Category: Reviews

While one of the strongest ensembles on television today, The Big Bang Theory has come to revolve around the socially awkward Sheldon (Jim Parsons), so it makes perfect sense that the eighth season began and ended with the brilliant scientist. Sandwiched in-between, the series slowly advanced the cast of characters through their lives and thankfully Chuck Lorre has not prevented them from growing.

Warner Bros Home Entertainment releases The Big Bang Theory The Complete Eighth Season this week and the combo pack contains all 245 episodes on Blu-ray and Digital HD. We open with Sheldon, 45 days after leaving on a train, only to call Leonard (Johnny Galecki) to come rescue him from Kingman, Arizona. Accompany him is Amy (Mayim Bialik), who has been hurt by Sheldon’s actions, which remains a recurring theme through the season, setting up the finale, where she puts their relationship on hold just as he was about to propose.

While their relationship foundered, the real winner this year has to be Penny (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) since she has come to realize she won’t make it as an actress and gives up waitressing to become a pharmaceutical salesman. And guess what? She’s good at it and is finally making money so we see how this does and does not change her as she and Leonard keep talking about their impending marriage.

The character who may have grown the most this season was Raj (Kunal Nayyar). Not only has he felt comfortable speaking to women, but he has endured one breakup and is now involved with Emily (Laura Spencer). At first, we think it’s an odd but sweet pairing but by the finale, we realize just how creepy she is which apparently propels Raj’s arc in the coming ninth season.

The season is also one of loss. First, and perhaps to foreshadow matters, the team clean out the office of a deceased professor and find a bottle of champagne he had stored for the day he made his big discovery, which never happened. And then, just as Stuart (Kevin Sussman) reopens the comic book store, Howard (Simon Helberg) learns of his mother’s death (prompted by the quick death of actress Carol Ann Susi). The remainder of the season follows the repercussions of her absence culminating in the wonderfully touching “The Leftover Thermalization”.

The season is filled with all the usual supporting players without losing the focus on the core characters, as the guests serve as foils such as when Wil Wheaton and Penny discuss the horrible film they made together. In some ways the strongest episode of the season is a result of the combustible meeting between Mary Cooper (Laurie Metcalf) and Beverly Hofstadler (Christine Beranski). And the geek quotient may have been diluted by the various romantic entanglements, it is not gone. The impromptu visit to Skywalker Ranch was a highlight.

The season-long threads come to a head in the finale which sees Sheldon and Amy in crisis while Leonard and Penny are ion the process of eloping. If there’s a false note in any of the brilliance, it’s Penny’s overreaction to the news that Leonard had a drunken kiss with a colleague while in Antarctica. Given her sexual past, her reaction, spilling into the season premiere in a few weeks, rings falsely.

Still, the series has sustained its premise and become a rich, endearing, and still uproariously funny series. The high definition transfer and audio are superb. There are six special features spaced between the two discs. We have the 2014 Comic-Con Panel, which is interesting for archival purposes, and Shooting Stars: BBT on BBT, a cleverly named bit about Billy Bon Thornton’s turn as a lecherous doctor.

It’s a Quark…It’s an Atom…It’s the #BBTSuperfnas! Which shows the winners of the international contest brought to the soundstage. While engaging, it would have been nicer to show us how they won and the challenges that earned them the points. Best is the loving tribute Here’s to You, Carol Ann Susi and cast and crew talked about the unseen actress’ impact on them and their characters. Finally, there’s a lengthy Gag Reel showing that the complicated dialogue is quite difficult to master.

Gotham arrived amidst a ton of hoopla and promised to be a fresh look at the intervening years between the deaths of Martha and Thomas Wayne and their son Bruce’s debut as Batman. Rich, fertile territory to explore, ripe for drama. What we were offered instead, was a hodge-podge of warmed over cop retreads and overstuffed with criminals who have no business operating in Gotham during this period. You can see this for yourself on the just-released Gotham: The Complete First Season from Warner Bros Home Entertainment.

It became fairly quickly after the promising pilot episode that the series was going to pay no attention whatsoever to the canonical material published by DC Comics. At best, they borrowed names and places and affixed them to characters they wanted to use, ignoring what made them work for the last 75 years.

Gotham is a dark, depressing place, rife with corruption, an ineffectual police department and too few citizens willing to fight to save their city. It appears the lone exception is James W. Gordon (Ben McKenzie), the only good cop on the GCPD. Everyone else apparently is in the pocket of Carmine Falcone (John Doman), Sal Maroni (David Zayas), or their underbosses. Over the course of the 22 episodes, we see little variation in this so when even heinous crimes are committed, Gordon stands in police HQ, doing his best to rally the troops and gets stared at.

His captain, Sarah Essen (Zabryna Guevara), has given up and his partner, Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), is slowly climbing out of the criminal pocket, shaking his head in disbelief that he is actually coming over to see things Gordon’s way.

Gordon doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. When he’s forced to kill Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), he fakes the man’s death (which we all see coming back to bite him, and fast) the word is out that he’s now one of “them”. Rather than use it to his advantage, he lets it gnaw at him. He refuses to share with his fiancée, Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) and here, the producers appear to have added one supporting player too many. It took most of the season to conclude the producers had no idea what to do with her other than give her a former affair with Renee Montoya (Victoria Cartagena). She’s now in the looney bin which is shame since she winds up marrying Gordon in the comics.

Meantime, young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) is being raised solely by Alfred Pennyworth (Sean Pertwee) and the withdrawn, sullen 12 year old is trying train his body in fits and starts, using his already-keen mind to figure out who may have killed his parents, a trail that leads him to the deadly board of directors at Wayne Enterprises. He is also on the cusp of adulthood and can’t figure out his feelings for the fascinating street urchin and thief Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova).

In the first season alone, producers Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon have given us Catwoman, Penguin, Mr. Szasz (Anthony Carrigan), Poison Ivy (Clare Foley), Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), Tommy Elliot (Cole Vallis), the Electrocutioner (Christopher Heyerdahl), the Scarecrow (Charlie Tahan), the Dollmaker (Colm Feore), the Ogre (Milo Ventimiglia), and maybe even the Joker. And we’re promised even more villains in the second season starting September 21.

The addition of Fish Mooney, a little too on the nose of a name, improves the male/female ratio but she is also a stock character without much to differentiate her although it is interesting to see Jada Pinkett Smith play against type. Her story arc was destined to end up short-lived but she was also given some of the most interesting material to work with.

So, Gordon remains the seemingly lone voice of reason in a city spiraling around the drain. He tells young Bruce that there is always hope and their budding relationship will inevitably lead the detective to figure out who the new dark knight is 13 years from now. The series, to be successful, has to tread that delicate line between utter defeat making Batman a necessity and Gordon a failure.

As a result, the show is a mess. Oddly, though, it’s a compelling mess that you keep coming back to check in and see if they’ve figured things out yet. The acting goes from square-jawed and wooden to outlandishly bad and caricatured. The writing is tedious and melodramatic, robbing interesting characters from saying interesting things. We’re told in the pilot that Thomas Wayne and Falcone both loved Gotham and were fighting, in their own ways, to preserve it. A great premise that went absolutely nowhere all season.

For a moody and atmospheric show, it has a dull color palette which transfers nicely to high definition disc. The combo pack comes with just four Blu-ray discs and a Digital HD code. The 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 video presentation makes a bad show lovely to look at. Coupled with a fine DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track you can hear it all.

The set comes with handful of average Special Features, starting with Gotham Invented (32:00), a three-part (“Building Our Gotham,” “Paving the Way for the Caped Crusader” and “Fractured Villains.”) behind-the-scenes look at how to study then ignore the source material; Designing the Fiction (20:00), a look at the process of making the city unique and timeless; The Game of Cobblepot (26:00), a profile on Robin Lord Taylor, one of the most arresting things about the series; The Legend Reborn (22:00), looking at the pilot’s shoot; DC Comics Night: Comic-Con 2014 (30:00): Gotham, Arrow and The Flash; Character Profiles (14:00), examining Jim Gordon, Oswald Cobblepot, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Harvey Bullock, Fish Mooney, Dr. Leslie Thompkins and Killer Characters; Unaired Scenes (7:00); and finally, the Gag Reel (5:00).

Before post-apocalyptic fiction became in vogue, there was always a work or two that captured the imagination. From Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale there have been stories to challenge society. But few packed the visceral punch of the visuals Australian director George Miller brought to his bleak world in 1979’s Mad Max. It set a standard rarely surpassed and introduced us to the talent of Mel Gibson. The modest film found an international audience so Miller was able to revisit the world on a somewhat larger scale in 1982’s The Road Warrior. And that found an even more eager audience so Hollywood threw money at him and we got the somewhat over-the-top Beyond Thunderdome.

Miller has wanted to look back at that society and has spent the last three decades attempting to mount such a production but fate was unkind to him. Meanwhile, contemporary fiction and filmed entertainment caught up to him so dystopia is as common as the soap opera. Audiences were therefore a little cautious when they settled into their seats to see Mad Max: Fury Road. As you may have seen for yourself or heard, he was more than up for the challenge, as was Thomas Hardy, the new Max.

Max has lost everything and like many a good protagonist, he wanders the wasteland, a restless spirit. His chance encounters ignite the stories much as the orphaned children took him to Thunderdome, here his capture by a savage society led him to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). For all the heroics Max display here, this is truly Furiosa’s film and she has made an indelible impression on audiences around the world.

The film, out now on Digital HD and coming to disc Tuesday from Warner Home Entertainment, is well worth a look. While there isn’t an overly complex story don’t think there isn’t a story or a message in this high-octane chase. By the time Max finds her, she has stolen five women known as the Breeders, from Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who has kept them in sexual bondage, seeking to generate male heirs to inherit his brutal control over the masses. She has The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton) and The Dag (Abbey Lee) aboard an amazing machine and is taking them to the only safe place she knows, the land where she was raised.

While it’s her story, we see it from Max’s point of view, and are privy only to his thoughts. Still, Furiosa ignites the story and is active rather than reactive, something that has been debated online since the film opened in June. She has been savaged and has lost an arm, but has not lost her wits and when the opportunity presented itself, she took the women, robbing Joe of his destiny. He wants them back and the chase is on as one truck is followed by dozens of the most imaginative motor vehicles captured onscreen.

Max has been taken by Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the white-painted war boys, the Citadel’s armed forces. He’s strapped to the front of Nux’s vehicle and over the course of the story, once Max gets free, he exerts a quiet influence over Nux, who finds his soul, and first love, while risking his life to eventually protect the Breeders.

Miller co-wrote the film with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris and touch on many aspects of heroes, villains, sacrifice, and the greater good. Although little of their writing is found in the finished film, you can learn from the extras how every character and vehicle had a name and distinctive background. Miller can tell you more about Immortal Joe or Coma Doof Warrior (the flame throwing guitar guy) than you can infer from onscreen, but it certainly helped inform the performances. And it clearly helped Margaret Sixel (Miller’s wife) edit the reported 450 hours of footage into an entertaining story.

Furiosa wants the women safe in The Green Place, even if it costs her her life. Max and Furiosa find themselves reluctant allies and little personal is shared between them, but there are volumes said between glances from Hardy and Theron. As they come to trust their lives and their precious cargo with one another, we get new glimpses of how harsh life on Earth has become, with rival factions, fragile alliances, and few places that can be considered safe refuges. There’s little hope here, but you find yourself rooting for their success regardless.

The action rarely slips out of third gear and the visuals are an unending array of imaginative devices, big explosions, loud thrumming noise from the Doof mobile, and Max’s careworn gaze. The cast makes the most of their meager lines, letting their physicality convey much of the story.

The flawless 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer means you can enjoy the visuals from home and study the machinery or terrain with ease. Matched with the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 surround sound, the film sounds strong and you hear everything from the whisper wind-swept sand to the revving of an engine in the distance.

The combo pack comes with the Blu-ray, DVD<,and Digital HD along with a handful of extras that elaborate on the amazing world Miller has successfully revisited and we hope will bring us back for another look. The special features start with  Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road (29:00); Fury on Four Wheels (23:00), a detailed look at the incredible war machines; The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa (11:00), Hardy and Theron discuss their alter egos;  The Tools of the Wasteland (14:00), a look at the props and more on the production design; The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome (11:00), Huntington-Whiteley, Keough, Kravitz, Lee, and Eaton fill us in on their characters, filming in the chill of Namibia, and how the rehearsal and skimpy outfits led to  a sisterly bond; Deleted Scenes (4:00), a mere three scenes; Crash & Smash (4:00), a selection of pre-production tests before CGI, which shows you how much was real.

I cannot recommend the film enough, whether you’ve seen the first three or not because there’s a lot to enjoy and think about.