A new Skylanders video game has become an annual event since the 2011 release of Spyro’s Adventure. This year’s installment, Skylanders SWAP Force, should be at the top of any fan’s wish list for Santa or the Boxing Week sales. Like its two predecessors, Spyro’s Adventure and Skylanders Giants, SWAP Force features the combination of a video game and a...
DVD Review: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman – The Complete Series
Longtime fans like me spent decades wondering whether television’s groundbreaking Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman would ever surface on disc. Our hopes rose in 2007 when Sony issued a three-DVD package labeled Volume 1, which contained the first 25 shows from the 1976-77 series. But additional volumes never arrived and I eventually gave up. Now, out of the blue, comes this...
Scientology: NOT the Way to Happiness
When I walked through the front door at The Way to Happiness Foundation International in Glendale, California recently, I found the building empty except for a young brunette receptionist. I expected the impressive Scientology building to be empty — I haven’t seen one recently that wasn’t scarcely populated, and I’ve visited a few of their sites in California. I asked...
Princess Michael Prattles About Her Royal Neighbours
Britain’s Princess Michael of Kent has talked openly about her neighbours at Kensington Palace and revealed that Prince Harry might move in next door to William and Kate when the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester eventually quit their nearby apartment. In an astonishingly loose-lipped interview with the January edition of the society bible Tatler, the Princess refers to Prince William...
Black Scientology
When I first read of Scientology’s most recent incursion into the black community in the U.S., I laughed, but that quickly turned to horror the more I learned. A small storefront on East 116th Street in Harlem had been closed, but a newer, flashier Scientology organization had been opened at 220 E. 125th Street. The New York Daily News noted...
Music Review: The Beatles – Live at the BBC (Remastered)
Nineteen years after it was originally released, The Beatles’ double-disc set Live at the BBC has been reissued in remastered form, its two discs housed in a cardboard digipak matching the style of the 2009 studio catalog reissues. Also available is the long overdue sequel, On Air – Live at the BBC Vol. 2, leaving many Beatle fans wondering if...
DVD Review: I Am ZoZo
Just when it seemed small-gauge filmmaking was becoming a thing of the past (at least in terms of viable commercial releases), along comes the micro-budget horror film I Am ZoZo. Writer-director-cinematographer Scott Di Lalla decided to forgo the often characterless sharpness of high definition video in favor of Super 8mm film stock. Shot entirely on Kodak Vision3 200T Super 8mm...
An Honorable Man: Interview with Bomb Girls’ Antonio Cupo
Canada may have been on the other side of the pond while the historic battle known as World War II unfolded, but as a country it was no less invested in the conflict as far as manpower and womanpower. While their husbands, brothers, cousins, and other male family members (as well as friends) were risking their lives on the front...
The Man Who Got Me Out of Scientology
In 1996, I had been involved in $cientology (that’s how I spell it now) off and on for a couple of decades. It started off innocently enough. I was estranged from my family, had dropped out of college, had recollections of past lives, and wanted some answers and direction in life. I wrote about this previously for The Morton Report....
Music Review: Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way (Deluxe Edition)
The third album by Lenny Kravitz, Are You Gonna Go My Way (originally released in 1993), is also his third to be treated to a two-disc deluxe anniversary reissue. When Kravitz first burst on the scene in 1989 with his debut, Let Love Rule, many wrote him off as a derivative hippie-era ‘60s revivalist. The tag stuck and detractors continue...