Yvonne Strahovski

I’m sometimes in the mood for a bad movie. In the middle of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, weighed down with stress related to producing it and the serious subject matter of our films this year, I felt a need for a bit of movie fast food and popped in “I, Frankenstein,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD. This movie cheeseburger will give you food poisoning.

CHICAGO – If television shows were deemed a success or failure based on the number of emails, comments, and call-ins to radio shows that were sent on their behalf, NBC’s “Chuck” would be one of the biggest programs of the last two decades. Every time we wrote about it or discussed it on the radio show, people got excited. The show didn’t have many fans, but they were LOYAL and that’s why it stayed on the air much longer than it should have based on pure ratings numbers and that’s why WB has treated fans right through five Blu-ray releases.

CHICAGO – “Killer Elite” is one of those home releases that makes me wonder about the future of Blu-ray. It’s clearly not an edition designed for fans of this awful action movie, even if one does assume that it’s a very small group of people since it has practically no special features. And there really aren’t any Blockbusters any more, buying these things in bulk with a design on renting them. So, why not just download it? With more and more people able to download in HD, lackluster releases like that for “Killer Elite” are going to be the first to go the way of the VHS tape.

CHICAGO – In our latest action edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Blu-ray, we have 5 Blu-rays up for grabs for the home entertainment release of “Killer Elite”!

CHICAGO – There have been a number of casualties of the debacle of “The Jay Leno Show” but one has to believe that were NBC not in such dire straits when it comes to ratings (an increasingly depressing situation for the network with new lows nearly every week) that “Chuck” would have been canceled years ago. The program has been on “bubble watch” since its first season, when it dipped below 60th place in the weekly ratings. And yet here we are, reviewing the fifth-season premiere of the show that simply wouldn’t die.

CHICAGO – “Killer Elite” is an exhausting, nonsensical, illogical, loud collection of action clichés masquerading as a modern action film. It features characters less three-dimensional than most cartoons doing and saying things that are only done and said in movies. Bad movies. Really bad movies.

CHICAGO – In our latest action/thriller edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 40 admit-two movie passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of the new film “Killer Elite” starring Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro!

CHICAGO – We won’t know for sure until Sunday at the earliest (when NBC holds a press conference call about their official Monday fall schedule announcement), but several outlets are reporting that, drum roll please, “Chuck” is coming back. The annual bubble show that this critic predicted would get the death-sentence reprieve has been saved yet again.

CHICAGO – Last week we covered several of the more notable rookie programs of the just-passed TV year and their inaugural TV-on-DVD season sets. This week, we’re back with a few of the veterans of the field, three shows that have never become critical smashes but have all developed their own devoted followings for good reason.

CHICAGO – After a second season that saw already-low ratings decline, NBC took a chance by bringing “Chuck” back for a third, shortened season. As the network has struggled this year due to a number of horrible decisions (most of them related to Jay Leno), most of its lineup has been hit. Let’s hope “Chuck” bucks the trend because this cult hit has arguably never been better.