Is the business of producing DVDs all about putting the same old crap in a new package to throw in the trough of public mass consumption for the sake of making money? Kind of, but consider this - all the extra features and directors commentaries included with the finer DVD releases do alot to put the multimillion dollar film school industry out of business.

Be warned! The usual Hollywood trifle in the form of "new releases" is not the sole object of my scorn. I will freely review Seattle independent films, and any other project that is sent to me on DVD format.

c/o Belltown Messenger

END OF THE CENTURY THE STORY OF THE RAMONES
(2004)
In Seattle the rockers done in by heroin tend to die young, but New Yorkers Joey (1951-1998) and Johnny (1948-2004) Ramone outlasted that curve by decades.

NIRVANA - NEVERMIND DVD
The chapter "Going To Record In L.A. - The story behind why the band recorded Nevermind in L.A." is about how they sold out, and now this DVD is guaranteed to rake in even more cash from a group that died, literally, over ten years ago.

THE WALTONS
The Complete Second Season (1973)
A rural Arkansas family become billionaires after convincing the U.S. Government to subsidize their chain of stores that sell Chinese produced junk to poor people.

THAT 70S SHOW
Season Two (1999)
For some reason viewers want to be nostalgic about a decade where people freely experimented with drugs and sex without said viewers having to get their fat asses up from behind the TV to experience those same things themselves in the real world.

Seattle Tattler #4 (pdf)

FRITZ THE CAT
(1972)
What's so avante garde about opportunistic hollywood types making a sleazy film based on Robert Crumb's art?

Hogan's Heroes
The Complete First Season (1965)
A situation comedy based in a Nazi concentration camp whose set was later used to shoot the softcore sex movie Sheena, She Wolf of The S.S.

THE SOPRANOS
The Complete Fifth Season (2004)
The subplot where violent goon Tony Soprano sees the psychiatrist is a contrived device designed to appeal to female viewers, much the same way romance stories are tossed casually into grisly, sexually violent cop shows like Law and Order and The Shield.

Sex and the City
The Complete Second Season (1998)
Anorexics and the City.

Star Wars - Episode II, Attack of the Clones
Widescreen Edition (2002)
I guess a series of films called Star Peace Negotiations would never sell as well as the Star "Wars" franchise, with all its throbbing light-sabers, chattering robots and other fascistic, militaristic nonsense.

METALLICA - SOME KIND OF MONSTER
(2004)
Some kind of morons.

---

Search the Belltown Messenger Archives