Region: 1
Discs: 3
Publisher: WWE Home Video
Length: 9 hrs
Video: 1.33:1
Audio: Dolby Digital English
Subtitles: none
UPC: 741952929734
Release Date: August 25, 2009
MSRP: $34.95 US

PROS:

• interesting story covered
• interviews with legends of the business
• plentiful, valuable bonus features

CONS:

• heavily biased
• surprising omissions
• time wasted on axe-grinding
• shallow coverage

MAIN FEATURE

In the mid-1990s, professional wrestling was the hottest thing on cable television. This was mostly due to an all-out war between the two biggest companies in the business: WCW (World Championship Wrestling, owned by Time Warner) and the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, owned by Vince McMahon, now called WWE). At the height of the war, WCW was doing especially well for itself — it became a household name, dominated its adversary in the ratings for over a year and a half, made hundreds of millions of dollars, and nearly drove the WWF into bankruptcy.

Just three years later, WCW was dead, sold to the WWF in a fire sale for a mere $4 million.

The story of WCW’s demise is one that should be studied by any wrestling fan, of course, but also by anyone with a general interest (or a job) in the entertainment business. It is an object lesson in what happens when a cultural product is placed in the hands of executives who neither understand nor appreciate it, when some of the talent is given too much creative freedom while others are given none at all, and when fans are treated as a nuisance or ignored altogether. It’s a story that remains relevant today; WWE’s main competitor, TNA (Total Nonstop Action), seems determined to make as many of the same mistakes that killed WCW as they possibly can these days.

However, if you are not yet familiar with this story, The Rise & Fall of WCW is probably not the best place to learn about it. History, as the saying goes, is written by the conquerors — in this case WWE, who produced and released this DVD. For that reason alone, the documentary cannot help but be heavily spun in WWE’s favour.

Many important factors are either glossed over or ignored completely. There is, for example, surprisingly little mention of Vince Russo, the booker (i.e. scriptwriter) whose work was so thoroughly rejected by WCW fans that the company lost $60 million in the one year of his employ. The title reign of David Arquette, possibly the single biggest error in judgment the company ever made, is likewise underplayed. And there is, of course, no mention of how thoroughly WWE botched the “Invasion” storyline upon their purchase of WCW, one which should have been a license to print money.

Wrestler Jeff Jarrett receives about as much coverage as Russo and Arquette do. In Jarrett’s case, however, it’s far too much, as Jarrett was never a major player in the company and most fans do not even recall that he was its champion at one point. He is trashed for one reason in this doc: at the time it was made, Jarrett was in command of TNA. This kind of petty axe-grinding is common in wrestling, but does nothing to improve this DVD.

The documentary is not without some merit. It features many exclusive interviews with the men behind WCW at various points in its history, such as Bill Watts and Dr. Harvey Schiller, who offer up inside information and new perspectives. For the most part, though, The Rise & Fall of WCW is content to skim the surface of these events without digging any deeper than it has to.

BONUS FEATURES

As with most WWE DVDs, the set is packed with bonuses. It contains two full discs of important matches from WCW’s history. Most of them are truly outstanding, probably worth the purchase price by themselves. There are also some interesting snippets of interviews covering such subjects as the marketing of Bill Goldberg and Eric Bischoff’s controversial practice of giving away spoilers of WWE shows on live television.

A/V

While some of the footage in this documentary is 20 years old or more, the overall show looks and sounds fine. It’s doubtful that any of the classic matches in the Bonus Features were cleaned up for this release, but they too are acceptable by current standards.

PACKAGING

The set uses a gatefold Digipak with an insert listing the disc contents.

OVERALL

The Rise & Fall of WCW tells a fascinating story, but never really sinks its teeth into it. The definitive work on this series of events has already been written: The Death of WCW, by Bryan Alvarez and R. D. Reynolds. This DVD makes an excellent companion to the book, but should not be considered an acceptable substitute for it.

You can buy this DVD from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk

Review written by forum member MegaHentai.

Region: 1
Discs: 6
Publisher: Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc.
Length: 650 minutes
Video: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0, Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: English
UPC: 704400086755
ISBN: 1421016621
Release Date: August 25, 2009
MSRP: $69.98 US

PROS:

• excellent horror
• unique story structure
• clever art style juxtaposition
• creepy, yet beautiful, soundtrack

CONS:

• initially confusing
• too violent for some viewers

MAIN FEATURE

With Halloween fast approaching, many of you will be deciding which horror movies to watch to get ready for the day. For those who are looking for something better than mere special effects jumping out at you and shouting BOO!, allow me to make a recommendation: the newly-released eleven-hour box set of When They Cry.

Keiichi Maebara has moved from a big city to the small, close-knit community of Hinamizawa. At school, he falls in with the Games Club, a quartet of cute girls with a penchant for low-stakes gambling, and quickly befriends all four. Everything’s coming up roses for Keiichi until a visiting photographer clues him in to the town’s dirty little secret: a series of murders and abductions which take place every year during the annual Cotton Drifting festival, and which seem to have something to do with an abandoned dam construction project and a local legend known as “Oyashiro’s Curse”. Within days, more people are dead, and a cop is hinting that he suspects Keiichi and/or his friends.

What makes When They Cry so unique is that it tells this story three times. While the above details remain the same each time, everything else changes. Clues to the mystery are provided in each story arc, though it is unlikely that first-time viewers will correctly catch all of them. Following these three stories, three more give the answers to the mysteries. If anything, the answers are often even more disturbing than the questions.

Like the manga and video games on which it is based, When They Cry makes use of an unusual clash of art styles to increase the tension and terror. Most of the series makes heavy use of the kawaii aesthetic — the cute, bouncy style most commonly associated with anime. This creates extra unease in the viewer when things start going badly for any of the characters and the style suddenly shifts into jagged lines and grotesque features. It’s a crude technique, but a highly effective one. Imagine a version of Nightmare on Elm Street in which any scene not featuring Freddy Krueger is filmed in the style of The Doodlebops, and you’ll have an idea of the effect.

BONUS FEATURES

None, unless you count several trailers.

A/V

Both audio and video are high-quality by DVD standards. The music is especially wonderful — I actually watched the opening credit sequence in its entirety for all 26 episodes, which is a rarity.

PACKAGING

The box set contains six discs in three double-sided slimpacks, all contained in a slipcase. The cover art on the slimpacks seems to replicate that of the single-volume releases from last year.

OVERALL

When They Cry will haunt your dreams for days. Anime and horror fans alike will find it an interesting experiment in their respective genres. A second series and three OAVs have been made; here’s hoping they receive an English release very soon indeed.

Review written by forum member MegaHentai.

You can buy this release from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

Publisher: Pixie Trix
Pages: 176
ISBN: n/a
UPC: n/a
MSRP: $10.99 US

PROS:

• strong humour
• excellent art
• pervy

CONS:

• limited availability
• shipping techniques need improvement

STORY

Ménage à 3 is one of the best webcomics running today. Many webcomics support themselves with occasional print collections of the strips; Ménage à 3 released its first earlier this year.

Wanna-be comic book artist Gary lives in Montreal, where he works in a call center. He comes home from work one day to learn that his two roommates are moving out so they can get a place of their own. With no other way to pay his rent, Gary quickly takes on two new roomies — and as luck would have it, they’re both gorgeous women. Zii is a rock musician with a taste for hot man-on-man action.

(Click to enlarge)

Blonde amazon Didi has the body of a goddess and the personality of an angel. She is enormously popular with the boys, as well as the customers at the restaurant where she works and she also enjoys dancing.

(Click image to enlarge)

It’s not a particularly strong premise, but writers Gisèle Lagacé and David “Dave Zero” Lumsdon work miracles with it. Ménage à 3 presents a kind of sexually-idealized worldview; nearly everyone has some kind of kink, and the majority of characters are bisexual. Zii’s obsession with gay men is a particularly effective running gag throughout the series.

(Click image to enlarge)

(Click image to enlarge)

The series is presented in a series of strips, usually four panels each, which connect together into story arcs. The overall storyline sees the three main characters getting to know each other. Zii learns that Gary is a 29-year-old virgin, and vows to get him laid. Didi runs into an old boyfriend and brings him home for a night of fun and frolic. Zii runs into an old girlfriend, and inadvertently handcuffs her to Gary. Didi comes to a stunning realization about her sexuality, but manages to get the details wrong. It’s a lot like what Three’s Company might have looked like if it had been (a) shown on cable and (b) actually funny.

ART

Lagacé doubles as the series artist. The art features a lot of clean linework, sort of like something Dan DeCarlo might have produced if he’d been heavily influenced by anime. Throughout the series, Lagacé shows a strong ability to translate physical comedy to the printed page. All art is presented in black and white.

AVAILABILITY

Ménage à 3 Volume 1 is sold only through the series’ website via mail order. PayPal is preferred, but money orders can be negotiated. The high-end Special Edition, which came with four colour postcards and the creators’ signatures, was limited to pre-orders only, and is no longer in print.

SHIPPING

I wouldn’t normally bring this up in a review, but it seems relevant for a company that distributes its product only by mail order. The books are shipped in bubble-wrap envelopes that are slightly too small for the job. My copy arrived with significant crumpling on the upper spine, as though the book had ben dropped on that corner. I’m not sure what the solution to this problem might be; larger envelopes would be a good experiment for the eventual Volume 2, though the cardboard packages used by Amazon and Best Buy might be overkill for a self-publisher.

OVERALL

Ménage à 3 Volume 1 is highly recommended for those who like their humour pervy and frequent. Most of the material in the book is available for free online, but the new long-form chapter is funny on its own — and besides, you can never go wrong putting a few bucks in the pockets of independent artists.

Review written by forum member MegaHentai.

Region: A
Discs: 2
Length: 70 minutes
Video: 1080i, 1.78:1
Audio: English DTS-HD High Resolution 5.1 (Director’s Cut), English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (Episodes)
Subtitles: English
UPC: 883929085057
ISBN: 1419885219
MSRP: $29.99 US

PROS:

• the boys from The Dwarf are back!
• improved acting
• excellent effects
• plentiful bonuses

CONS:

• overused plot device
• inaccessible to newcomers
• several jokes don’t work

MAIN FEATURE

First things first: if you have not seen the first eight seasons of Red Dwarf, go watch them now. You won’t regret it, and it’s the only way this review will be of any use to you, because there’s no other way you’ll understand or appreciate the disc we’re talking about today. Come back once you’ve got the series under your belt.

Right, that just leaves us Dwarfers here.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth picks up, both in storyline and in real life, nine years after the end of the eighth season. Lister, Kryten, Rimmer and Cat are the sole occupants of the Red Dwarf ship. We learn that Kochanski has died, Kryten is on holiday, and there is a problem with the ship’s water supply. This starts a chain of events which eventually sees the crew leap through a dimensional rift and wind up on Earth in 2009. They quickly discover that in this universe (presumably ours), they are mere characters in a TV show, and there is a good chance they will be dead very soon. To save themselves, they must find their creator and convince him to change his mind.

If you haven’t seen Back to Earth yet, here’s a word of warning: in all likelihood, your first viewing of it will be thoroughly unpleasant. (Indeed, the cast and crew report similar reactions upon first reading the script.) The “fictional characters in the real world” premise has been done many times before, will be done many times more, and is usually about 10-15% as interesting or clever as writers and directors think it is. In this case, the humour value of it wears out after about a minute. Writer/director Doug Naylor explains his reasons for going this route in one of the bonus features, and you’ll probably be willing to forgive the whole thing once you get to the end and see where it’s all headed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the material itself is extremely weak, especially by Red Dwarf standards.

Two things save this part of the show: a decent Blade Runner parody, and some truly excellent acting from the main cast. All four have improved their craft greatly in the past nine years, with Craig Charles having gained the most ground, presumably due to his new role on Coronation Street. Chris Barrie is still the best of the bunch, though; his one-man-symphony bit early in the series is hysterical.

A/V

The picture and sound are crystal clear on these discs. During the various bonus features, much is made of the use of Red One cameras during shooting, and they certainly seem to have done their job admirably. I’m not sure why 1080i was deemed sufficient for the video on a Blu-Ray, nor why only those scenes added for the Director’s Cut use DTS HD 5.1 audio, but these are minor quibbles that should be unnoticeable during viewing.

BONUS FEATURES

The bonus features take up the entire second disc of the set. The two-part making-of doc is fully worthwhile, and the “Smeg Ups” blooper reel is a lot of fun. The funniest feature is probably Chris Barrie’s commercial for the new Carbug. Other features include a pair of commentary tracks, deleted scenes, trailers, and an Easter Egg. (On the “Behind the Scenes Web Videos” menu on Disc 2, highlight “Cat Always Lands on his Feet” and press Right on your remote.)

OVERALL

Back to Earth is a must for any Red Dwarf fan, but it’s not something you’ll likely enjoy the first time around. In the bonus features, the cast and director make thinly-veiled pleas for another season of the series. If that does come to pass, we can only hope that more time will be spent massaging the script into something that is both clever and funny, rather than only one or the other at any given moment.

Review written by forum member MegaHentai.

You can buy this disc from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk