Here at CHUD, we get a lot of DVDs. Like, A LOT. We handle as many as we can, but sometimes, the discs pile up in the Sewer and with all the toxic waste down here, they can start to get a little…well…hot. When that happens, we gotta hit the purge button and clear them out before the whole joint melts down.
Counting Cars – Season 1 (Buy It Here)
Counting Cars is the third spinoff from Pawn Stars, and if you ever caught any episodes where Danny “The Count” Coker, appeared on that show, you’d know that giving him his own show, about his custom car and bike business in Las Vegas, was a no brainer. The Count is a good-natured biker dude who loves cars, loves buying and flipping them, and loves driving his employees crazy with tight deadlines, tight budgets, and his propensity to ignore their best advice when it comes to running his business, Count’s Kustoms. He’s got an insane car collection, and spends a lot of his time out on the streets of Vegas with his manager, Kevin, looking for classic cars to buy and flip. Oftentimes he’ll see a car in motion and follow it, trying to get the attention of the owner until he can get him to pull over.
When not engaged in business, there are some vignettes of the Count out with his crew, Scott, his general manager, Roli, a Finnish detailer, and Horny Mike, a painter with fetish for putting horns on everything he owns, in various situations. It’s a fun show and like Pawn Stars, very breezy, easy to watch fare.
How Hot Is It?
This offering is only the 13 episodes from Season 1, and aside from those, you get 19 2-3 minute bonus scenes. History isn’t rerunning this show like it is Pawn Stars yet due to it being so new. So if you love the show and must have it, don’t drop more than $15 for it because really, this isn’t the type of show to collect, it’s junk food for TV. I watch the show (seen every episode) but this isn’t something that I would collect. Catch the reruns on History when they run them.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
Fringe – Season 5 (Buy It Here)
Excellent genre show that I feel is the best heir to X-Files – a show to which it was invariably compared – that got to end on its own terms after some iffy chances of return in earlier seasons. I didn’t watch Fringe during its initial run. I spent last fall catching up on it as it neared the end of its run and timed my completion of the show with its own completion this past January. I friggin’ loved the show. And it’s one of those rare shows (especially genre shows) that not only nailed its finale, but paid suitable homage to its own history (that assault on the Observer compound with all the old creepy crawlies and hazardous toxins was genius). That finale had me misty, to be honest. I have no complaints about the length of Fringe’s run, I think five seasons was perfect, and there certainly wasn’t nearly as much frustrating narrative padding as in other series, such as the aforementioned X-Files and a certain island-themed show…
Cast was stellar, particularly John Noble as Walter. Show absolutely doesn’t happen without him. Anna Torv was tough and engaging (all that talk about her being wooden in earlier seasons is BS to me), and didn’t need to play up her obvious sexiness, a great protagonist. Joshua Jackson? Surprisingly good. I wasn’t a Dawson’s Creek guy, but I wouldn’t have figured him to be as good as he was. This final season was simultaneously epic, yet confined often in that ambered lab, and a great capper to a mythology that was very inventive. I also like that the show wasn’t afraid to take chances, like each season having it’s own distinct situation, and having entire episodes focus on the alternate universe characters.
How Hot Is It?
This is a show to collect. Set has four discs with final 13 episodes that look great. Special features include a couple of deleted scenes, commentary by exec producer J.H. Wyman and editor Jon Dudkowski on the episode, “Black Blotter”, a featurette on the 2012 San Diego Comic Con panel that runs 30 minutes, a featuerette on the ending of Fringe that runs to 21 minutes, a gag reel and digital script of the series finale, “An Enemy of Fate.” More commentaries and special features would have been welcome, considering this is the final season and all. But the show is good and you’ll probably be glad to have this in your collection.
Rating:
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
Titanic at 100: Mystery Solved (Buy it Here)
Just when you thought James Cameron had already answered everything, the most comprehensive mapping expedition of the Titanic wreck site set out to commemorate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking. Whereas previous expeditions had merely used ROVs to film sections of the wreck at random, this new expedition is loaded with experts and top of the line equipment, headed up by Chris Davino, the president of RMS Titanic, Inc., which owns the salvage rights. Couple of things elevate this documentary from others that have been done recently, including one in 2005, also by History. The first is that they’re using robotic AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) to grid map the entire 15 square mile wreck site with sonar. The AUVs need no tethers to the surface and can work independently. The sonar maps they return with are astounding, unearthing huge sections of the wreck that weren’t even known to exist.
The other is that they use these hyper-detailed results and some independent experimentation on some steel and rivets analogous to what was used on Titanic herself to address some lingering issues about whether or not Titanic was shoddily constructed. They also us a large “virtual hangar” to digitally reconstruct the wreck, incorporating the new data they’ve amassed about the newly discovered sections. It gets into cornball territory when you ha the experts manipulating the huge model in a virtual reality setting, but that’s a minor gripe.
How Hot Is It?
I see this rerun on History sometimes, but if you’re a Titanic nut (and hey, who isn’t?), then the $10 asking price on Amazon ain’t too bad. No special features whatsoever.
Rating:
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
Iron Doors (Rent It Here)
Imagine my surprise when I came across a review for Iron Doors, a very small indie pic with essentially one set and one actor (for the majority anyway), by my esteemed colleague, Joshua Miller at the 2010 LA 3D Film Festival, a fest that we attended together. I obviously missed that review (we both did a couple), but it will let you know that either the DVD for Iron Doors has been sitting idle in our review pile for way longer than I thought possible, or it sat on its production company’s shelf for a good couple of years. Regardless, I grabbed a looksee at the non-3D DVD. I agree with most everything ole Wormy had to say, except there’s no way I give this film 7 out of 10 (or 3.5 stars out of 5 as the case may be here). Why? Because although Axel Wedekind, Mark in the movie, does an admirable job of carrying the film, which plays out like a torturous Saw-esque game, it has none of the logic of one of Jigsaw’s traps and contains such a complete WTF? ending, that it invalidates most everything that was good about the movie IMO.
Up until that ending, I was with the film and what it was trying to do, namely play out the desperate situation of Mark, a yuppie type having been deposited in a vault with a door the size of Zambia and no memory of how he got there and seemingly no way out. It seemed to be the machinations of some serial killer bastard who liked to watch his victims slowly die. I can’t say whether or not that turned out to be the case, but the ending makes no goddamned sense, nor does any of the steps Mark took and clues that were provided for him to advance from the first vault. You can let some things go in a movie, even motivations of seen or unseen characters up to a point, but when they add up to a big “fuck you” like Iron Doors does, that shit don’t fly.
How Hot Is It?
However hot as “fuck you” gets. If you’re curious, watch the Amazon Instant Video for $3.99. The DVD for $14.99 is a sucker bet.
Rating:
Out of a Possible 5 Stars