America: The Story Of Us: Millennium
DVD | Instant Video
Narrated by Liev Schreiber
History Channel
Release Date: July 5, 2011

America: The Story Of Us: Millennium is the last of this series that explores how The United States came to be the the wonderful country that we see today. Exploring the past and reviving it in a new form for current generations to enjoy, The History Channel has breathed new life into some of the greatest achievements in human history. This final disc is broken into two episodes that bring this wonderful journey to an end…so to speak.

In the first section, “Superpower,” the viewer gets to see how much America changed in the years right after World War II. We begin with the Interstate Highway System that created safer roads by which industries could transport their goods to the rural parts of the country. This, in turn, causes a housing boom in what is to become suburban America. Which leads to the coming of the Baby Boomers. And using the community of Levittown, New York as an example of how these areas popped up after the war to accommodate the returning soldiers, this episode explains how these manufactured communities created entirely new cities and towns and even helped populate some of the more remote regions of the country. This was a time of many changes, which leads us directly to the next installment in the series.

Rewind This, a Kickstarter-funded documentary about the massive financial and cultural impact videocassettes had on the international film industry and the lives of hungry movie geeks looking for quality thrills on a Friday night, has a new trailer out today.

You can watch it here below.

Directed by newcomer Josh Johnson, Rewind This features interviews with many individuals who greatly benefited from the VHS boom of the 1980s and 90s including The Sweet Hereafter director Atom Egoyan, Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener, Troma Films honcho Lloyd Kaufman, Full Moon Video head Charles Band, David Gregory of Severin Films, online film critic Drew McWeeny, and many others not appearing in the trailer. Johnson has assembled a fantastic line-up of filmmakers, writers, fans, and a few of the video store owners and clerks who helped bring these black plastic rectangular boxes of wonderment to the masses and alter irrevocably alter the landscape of film production and distribution forever.

America: The Story Of Us: Rebels
DVD | Instant Video
Narrated by Liev Schreiber
History Channel
Release Date: August 16, 2011

This is the first time I have been asked to review something from a channel that I watch more than any other. I loved this mini-series when it came out but watching it without commercials is far superior to my original viewing. I was very excited to have this opportunity to spend an evening watching and writing about America: The Story Of Us: Rebels.

History Channel does an excellent job of bringing the story to life and allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in it on every available level. I love the way the storyboards in this initial episode are set to show the settlements being built and the population increasing and expanding throughout the new world. We see how the cultivation of tobacco positively impacted the settlers and allowed them to thrive in the harsh new land. Showing how the native tribes helped these early settlers grow food and hunt in order to survive, the first part of this episode really concentrates on how these hardy folk adapted to their new country.

People tend to forget, or have the memory surgically removed from their brains, that fifteen years ago we saw Superman battle Brainiac, Lex Luthor, and Doomsday on the big screen without the benefit of his trademark costume or even the ability to fly. The possibility that a universally adored icon of comic book heroics could have gone such a revisionist undertaking once is enough to send the most ardent Superman fans into therapy.

Had all the pieces fallen into place in the summer of 1998 Warner Bros. would have brought to the world the Last Son of Krypton’s biggest – and potentially strangest – movie adventure to date: Superman Lives, directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay credited to several different writers including independent filmmaker/geek icon/current critical pariah Kevin Smith and Wesley Strick (Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear), with no less than Nicolas Cage in the title role of the greatest hero of the DC Universe. Yes friends, this movie almost happened, except it didn’t happen.

Harlem Street Singer – The Reverend Gary Davis Story is a new documentary that tells the story of Gary Davis, one of the most underrated musicians of our time. Though Davis has had a huge influence on many well known musicians including Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane, David Bromberg, Bob Dylan, Woody Mann, Dave Van Ronk, and Townes van Zandt, his story has gone virtually unknown until now.

The first official screening of the film will take place this Friday, January 25, 2013, at 6:30pm at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA. The screening will be followed by a live performance by Woody Mann, Paul Rishell, and Annie Raines.