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DVDs/Blu-rays Reviews TV

“Drawn Together The Complete Collection” DVD Review

 

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that if I bought what was supposed to be a new DVD collection of a TV show I liked, and it turned out to be just the old discs repackaged, I’d be annoyed. Which is how fans of the animated reality show parody Drawn Together should feel about the Drawn Together The Complete Collection DVD. While this pairs all thirty-six episodes and the movie with a bunch of fun extras, it does so by just putting the Drawn Together: Season One: Uncensored DVD, the Drawn Together: Season Two: Uncensored DVD, the Drawn Together: Season Three: Uncensored DVD, and The Drawn Together Movie DVD into a single physical package.

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DVDs/Blu-rays Reviews TV

The Good Place The Complete First Season DVD Review

The Good Place Season One

As everyone knows, the best show on TV for the last thirty years is The Simpsons. So it’s not surprising that many of the better shows on TV are Simpsons-esque: 30 Rock, Rick & Morty, and now, The Good Place, a smart and surreal high concept sitcom. But whether you missed it when it aired on TV, or saw it and want to cherish it forever and ever, The Good Place The Complete First Season DVD is the best way to accomplish this. Though it could’ve been better.

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DVDs/Blu-rays Reviews TV

American Gods Season One Blu-ray, DVD Review

American Gods Season One Blu-ray DVD

As Game Of Thrones has shown so beautifully, it’s entirely possible to adapt a sprawling novel (or series of novels, as the case may be) into an equally impressive television show. The same can now also be said of Neil Gaiman’s 2001 fantasy novel American Gods. Though what’s great about the American Gods Season One Blu-ray and DVD is how its extras are almost as much about the original book as they are about the show.

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Music Reviews

Anouar Brahem: “Blue Maqams” Review

Anouar Brahem Blue Maqams

 

Like a lot of jazz fans, I first heard oud player Anouar Brahem when he teamed with soprano saxophonist, bass clarinetist John Surman and double bassist Dave Holland for their 1997 album Thimar, a hauntingly beautiful and moody collection that seamlessly melded middle-eastern music with jazz.

It’s territory Brahem would mine again with 1999’s Astrakan Cafe and 2008’s The Astounding Eyes Of Rita, just as he had prior to Thimar on his 1991 debut Barzakh and on Jan Garabek’s 1994 album Madar.

Now he returns to it once more, and with a familiar face in tow, for Blue Maqams (CD, digital, vinyl), yet another album on which he and his compatriots create moody beauty from the marriage of jazz and the middle-east.

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PC PlayStation 4 Reviews Video Games Xbox One

The Evil Within 2 Review

The Evil Within 2

After years of slowly morphing into action games, the survival horror genre has been getting back to its scary roots lately, first with Resident Evil 7 biohazard, and now with The Evil Within 2 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), a third-person psychological fright-fest that really does have you trying to survive a horrible situation (and is a slight but noticeable improvement over its predecessor).

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PC PlayStation 4 Reviews Video Games Xbox One

Danger Zone Review

 

It’s not uncommon for a video game’s sequel to be made by different people than the original. But the car crashing arcade game Danger Zone (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) puts a new spin on this by being the spiritual sequel to a game that’s made by the same people as the original. Too bad it’s not as good.

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PC Reviews Video Games Xbox One

“Forza Motorsport 7” Single-Player Review

 

Like a lot of people excited for Forza Motorsport 7 (Xbox One, Xbox One Deluxe Edition, Xbox One Ultimate Edition, PC), I’m only really interested in playing this racing game’s career mode. It is for my fellow solitary drivers that I present this assessment of Forza Motorsport 7 as a single-player game.

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PC PlayStation 4 Reviews Video Games Xbox One

“Universal Classics Pinball” for “Pinball FX3” Review

 

To celebrate the launch of Pinball FX3 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), the sequel to both Pinball FX2 and Zen Pinball 2, the good people at Zen Studios have teamed with Universal Pictures for Universal Classics Pinball, three new virtual pinball tables inspired by the movies Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the Back To The Future films. And like Pinball FX3, all three offer the same kind of pinball fun we’ve come to expect from these folks.

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Music Reviews

Matthew Shipp, Mat Walerian, William Parker: “This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People” Review

Matthew Shipp Mat Walerian William Parker This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People

 

Having recorded one live album on their own (2015’s excellent Live At Okuden) and a second live album as a trio with drummer Hamid Drake (2016’s also excellent Live At Okuden), the jazz duo of pianist, organist Matthew Shipp and alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, soprano clarinetist, and flutist Matt Walerian are mixing things up again for This Is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People (CD, digital), their first studio album and first recording with bassist, shakuhachi player William Parker. That it took such a long sentence to explain was not intentional, but it was fitting given the music they’ve made this time out.

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