Gunsmoke: The Fifteenth Season, Volume One <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> Not hot on its heels but still less than a year after the CBS/Paramount release of Gunsmoke: The Thirteenth Season comes Season Fourteen. After assuming for years that the DVD format would be dead long before the label's run made it to The Twentieth and Final Season of Gunsmoke, I'm actually starting to think they might just make it, at least they can if they manage to crank out the last the last six years over the next three or so. As headlines continue to herald the end of hard media (e.g., Samsung's announcement about stopping manufacturing of Blu-ray and 4K players), the reality is that mass numbers of consumers still like DVD and Blu-ray. The aggressiveness of the industry in pushing streaming has undeniably taken hold, but as an increasingly niche but still heartily viable market, there's no reason both formats can't hang on into the foreseeable future. I've been r...Read the entire review »

Gunsmoke: The Fifteenth Season, Volume Two <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> Not hot on its heels but still less than a year after the CBS/Paramount release of Gunsmoke: The Thirteenth Season comes Season Fourteen. After assuming for years that the DVD format would be dead long before the label's run made it to The Twentieth and Final Season of Gunsmoke, I'm actually starting to think they might just make it, at least they can if they manage to crank out the last the last six years over the next three or so. As headlines continue to herald the end of hard media (e.g., Samsung's announcement about stopping manufacturing of Blu-ray and 4K players), the reality is that mass numbers of consumers still like DVD and Blu-ray. The aggressiveness of the industry in pushing streaming has undeniably taken hold, but as an increasingly niche but still heartily viable market, there's no reason both formats can't hang on into the foreseeable future. I've been r...Read the entire review »

Shaft (Blu-ray) <small>by Ryan Keefer</small><hr /> The Movie: I'm not going to lie, I glossed over the fact that several moons ago, Samuel L. Jackson decided to do a reboot of Shaft, the 1971 Richard Roundtree film that was the closest thing to a film franchise the African American community has had. I liked the original, thought the remake could have been silly and ignored it. And I knew little about the 2019 film. Jackson was in it? Roundtree too? Why reboot something 20 years ago? Then it dawned on me: Shaft can be a pop-pop too! The latest Shaft was written by Kenya Barris (Black-ish and Alex Barnow (The Goldbergs) and directed by Tim Story (Ride Along). It looks at the latest Shaft named JJ (Jessie T. Usher, Indepedence Day: Resurgence), who was the son fr...Read the entire review »