Burn Notice: Season Six (2012/Fox DVDs)/CSI: NY – The Final Season/Season Nine (2012 – 2013/CBS DVDs)/Graham Kennedy Show (1960 – 1, 1972 – 5)/Snowy: The Complete Series (1993)/Spyforce: The Complete Series (1971 –
1973/Umbrella Region Free PAL DVD Sets)/The
Wedding Band: The Complete First Season (2012 – 2013/Fox DVDs)
Picture:
C/C+/C/C/C/C+ Sound: C/C+/C+/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C/C/D/D/C-/C Episodes: C-/C-/B-/B-/C/C-
PLEASE NOTE: The Snowy, Spyforce & Graham
Kennedy Show Region Free PAL DVD imports can be ordered from our friends at
Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the
review.
Now for a
nice cross-section of recent TV releases…
I am
amazed that we are on Burn Notice:
Season Six (2012) because the show may have started nicely, but started to
wear thin and somehow, enough fans have stuck with it that Fox has continued to
produce it. Even with the first clip of
the first episode on this 4-DVD set, even the makers admit they have to start
at the beginning to explain the initial set up.
The main cast is still here, but the energy that made the show work in
the beginning has wavered, so to say this is for fans only is an
understatement.
It was
never a serious spy show (neither was Alias
to me, so I have high standards for the genre) and though the 18 episodes here
are professionally produced and have money in them, they did nothing for me and
are pretty flat. You would think they’d
wrap up the show while they were ahead, but guess not.
Extras
include Deleted Scenes, a Gag Reel (at least they are still having some fun), Matt Nix Gets Burned and an audio
commentary on the Shock Wave episode
with Nix, Bruce Campbell, Jeffrey Donovan and director Renny Harlin.
ON the
other hand, it is hard to say if a ninth season is where a so-so show should
end, but that is what happened with CSI:
NY – The Final Season (2012 – 2013) which has been dragging for too long to
begin with. They still managed to churn
out 27 more hour-longish shows (on 5 DVDs here) that sort of wrap things up,
but I was not a big fan to begin with, don’t know if they succeeded here and to
say this is for fans only is being nice.
It is
just way too played out, but here it is and extras include four making of
featurettes, a CSI crossover episode “In Two Weeks”, a Vegas/New York
Crossover, Gag Reel and Deleted Scenes.
Which I could say more, but we should at least see Gary Sinise and Sela
Ward in something new soon, at least.
Next we
have 4 surviving episodes of the original Graham
Kennedy Show, which ran from 1960 – 1961, then 1972 – 1975. The first three shows are in black and white,
the last one in color and they feature the variety show host (sometimes
singing) introducing music acts, sometime4s appearing in skits, talking to his
audience well and either introducing or participating in advertising which
extends to games at the end with a spinning wheel where viewers can win
valuable prizes answering a question.
We have
covered the also sometimes character actor in two of his TV shows that happened
after this one, Coast To Coast and Blankety Blanks, an Australian answer
to the 1970s Match Game and you can
read more about them at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9004/Graham+Kennedy+Coast+To+Coast
This set
extends with proof why he was such a popular personality in his many decades in
the business and there are some funny and more than a few unintentionally funny
moments throughout these shows. The music
acts never crossed over to the U.S.,
but some of them have not dated as badly as others, while some of the products
being sold and in contests are a hoot.
There are
no extras, but this is a fun set worth checking out.
Snowy: The Complete Series (1993) is an underrated
Australian Mini-Series about the title locale that wants to be a serious drama,
but also has aspirations to compete with nighttime soap operas staring with its
instrumental theme song, which sounds like a combination of Dynasty and Falcon Crest. Fortunately,
it is much better and we reviewed it many years ago on DVD at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/608/Snowy+(Australian+Mini-Series)
It is the
Australian answer to the best U.S. and U.K. dramas of its ilk set in 1949 in
the title locale and does a great job of showing the little-seen history (even
partly fictionalized) of post-WWII Australia.
I am still impressed after all these years and am a little surprised it
was not given a new round of rediscovery by those who love quality TV. It may have some minor flaws, but they are
very minor and the acting, production values and consistency impress
throughout. Now here is another version
for which to catch it.
There
were many extras in the previous set, but they are not here, yet we get one
different extra and it is a black and white industrial film co-produced by
Shell Oil entitled The Forerunner that shows how flooding in parts of the country
will be alleviated by a big construction project to divert water to where it is
needed, as the country apparently has bad weather patterns and other conditions
that create floods in some areas and serious drought in others. I’ll have to look up how progress has been
since.
Now we
come to Spyforce: The Complete Series,
an Australian Co-production with Paramount Pictures that ran from 1971 to 1973
and stars Jack Thompson as a tough brawler and hard head who lands up being
pushed into a special spy unit to fight the Axis powers during WWII. Shot on 16mm film, the show is more drama
than action with very few fights (and some lame ones at times at that and some
gun fights, but mostly talking and pacing.
The Nazis
and Japanese Imperialists are somewhat cartoonish and I suspect the makers were
trying to do a show in the Rat Patrol
tradition, but with less money spent on bombs, guns and props. It is certain that this will be nostalgic fun
for fans, but others will see it as dated and not just because the prints of
all 42 hour-long episodes over 14 DVDs might be a bit rough. Some fans might even prefer that.
Peter
Sumner (The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith,
Aussie TV’s Neighbours) and Max
Cullen (Number 96, the recent
Leonardo DiCaprio Great Gatsby) are
among the decent cast and they help the show age well. It is worth a look if you have never seen it
before just so you can see a unique, nearly one-of-a-kind show, but don’t
expect much actual espionage adventure.
The only
extra is an episode of the show entitled The
Rolls That Went To War that was intended to launch a spin-off series with
Thompson, but was not picked up. Event
he makers knew they had played out the original show and ended while they were
ahead.
Finally
we have The Wedding Band: The Complete
First Season (2012 – 2013), which takes the idea of an overrated Adam
Sandler comedy and tries to make it into a semi-dramatic comedy series. Maybe it seemed like a good idea on paper,
then they hired Brian Austin Green and it apparently went downhill from
there. Predictable, silly and pointless,
we’ll see how long this one lasts, but it was a 10 episodes of juvenile antics
over 3 DVDs and that was more than enough for a serious divorce.
Extras
include a goofy Jukebox function and two Making
Of featurettes.
The
picture quality on most of the releases are unfortunately not very strong, so
by default, the soft, detail challenged and occasionally flawed anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image presentations on CSI
and Band are the best playback
performers by default. Burn has the same
playback specs, but it tends to be much softer throughout for whatever reason
and poorer as a result.
That
leaves our three Australian import releases sharing 1.33 X 1 aspect ratios with
their own different problems. The Graham Kennedy Show has a
mix of film and video for the monochrome shows, then switches to color tape for
the final show, but they have flaws, softness, haloing and even some
staircasing that holds them back. A few
shots are nice, but others are sometimes difficult to watch or make out,
especially in some detail moments. Snowy was shot on film, likely 35mm,
but even if it was 16mm, these copies were finished on analog video and its
shows. This transfer is a tad poorer
than the older set we looked at, but the show needs an all-film, all-HD upgrade
and a Blu-ray release. That leaves Spyforce in rough 16mm prints and it
definitely was shot that way like similar genre shows at the time like Jason King, The Protectors and The
Adventurer. This show needs fixed up
and hopefully it will get a restoration down the line.
As for
sound, the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on Burn, CSI and Wedding have weak soundfields and are
equaled by the rest of the entries on this list, but Burn has additional mixing
issues and is too much in the center channel, so it rates the worst of all the
releases on this list sonically.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on The Graham
Kennedy Show and Spyforce
(which could use some cleaning up that might improve its sonic situation a bit)
hold up better than their picture quality, while Snowy is barely stereo though you can tell it is a comparatively newer recording.
As noted
above, you can order the imports of Snowy,
Spyforce & Graham Kennedy Show exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
