Author Archive: Jef Burnham
Jef is a writer and educator in Chicago, Illinois. While waging war on mankind from a glass booth in the parking lot of a grocery store, Jef managed to earn a degree in Film & Video from Columbia College Chicago, and is now the Editor-in-Chief of FilmMonthly.com.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season Three) on Blu-ray
There are folks out there who still don’t see the point in buying any Blu-ray of a film or series made prior to The Matrix, people for whom anything that didn’t make generous use of digital effects is simply not worthy of a full HD transfer. They fail to see the benefits that 1080p resolution [...]
A Certain Scientific Railgun
Mere months after the release of 2010’s A Certain Magical Index– the 24-episode anime adapted from Kazuma Kamachi’s light novels of the same name– animation studio J.C. Staff returned with this adaptation of Kamachi’s Index side story/companion, A Certain Scientific Railgun. Whereas Index followed Toma Kamijo and his magical friend Index, caught in the middle [...]
Jackie Chan Double Feature: Police Story/Police Story 2
On April 16, 2013, Shout! Factory will release the second of their Jackie Chan Double Features, following January’s double feature of Crime Story (1993) and The Protector (1985). In this sophomore release, Shout! brings the first two installments of Jackie Chan’s Police Story series together on Blu-ray for the first time ever. Whereas, as I [...]
Woochi the Demon Slayer
I was amazed by the sheer epic scope of Korean writer-director Dong-Hoon Choi’s 2006 feature, Tazza: The High Rollers, when I covered its DVD release in September of last year. More recently, upon the Blu-ray release of his 2012 picture, The Thieves, I declared that the film “may just be perfect,” going to quite some [...]
Dirk Gently
The pilot for BBC Four’s Dirk Gently premiered in 2010, and it wasn’t until 2012 that three more episodes aired on the channel. Unfortunately for the series’ dedicated viewers, however, BBC Four thereafter declined to commission any further episodes. While this decision was met with significant fan outcry, their pleas ultimately fell on deaf ears. [...]
Digimon Adventure: Season Two
After the Pokemon franchise proved itself to be an overwhelming, immediate success in 1996, it’s no surprise that a host of similar, if not outright derivative, franchises would emerge in its wake. Digimon, one such post-Pokemon franchise, premiered in 1997 as a line of pocket pets in the Tamagotchi vein, but would soon spawn an [...]
Sweet Blue Flowers
Admittedly, Sweet Blue Flowers (Aoi Hana) is not the sort of show I‘d normally go out of my way to see. Adapted from the even still ongoing manga by Takako Shimura, this 2009 “Girls’ Love” anime is a slice-of-life story about a group of Japanese high school girls, some of whom, including our protagonist, Fumi, [...]
Shakugan no Shana: Season III
Things are quite different for Shana and Yuji in this, the final series of Shakugan no Shana (but not in a bad way). No longer is the action set exclusively in Misaki City. And gone is the slice-of-life, high school material that supplemented the series’ broader, battle-based narrative in which Shana, Yuji, and their allies [...]
Nanook of the North/The Wedding of Palo (and Other Films of Arctic Life)
When Robert J. Flaherty made Nanook of the North, there was no such thing as the documentary. Released in 1922, the film presents elements of the Inuit culture prior to the white man’s intervention. Of course, that intervention had already taken place when Flaherty made the film. What strikes some viewers of Nanook as odd [...]
Willow on Blu-ray
Sometimes nostalgia isn’t enough to get you through a movie. Revisiting a film you had been fond of in your youth after a decade or more can, and quite often does, prove to be a major disappointment. Such was the case for me when I revisited The Last Action Hero a year or two back– [...]
Connect