THE SHOW:

The Who: The Vegas Job has the best backstory to not be featured on a DVD. According to the back cover copy, this concert was part of a large event in October 1999. An internet technology company organized a day-long concert under the claim that they'd be broadcasting the entire thing to the computers of a billion people around the world. The Who hadn't played together in three years, and so it was going to be a triumphant kick-off to a whole new, five-piece incarnation of the band. (Fans of Pete Townshend who have followed his Lifehouse concept over the years will instantly see how this world-wide, direct-to-your-homes broadcast would have appealed to him.) Little did anyone know that the company running the show was ahead of the "What...Read the entire review

For those with a fondness for '50s sci-fi movies, the short-lived TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954-55) is a pleasant surprise. Science fiction and fantasy television from the late-1940s through most of the fifties tended to be awfully cheap and unambitious. Tales of Tomorrow, for instance, was fairly well-written but kinescoped live with actors standing in front of sets that often resembled painted cardboard. Even the much-loved Adventures of Superman, for all its nostalgia value, was a penny-pinching series notable for its terrible visual effects (when it had them at all), and it shied away from the fantastic, stories that would have cost an extra $100 to make.

But Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (or as its announcer calls it, "Rocky Jones, Spa...Read the entire review

Passport has released a five disc set of Buster Keaton films under thetitle Comedy Legend:  Buster Keaton.   I'm a hugeKeaton fan, and I always greet the prospect of a set of his work with eagerexcitement.  Unfortunately this isn't a set to get excited about. Most of these have been released before in much better versions, and thetwo sound features are not very good.

Disc One:

The Garage (1919): This was thelast film that Fatty made for Comique. Buster and Fatty work in a garagethat doubles as the local police station and fire house. Mayhem reigns.

Neighbors (1920): A lot of slapstickis included in this modern-age Romeo and Juliet story.  Buster andhis girlfriend live in adjacent buildings in New York, separated by...Read the entire review

Depending on how you look at it, disco was either the bane of the music business, or a natural expression of the free and highly hedonistic 1970s. As the socially inflammatory 60s gave way to the self-centered sentiments of the Me Decade, America was looking for the appropriate soundtrack to commemorate the shift. The pure pop of the British Invasion had long given way to the far more searing sentiments of the acid rock sound, and soul seemed bathed in too man strings and strangely saccharine sap. Heavy metal was making gains, with groups like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath guiding disaffected teens like a power chord Pied Piper, as "progressive" groups like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer were pushing the limits of what audiences would tolerate in the way of instrumental classicism.

So it's relatively shocking that the two biggest musical forces in the 70s came from decided outside influences. Pun...Read the entire review