCarthy era paranoia over masked men. The government simply did not trust them, and not without good reason. The only ones left operating openly are Superman (KYLE MCLACHLAN) and Wonder Woman (LUCY LAWLESS), while Batman (JEREMY SISTO) is more of an outcast than ever.

During the Summer of ’16, something monumental happened…

Jeff Beck, one of the greatest guitar players rock has ever known, celebrated his 50^th anniversary in the business by having a concert at the celebrated Hollywood Bowl amphitheater, along with some very special guests he’s worked with over the years.

At 72 years of age at the time of the concert, you would think it more of just a tribute concert. Not so at all. This was no going-through-the-motions event. Jeff was in perfect form, and played as astonishingly as he ever had. Think about what I just said: one of the greatest (in anyone’s list of greatest guitar players ever) played as good as I have ever heard and seen him--at 72 years old!

Now, if (like me) you didn’t know about this, or couldn’t even go if you did, the music lovers at Eagle Rock Entertainment wove their magic and were smart enough to capture it for all of us to see and hear.

This Blu-ray/DVD/CD set from Eagle Rock Entertainment covers the Stones in an intimate setting at the Fonda Theater in LA in 2015, at the start of the North American Zip Code tour, and captures the first time the band had ever (and, so far, has ever) played the entire STICKY FINGERS album in concert (along with some other great Stones' songs).

The Jerry Bruckheimer franchise seems to have finally capsized. The motion picture, budgeted at $230 million ($20 million less than it's predecessor, ON STRANGER TIDES), grossed $172 million at the box office, compared to the $241 million grossed by the previous film. Those are numbers that don't bode well for there being a fifth film in the franchise--unless it's a rebooting, and honestly who could see Captain Jack Sparrow as anybody but JOHNNY DEPP?

The first thing that's a bit off about the film is the title: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. Given that the entire run has been filled with ghosts who relate stories of curses, and that the plot of this movie hinges on one Captain Salazar (JAVIER BARDEM) who perished in the Devil's Triangle pursuing a young Jack Sparrow, it would seem that dead men tell quite a few tales at sea.

When LETHAL WEAPON hit the big screen starring DANNY GLOVER and MEL GIBSON, the SHANE BLACK screenplay was a hit with audiences. Roger Murtaugh was an aging cop looking forward to keeping a low profile in the last few years of his career before collecting his pension. He gets saddled with a new partner, Martin Riggs, who is suicidal after the loss of his wife, and takes death-risk chances that endanger not just himself but Murtaugh. It worked.

The Book of Monsters, aka Monstrox (MARK OLIVER) has been defeated. Jestro (VINCENT TONG) has been freed from his influence and is back to doing poor jokes for the kingdom of Knighton. And the Nexo Knights have earned their well-deserved rest, with Lance Richmond (IAN HANLIN) co-starring as a morning talk show host and Macy Halbert (ERIN MATHEWS) taking on more duties as a Princess.

Are there truly individuals in politics that care more about service to country than themselves? Is it ever possible to take ambition, greed, hypocrisy, broken promises, and distrust out of Washington? Probably not, right? But what if you destroy every member of Congress, the entire Presidential Cabinet, Supreme Court, and their staff in one fatal blow? Who is left standing?

The Designated Survivor! The Lone Ranger--truth justice and the American way, but with a tie.

Boxing, the Sweet Science if you will, was a frequent distraction in my formative years in the ‘80s. There were so many brilliant fighters and they were constantly battling each other for supremacy. They were legends like Hagler, Duran, Hearns, Holmes, Tyson, Holyfield, Foreman, and Leonard. Giants of their profession no matter the weight class. Perhaps even greater was the generation from the ‘60s and ‘70s known by many as Kings. Men like Frazier, Arguello, Monzon, Ali, not to mention Duran & Foreman who spanned both groups. Having been born in 1973, I just missed being a first hand witness of that glorious age for boxing. My window into that time was replays, interviews, and highlights. Honestly, it made the men and their actions slightly more mythical in my mind.

If you have children...

No. Scratch that. Trigger warning, I'm about to go sexist for a half a second.

Ahem.

If you have young boys in your home, you are likely no stranger to that dynamic figure in the tighty-whiteys, Captain Underpants. (If you're not, just check under their mattress, so long as they're still under 13.) That jaunty gentleman of justice who makes brief work of supervillains has starred in countless books (okay, they could actually be counted, but I'm kinda lazy) has now leaped off the page and onto your screens in an epic movie flush with adventure and clogged with laughter! (Okay, maybe I should leave that to Mr. Pilkey.)

Wonder Woman, the Amazing Amazon might not be the first superhero you name when asked to list off some of DC's pantheon of superheroes. But thanks to Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot, that's definitely changed. Coming off the heels of BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which had mixed reviews, expectations for WONDER WOMAN had to be shaky.

But Patty Jenkins has delivered what is likely the best DC comics-to-screen film in the company's history -- and I'm including Richard Donner's SUPERMAN and both Tim Burton's and Christopher Nolan's BATMAN and BATMAN BEGINS / THE DARK KNIGHT.

Mom's back, and there's going to be Hell to pay.

The second season of LUCIFER kicks off with the news that the nameless Goddess of Creation has escaped Hell where God cast her, and is making her way to Earth as soon as she can find a freshly dead body to reanimate and occupy. She finds it in the form of high-profile defense attorney Charlotte Richards (TRICIA HELFER, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA), and quickly sets about to finding her children, Lucifer (TOM ELLIS) and Amenadiel (DB WOODSIDE) so that she can bring them into her plan of everyone going back home to Heaven.

Okay kids, here it is! For you fans of Vincent Furnier who remember the pre-MTV days, Eagle Rock Entertainment has brought back not just the1975 “Welcome To My Nightmare” Concert Video but also the 1975 TV special, “The Nightmare” complete with special guest star, the indomitable Vincent Price, all in a single DVD video offering.

Eagle Rock has been releasing many great videos and CDs of important rock music from the second generation of rock, many of which feature the members performing recently or in the past 10 to 15 years. With this DVD, they are releasing in one of the most important concerts and specials from what I would call the “Golden Age of Alice.” It’s important for a couple of reasons: one, because it was his first solo tour and two, because it was ground-breaking. Remember, this was before MTV and it was the first time a concert special was filmed to support an entire album in long form.

Life in the big city of pre-Batman GOTHAM continues to get crazier -- literally -- in this third season of the DC Universe series as the Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch (BENEDICT SAMUEL) comes to town. He's using his hypnotic skills to help track down his runaway sister, Alice (NAIAN GONZALEZ NORVIND), who was locked up in Indian Hill due to a virus carried in her blood -- a virus that induced mania in anyone with whom it comes into contact.

In the first season of The Flash, Barry Allen (GRANT GUSTIN) took on the Reverse-Flash (played, most of the time, by TOM CAVANAGH and sometimes by MATT LETSCHER). He was a super-speedster, just like The Flash.

In the second season of The Flash, the producers opened up the multiverse, and Barry took on Zoom (played, most of the time, by TEDDY SEARS). He was a super-speedster, just like The Flash.

In the third season of The Flash, the producers tried something different, and Barry took on Savitar (played, some of the time, by GRANT GUSTIN). He was a super-speedster, just like The Flash.

When Poison Ivy (PAGET BREWSTER) and the Floronic Man (KEVIN MICHAEL RICHARDSON) team-up to recreate and viralize the Alec Holland bio-restorative formula in an effort to save the world from global warming by turning everyone into plants, it's up to Batman (KEVIN CONROY) and Nightwing (LOREN LESTER) to put a halt to their plan. There's just one hitch: finding them. This leads our heroes to turn to Ivy's closest confidante and gal-pal, Harley Quinn (MELISSA RAUCH, THE BIG BANG THEORY).

Thus begins a tale of the bats and the batty which takes the familiar environs of the Bruce Timm BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES universe and runs it through the lens of Adult Swim.

They may be heroes to the galaxy, but some of them are still little sneak thieves. That's the spark that gets the ball rolling in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 as the Guardians have been hired by a race of golden skinned elites called The Sovereign to protect a battery from a monstrous creature that wants to eat it. But when Rocket pockets a few for himself on the way out, the Sovereign doesn't take kindly to it, and sends about a bajillion ships after them (flown remotely from what looks like a high-tech arcade).

Their escape leads the team into a meeting with a being who calls himself Ego (KURT RUSSELL), and he's got a secret or three: he's a Celestial, he's actually a planet, and -- oh -- he's Peter Quill's (CHRIS PRATT) father! That's right, Peter isn't just egocentric, he's also Ego-decentric. (Okay, I'm making that word up. Sue me. That's how terms are born, people make them up.)

So there's this movie about a guy named Arthur. He's the rightful son of a guy named Uther, who was the King. But Uther got dethroned, and nobody knew where Arthur was. There was a sword in a stone that nobody could pull out, and some stuff about fights with Merlin and Modred.

And if you squinted at it, you might think you were watching a remake of the story of King Arthur. But Guy Ritchie's KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD has pretty much an "in name only" acquaintance with the works of Thomas Mallory or T.H. White.

In news that may very well break the Internet, if not classic television itself, Warner Bros. Animation has announced that the late ADAM WEST can be heard one last time voicing the Caped Crusader in BATMAN VS. TWO-FACE, with none other that STAR TREK's WILLIAM SHATNER voicing the duplicitous double-profiled double-dealer, Harvey Dent!

Here's the news released earlier today:

Here's why I hate "found footage" films: because when they're done well, they accomplish their objective and convince you what you are seeing actually happened; and when you mentally correct course in the middle of the film, you have a very disconcerting sense of cognitive dissonance as your brain argues against itself as to what is real and what is not.

Enter PHOENIX FORGOTTEN, a slow-starting documentary that picks up the pace about fifteen minutes in. It begins with a birthday party of a six year old girl, with her teenaged brother, Josh, controlling the camera. It is during the party that the so-called Phoenix Lights appear in the sky--beginning an obsession with Josh that potentially leads to his disappearance.

But Josh didn't disappear alone. He took two other teenagers with him, and they were never found.