9:00 AM
Blog Fasion
- Condition: New
- Format: Blu-ray
- AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; Subtitled; Widescreen
Once upon a time, Jill, Sabrina and Kelly were police officers whose skills were being wasted in menial duties such as answering phones and filing. A mysterious millionaire named Charles Townsend took them away from all that by opening his own private investigation agency and hiring these gorgeous ladies as his operatives with John Bosley acting as their assistant and liaison. America's guiltiest pleasure of 1976--the inaugural season of Charlie's Angels--has returned in all its jiggly, jolly glory in this tidy boxed set. It's hard to describe just how captivated the nation's! media and viewing public were with cheesemeister Aaron Spelling's ABC-TV hit, but for awhile Charlie's Angels was wildly popular appointment television at its most self-consciously banal. The first season's three (and best-remembered) belles--lioness Farrah Fawcett (then Farrah Fawcett-Majors), pin-up babe Jaclyn Smith, and Thinking Man's beauty Kate Jackson--were something like primetime Spice Girls, gracing countless magazine covers and bestselling posters. The idea (even if a fan of the show didn't happen to be a straight male) was that one was compelled to choose a favorite angel as a kind of ink-blot window onto one's subconscious life.
While the 2000 Angels feature film (starring Cameron Diaz, etc.) kept faith with the original show's self-mockingly sloppy storytelling, there's nothing like seeing the old episodes for a lesson in narrative hubris. Basically, the three leading characters were bored policewomen wooed away to a private firm owned and ! operated by the unseen sybarite, Charlie (voiced--over speaker! phone--b y an uncredited John Forsythe). After a long set-up each week, the girls' investigations typically saw them going undercover: as fashion models--no great stretch--in "Night of the Strangler"; nurses in "Terror on Ward One"; roller-derby stars in "Angels on Wheels"; and vulnerable convicts (of course) in "Angels In Chains." The exploitation factor is not as bad as it might have been. The cast was so glamorous, their chemistry so perfect, Charlie's Angels never became a mere meat market. Despite such nods to modernity as Fawcett's no-bra look, the episodes were old-fashioned in their heroine-in-peril appeal, yet there was a difference: The Angels looked out for themselves and each other. --Tom KeoghAdventure has never been more beautiful than Charlie's Angels! Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu star as the captivating crime-fighting trio who are masters of disguise, espionage and martial arts. When a devious mastermind embroils them in a plot to destroy in! dividual privacy, the Angels are on the spot with their brains, brawn and high-tech toys. Aided by their loyal sidekick Bosley (Bill Murray), the girls are about to bring down the bad guys when a terrible secret is revealed that makes the Angels a target of assassination. Now, it's a matter of life or death as the stunningly smart detectives use their state-of-the-art skills to kick evil's butt in this sexy, high-octane comedy!For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programmer (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daff! y Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, corn! ball pop corn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --Doug ThomasAnother season of the hit classic series comes to DVD! This season, the A! ngels go on the Love Boat to investigate a major art theft, go back to college to stop a white slavery ring, and find more than just fingerprints when Charlie's yacht is stolen. Jill gets help from the Angels after her date with a crown prince is interrupted by sniper fire, and Kelly meets a man who may be her long-lost father.Millionaire Charles Townsend starts up his own private investigation firm and hires three female police officers as his investigators.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 4-JUL-2006
Media Type: DVDThey're back, they're beautiful, and they mean business--but in a sweet way. Charlie's Angels: The Complete Third Season finds Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), sister of departed Angel Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett), well ensconced in the Charles Townsend Investigation agency. Jill, however, isn't entirely absent from the scene: Fawcett turns up in at least three episodes, not quite ready to shake her old job des! pite the lure of car racing and a handsome beau (Stephen Colli! ns). But enough about her: the current incarnation of Charlie's team kicks off the season with a two-part mystery set in Las Vegas. Dean Martin plays a maverick casino owner who believes he's being "gaslighted," i.e., made the target of psychological harassment by an unknown enemy. Trouble is, some of his employees and friends are getting hurt and even killed by this same assailant. The girls, including brainy Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) and streetwise Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), plus mirthful supervisor Bosley (David Doyle), go undercover to root out a plot to ruin Martin's character. (Sure, Dino romances one of them: Sabrina.)
The rest of the season follows the usual Charlie's Angels formula of relying on the cast's appealing personalities and substantive, anti-bimbo characters, while also getting them (well, not Jackson so much) in various states of undress as quickly as possible. An accent on stories requiring the wearing of leotards and showgirl costumes certainl! y helps the cause, but there are plenty of non-exploitational episodes as well. Among the best programs is "Angel Come Home," in which Jill arrives at Charlie's by surprise after receiving a phony emergency cable in Europe from someone claiming to be Kris. Eager to investigate, Jill soon hooks up with an old friend (Horst Buchholz) developing a new car engine targeted by enemies. "Angels in Springtime" capitalizes on a creepy suggestion of lesbian incarcerators running an expensive spa for women. "Haunted Angels" is a spooky tale of a young man's demanding spirit being channeled, from beyond the grave, through a terrified woman. It could be real or it could be a scam; only the Angels can find out. "Counterfeit Angels" finds a trio of bank robbers claiming to be Kris, Kelly, and Sabrina; the girls fight for their innocence. Finally, a great episode from its era (1979), "Disco Angels," gets the ladies exactly where they belong: on a dance floor. --Tom KeoghThree beauti! ful private detectives who work for a suave playboy boss are c! alled in to rescue soon-to-be billionaire software mogul Eric Knox, when he is kidnapped from his office at Knox Technologies. While rough-and-tumble Alex, wild-child Dylan, and nerdy Natalie use an impressive array of high-tech gadgetry and martial arts moves to retrieve Knox from the clutches of rival Roger Corwin and his goons, they unwittingly become embroiled in a battle to protect the world from a wide-scale invasion of privacy that threatens to occur when good technology falls into the hands of bad people.For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programme! r (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daffy Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, cornball popcorn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over! the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --D! oug Thom as
0 comments:
Post a Comment