SNL!! TELL!! BLADE!! GEORGE!! Bugs, Popeye & Superman!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

I am – Hercules!!

Tell Me You Love Me: The Complete First Season was, for my money, last year’s second-best new series. Insightful, alluring, well-considered, ground-breaking and fearless in its depiction of intimacy. HBO’s finest series this side of “The Wire” mesmerizes with perhaps the most honest scripted look at the American bedroom to grace a screen of any size. Brims with suspense. Makes you think. Also? Lots of hot screwing!

David Goyer, who wrote and directed “Blade III” and created CBS’ “Threshold,” followed up with 2006’s Blade: The Series. What thought the critics? Variety said:

… Picking up, unfortunately, where the "Blade" movies left off, Kirk "Sticky" Jones offers a fair Wesley Snipes impersonation as the half-vampire hunter blessed with "all of their strengths, none of their weaknesses." Even with comicbook pedigreed producers, however, there's more emphasis on noise than smarts here, proving the film-to-TV leap by an earlier vampire slayer, Buffy, is more difficult than it looks. David Goyer, who wrote all three "Blade" films and directed the third, is joined by comics scribe Geoff Johns, but the two-hour premiere still feels more like a bland swig of plasma than the bloody romp that it ought to be. …

The Hollywood Reporter said:

… In its two-hour launch, "Blade" shows itself to be less driven by plot than a series of violent, revenge-driven, oft-graphic confrontations. … just dandy for comic book vampire fans and must-flee TV for the rest of us.…

TV Guide said:

Normally I'm a sucker for a good bloodsucker, but I've seen paper cuts go deeper than Blade, the toothless new TV version of the comic-book-turned-film franchise … Where Buffy the Vampire Slayer took a mediocre film and elevated it to TV art, Blade doesn't even try to improve on the loud, flashily hollow movies. It's just more of the same martial artlessness. I kept expecting to see Batman-style OOF! BAM! graphics on screen. …

The New York Times said:

… surprisingly inoffensive …

The Los Angeles Times said:

… It's not as pop-culturally knowing as "Buffy," which some might account a good thing, but the action is active and the suspense fairly suspenseful. (There's a little too much slo-mo for my taste, but that is just the price of watching an action show in 2006.) …

The Boston Globe said:

… It's not just Blade's dark sunglasses and mournful leather coat that give him away; his delivery is so wooden it could kill a vampire for all eternity. … too dreary and weary for its own good. …

The Boston Herald said:

… Those thirsting for action will find it in quick, unsatisfying bursts. Many of the stunts are a cross between a low-budget “Matrix” and a Wirework 101 class. The pacing of the two-hour debut is so slow that you will pray for daybreak. Even die-hard “Blade” fans will find little to sink their teeth into. …

The San Jose Mercury News said:

… comes up more than a bit short. …

The Philadelphia Inquirer said:

… Despite the loud music and all the supposedly ominous foolishness, blood that even spatters the camera lenses, and a sexy proto-vamp who often manages to wear almost no clothes (OK, maybe not despite her), I kind of liked the stupid thing. …

The Detroit Free Press said:

… a tediously bloody bore. … Those feature films may have been thudding, flashily overwrought nonsense, but they're sophisticated entertainment by comparison to the dreary new TV series … What "Blade: The Series" desperately needs and doesn't have is a playfully dark sense of humor to alleviate the show's relentless onslaught of graphically violent, lowest-common-denominator bloodsucking schlock. And it sure doesn't help that Jones also portrays black-clad Blade with negative flair in a perpetual droning monotone, grunting out such morsels of bad dialogue as, "Sun's down. Time to make some friends." Not with "Blade: The TV Series" he won't.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said:

The leap from big screen movie franchise to small screen hopeful is a successful one for Spike TV's "Blade: The Series" … many of the effects are just as well-done in the series, whether it's the "ashing" or flaming disintegration that marks the death of each vampire slain, the razzle-dazzle weapons of artificial sunlight Blade deploys, or the superhuman leaps from 20th floor to street level, which the vampires routinely perform. Although most viewers will notice a scale-down in the scope of effects and stunts, the style, the look and the impact are much the same as in the films. …

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel said:

… For a series named "Blade" on a channel called Spike, basic cable's latest drama is surprisingly lacking in edge. … the pilot has little suspense and not a hint of the humor and humanity that made hits of "Buffy" and "Angel." Only Nelson Lee ("Oz," "Traffic"), as Blade's tech-wizard buddy, Shen, and Randy Quaid, as a professorial type, display much life. And Quaid's just a guest star. Visually, the pilot is so dark it's sometimes hard to figure out what's happening. Repellent as Marcus is, his silver-blond hair at least provides a relief from the gloom. Of minor hometown interest is the product placement of Harley-Davidson's sleek, midnight-black VRSCD Night Rod motorcycle, Blade's wheels of choice. It has more personality than some of the characters.

Hercules The Strong said:

… Those who thought a Marvel superhero series could never produce characters as listless and uninspired as those populating “Mutant X” could find themselves unpleasantly surprised. A TV-size budget - and a grunty rap artist named Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones pinch-staking for Wesley Snipes - do this wobbly franchise no favors. It’s pretty dull going, and shockingly so for a show about fight-happy Detroit-dwellers with superpowers. …

Outlaw Vern said:

… get past the fact that it's a guy playing Blade instead of THE REAL Blade, and you've got a good fuckin TV show. … If you like the character Blade, you will probaly like this show. …

Don’t buy Academy Award Animation Collection: 15 Winners, which goes for $14.99.

Go big and pony up the $29.99 for Academy Award Animation Collection: 15 Winners & 26 Nominees. 41 cartoons means more bang for your buck, and – candidly – the nominees on this set are, on average, a lot cooler and funnier than the winners. Oscar-winning shorts featured on both the $14.99 and $29.99 sets: 1) The Milky Way (1940; d: Rudolph Ising), 2) Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 3) Mouse Trouble (1944; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 4) Quiet Please! (1945; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 5) The Cat Concerto (1946; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 6) Tweetie Pie (1947; d: Friz Freleng; w: Michael Maltese & Tedd Pierce; WB), 7) The Little Orphan (1948; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 8) For Scent-Imental Reasons (1949; d: Chuck Jones; w: Michael Maltese; WB, Pepe Le Pew), 9) So Much for so Little (1949; d: Chuck Jones; w: Chuck Jones & Friz Freleng; Warner Brothers short), 10) Two Mouseketeers (1951; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 11) Johann Mouse (1952; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry), 12) Speedy Gonzales (1955; d: Friz Freleng; w: Warren Foster; WB), 13) Birds Anonymous (1957; d: Friz Freleng; w: Warren Foster; WB, Tweety & Sylvester), 14) Knighty-Knight Bugs (1958; d: Friz Freleng; w: Warren Foster; WB, Bugs Bunny) 15) The Dot and the Line (1965; d: Chuck Jones; MGM cartoon) And why two winners in 1949? “So Much For So Little,” an informational piece designed to curb the appalling infant mortality rate of the era, won the Oscar for “best documentary short.” “Scent-Imental” won “best animated short.” (A big year for the amazing Chuck Jones!) Only the $29.99 set contains all those plus these Oscar-nominated shorts: 1) Popeye The Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor (1936; d: Dave Fleischer; Paramount/Fleischer) 2) Peace On Earth (1939; d: Hugh Harman; MGM)* 3) A Wild Hare (1940; d: Tex Avery; w: Rich Hogan; WB, Bugs Bunny) 4) Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941; d: Friz Freleng; w: Michael Maltese; WB, Bugs Bunny)* 5) Night Before Christmas, The (1941; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry) 6) Rhapsody In Rivets (1941; d: Friz Freleng; w: Michael Maltese; WB)* 7) Superman (1941; d: Dave Fleischer; w: Seymour Kneitel & I. Sparber; Paramount/Fleischer) 8) Greetings, Bait (1943; d: Friz Freleng; w: Tedd Pierce; WB)* 9) Swooner Crooner (1944; d: Frank Tashlin; Warren Foster; WB, Porky Pig)* 10) Life With Feathers (1945; d: Friz Freleng; w: Tedd Pierce; WB, Sylvester)* 11) Walky Talky Hawky (1946; d: Robert McKimson; w: Warren Foster; WB, Foghorn Leghorn) 12) Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Mouse (1947; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry) 13) Mouse Wreckers (1948; d: Chuck Jones; w: Michael Maltese; WB, Hubie & Bertie) 14) Hatch Up Your Troubles (1949; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Tom & Jerry) 15) From A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1953; d: Chuck Jones; w: Michael Maltese; WB, Ralph Philips)* 16) Sandy Claws (1954; d: Friz Freleng; w: Arthur Davis & Warren Foster; WB, Tweety & Sylvester)* 17) Good Will To Men (1955; w&d: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera; MGM, Hanna Barbera)* 18) One Droopy Knight (1957; d: Michael Lah; w: Homer Brightman; MGM, Droopy) 19) Tabasco Road (1957; d: Robert McKimson; w: Tedd Pierce; WB, Speedy Gonzalas) 20) Mexicali Schmoes (1959; d: Friz Freleng; w: Warren Foster; WB, Speedy Gonzalas) 21) Mouse And Garden (1960; d: Friz Freleng; w: Warren Foster; WB, The Honeymousers) 22) High Note (1960; d: Chuck Jones; w: Michael Maltese; WB)* 23) Pied Piper Of Guadalupe (1961; d: Friz Freleng; w: John W. Dunn; WB, Speedy Gonzalas) 24) Beep Prepared (1961; d: Chuck Jones; w: John W. Dunn & Chuck Jones; WB, Road Runner)* 25) Nelly's Folly (1961; d: Chuck Jones; w: David Detiege & Chuck Jones; WB)* 26) Now Hear This (1962; d: Chuck Jones; w: John W. Dunn & Chuck Jones; WB)* *new to DVD

Half a decade after “The Adventures of Bullwinkle” went off the air, the minds and voices responsible reunited for ABC’s Saturday morning cartoon half-hour George of the Jungle , a hilarious parody of the “Tarzan” movies. One of the best running jokes was George’s ape sidekick was a good deal smarter than the title character. Much funnier than the 1997 Brendan Fraser movie – but then it would kind of have to be, wouldn’t it? George only contributed one weekly segment to the 17-episode series that bore his name. Two other shorts – “Tom Slick,” about a patriotic race-car daredevil and “Super Chicken,” about a fowl who got his superpowers by emptying a martini glass – filled out each half-hour.

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

47% Off!! $31.49 House: Season One $31.49 House: Season Two $31.49 House: Season Three

Congrats to all who picked up I-Spy: Season One and I-Spy: Season Two at $13.99 a week ago, as the price has already risen to $14.99!! (Still a pretty good price, though, for 28 one-hour episodes on five discs!)

The third and final and completely wonderful third season of “Veronica Mars” (the one with the 12-minute fourth-season “Veronica FBI” pilot among its extras) is still selling at the moment $19.99!! That’s 67% Off!! (It was $37.99 two weeks ago.) The first two seasons have been momentarily encheapened as well: $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season One <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!! $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season Two <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!! $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season Three <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!!