Tag: DVD Review

How The Banana Splits Movie Will Ruin Childhoods…

Banana SplitsBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

* Spoiler Alert

Home Video Release
August 27, 2019

Scheduled to air on Syfy channel on September 21, 2019.

Childhoods will certainly be ruined for anyone who grew up watching The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (TV Series (1968–1970) and have no intro before seeing the new movie. Every adorable aspect we loved from the classic is turned upside down in the 2019 film which reimagines the beloved bubblegum pop band variety show as heavy metal horror mayhem. I wondered what’d this film would be like if the Arabian Nights popped into existence to save the day….

Newcomers won’t be as affected, but I can’t buy into the thought robots are inside the suits which made the anthropomorphic band come alive. Fleegle (guitar, vocals), Bingo (drums, vocals), Drooper (bass, vocals) and Snorky (keyboards, effects) looked a bit gaunt when the real production had actors in huge body costumes and voice over veterans provided the goofy voices.

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Star Trek DS9: What We Left Behind Lands on Home Video! & Review

The regular home video release of the documentary Star Trek DS9: What We Left Behind includes what’s left on the cutting room floor to make this look back of this series perfect.

Banana SplitsRelease Date: August 6, 2019
Shout! Factory

Special Offer: The special edition contains a second Blu-Ray disc with additional material, and is limited to 1,500 copies. It is only available on ShoutFactory.com

The regular home video release of the documentary Star Trek DS9: What We Left Behind includes what’s left on the cutting room floor to make this look back of this series perfect. Usually the amount of clips offered may reach up to six, and sometimes a dozen. I was dumbfounded to find 17 in all! And one of them addressed my most favourite episode, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.” The set up at the end credits explains it all. I highly recommend watching this work completely to the end.

Not everyone will have seen this work at its limited cinema and convention screenings. When I first heard of it, I did not have the spare funds to support the Indiegogo campaign. For those who did, a bevy of exclusive material can be found in the video vault on the official website.

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There’s No Need to Be Afraid of The Big Bad Fox

Banana Splits
Available to purchase on Amazon

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Release Date: July 16, 2019
GKIDS and Shout! Factory

The Big Bad Fox (Le Grand Méchant Renard et autres contes…) is a delightful, hilarious children’s book by Benjamin Renner and it’s animated counterpart is just as whimsical. The breezy watercolours featured in this hand-drawn work was very meditative. The poke at simple life was just as illustrious to the work I also recall in the printed Winnie the Pooh books.

The film released two years after the publication (2015) and what it offers are three shorts within a variety show format featuring Pig (Justin Edwards), Rabbit (Adrian Edmonson), Duck (Bill Bailey) and the titular Fox (Giles New, Pirates of the Carribean movies). More barnyard creatures pepper the background and this parable has a lot to offer to keep the kid in me entertained for years to come. This work is all ages friendly!

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Beware the Fists of ‘Furie’

Furie Blu-Ray + DVD Cover
Available to purchase on AmazonBanana Splits

Release Date: June 25, 2019
WELL GO USA

Spoiler Alert

When a young girl gets kidnapped and mom is nearby, hell hath no Furie than a woman scorned. This idiom gets an all new meaning in this movie starring Veronica Ngo. She appeared in The Tailor (2017) and had a supporting role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She shines as a tough as nails ex-gang member wanting a simple life in the countryside of Vietnam but has to be John Wick.

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Tanks for the Memories, T-34 roars into Home Video this Week!

Despite being glued to the action than the drama, the story of hope is what drives T-34 forward.

All-Formats-T34-front
Available to purchase on AmazonBanana Splits


Available Now
Released by Well GO Entertainment

T-34 is not your Hogan’s Heroes. This Russian made film about such a resilient war machine is more about the people who can drive this tank, than anything else. It’s less about comedy or propaganda. The latter is inevitable, but more often than not, no matter which country the film is made in, the focus is often about the brotherhood forged.

Here, Nikolay Ivushkin (Alexander Petrov) is in the front lines. He quickly gets promoted to tank commander and despite being able to defeat a German Panzer attack, he and driver Stepan Vasilyonok (Viktor Dobronravov) are captured. They are sent to a concentration camp. Three years later, he meets his rival, Klaus Jäger (Vinzenz Kiefer) and is “coerced” to take part in local war games.

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Getting Funky with Lu Over the Wall, A DVD Review

Many comparisons have already been made of Lu Over the Wall to Ponyo and director was not averse to paying tribute to this particular Studio Ghibli work.

Lu Over the Wall Blu-ray + DVD Case
Blu-ray available to pre-orderBanana Splits

Shout! Factory & GKIDS
Release Date: Feb 5, 2019

The home video release of Lu Over the Wall is right around the corner and one of the two bonus features includes an interview with director Masaaki Yuasa and producer Eunyoung Choi. Fans can hear about how he felt when this anime won the top prize at the 2017 Annecy International Film Festival. The audio commentary is even better as it discusses the creative process behind this movie. At first, they thought of introducing a vampire and thankfully changed their minds. They also discussed how integral the music had to be. In between wanting to craft a supernatural tale, the emphasis on Kai (Kanon Tani) had to be important.

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