Set in Boston and serving as a precursor to the wildly popular Boston Legal, The Practice debuted in 1997 and enjoyed its own success. Following attorney Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) as he struggles to keep his private practice afloat, the show is a fast-paced courtroom drama that uses every trick that creator David E. Kelley (Picket Fences, Ally McBeal) ever had up his sleeves.

It’s been ten years, and fans have been waiting and begging for a DVD release of the show. As of June 12, they will have to wait not longer. Called The Practice – Volume 1 (instead of Season 1) for a reason, the 4-disc set hold 13 episodes which did not actually air in the order you’ll find them in here. Originally written as a complete season, only six episodes aired before summer hiatus. The remaining seven episodes were interspersed throughout the second season. Here you’ll find them back to back, which is far more effective.

I have always been a fan of this show, and as such Volume 1 does not disappoint. Even after ten years, nothing feels dated or irrelevant. While it still borders on the massively over-dramatic and sensational, the show is still at its core a crime drama that draws you into the lives of the many characters present.

Camryn Manheim is completely identifiable as the character that made her famous, Ellenor Frutt, and Kelli Williams makes her Lindsey Dole the girl next door who will decimate you on the witness stand while blinking her doe-like eyes in your direction.

McDermott is actually hard to peg throughout the first few episodes and it is quite clear that he took some time in narrowing down exactly how to play the often conflicted Bobby Donnell. He is at different turns compassionate, caring, ruthless, and money-grubbing. The problem is that at first you can see him thinking out how to achieve these things and none of them are particularly effective. By episode five, though, he hits his stride and begins to own the show.

Keep an eye out for masterful guest-starring roles from John C. McGinley and Jane Kaczmarek. They steal the show in the several episodes they grace.

One big disappointment is the lack of extras. The only one is a paltry featurette that doesn’t feature much of anything.

The Practice also stars Michael Badalucco, Steve Harris, Lisa Gay Hamilton, and Lara Flynn Boyle.

The next time you decide to spend the night at one of those locally owned motels situated suspiciously in the middle of nowhere, be sure to check your room for the following items: poisonous snakes, flesh-eating rats, and an elaborate tunnel system created by the psychotic old lady who runs the joint. If your room contains one or more of the aforementioned items, run frantically through the surrounding woods until you stumble across someone who can help you locate the nearest redneck township. Heed my words, weary travelers!

The obscure 1986 genre travelogue Mountaintop Motel Massacre is yet another putrid blemish on the mom & pop lodging industry, portraying these unfortunate business people as impossibly disturbed individuals with an insatiable lust for murder, madness, and mayhem. Using Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho as a guideline, director Jim McCullough spreads his own unique hillbilly butter all over this painfully familiar slice of generic white bread. It's not the finest slab of cinema you'll ever pay money to witness, mind you, but it does manage to provide a rainy evening's worth of entertainment if you can overlook a set of wonky hand-crafted flaws.

After accidentally filleting her daughter for stupidly experimenting with the dark arts, Mountaintop Motel manager Evelyn Chambers slowly begins to lose what's left of her deranged little mind. To help soothe the voices rattling around inside her skull, she torments the paying customers with a nasty selection of bugs, critters, and reptiles. These diabolical activities soon become an insufferable bore, forcing this grandmotherly nut job to exponentially increase her psychotic tendencies. Using a dusty series of underground passages to accomplish her lofty goals, Evelyn effectively slices and dices her way through the odd collection of guests who have made the questionable decision to spend the night at the motel. Can they band together and stop this crazy old woman before she kills again?

Drenched in eerie atmosphere and scored with the noise scooped directly from a schizophrenic musician's nonsensical nightmare, Mountaintop Motel Massacre is a lot more interesting than it has any right to be. What passes for a story is basically an inbred redneck redux of Psycho, with a demented old lady in place of the immortal Anthony Perkins. Though the groundwork itself may seem very familiar to those who spend way too much time indoors, McCullough's execution of the material couldn't be more different. If you enjoy watching elderly people stumbling through narrow passageways, this flick was tailor-made just for you. Congratulations, loser!

Since this film was released by the notoriously bland New World Pictures, one shouldn't expect earth-shattering performances from its cast of pasty white unknowns. Anna Chappel, Major Brock, and Bill Thurman are probably the best of the bunch, turning in respectable if somewhat limp performances in their respective roles. The rest of the cast, sadly, is either wooden, forgettable, or just plain awful. To be fair, this is a low-budget slasher from the 1980's — expecting anything more is just silly. You know better than that, boy.

A friendly word of advice to horror buffs searching for buckets of blood and guts: don't bother. The violence found scattered throughout Mountaintop Motel Massacre is decent, yes, but it's certainly not what you'd expect from this kind of brainless genre release. That said, some of the murders are surprisingly gruesome, powered by some competent special effects work from somebody named Drew Edward Hunter. Kudos to you, kind sir, for giving this otherwise mediocre flick a shred of valuable street cred.

Jim McCullough's Mountaintop Motel Massacre is an oddity, and it should be approached as such. Expecting anything else would be an exercise in serious delusion. However, if you're someone who appreciates bizarre horror flicks from an era that seems to have an endless supply of them, perhaps this obscure outing is worth a look-see when there's nothing else to do with your spare time. Keep your expectations as low to the ground as possible, prepare yourself for some slower moments, and keep an eye on your tattered bathroom rug.

Who knows what kind of elderly freaks are lurking just beneath your soiled linoleum?

It doesn’t matter, you see? Tony got whacked/Tony went on as before — it doesn’t matter. That’s not what The Sopranos was about. Ever.

David Chase has said time and time again that The Sopranos is about family. Now you add that to the recurring theme of the show — criminal-level self-delusion — and you have your answer. It doesn’t matter.

The ultimate scene of the entire series actually happened the week before in Dr. Mefli’s office. She finally realizes what an abyss Tony is, that she has made no progress, that she has been used in the service of Tony’s dysfunction. She kicks Tony out acknowledging her failure, he turns to her declaring, without a hint of irony, that what she is doing is “immoral.” (Note how he instinctively starts the charade again with A.J.’s therapist.)

Tony is hopeless. Whether it was referring to himself as a “soldier” or a “captain of industry” he could always build a fortress of justification around himself. But what about the family? Carmella, whose conscience once tortured her and sent her to therapy and to her priest desperate for redemption doesn’t even think about it anymore; she just focuses on her real estate career. A.J., who for a brief moment seemed to gather up the courage to act in some way, is bought off with a BMW and two-bit job in the film business. Meadow is headed for a career in civil rights law, convinced that the horrendous criminality all around her is really just a reflection of society’s prejudices.

Their apparent happiness is just more self-delusion. Tony’s criminality and the need to live with it everyday has claimed its ultimate victims, the ones he most wanted to save. Whoever came through Holsten’s door didn’t matter. As Carmella from Season One might have said, they are all going to Hell. The moment of potential salvation is gone. One minute everything is fine, but once the moment for salvation is past, there is nothing but blackness. As Bobby Baccala says, “When it comes, you don’t even hear it.”

Three more things:

First, this marks the end of the Mafia as an American movie paradigm. How can it not? Even if you’re another Scorsese or Coppola, there is no way you top The Sopranos with a two-hour film, even if you add in four hours of sequels. The genre is done. Everything that could have been said has been said. (Except for the inevitable "courageous" film about a pair of gay wiseguys.)

Second, Gandolfini has pulled off what is almost certainly the greatest extended acting tour de force in history. Not an episode went by where I was not amazed by the pitch perfect emotions, manners, and delivery. Even in the episodes when the script was weak, Gandolfini sold me. Just flawless. His performance should be watched closely by every student of acting from now on.

Lastly, on a personal level I am very sad to have seen the last of these characters we shared for the last eight years, but all good things… And of course, I am already totally intrigued by John from Cincinnati. If anyone can top David Chase, it’s David Milch.

Written by Fumo Verde

What is globalization? We have all heard it mentioned in media sound bites, but do we really know what it’s all about? Joseph Stiglitz does and he’s here to explain it in 380 minutes across two DVDs. Stiglitz, who was Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank, and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics explains to us what the visions of globalization looked like and how it has measured up to those who had envisioned it from conception. This is a crash course in World Economics with a professor who has taught at the universities, such as Columbia, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about a final exam.

Stiglitz discusses the subject of globalization in a way even a clownshoe such as myself could understand. For those of us who hate math and recoil at the thought of economics, this DVD makes it palatable. Stiglitz isn’t an actor so don’t get ready for a charismatically charged discussion. I have to be honest and admit I fell asleep five times while watching it. This was like sitting in traffic court; if you can pay attention, you can actually learn something. What is being said in this two-disc set is the truth about globalization from one of its architects, and unfortunately he’s not telling us everything is coming up roses.

So why did globalization fail, Mr. Stiglitz? There were many reasons, two of which stuck with me. These were in the areas of subsidies and trade barriers or tariffs. The IMF and the World Bank come to developing countries and offer them loans for different reasons depending on each country’s problems. If that country accepts the loan, it has to follow certain rules, such as to cease subsidizing its agricultural industry. This happened to most of the underdeveloped countries and is still happening today.

Seventy percent of the people from those countries depend on agriculture for their survival. Once the subsidies stop, the farmers can only depend on what they can get out of the land. That’s when the trade barriers and tariffs for that country must be removed, another rule to follow if the country wants the loan. As the trade barriers come tumbling down, in come the industrialized nations to “invest.” The farmers have to sell their corn for a certain amount, 50 cents a pound. When the investing nation comes in, it doesn’t have to deal with regulations, so it can sell its corn for 10 cents a pound.

If the main idea of globalization was to make the world richer by bringing the third world into the first, undercutting them at the dinner table isn’t going to do it. The example above isn’t one I made up; it was how Stiglitz told it because that is the way it happened. Investors are making money and the first-world nations are seeing better economies, but making someone less off to better myself leaves me with an even more bitter taste in my mouth about world politics and the banks that finance them than I already had.

The section on “Global Financial Institutions” was revealing. If Wall Street wants to invest in a developing country and it has its eye on a candidate that will enact laws and regulations, which would benefit Wall Street, they will blackmail, by way of pulling out investments, the country into electing the person they want. If their candidate doesn’t win, the investment money dries up. An investment firm certainly has the right to put its money where it wants to, but to interfere with the democratic process of another country should be beyond a company’s limits, and Stiglitz lets you know why.

If you want to understand what may happen in the next decade, Where is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz? will help open your eyes and mind to what is really happening out there. From budget deficits to immigration woes, these discs cover the monetary ups and downs that have and may still occur in the not-so-far future. The information is awesome, sometimes overwhelming, but it is understandable. I wish the people who put this together with Mr. Stiglitz would put in some eye candy, pictures or scenes of other parts of the world, just to keep me awake. I understand the seriousness of the discussion, but if you are going to watch this, do it in segments and leave the herb alone. If you are looking for entertainment, this isn’t it.

We all keep saying politicians never answer the big questions, that’s because we as the people don’t ask those questions. This DVD set will get you motivated to ask those questions and it will give questions for you to ask. Stiglitz doesn’t have all the answers and he doesn’t imply it either, but he does cut through what we have all heard and gives honest assessments from what has happened, what is happening now, and what might happen if we don’t work out this ever-growing problem of a shrinking world. Globalization was supposed to help us all and it hasn’t.

Welcome Back, Kotter, arguably the defining sitcom of the mid- to late-1970s, starred popular stand-up comedian Gabe Kaplan as a teacher who returns to a tough Brooklyn high school to teach a class of delinquent remedial students. Kotter, it turns out, belonged to that class back in the day, and was part of the gang who gave it the deathless "sweathogs" nickname. After some initial reluctance, he wins over the class and becomes a friend and mentor to the students.

Specifically, Kotter becomes a friend and mentor to four students: Barbarino, Epstein, Washington, and the immortal Horshack, who inspired Skippy, Urkel, and several generations of sitcom nerds. Vinnie Barbarino was played by some guy named Travolta, and I find myself wondering whether he ever lived up to his potential. The four primary sweathogs were all great (who can forget Epstein's excuse notes from home?) but I wish they would have done something with the other students, who fade into the background in every episode.

Welcome Back, Kotter is probably most fondly remembered for the corny jokes with which Kotter tortured his wife (the adorable, and sadly underused, Marcia Strassman) at the beginning of each episode, and the stories about his fictional relatives with which he tortures her at the end. In contrast with another '70s show I reviewed the other day, The Ghost Busters, the moldy gags in Kotter were funny because the title character thought they were funny, not because they were amusing in themselves. Kaplan was no great actor, but he looked like he was enjoying himself.

So, the show was pretty good. Unfortunately, the first-season DVD set is a bit light on special features – pre-production screen tests, and a twenty-minute "making-of" documentary hosted by Strassman (who has aged very well) and featuring most of the non-Travolta cast members (who have not aged very well). But there are no audio commentaries, deleted scenes, vintage ads or outtakes. I even wish they'd included a feature about John Sebastian's classic theme song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976.

Am I being a little picky, in demanding more special features? As Barbarino would have said, "get off my case, toilet face."

Written by El Articulo Definido

In 1989 The Simpsons aired their Christmas special, and for many, this was something totally new, a depiction of a dysfunctional nuclear family that seemed more familiar to many families than what was depicted on typical sitcoms. In the beginning that show had dysfunction, but its popularity was largely due to its heart.

However, when that show was aired, not once do I remember it being compared to, what seems to me, its obvious predecessor, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. With Season One released as a Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection by Time Warner last week, it has become apparent to me what an overlooked treasure this show is.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was originally aired in 1972 and features the voice of Tom Bosley as Harry Boyle, an understanding father trying to understand a vastly changing world. His neighbor is conservative, way to the right, terrified of the communist threat to America, and thus runs a crack outfit of pseudo militants, The Vigilantes, bent on bringing justice and safety to their quiet neighborhood. And so, The Vigilantes stand as a great example of just one extreme.

His children, however, go to the opposite extreme. The two oldest children, Alice and Chet, serve to show the bleeding-heart liberalism that was prevalent in the 1970s. Just one example, is in an early episode in which the family suspects Harry of cheating with his secretary. They don’t believe him when he denies it, yet they try to understand why he would cheat, rather than chastise him for doing so. Of course, not once do they consider that he didn’t. In response Harry utters, “I get treated better around here when they think I’ve done wrong.” The largest, most prevalent theme when dealing with the kids is that Chet, at 22, refuses to get a job.

Is it a case of history repeating itself, as more and more kids are frightened of entering the workplace after college? Of course, it doesn’t help that there are few jobs waiting for them.

The youngest son, Jamie, who is voiced throughout the season by both Willie Ames and Jackie Earl Haley, seems to be a prototype for Family Ties’ Alex P. Keaton, and sign of what is to come in the ’80s. The young, entrepreneurial Jamie is constantly trying to sell whatever services he has for a little extra change, and even tries to barter up the value of a lost tooth, asking why the Tooth Fairy doesn’t account for inflation.

In the middle of all, is Mom. She is a mom of the past, dependent on house and husband, but is ruler of the roost at home. However, she is always supportive of both the kids and Harry. She is the sole voice of reason, even when no one is listening.

Overall, it is a very unique family dynamic that encapsulates the feelings of change spreading through the mass consciousness at the time. Alongside of all of this social commentary is an animation style that fits the show so well. It is very pared down, putting less emphasis on backgrounds, and more emphasis on characters, and with this minimalist approach the viewer is left with a less-is-more feeling.

In the end, the best way to describe it is as Family Guy living next door to American Dad with the heart, emotions, truth, and honesty of the first few seasons of The Simpsons. For those who remember this show, it is worth the purchase as a reminder of the past, and a reminder of the present as it holds up remarkably better than many sitcoms of the ’70s. That, in my mind is due to the themes taking precedence over the visual commitment of painting the ’70s. It’s just a family, dealing with the issues of their, and our, times.

Rolling an impossible thirteen with two dice already on the table, Ocean’s Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh’s practically critic-proof third entry into the Ocean’s canon of heist movies marks a return to both the form of the original film and its Las Vegas setting.

The sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, sprawled in terms of narrative and location and felt diluted and lacking because of it. In the one true City of Sin it’s effortless; each member of this eclectic team of thieves distinguishing himself wonderfully, especially the talented Affleck whose comfortable, playful banter with Caan is like sparring sessions ahead of the main event: Clooney and Pitt.

Say what you want about these two, they’re practically Hollywood gentry. They’re stylish; they lounge like the most consummate lizards. When they’re on-screen it feels like you’re watching rehearsals, never sure which lines are improvised. We don’t flow into their scenes; we break in, the punch line to some fabulous joke just delivered; the opening frustratingly out of reach. What seems extraneous is actually the main pleasure of the film. It’s narrative as play, and all the more pleasingly audacious for it, making plot twists or surprises as inconsequential as the dust flicked from a swinger’s lapel.

It’s ephemeral, a taste of the fun these actors must be having behind the scenes, but we’re not talking base MTV reality here, this is drunken nostalgia for the old players of Vegas. As the leads emulate Sinatra and Martin like never before, they, along with the double-crossed Reuben, the catalyst of the plot, represent the old moral code of Vegas, facing down the perversion of Vegas’s fine history by the vulgar Willie Banks and his prestige without style industry. It’s almost ironic that the usually boorish Pacino pulls off an almost subdued turn as the aforementioned Banks.

It’s touches like this that belie the sly undercurrent to the film as Soderbergh reminds us why he can be such a deft director. Intertwined with the raucous narrative is a scathing look at the distribution of wealth, as dice are manufactured for nothing by oppressed Mexicans and rolled on Banks’ crap tables for everything. Masking a message that money is both power and poison with comedy.

And it’s not just in narrative and theme that Soderbergh shines. Through a clever use of montage, split screen, and floating camera that flits on the edges of the action, he creates an intoxicating pulse, almost funk rhythm that melds perfectly with the tonal shifts of colour, moving from subtle, almost chilly hues of blue and grey to the rich reds, and golds of the strip. It’s aesthetic as play, and it’s this approach, taking his arty, loose filmmaking style and blending it with the warmth of mass entertainment that makes this film such an audacious hit.

However, as Willie Banks might say: tread carefully Mr. Ocean, audacity can only take you so far. Coast on that alone and I can assure you there’s a fair few million who won’t be betting on you next go around.

Paul Newman has been around so long and is so extended as a personality — we see him most frequently on salad dressing labels — that there's a danger of forgetting his genius.

Now comes news that he's out of the acting game at age 82. Ponder this: If there's anyone close to being a new Paul Newman, he's probably in the cast of Ocean's Thirteen. Yikes.

Anyone in need of a refresher should queue up for Fox's double-disc re-release of The Hustler. This was Newman's breakthrough film, a startling piece of lowlife lit built around the fictional pool-shooting punk, Fast Eddy Felson. George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, and Piper Laurie turned this 1961 drama into an actors' showcase. Every other line found its way into the nation's pool halls and stayed there for decades.

Robert Rossen directed with style, daring, and street smarts, in striking black and white.

This DVD appears to have the same video and audio as the last Fox release, in 2002. No big deal — there is almost no apparent wear and the widescreen images look handsome overall, a little pale here or murky there. The DVD also ports over the extras from '02, including a group commentary in which Newman participates.

New to the set are three featurettes about the movie, actors, and pool shots. Newman is interviewed on camera, sharp but hunched over and hoarsely whispering a lot. The heavy lifting is done by Piper Laurie, who has excellent recall of the New York production. (Newman and Laurie both were in their mid-30s. Rossen called them "kids.")

Newman pays tribute to Gleason, who played Minnesota Fats: "He was on time, he knew what he was doing. Jackie Gleason is about as good as it gets." The TV comic already was an ace pool player. Newman claimed he'd never held a stick, but was coached up in no time by billiards legend Willie Mosconi, who often provided the hands and the trick shots for the actor.

Two decades later, of course, Newman won the Oscar for reprising the role of Fast Eddie in The Color of Money. Score that one a career makegood, in large part for this brash, run-the-rack performance.

Fox deserves credit for upgrading the title at a fair price, but owners of the previous disc probably should wait for re-rack on the A/V. There is a fair amount of repetition in the shotgun marriage of old and new extras.

Fox also brings to market a similar treatment of The Verdict (1982).

Whatever you do for a living, it has to be more pleasant than the job chosen by the people in Ice Road Truckers, a reality series premiering on The History Channel on June 17 (10PM Eastern, 9PM Central). The show's title says it all: to bring heavy equipment and supplies to diamond mines in Canada's Northwest Territories, truck drivers have to guide their massive machines hundreds of miles over roads made of snow and ice. The ice roads are only usable in the winter, obviously, so the truckers work in temperatures that can reach -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even in the Canadian north, where the ice can freeze several feet thick on some lakes, the ice roads can only support so much weight. When your cargo is several tons, you have to be extremely careful – not just because of the risk of sinking through the ice, but because of "blowouts" caused when truckers drive too quickly, creating waves of pressure that can burst through the ice and render the road impassable. Even when you're not driving over frozen water, the roads can be treacherous, and it's not uncommon for jackknifed vehicles to block the road and bring the traffic, such as it is, to a complete standstill for hours at a time.

So why would anyone do this? Money, of course – a skilled driver can make around $70,000.00 for a couple of months' work. (Even if that's Canadian money, it's still pretty impressive, especially at today's exchange rates.) But the work is lonely, tiresome and often very dull, and it's not uncommon for would-be drivers to drop out after a few days.

The first two episodes of Ice Road Truckers are quite fascinating, with brief segments on maintenance of the roads, salvage divers, a computer-generated "blowout" and, of course, lots of big rigs. (Anyone who grew up on Smokey and the Bandit movies and their fathers' old Red Sovine records will appreciate this show.) We don't learn too much about the drivers themselves, though, and Ice Road Truckers will only work as a regular series if we grow attached to them individually. Time will tell.

Okay, obviously that ending, or lack thereof, made many crazy. Me too, initially. Now, I dig it. Why? Because that was what every day of the family’s life was like. Was that guy with AJ (just in front of him) gonna pop Tony? How about that trucker guy at the bar? How about those two black guys?

When that dude walked past Tony en route to the bathroom, I thought they would do a formal Godfather homage. Namely, a gun is taped to the back of the toilet. What else? Surely, during the painfully prolonged scene of Meadow parking, I thought she would see or hear two or three pops come from the diner. Then, nothing else. They wouldn't say who got shot or who is dead. Just Meadow walking up to the diner and hearing three gun shots. Of course, David Chase knows this and played us like the cheap broken banjos that we are.

So, who in there was going to kill Tony? Did Tony die after the credits rolled?

Maybe, maybe not. That is every single moment of Tony’s life. Maybe, the whole family will be sprayed in blood. Maybe, they will just have another family dinner and bicker about what poor decisions their teenagers are making. That kind of insane tension is what they live with. Bravo!

I will tell you my perfect ending for the show. It was last week's show. Remember how it ended with Tony laying alone in bed with a shotgun? He was exiled from his family, and even his entire state. Honestly, they could have skipped this week's show altogether. It was great to see Phil got popped, though. Now, what did the FBI agent mean when he said "we may finally win this thing"?

Lastly, I hear people say, “I feel like I just wasted the last ten years of my life.” I understand that sentiment, but not because of that ending. What drove me absolutely mad was waiting three or four years in between every season. Just season six (this very last one) took a one-year break. That is the crap that angered me.