I’ve always been the flaky sort when it comes to TV. There’s two factors to blame for this; one I generally have a lot of movie screeners to work through and two, I just don’t like being held to a schedule. Sure, there are a number of shows that I do watch week to week, but there’s just a limit on how many I like to add to my list.

Which brings us to “Supernatural”. The show should be a natural (some would say ’super’) fit for someone such as my self. By the name alone, you’d think that I would have eaten such a show up. Be it other interests at the time the show started or the fact that I didn’t really watch the channel that show aired on, I’ve managed to pretty much ignore all five seasons. Until now of course. After hearing a lot of love and praise regarding the Winchester Brothers and their adventures, I jumped at the chance when I was asked if I wanted to review the impending blu-ray release of the first season. After trudging through all four disks of the set, I’m now pretty happy I finally took the time for it.

If your’e like me, avoiding five seasons of the show, the first season of “Supernatural” is a fun monster of the week type setup. We watch along as the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean, fight evil across the country in search of their missing father. We learn quickly that the family has a bit a history regarding such pass times, fighting evil and such, starting with the demonic attack which killed their mother and later Sam’s girlfriend in the same fashion.

Though the show isn’t a high mark of television quality, it’s still a good entry in genre TV. For the first season, the monster of the week format keeps the show nice and light. At times it hearkens back to the glory days of the “X-Files”. The creators penchant for exploring urban legends for their monsters helps to give the viewer a quick and easy familiarity with the story and makes the deconstruction of the myths just plain old fun.

While the seasons have been out for some time now on DVD, Warner Brothers is bringing the Winchesters to blu-ray on June 15th. We’re all familiar with the benefits of the format and the four disk set of “Supernatural The Complete First Season” hits all the right notes. The picture is nice and pretty sharp with surround sound that is sufficiently booming when the show’s trademark classic rock soundtrack kicks in. I will say that the episodes do not appear quite as vivid and clear as other blu-ray movies you may have seen. While the picture itself is fine, it lacks a bit of the ultra sharp vibrancy that is typical of the high def format. This can be contributed to the format of the show as it relies heavily on blacks ad shadows which are notoriously hard to produce in a lot of different HD televisions. At times the scenes will appear to luck much like their DVD counterparts for this reason. When we get scenes that take place in full daylight and such though, the picture is exactly as you would expect from a HD broadcast.

The other bonus for this release is that it comes packed with extras. Most of the features you’ve seen will be familiar if you already own the DVD sets. New to this release are the Devil’s Road Map, an interactive atlas to all of season ones urban legends. How factual it is I can’t say, but it is fun to find out more to all the myths that you will vaguely remember from the show. We all know the stories such as ‘Bloody Mary’ or the ‘The Man with the Hook’, but have you ever bothered to look up the history of these legends? This feature will help fill you in! The other new feature is a panel discussion with the cast and crew from the Paley Festival. If such a thing is your bag, you’ll have fun getting some candid behind the scenes discussion from all involved.

For a blu-ray collection, “Supernatural The Complete First Season” is a good set all around. The show is a solid bit of fun to fill your genre TV needs during the summer hiatus. At $49.99, I can’t say that there is enough new material here or high def glory to warrant an upgrade from your DVD set, but for those just getting started on the show, this blu-ray set is a sure thing.

As a recent Blu-ray convert, I’ve been wowed by the formats crisp picture and even more astounded by the improvement in sound in nearly every title I’ve bought. Sure, I waited for the format wars to end before I jumped on board but since then, I’ve made an effort in that any new movie I buy, it would be in blu-ray. After seeing “Avatar” in theaters, it’s a logical jump that most everybody would be chomping at the bit to get this sci-fi spectacular at home. It stands to reason that this movie would be a great showcase for the increased resolution and sound, perhaps even a great demonstrator to show off your own home theater setup. Having gotten my hands on it finally, the “Avatar” blu-ray stands up in the technical areas if not exceeding them but does leave a little bit of disappointment in other areas.

As a showcase of presenting a movie in the best possible format at home, the “Avatar” blu-ray has it all. The picture is clear as a bell and stands out well, even on my older 1080i setup. Sure, I may not be running at the top of the line as far as equipment goes, but this disk still manages to look great. The details standout throughout the film and they seem just as breath taking as they did in theaters. Now of key interest here; this current blu-ray release does not include 3D. Sure, the home technology isn’t quite up to par to show off the movie in its full 3D glory so that’s fine. At the moment, our only accessible option for home 3D is the crummy old fashioned blue and red variant and really, a movie such as “Avatar” with Camerons newly developed process in that older format would just be a waste. You can count on there being yet another release of this movie on blu-ray somewhere down the line because you know as well as I do that people will flock to purchase the 3D version once they figure out how they’re going to release it in the home market.

Perhaps my next point lies in the fact that I am running an older 55″ 1080i display but in my home setup, it’s never the picture of blu-ray movies that stand out to me. Instead, it is always the DTS audio tracks that really seem to pop far more than they ever did even on DVD. Small underlying sound details seem to be given much more emphasis and really stand out separately from the mix. This release of “Avatar” is no exception and possibly even stands out as one of my favorites yet. With the multitude of sounds that take place on the forest floor, the movie managed to make my poor pooch Frosty a nervous wreck as he was surrounded by sounds of alien wildlife. He really didn’t know what to make of it!

This iteration of “Avatar” on blu-ray is worth the money, especially since you can find it on sale in most locations, but there is a big caveat. This two disk set comes with absolutely no special features whatsoever. The theatrical version of the movie takes up an entire blu-ray disk with nothing more that two sub-title tracks and corresponding audio tracks. There’s no making of, no behind the scenes or anything of the sort. For myself who is not a big fan of special features, this is fine. You can argue that this allows them to use the entire 50 gb of the disk dedicated to giving us the highest possible resolution and sound quality. Once again, I can appreciate that! Disk two is nothing but the same exact theatrical release, only on DVD. The problem here is that there are many film fans out there that do enjoy the special features and digging into the behind the scenes elements of a movie. For them, there is currently no option. This almost guarantees that there will be a second ’special edition’ release of “Avatar” in the near future that includes all of these features and more. Could the studio be holding back to add that to the 3D version? It’s hard to say. The only thing you can say for sure is that they will be looking forward to getting your extra money when you wind up buying the same movie several times.

If you absolutely can’t wait to watch “Avatar” another seven times in a row or don’t really care at all about the special features, this release is top notch. The presentation is one of the better ones I’ve seen in blu-ray format and is a treat. It even holds up to at home viewing in boring old 2D! If you need more for your movie enjoyment however, you might want to hold off for the inevitable special edition somewhere down the line.

Life rears its ugly head once again and begins to bog down my own personal blogosphere as of late, but that’s not to say I haven’t been watching movies. When real life bulks up to become annoying, I find myself watching some movies not to review or write about in critical detail but to simply kick back and relax a bit. Many of the movies become re-watches, flicks I know that I’m going to life so that I can shut off the old noggin and space out for a few, some are ones I’ve been meaning to watch but don’t really feel I can add to much to what has already been said of it. Work continues though, so it’s not all for loss, if you want to check out some reviews be sure to check out my write ups for Val Kilmer’s The Chaos Experiment, Steve Zahn, Lee Lee Sobieski and Danny Glover in Night Train and Nick Simmons Incarnate #1 over at Bloody Good Horror.

As for the fun stuff this week, the Criswell family finally made it out to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit! The Mrs. being the hard core fan of the family found the movie to be pretty great though she wishes she could have seen a lot of the content cut from the book, such as Dumbledore’s procession. The daughter was pretty devastated by the events that take place in the film but otherwise liked it quite a bit. For myself, I felt the movie was fantastic all around and though it may be the newness and the heat of the moment, mark it as amongst my favorite of the franchise so far. The setup for the final book is pretty great here and I can’t wait to see it all! I’ve read the books but not too closely, so the cut factors don’t bother me too much, so that’s a plus. And for an off note, let it be know that I love love love Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. Rawr!

For the past week or two, mainly since I picked up a blu-ray player, I’ve found myself with an unexplained urge to watch The Fast and the Furious and its sequels. This is odd for me for a number of reasons, primarily because I’m the type that could give a shit about cars in general and I’m not the world biggest Vin Diesel fan either. The movies felt like they would lend themselves to the flashy colors and loud sounds of blu-ray though, so I suppose that was a driving factor. (Get it?) I did finally manage to give the first two films a watch this past week and ultimately, I didn’t hate them. There is a bit more story to them than I expected, at least in the first film, so it wasn’t too horrible. 2 Fast 2 Furious was really rather boring over all and flat, especially in comparison to the first movie and just felt like an over long episode of ‘generic action cop show’. I’m still planning on giving the the 3rd and 4th movies a shot but the urgency has now been sated, so it may be awhile for those. At least Jordana Brewster comes back for the latest flick!

I don’t buy a lot of DVDs and Blu-ray disks these days. The majority of my library is made up of review copies in from PR companies and a lot of rentals. Browsing through the Video on Demand choices on our UVerse box the other night in search of something mindless to throw on, I was thrilled to find one of my favorite comedies of late in the free VOD choices, Pineapple Express. Having seen it roughly three times now, this one has quickly earned its title as my default background movie. The first time through, I was pretty amazed in that the film isn’t just a simple “Cheech and Chong” ripoff, but actually a cleverly disguised action comedy. Seth Rogan has reached the over saturation point lately but he’s firing on all cylinders here, for me anyway. The highlight of the movie though is James Franco’s Saul Silver. Luckily, the movie holds up to repeated viewings and is just and funny the second and third times through and always serves well for turning off and tuning out.

Some may even say there’s quite a bit of physical resemblance to myself and my friend Chris many years ago, but that’s another story for another day!

The movie watching is still going on, but it has been more in the personal indulgence mode as of late. The writing continues on as well, but again more in the personal venue than of the public nature. Coming up, I’m expecting some new review disks in the mail any day now, in particular some blu-ray disks to start the coverage on that spectrum too!

I’m an action flick kind of guy. I like to watch fist fights, people shooting guns at each other and things blowing up. A lot of the time, these are the majority of what an action film consists of; a whole lot of flash and little substance. To be honest, this is fine. Sometimes you just need to see somebody else’s chaos and carnage to end your day. Sometimes though, an action movie will give you some meat and potato’s to go with it though and give a little bit of drama, tension and story to go along with it. This generally gives you a well rounded action movie with some depth to it, something nice to stimulate both the ‘things that go boom’ part of your brain, and the ‘things that make you go hmm’ part.

When the trailer for “Taken” first hit, I wasn’t sure what to think of them. The first thing to jump out at me was the idea of Liam Neeson as an action hero. Sure, we saw his wily ways as Qui Gon-Jin, but those were younger days and pretty fantastical fighting at that. Would it be possible to believe him in a real world fight situation? With real people fighting back? The second thing to stand out to me was the fact that the trailers seemed to be dead serous, bordering on becoming a heavy drama with an ex-CIA agent using his brains to outsmart some bad guys. Once again, nothing wrong with this idea in itself, but it felt as if it could easily slip into the dank and sappy depths of a family drama and well…I’m not a fan. Sitting down and letting the film run, after working my way through the character development and the excitement began to snowball, “Taken” surprised me as it managed to turn itself into a good mixture of action movie tropes and proved itself to be one of the most surprising action movies I’ve seen in awhile.

Setting off at a decent pace, “Taken” makes sure to spend some time to setup the characters and the scenario in good form. The do this in just the right amount of time avoiding weighing down the movie with too much development and making it thin and lifeless with too little. IN a mere thirty minutes, we manage to feel sad for Liam Neeson as a father, dislike Famke Jansen as an unfriendly ex-wife and somehow believe that Maggie Grace is a sweet and innocent seventeen year old. With characters to care about, it was pretty easy to get sucked in to the plot lines of the movie.

For me, the highlight of the movie is the fact that at roughly fifty seven years old, LIam Neeson can still kick some pretty major ass. Not only that, it was rather smart ass kicking as well. Feeling much like the frenetic fist fights of the “Bourne” series, the fights were always exciting and fast paced and still managed to be somewhat realistic. Mind you, the movie does suffer from the fact that its lead character is pretty much infallible throughout the entire movie. He continuously takes on throngs of men with nothing more than a pistol and a fist fight and doesn’t really appear to be challenged by all this in the slightest. Throughout the entire film, he really only seems to be on the defensive two to three times and comes across as injured only once that I can remember. He’s a super man and it takes away a lot of the realism the movie had going for it. Regardless, as lopsided as the fights were, they were still great fun to watch, well shot and well choreographed.

While the trailers led me to think that “Taken” would be more drama than anything else, I was still happily surprised at how engaging it was. It seems to fit in well with the “Bourne” style movies with plenty of crazy action, a meaty story and some brains behind it. There is no camp whatsoever here, so if you need some good yuks with your action this may not be the movie for you. If you like Liam Neeson and some solid ass kicking though, you’ll be all set.