The Dick Cavett Show Comic Legends (Shout! Factory-2006) Everybody loves Dick, and these comic legends are not above getting hep to the times and letting it all hang out. Bob Hope, for instance, laments that he hasn’t taken the time to read more books. And a weary Lucille Ball, when asked about the Women’s Liberation … Continue reading
MTV Video Music Awards Rock (Paramount-2003) and Hip-Pop (Paramount-2003) As always, Chris Rock says it best. While hosting the MTV Awards in 1997, he observes that a good video can lead you to like a bad song. And that’s pretty much what this MTV Awards collection – saluting this hip, attitudinal underdog of awards shows – should be all … Continue reading
Charles in Charge The Complete First Season (1984-1985) (Universal-2006) Scott Baio, formerly of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi fame, plays Charles, a stylin’ mid-80s college student (dig those skinny ties, suspenders and sweater vests) who decides to pay for his tuition and get free board by playing nanny for a suburban couple and their group of precocious kids. It … Continue reading
ALYSON HANNIGAN MAKES HER DATES by Brad Balfour Though 29-year-old actress Alyson Hannigan made her rep as Willow Rosenberg, the dorky lesbian sorceress pal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she has really established herself as a new comic talent through her work in films like those in the American Pie series of films and her new TV show How … Continue reading
The Electric Company The Best of the Electric Company (Shout! Factory-2006) HEY, YOU GUYS! Just when you thought you couldn’t recapture any more of your TV-watching childhood, The Electric Company has surprisingly and blessedly come to DVD. Nowhere near as good as you remember it – with crude graphics, cheesy synthesizers and overlong segments (it’s stuffed to the … Continue reading
I Love Lucy The Complete Fourth Season (1954-1955) (Paramount-2005) Do we really love Lucy, or have we been brainwashed to think we do, like in The Manchurian Candidate? When the laughter subsides, is Lucy truly deserving of our love? Is she as overwhelmingly funny as we are led to believe? Does the Empress have no clown … Continue reading
Music Scene The Best of 1969-1970 (Volumes 1 & 2) (MPI Home Video-2000) The train wreck that is Music Scene – an uncomfortable, pre-Saturday Night Live mix of youthful comedy and popular music – is worth watching if only for its noble attempt to do what it did before what it did was done right. This ABC variety … Continue reading
Josh Radnor Have You Met Josh? by Jay S. Jacobs The sitcom as an art form had reached a low place recently, but suddenly in the past year there is a stirring of new life in those old bones. There are still too few funny series out there, but in 2005 a group of shows have … Continue reading
Jeremy Piven Busting Out Into A Hollywood Leading Man By Marcie Somers It’s 10 a.m. in Los Angeles and Jeremy Piven’s day has long since begun. He’s had several meetings and reviewed his lines before he heads to a rehearsal for his hit TV show, Entourage. After that, he’s off to the American Music Awards. In … Continue reading
Teddy Geiger Life is a Marathon by Abraham Kuranga He’s got what every seventeen-year-old boy wants. What’s that, you say? It is a legion of adoring fans – who just happen to be teenage girls and some twenty somethings – all with raging hormones. Yeah, that’s the world of Teddy Geiger. Or at least it … Continue reading
