Angel
Of The Skies (2013/E1
DVD)/Burn Notice: Season
Seven/Final Notice
(2013/Fox DVDs)/Lone
Ranger Double-Barreled Feature
(1938, 1940, 1958/Legend DVD)/Sweetwater
(2012/Arc DVD)/The
Virginian (2013/Nasser
DVD)
Picture:
C/C/C/C/C+ Sound: C/B-/C/C+/B- Extras: C-/C-/C/C-/C- Main
Programs: C-/C-/C+/C/D
What
we have are a group of programs aimed at the typical guy
audience and they are not even as good as that moniker usually would
imply at its least.
We
start with a South African production, Christopher-Lee Dos Santos'
Angel
Of The Skies
(2013) which takes place during WWI as a pilot from the country joins
the Royal Air Force to help England and the Aliies battle the Nazis
in the air, on the ground and otherwise. That script is cliched, the
cast of unknowns somewhat convincing that they are the characters in
their period and period itself portrayed with some convincing
authenticity. However, almost ebverythign we see here worth noting
we have seen before and more on South Africa and their WWII ties
would have helped.
Worst
of all is a tendency to take the color image and fade it just a
little too much by whitening that is too faint, makes this even
harder to watch and is only so memorable. At 102 minutes, it plays
long and there is a better motion picture in here somewhere, but it
sadly never happens despite some of its ambitions.
A
trailer is the only extra.
Finally
quitting while it is ahead (it could have really ended badly) is Burn
Notice: Season Seven/Final Notice
(2013) which could only hve reached this far for a fan base that
managed to stick with the show all these seasons. We get the long,
no-end-left-untied 12 (lucky or unlucky) last 13 episodes and I
cannot imagine any fan of the show or stars Gabrielle Anwar, Jeffrey
Donovan and Brcue Campbell (et al) being disappointed. I liked the
show early on, but as noted in previous reviews elsewhere ont his
site, the show started to sag early, starting with the third season
for me.
Still,
the makers got Fox to stick with them and this is the end. Sharon
Gless helps make this more bearable, but unless you really love the
show from the debut season (where you should start), you will not
find much to like here.
Extras
include an audio commentary track on the Forget
Me Not
episode, Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel and the Final
Mission: Ending The Series
featurette.
As
the disastrous 2013 Johnny Depp revival that rightly bombed hits
Blu-ray (with a positive review by one of our writers elsewehre on
this site), Legend DVD has issued a Lone
Ranger Double-Barreled Feature
with the character in the original hero mode moviegoers expected and
did not get from the Disney production a 1958 TV special on the
character with Clayton Moore and Hi Ho Silver!, a 1940 film, bersion
of the 1938 serial of the character whose chapters have been lost as
of this posting. This version is really decent for its age and has
Lee Powell more than holkding his own as the silver bullet-toting
masked man.
If
you were disappointed by the new film, this is a great remedy for
suffering through that one and at a nice price. The best release on
the list amazingly, extras include a Clayton Moore interview plus
clips of Moore on the series Annie Oakley, Kit
Carson
and Range
Rider.
Finaly
we have two attempts at Westerns, both oddly angrier works for no
reason than expected, starting with Logan Miller's Sweetwater
(2012) offering a mixed revenge western plot involving a corrupt holy
man (Jason Issacs), no-good sheriff (Ed Harris looking more than a
little like Terence Stamp) and eventiually vengeful woman (January
Jones of Mad
Men)
who gets oput of control beyond what is called for. The sex can be
more graphic than usual and religion at leats not handled in a
preachy way, but this is far more bloody than expected and the weak
script only makes that more apparent.
Eduardo
Noriega, singer Jason Aldean and a scene-stealing Stephen Root (who
still cannot save this one) as a corrupt bank owner also star, but
this fell flat and bever really felt like the late 1800s.
A
Behind The Scenes featurette, trailer and odd Music Video are the
only extras.
Finally
we have the scond revival of the old hit TV show The
Virginian
(2013, directed by Thomas Makowski), the NBC Western that ran for 9
season from 1962 - 1971 with James Drury and Doug McClure, the first
to have what we would now call TV movie-length episodes. Like T.H.E.
Cat,
it is yet another popular classic NBC-TV series we never see rerun or
released much anymore. Bill Pullman landed up in a 2000 TV Movie
revival, but no series resulted, so now we have singer Trace Adkins
in the title role helping a bookwise city guy deal with the Widl
West.
He
gets some one-liners that spout his knowledge, but half of them do
not hold water, pluys they get pretty silly, especially the more
serious he acts. He looks the part somewhat, but I never bought him
in the role or this tale of preverted justice and revenge that we
have again seen hundreds of times. We get nothing new here, the look
of the production barely looks period and I was suprrised how
forgettable it was. Needless to say this willnto lead to a series
revival of any sort. For fans only, if that.
A
Behind The Scenes featurette is the only extra.
The
image on all the DVDs are on the soft side, but the anamorphically
enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Virginian
has a slight edge despite being styled down and not without flaws.
Angel
and Sweetwater
have the same framings and presentations, but Angel
has stylized softness that is overdone and too faded for its own good
while Sweetwater
is not as overboard in this sense, yet it is just to soft too often.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Burn
is also stylized way too dnw for its own good, so all four would
likely look to improve at least a bit on Blu-ray editions. The 1.33
X 1 on the 35mm Ranger
film footage is rough as expected, but more watchable than you might
think.
As
for sound the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on Burn
and Virginian
are more active and well thought out than the rest and made me wish
for lossless versions. The same type of mixes on Angel
and Sweetwater
tend to be more towards the front channels than I would have liked,
especially Angels which really lacks dynamic range. That leaves the
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the Rangers
films rough, but being able to compete with Angel
sonically when it should not.
-
Nicholas Sheffo