DVD Review

CHICAGO – The largely improvised “10 Items or Less” returns for a third trip to the grocery store on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 on TBS with what looks like another hit-and-miss season of occasionally inspired humor surrounded by generally boring characters in an overall mediocre show.

CHICAGO – “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” Doctors, I don’t like what you’ve done to a once-fascinating show. Ryan Murphy and the team behind “Nip/Tuck” missed a great opportunity with the fifth season of their cult hit show, now on DVD, and continued their series’ soapy decline.

CHICAGO – For audiences increasingly accustomed to watching movies at home instead of at the multiplex, it was an interesting year for DVDs and Blu-rays.

CHICAGO – David Simon and Ed Burns, two of the television geniuses behind “The Wire”, turned their eyes and ears from the gang-ridden streets of Baltimore to the bullet-strewn bodies of Iraq in the incredible seven-part HBO mini-series “Generation Kill”, now available in a box set from HBO Home Video.

CHICAGO – The concept of “American Teen” is undeniably interesting but the execution is another story and the DVD assembled by Paramount to bring this acclaimed film to home audiences is a disappointment on nearly every level.

CHICAGO – Lars von Trier opens his brilliant “Europa” by literally trying to hypnotize his audience. A barely lit train track moves slowly across the screen as Max von Sydow calmly incants a hypnotizing speech and countdown. “On the count of ten, you will be in Europa.” Is he speaking to the audience or to the man who just appeared on the screen when he says, “You are in Germany. The year is 1945.”?

CHICAGO – Every week there are a few titles that fall through the cracks. They’re movies or TV shows that don’t really merit the kind of comprehensive coverage of something like “Lost: Season Four” or “Deadwood: The Complete Series”.

CHICAGO – “Deadwood” and “The Wire”, two of the best television programs of the last decade, have been given lavish, must-own treatment by HBO with spectacular season sets available just in time for the holidays.