The Tom and Jerry brand continues to be a lucrative franchise for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Whether made up of new or repackaged material, the titles keep on coming. Falling into the former category is the all-new Tom and Jerry’s Giant Adventure, available on Blu-ray and DVD (or both formats together, along with a code for an UltraViolet digital copy,...
Blu-ray Review: Oblivion (2013)
Some movies are best approached with as little prior knowledge as possible. For anyone partial to either ponderous sci-fi or anything starring Tom Cruise, all you need to know in advance is that Oblivion falls into both those categories. It’s not action-oriented sci-fi, understand that before going in. Oblivion aspires to be more along the lines of 2001: A Space...
Taking a Beating: Interview with Continuum’s Victor Webster
Continuum, the mind-bending sci-fi series that is part time travel adventure and part procedural, is nearing the end of a successful second season on its native Canadian channel Showcase. Meanwhile, south of the border it is halfway through the same season on Syfy. The show stars Rachel Nichols as tough cop Kiera Cameron who has come back from the future...
Inteview with Paul Levinson, Author of Unburning Alexandria
Did you know that the Greek philosopher Socrates is buried in the Bronx? Yep. His tombstone reads “Socrates 470BC-2042AD.” You get used to reading verbal bombshells like that when you read Paul Levinson’s science fiction works. In them traveling through time is as possible as traveling through space. Like traveling through space, it requires some planning, but it’s fully possible....
Anger Management: Interview with King’s Alan Van Sprang
Most of us have said or done something at some point in our lives that we wish we could take back or at the very least do a bit differently. For Toronto city police detective Derek Spears, a brief professional misstep cost him his position as head of the Major Crimes Task Force. Although still a member of the team,...
Oxford’s Finest: Interview with Endeavour’s Shaun Evans
Classic cars, real English ale, opera and cryptic crossword puzzles — probably not the interests of your typical police officer, but whoever said that Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse was typical? Created by writer Colin Dexter, this often sullen-tempered but still likeable and always dependable police officer was the bane of existence of many a criminal in the city of...
Bentley’s Bandstand: The First Half – Favorite Albums of 2013
This week’s column celebrates the second anniversary of Bentley’s Bandstand. It’s still amazing to see how much moving music is being released, in all different kinds of categories. As the record business continues to shift and splinter, it seems like musicians themselves are becoming more and more dedicated to finding a way to share their sounds. The releases featured in...
Yes’s Close to the Edge Gets the Steven Wilson Remix Treatment
The Steven Wilson HQ page on Facebook officially announced that the label responsible for the re-release and distribution of multiple King Crimson remixed classics would be reissuing a remixed version of Close to the Edge, the classic 1972 album from Yes. Close to the Edge followed up the huge success of that band’s 1971 gem, Fragile, and in its own...
Blu-ray Review: Stoker
The creepy thriller Stoker, now on Blu-ray, was the final film produced by the late Tony Scott. It’s also the first English-language production directed by acclaimed South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. Aside from those two distinctions, the more likely hook for curious potential viewers is the cast, which includes Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Dermot Mulroney. It’s kind of a...
Detective Work: Interview with Motive’s Brendan Penny
There are some people who from childhood know what they want to be when they grow up, while others are what you might call “late bloomers” when it comes to deciding on a career path. Actor Brendan Penny freely admits to being one of the latter. “I didn’t really have any specific aspirations when I was younger. I just enjoyed...