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Reviews
Lovecraft Country (2020)
Loved it, but not for everybody
Interesting to see the wide variety of opinions on this show.
My wife and I absolutely loved it but I get that the time shifts and sub-plots can be difficult to follow unless you concentrate. Certainly it veered away from where you thought it might be heading after the first couple of episodes, but many of the loose ends came together as the show moved along, right up to the final episode.
Frankly we can't wait for a second series.
Hollywood (1980)
The reason behind the lack of a DVD release
As mentioned by everyone else, this is a truly superlative series, all the more remarkable when you consider the list of stars, directors and producers who refused to appear in it when it was first created.
The lack of a DVD release is, unfortunately, entirely the result of human greed. In the almost 25 years between the time that the series was created, and the time that it was set for DVD release (with lots of extra interview footage not shown in the original series), the ownership of significant parts of the original film footage had changed hands. The home video market, and the DVD market did not exist at the time the series was made, and so there was no provision in the contracts for usage of the original footage for it to be used in such a manner. This was common at the time of course, and is usually not a problem as copyright has often lapsed, or no-one really cares either way, but the new owners of significant parts of the silent footage used in the series made sure that the copyrights were renewed and then tried to squeeze the producers for huge amounts of money, which made the DVD release uneconomic.
Therefore, only weeks before the DVD was due to be released it was scrapped, and all the DVDs were destroyed. I've managed to track down and rip a full set of episodes from the LaserDisc release, which is the best source material available, but otherwise it's only the old VHS tapes that are available. A very sad situation, and I hope the scumbags who caused this are happy with themselves.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
A Stephen King sequel to a Kubrick movie
As a huge fan of The Shining, I was disappointed to see very negative reviews when this film first came out, and I almost didn't bother watching it as a result. What a mistake that would have been. Yes, Kubrick would probably hate it, but for many fans of the original this is a very special quasi-sequel.
While the main part of the new plot is hardly very original, it is the attention to detail in the sequences linking back to the first movie that will blow fans of that film away. From the re-created shots of a young Danny cycling around the halls of the Overlook, through to the older Danny making his way back through the modern wreck, and everything in between, the attention to detail by the film's art design team is exceptional.
Personally I think anyone contemplating watching this film should see the original before viewing Doctor Sleep, as it will make much more sense when viewed in context, but overall I rate it very highly as sequels go.