“Weeds” is my favorite show on Showtime and my favorite live-action sitcom that's not on NBC.
It tells the tale of thirtysomething suburbanite and mother Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker). After her husband gets killed without a paid-up life insurance policy, Nancy maintains her upper-middle-class lifestyle in Agrestic, Calif., by selling doob to all her marijuana-loving neighbors.
As with the first season, season two of this Showtime series , which streets today, indulges no exciting "Angels In America"-like Mary Louise nudity for us to enjoy. Still and all, Parker is never less than adorable, surely one of the milfiest MILFs in the history of filmed entertainment.
“Weeds” creators finally acknowledge Parker’s supreme milfocity in the show’s second season, when no less a pot icon than Snoop Dogg christens Nancy’s new brand of dope “milfweed.”
Season two was great for other reasons. I love protagonist Nancy Botwin’s grace under pressure, and how that grace has to evaporate as she falls into bed with an open-minded DEA agent and onto the radar of her violent Armenian competitors.
I love Nancy’s horny, cowardly slacker brother-in-law Andy (stage vet Justin Kirk). I love Andy’s frank and solid mentoring of Shane “Strange” Botwin, Nancy’s preteen son. I loved the arrival of big-deal movie actress Zooey Deschanel (“Elf,” “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” “The Happening”) as Kat, Andy’s sexy nutcase fugitive ex-girlfriend. I loved everything that happened with Shane and Kat and Andy.
I also love self-absorbed busybody/cancer survivor Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins) and pothead accountant Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon). Their storylines become firmly intertwined in season two when the widely feared Celia decides to run for popular Doug’s city council seat.
The new set is available in both standard-def DVD and Blu-ray.
To anticipate the question, the third season of “Weeds” launches on Showtime Aug. 13.
Land of the Giants: The Complete Series, arriving today, is an experiment for Fox Home Entertainment, which has heretofore broken up all of Irwin Allen’s TV work (e.g. “Lost In Space,” “Time Tunnel,” “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”) into half-season sets.
With “Giants,” Fox goes gigantic, initially issuing all 51 episodes from both its seasons with a lorryload of extras. The extra rundown from Amazon.com:
GARY CONWAY INTERVIEWS:
The Series' Lasting Effects
The Influence of Gulliver's Travels on the Show
Fight Scene in the Cage
Humorous Moments
A Couple Memorable Episodes
Memories of Irwin
DON MARSHALL INTERVIEWS:
Acting and the Actors on the Show
Memories of Kurt Kasznar
Memories of Cast Members and the Director
Popularity of the Show in England
Presentation Reel
Special Effects Shots (no audio)
IRWIN ALLEN HOME VIDEOS (no audio):
Meeting
Irwing Directing Actors in Interior Sets
Irwing Directing Actors in Exterior Sets
Rope Climbing
Escape Through the Tunnel
Glass Prison
Escape from the Giant Hand
Irwin Directing Forest Scene
STEFAN ARNGRIM INTERVIEWS:
Irwin's Direction
Dogs
The Mechanical Hand
Directors Harry Harris and Sobey Martin
The Popularity of the Show
The Tone of the Show
The Concept of the Show
The Second Season
The Stunts and Effects
The Ship's Name
DON MATHESON INTERVIEWS:
Perparation for Irwin's Shows
What Attracted Him to the Show
Imagination
Climbing the Rope
The Dog
Saying the Dialogue
DEANNA LUND INTERVIEWS:
Her Appreciation of the Show
Acting on the Show
How She Got on the Show
Ballet in a Bird Cage
Her Friendship with Don Matheson
The High Cost of the Show
Where Did the Story Take Place?
STILL GALLERIES:
Merchandise
Mad Magazine Parody
Publicity Photos
Episodic Photos
Deanna Lund Gallery
From the Fox press release:
The collectible DVD set also includes a full-color booklet with cast interviews and photos, a collectible Spindrift keychain, iron-on crew patch, reproduction of the first comic book, and trading cards. All of this is packaged is a collectible wooden cage themed directly from the show.
For those unfamiliar, “Giants” ran on ABC from 1968 to 1970. It was set during 1983, when spaceships ferried people from New York to London. One of these spaceships flew through a strange cloud and crashed on a planet where everything, including the girls, were of Brobdingnagian proportions.
The English-speaking part of the giant planet the Earthers crash into is ruled by a Nazi-ish capitalist dictatorship which has set up a Special Investigations Department (SID) to deal with dissidents and little people (the series’ protagonists, it turns out, are not the first Earth people to have crashed there).
In the second episode we learn at least some on the planet of giants (we never do learn its name) somehow know of Earth. We also come to learn that the giants have cloning and forcefields, but not the space flight that would allow the giants to conquer Earth. As a result, the Giants really want to get their hands on that Earth spaceship to see how it works.
Star Trek: Captain's Log has one episode that appeared on a previous fan collection, Harlan Ellison’s amazing “City on the Edge Of Forever,” but it comes with a new 13-minute introduction by William Shatner and Joan Collins, so it’s hard to begrudge.
The $29.19 set streeting today contains at least three episodes from each of the five “Star Trek” TV series. Two from each series were episodes that prevailed in a fan vote, and the third was chosen by that series’ lead actor.
New interviews and introductions with Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew and Scott Bakula are included. Somebody posted a breakdown of the extra material on Amazon.com:
00:12:55:07 STAR TREK - CAPTAIN'S LOG - WILLIAM SHATNER - THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER
00:03:29:09 WHAT MAKES A GOOD CAPTAIN? - BALANCE OF TERROR & THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT
00:01:35:15 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE "CAPTAIN'S LOG"
00:02:19:03 CAPTAIN KIRK'S LEGACY
00:02:39:09 STAR TREK - CAPTAIN'S LOG - PATRICK STEWART - IN THEORY
00:01:12:08 CHAIN OF COMMAND
00:01:11:21 DARMOK
00:01:01:14 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE "CAPTAIN'S LOG"
00:01:27:02 PLAYING A CAPTAIN
00:02:08:03 LOOKING BACK
00:01:59:07 STAR TREK AND THE STAGE
00:00:46:23 PICARD'S FUTURE
00:01:39:22 STAR TREK - CAPTAIN'S LOG - AVERY BROOKS - FAR BEYOND THE STARS
00:01:00:13 A CAPTAIN AND A FATHER
00:01:06:00 SISKO AS EMISSARY
00:01:16:10 DIRECTING
00:00:41:19 IMAGINING THE FUTURE
00:01:00:02 SOCIAL COMMENTARY
00:00:54:06 ASPIRATIONS
00:01:52:15 STAR TREK'S IMPACT
00:01:52:18 STAR TREK - CAPTAIN'S LOG - KATE MULGREW - COUNTERPOINT
00:00:44:06 THE OMEGA DIRECTIVE
00:00:55:08 FLASHBACK
00:01:08:20 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE "CAPTAIN'S LOG"
00:01:40:19 CAPTAIN JANEWAY'S BEST QUALITIES
00:01:29:24 WHAT MAKES A GOOD CAPTAIN?
00:01:07:00 JANEWAY'S FUTURE
00:00:42:19 LOOKING BACK
00:02:38:12 STAR TREK - CAPTAIN'S LOG - SCOTT BAKULA - JUDGEMENT
00:01:34:03 THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...
00:03:16:11 WHAT MAKES A GOOD CAPTAIN?
00:01:30:23 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE "CAPTAIN'S LOG"
00:03:19:21 CAPTAIN ARCHER'S BEST QUALITIES
00:03:06:04 LOOKING BACK
00:00:35:21 ("CLOSING STATEMENT TO CAPTAIN'S LOG FAN COLLECTIVE WITH SCOTT BAKULA")
Episodes included in the set are:
1.29 "The City on the Edge of Forever"
3.2 "The Enterprise Incident"
1.15 "Balance of Terror"
4.25 "In Theory"
6.10/6.11 "Chain of Command"
5.2 "Darmok"
6.13 "Far Beyond the Stars"
7.25/7.26 "What You Leave Behind"
6.19 "In the Pale Moonlight"
5.10 "Counterpoint"
4.21 "The Omega Directive"
3.2 "Flashback"
2.19 "Judgment"
4.22 "These Are the Voyages … "
2.24 "First Flight"
The superheroine Isis is now part of the DC comic-book universe, and played a huge role as Black Adam’s girlfriend in DC’s recently concluded “52” title, but she was originally introduced in “Isis,” the distaff half of the CBS’s live-action Saturday morning “Shazam!/Isis” hour.
The new “The Secret of Isis: The Complete Series,” hitting shelves today, collects all 22 episodes shot between 1975 and 1977: the 15 half-hours created for the “Shazam!/Isis” hour, and the seven half-hours produced for its stand-alone spinoff “The Secret of Isis.”
Isis in the 1970s was secretly a hot American science teacher named Andrea Thomas who found a magical amulet that once belonged to Hatshepsut, an ancient Egyptian Queen. When Andrea spoke the magic words “Oh Mighty Isis,” she became Isis, and could do pretty much everything her pal Captain Marvel could: fly, run really fast and lift heavy things.
Isis was integrated into the DC universe via her crossover appearances in the “Shazam!” half-hour and via DC’s “Shazam!” and “Isis” comic-book series of the late 1970s.
An animated version of Isis was a component of 1980’s “Freedom Force,” itself a component of CBS’ then-ongoing “Tarzan and the Super 7” series.
In 2006, the DC funnybooks introduced a new post-Crisis Isis who begins life as Adrianna Tomaz, a hot and helpful slave from Egpyt who is given Hatshepsut’s amulet by Captain Marvel’s old frienemy Black Adam. In the comic we learn Hatshepsut, like Marvel and Adam, was a champion of the ancient wizard Shazam. Cool.
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