3.5 Razors

Beauty and the Beast

/ / Home Video

How many shows can you name which center around lawyers, doctors, cowboys, explorers, families and space travelers?  Now how many prime time fairy tales do you remember from television?  Here’s one…

  • Title: Beauty and the Beast – The Complete First Season
  • tv.com: link

“We’re below the city, below the subways.  There is a whole world of tunnels and chambers that most people don’t even know exists.  There are no maps to where we are.  It’s a forgotten place.  But it’s warm and it’s safe, and we have all the room we need.  So we live here and we try to live as well as we can, and we try to take care of each other.”

After being attacked society girl Catherine Chandler (Linda Hamilton) is nursed back to health in the bowels of New York City by Vincent (Ron Perlman).  Here begins a fairy tale love story between a beautiful Assistant District Attorney and her protector, a beast with the soul of a poet.

This first season introduces us to the world of “down below” and the characters who will become staples of the series.  It also sets up Catherine’s world above with her boss Joe (Jay Acovone) and her on-again, off-again, suitor Elliot Burch (Edward Albert).  “Son of Orpheus” reveals Father’s (Roy Dotrice) past and his reasons for retreating from the world above and creating the underground society.  “An Impossible Silence” and “China Moon” are set in the distinct worlds of a deaf girl (Terrylene) and Chinatown.  “The Alchemist” introduces the recurring villain of Paracelsus (Tony Jay), and Vincent’s childhood friend returns in “Promises of Someday”.  The nature of the lovers relationship is put to the test in “A Happy Life”

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The Lucky Ones

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Lucky Ones
  • IMDB: link

“Thank you.”
“No, thank you.”

The film, except for small cameo roles, is a three-man piece.  Two soldiers wounded in action (Rachel McAdams, Michael Peña) with 30-day furloughs and one (Tim Robbins) on his way home for good travel home on the same flight.

Do to circumstances beyond their control the threesome find themselves renting a mini-van and travelling west.

Cheever (Robbins) just wants to make it home to his wife (Molly Hagan) and son (Mark L. Young) in St. Louis.  T.K. (Peña) is on his way to Las Vegas in hopes of curing an unfortunate medical problem caused by his injury.  And Colee (McAdams) is traveling to Vegas to return a friend and fallen soldier’s guitar to his family.

Their journey across the country will lead to surprises and disappointments as the world they fought so hard to get back to has change and dreams they had for their futures turn to ash.

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Pushing Daisies

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Pushing Daisies – The Complete First Season
  • tv.com: link

“I was born into the life of windmillery.”

Ned (Lee Pace) is a pie maker.  He also has an unexplained ability to return all manner of dead things (people, vegetation, animals) back to life.  He can do this for 60 seconds at a time, any longer and something or someone else must die.  And if Ned ever touches a second time permanent death is the result.

Ned discovered these abilities, their limitations, and their consequences as a child living next door to Chuck (Anna Friel), his boyhood friend and first love.

Years later when Chuck is killed mysteriously over some ceramic monkeys Ned brings his childhood love back to life and invites her into his life much to the dismay of his private eye business partner (Chi McBride) and his friend and co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth).

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Frozen River

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Frozen River
  • IMDB: link

“I didn’t know any other way to keep us together.”

Melissa Leo stars as Ray, a struggling mother of two (Charlie McDermott, James Reilly) just trying to get by in a small town in upstate New York, just across the border from Quebec.

When her husband takes off for Atlantic City with the final payment for her family’s DoubleWide new home she’s left without options.

A chance encounter with a Native American woman named Lily (Misty Upham) provides Ray a dangerous business opportunity to smuggle illegal immigrants across the Mohawk reservation into the United States.

The film, written and directed by first-timer Courtney Hunt, is a bleak story about love, family, and how far someone will go to persue their dreams.  Leo and Upham carry the film with a pair of strong performances, and when the story movies away from their characters the story suffers.

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It’s Always Sunny in Season 3

/ / Home Video
  • Title: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – The Complete Third Season
  • tv.com: link

“Here’s to you pussyhands!”

A Philly bar, endless amount of dysfunction, jokes about rape, death, sex offenders, kittens trapped in a well, that Marky-Mark movie, ejaculating bums, and North Korea. Although this third season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t quite as good as the previous volume, there’s plenty of bad behavior and craziness to go around.

Paddy’s Pub regulars Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Mac (Kaitlin Olson), Charlie (Charlie Day), and Frank (Danny DeVito) all return along with some recurring characters like Charlie’s waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), the McPoyles (Jimmi Simpson, Nate Mooney), Charlie’s Mom (Lynne Marie Stewart), Mac’s tranny girlfriend (Brittany Daniel) and father (Gregory Scott Cummins) and Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby).  New characters include an entire clan of McPoyles, Dee’s old high school friend Fatty McGoo (Judy Greer), and Charlie’s 12 year-old Asian fiance (Tania Gunadi).

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