Just in case you thought HE-MAN was the only ’80s cartoon getting some DVD love, Media Blasters has announced it will release box sets of VOLTRON: DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE, “the most beloved robot action cartoon ever made,” beginning in September.

VOLTRON was the number one children’s program in the U.S. during its initial run in 1984, beating out both HE-MAN and TRANSFORMERS. VOLTRON continues to be shown on television throughout the world, appearing regularly on VH1’s I LOVE THE ‘80S and Adult Swim’s ROBOT CHICKEN. And with a blockbuster Hollywood film in the works, Voltron-mania is in full-force. So suck on that, Optimus Prime!

Head to your local Borders today to pick up two free CD samplers they’re currently giving away.

First is VH1 MUSIC GOOD, a 13-track sampler of new artists that VH1 might play if they played music, including The Fray, Say Anything, O.A.R., Feist, Rosanne Cash and others. I found all but two of the songs good.

And last but not least is CLASSIC STYLES CLASSIC SOUNDS FROM SONY MASTERWORKS, a much more mellower disc with tracks from the SYRIANA and MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA soundtracks, plus current renditions of Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Chopin, Stravinsky and all those famous dead guys.

Take elements of CUBE, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and the SAW films, but strip them of almost all of what made those films cool, and you’re watching HOUSE OF 9, a suspense film from the UK that’s high (if unoriginal) on premise and low on execution.

After being kidnapped, nine strangers wake up in a sprawling, sterile mansion. A voice tells them they’re to play a game, and the winner gets a cool $5 million. To win, you have to be the last person alive. Among the participants are a priest (Dennis Hopper), a dancer (eye-easy Kelly Brook), a cop, a black guy, a druggie, a smoky chick, a married couple and some nondescript guy with spiky hair.

This would be one cool movie if the house had any character to it, in the way of traps or scares or suprises. An automatic dumbwaiter offering chicken-and-potato dinners doesn’t cut it for me cinematically. So what we’re left with is an hour and a half of nine people bickering with one another and occasionally killing somebody. The kills are often graphic and bloody, but the lack of anything else going on is a real patience-tester. However, the ending is terrific, but a reminder that HOUSE OF 9 would’ve worked best in a third of the time.

The house directly behind mine has been abandoned for about a year now, after the people who lived there – bickering old couple with their allegedly drug-dealing daughter and shot-her-boyfriend-in-the-face granddaughter – moved out. Whoever’s bought it has sloooowly been renovating it, with an intent to then flip it and make a little profit.

Apparently, part of this renovation entailed draining some rain water out of the swimming pool in an entirely ridiculous way, because yesterday, shortly after lunch, I was working in my home office and heard this loud, annoying buzz. I thought certainly it would cease after a few minutes, but it kept going and going. It got so bad I could not work anymore. After dinner, I peered over the fence to see what was what; they had a shop vac at the poolside, its hose hanging in the now-empty pool. Because no one lives there, they just left it going all these hours.

So I called the police with a noise complaint. They said they’d send an officer out, but no action was taken, and this morning (thank God my bedroom is at the opposite end of the house) the damn thing was still going. I couldn’t stand another workday of it, so after dropping the kids off from school, I parked at their curb, went in the backyard and yanked the damn cord out of the wall. It felt good. Trespassing? Sure, but when the cops don’t take action, I seek vigilante justice.

Now eight hours after I killed their project, they still haven’t returned, so who knows how long those boneheads (who paints a house pink anyways?) were going to leave it running. My dad says if they do it again, I should chunk the vac over to our side of the fence and put it in my garage. “Then they won’t do it anymore,” he said. Father knows best.

With today’s release of the 14-disc ULTIMATE DVD COLLECTION, we thought it apt to check out three books in the PLANET OF THE APES universe: the original novel, a tie-in and a non-fiction book about the whole phenomenon.

Recently I breezed through Pierre Boulle’s classic novel PLANET OF THE APES (originally titled MONKEY PLANET). It’s more than a bit different from the movie, though a few of the characters are the same, and more satire than science fiction. The first 20 pages are a drag, but I quite enjoyed the rest. Plus, it has not one, but two twist endings! Damn you, Pierre! Damn you all to hell!

In addition to a novelization of Tim Burton’s remake, author William T. Quick also penned two original novels tied to the remake, the first of which is THE FALL. Remember the beginning of the film, where Mark Wahlberg’s character leaves the spaceship Oberon in pursuit of the monkey and falls into the time warp? The book stays behind on the ship, where Lt. Gen. Vasich decides to send more monkeys out in pods into the disturbance to rescue his lost astronaut. However, this triggers a massive implosion which rocks their mighty ship, sending it crash-landing onto a mysterious planet.

This is where you’d expect the downed crew to have adventures with all the intelli-ape characters from the film, but nope. Instead, Quick makes the menace be a snotty mass of flesh-eating insects that grow into scorpion-wolverine hybrids known as Brax. And these creatures are all linked so they can see what each individual one is seeing, making their forced extinction more difficult for our crew. Luckily, they have genetically engineered one of their test monkeys to give birth to a super-smart ape whose head his so big he busts his poor momma’s pelvis during delivery. This monkey learns to walk and talk just like a human, and if you smell “prequel,” you’ve got quite a nose on you.

Allowing Quick to further screw with the timeline and overall mythology is intriguing, but I’m afraid THE FALL simply fails when it ceases being about apes in favor of bugs. After all, the franchise is not PLANET OF THE INSECTS.

I literally waited for a book like PLANET OF THE APES REVISITED for years. Back in 1994, I had sent in my check for a copy; it was never cashed, as the title was canceled and shopped around from house to house before finding a home to St. Martin’s, thanks to renewed interest in the series (likely granted by Tim Burton’s version).

Overall, it was worth the wait, with authors Joe Russo, Larry Landsman and Edward Gross exhaustively covering each movie in the five-film franchise, with exclusive insights from the creative parties involved. The TV show and cartoon show also are discussed to good effect, but the chapter on Burton’s 2001 reimagining just reads like tacked-on PR fluff. The boys’ approach occasionally reads fanboyish, but not to an extreme that ruins their credibility or your enjoyment.

I thought that having seen the excellent BEHIND THE PLANET OF THE APES documentary, I might have learned all there is to know, but the book reveals plenty more, from Kim Hunter’s claustrophobic reaction to the ape makeup to the odd choice who almost directed the landmark original: Blake Edwards!?!

FHM Magazine has placed actress Scarlett Johansson at the top its “100 Sexiest Women in the World” list. Given that FHM is the kind of magazine that thinks Bam Margera is hilarious, that frat boys are cool and that videogames with the word “Madden” in the title are better than orgasms, this is one of the very few times I’m inclined to agree with them. Heck, I thought she was sexy when I first saw her in GHOST WORLD and now look at her.

The rest of the top 10:
2. Angelina Jolie – Growing on me.
3. Jessica Alba – The only reason I watched INTO THE BLUE last week.
4. Jessica Simpson – Dumb as rocks, but oh so yes.
5. Keira Knightley – Huh-wha? Did they get confused and think they were compiling a list of chicks whose bones are most likely to snap?
6. Halle Berry – Sorry, I just don’t see it.
7. Jenny McCarthy – Maybe 10 years ago.
8. Maria Sharapova – I don’t even know who that is.
9. Carmen Electra – Skanky, yes. Sexy, no.
10. Teri Hatcher – Perhaps if you use carbon dating.

TV producer Dan Curtis died yesterday of a brain tumor at the age of 78. He’s probably best known for the DARK SHADOWS TV series, as well as the pair of NIGHT STALKER made-for-TV movies that introduced audiences to Darren McGavin’s newspaper reporter/monster hunter Kolchak character. If there was a cool TV movie in the 1970s, Curtis likely was responsible for it: THE NORLISS TAPES, TRILOGY OF TERROR, CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW.

Director Richard Flesicher died this weekend at 79. Though never a household name, take a look at some of the movies he made: Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, THE BOSTON STRANGLER, SOYLENT GREEN, MR. MAJESTYK, AMITYVILLE 3-D, CONAN THE DESTOYER and RED SONJA, which gave us the immortal line “I can smell you at a hundred paces.” He also won a documentary Oscar in 1948, which all the obits seem to ignore.

Buck Owens died Saturday at the age of 76. All the obits called him a country music “legend,” though I can neither name nor hum a single one of his songs. For me, the name Buck Owens will forever be associated with the TV show HEE-HAW, and that’s something I don’t think even God can forgive.

“Brokeback Mountain is tops at gay media awards”

From no less than three different sources on Friday, I read that LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR was going to open at No. 1 at the box office this weekend.

Sadly (for Larry and the redneck movement only), it tanked, opening at No. 7 with a mere $7 million. There is a God!

What’s the reason for its fizzle and failure? Easy. Theaters don’t take food stamps.

A few notable DVD releases on tap this June from Brentwood Home Video:
• More animated, toy-inspired swordplay with HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: SEASON 2, VOLUME 1, with 33 episodes, two new documentaries and lotsa stuff to keep your clicker busy.
• Fans of wrestling – particular involving women in Spandex – might want to keep an eye out for the two-disc set WOMEN’S EXTREME WRESTLING: VOLUME 3. I’m not into the sport, but I’m totally into their names. Tai “Killer” Weed? G.I. Ho? That’s hott.
• Two more KUNG FU THEATER double features: One with CHINESE DRAGON and EVERLASTING DUEL. The other with Jackie Chan in MASTER OF DISASTER and Don “The Dragon” Wilson (interviewed at length in Hitch #5!) in NEW YORK CHINATOWN. I suspect MASTER is one of those titles where Jackie appears in the background for a second when the camera swoops over or something, but I’d still watch it.
• Not enough Asian insanity for you? How about another EASTERN HORROR double feature? This one has MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE (which had me at “Filipino circus magician”) and COUNTER DESTROYER, which sounds totally awesome because of the appearances of “Robovampire, a Chinese Freddy Krueger and a Taoist Priest with their vampire assistants.” Meet you at my place; we’ll get pizza.
• Finally, there’s a new 4-pack in BLOOD BATH II, containing the horror flicks LEGACY OF SATAN, THE BRIDE, BLOOD SONG and – love this title – JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST. Note: It is not necessary to have seen the previous 4-pack BLOOD BATH to be able to follow these films.

Soon all these suckers should be up at Amazon.

In other Brentwood news, the company will release all 93 episodes of the HE-MAN companion series SHE-RA: PRINCESS OF POWER. First up in July is a two-disc “best of” package with the top 5 episodes as voted on by fans, along with her 1985 feature film THE SECRET OF THE SWORD. You can vote on the episodes to be included in the “best of” at he-man.org.

We all give crap to Nicolas Cage for chasing the paycheck to make dumb, big-budget movies, so when he finally makes a good one and acts, what do we all do? Ignore it. I speak of THE WEATHER MAN, and it’s better than most of this year’s big Oscar contenders I saw.

Cage plays a Chicago TV meteorologist who’s got a shot at the big time with a slot on a national network morning show with Bryant Gumbel. But the rest of life is falling apart: His wife (Hope Davis) despises him, as do his children, one of whom is grossly overweight for a girl her age and called “camel toe” at school. His dad (Michael Caine) has cancer. And people on the street, angry over incorrect forecasts, tend to pummel him with discarded fast food.

It may sound depressing, but it’s not. In fact, parts of it are quite funny, thanks to Cage’s performance, full of those great quirks and tics that made everyone take notice of him in the first place. Davis is equally terrific, once again demonstrating why she’s one of the most underrated actresses working today. The big surprise of the film is director Gore Verbinski. He started simply as DreamWorks’ in-house go-to guy, with MOUSE HUNT, THE MEXICAN and about half of THE TIME MACHINE before hitting it big with THE RING and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Though he’s never been incompetent behind the camera, he never demonstrated a true connection with the material. That all changes here; he does fabulous work.

So next time you come out of Cage’s next collaboration with Jerry Bruckheimer and think, “Eh,” head to the video store for THE WEATHER MAN. And then remember I told you so.

St. Patrick’s Day? I didn’t even realize it was March until fairly recently. But according to this news story, folks in Alabama couldn’t escape it, what with the string of leprechaun sightings in the area recently.

I have to be honest: This is the funniest thing I’ve seen so far this year. If my local TV newscasts were like this, I’d watch. Thanks to Louis for the link.

David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was up for a couple of Oscars this year, and I think it should have been up for at least a couple more. This is one of 2005’s very best films, and a real home run in a change-of-pace risk from Cronenberg.

Viggo Mortensen plays Tom, a happily married family man and diner owner in a sleepy small town where Nothing Ever Happens. Then one night, as the diner is about to close, two crooks make trouble, and Tom shoots them dead in self defense, instantly (and relucantly) becoming a media hero. Showing up almost as quickly as the cameras are a couple of goombahs, lead by a facially scarred Ed Harris, who claims to know Tom from the past … as a mobster. Tom denies the charges, but as danger surrounds him and his beloved family, he’s forced to show his true colors.

VIOLENCE plays out like a modern-day Western, except that the line between good and bad is blurred in the case of our protagonist. Mortensen gives a strong performance (one I didn’t know he was capable of), as does Maria Bello as his wife and the Oscar-nominated William Hurt in a small, showy role as a mob boss. The script – from a Vertigo graphic novel – is pretty sharp, but Cronenberg’s expert direction is what makes this thing work. Except for one or two gore shots, you wouldn’t know he was responsible, as this is far outside his usual weirdo, open-sore fare. The job he does is really quite remarkable, and it’s a shame he wasn’t recognized by the Academy as such. Twenty years from now, MUNICH and GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK will be forgotten, but A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE will be regarded as somewhat of a lost-in-the-shuffle classic.

Since we haven’t discussed the tube in a while, why not do it all in one fell swoop?

PRISON BREAK – This returned last night after what felt like a six-month absence, but in reality was “only” almost four months. And it instantly hooked me all over again. I swear, sometimes this is so intense, it about gives me a coronary, and oh, how I have missed those weekly near-coronaries. They’re good for the blood flow. And it’s an utterly brilliant move on FOX’s part to pair it with…

24 – We’re now halfway through Season 5, and all’s going well for the CTU gang. And by that, I mean regular characters are dying off left and right, which makes for great TV. It amazes me how much stuff goes on in each episode. And just when things start to get a little dull, something awesome happens, like Jack Bauer putting one in the POLTERGEIST mom’s leg. Or Jean Smart removing her blouse. Or Jean Smart removing her blouse.

THE APPRENTICE – I almost didn’t realize this was on again, but it’s the only reality show I watch. I don’t know how NBC manages to find a group of self-absorbed young assholes year in and year out, but they do, and the world is better off for it, because there’s not much I love to watch more than a self-absorbed old asshole (Donald Trump, playing himself) knock their egos down a few pegs. Each season the producers throw in a goofball wild card that the frat boys and sorority girls other contestants immediately gang up on for being different, and this year it’s Brent, the fat attorney with bad hair and even worse ideas. Supposedly he went off the deep end on last night’s episode, but I haven’t yet been able to watch it. At this point, I don’t care who wins since they’ve already voted off the two hot blondes in the first three weeks.

HEIST – This is a new show that NBC is premiering tomorrow night. To me, it looks like a glitzier version of AMC’s Brit-import series HU$TLE crossed with a rip-off of OCEAN’S ELEVEN. Which is probably why I’ve already set my TiVo to catch it.

SONS & DAUGHTERS – From Lorne Michaels comes this semi-improvised sitcom of one dysfunctional family. It’s kind of like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT-lite, and ABC is choosing to run two episodes a week, so expect it to last maybe until next month. From the first two I saw, it’s actually good. Not great, but far too good for ABC.

THE OFFICE – Now officially the 30 minutes I look forward to every week. The news that this month is the last for this season is mitigated slightly by the news that 10 “webisodes” will debut online featuring its accounting department.

You may think I’m joking when I say that there will be no better time to be had at the movies all year long than when Samuel L. Jackson finally gets around to fighting those SNAKES ON A PLANE, but you would be wrong, my friend, because I am totally serious.

As a regular visitor to this page, you’re automatically predisposed to enjoying training videos, particularly those of fast-food franchises that involve rap music and greasy square hamburgers, as this clip for would-be Wendy’s employees of the 1980s does oh so well.

Thanks to Ken for the link.

After all these lame-ass (no pun intended) BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN trailer parodies flying around the Internet, it’s refreshing to see one that’s actually clever and funny again. That’s what you get with MUST LOVE JAWS, which is someone’s brilliant reworking of Steven Spielberg’s best-ever movie into a love story.

For me, this comes closest to matching SHINING.

Chip Kidd is a god. In the world of book cover design, there is no equal. He is The Man.

And hard to believe, but he’s been at it for 20 years now – two decades of ace efforts chronicled in the beautiful and voluminous CHIP KIDD: BOOK ONE – WORK: 1986-2006, a coffee table book you won’t want to put on your coffee table, for fear of coffee or other errant beverages spilling on it. This is a book to treasure.

It is also one you will hold in your hands and think, “Oh, I’ll just thumb through this for a few minutes and come back to it later.” Yet this is impossible. You simply can’t. So captivating are Kidd’s designs, you’ll be surprised at how many great covers he’s been responsible for, how many old favorites you’d forgotten about, how many you didn’t know he did. Plus, the 400 pages aren’t merely captioned; there’s so much detail, you could call them annotated. This is welcome, because whereas other designs would be satisfied to just show their work off and call it a day, Kidd lets you know how the finished idea came to be, even admitting (and sometimes showing) his failures along the way.

He’s perhaps best known for JURASSIC PARK’s skeletal dinosaur design, which has become iconic thanks to its use promoting both the book and the film franchise. But he’s also reinvigorated classics (SIR GAWAIN & THE GREEN KNIGHT), bloodied up James Ellroy (WHITE JAZZ), and included the occasional die-cut when absolutely appropriate (THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING). His CV is simply staggering: Anne Rice, Dennis Lehane, Dean Koontz, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Martin Amis, John Gregory Dunne, Oliver Sacks, Katherine Dunn, John Le Carré, Philip Roth, David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs – hell, even Joe Eszterhas and Boy George.

For my money, his cover of Jonathan Ames’ WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE? would be my favorite, if not for his foray into comics, with covers for BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, SIN CITY, PEANUTS: THE ART OF CHARLES M. SCHULZ and his own non-fiction BATMAN COLLECTED, JACK COLE AND PLASTIC MAN and MYTHOLOGY: THE DC COMICS ART OF ALEX ROSS among them.

His talents also have put into use in other media, designing a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album and a secret decoder watch for Swatch. But books are this man’s bread and butter, and he does them better than anyone else, as each page of WORK proves over and over. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Like a minor-league Beastie Boys (and I mean that as a compliment), the gang known as Ninja High School snottily half-raps it way through its debut, YOUNG ADULTS AGAINST SUICIDE. Some of it is annoying, while other parts exude smarmy charm. It doesn’t quite spark a singalong along the lines of Go! Team, but its aggressive too-cool-for-you-ness is at least mildly infectious.

It may just be a two-track 7”, but Drums & Tuba’s EL TUBADOR is also one of the most musically exciting works I’ve heard all year. Their sound is primarily drums and a tuba (natch), merging incestuously to produce some wonderfully twisted-sounding quasi-electronic rock. Two great songs, but much too short!

I’m totally into Chevreuil’s SPORT, a guitar-and-drums-only assault on the aural cavity. The album is entirely instrumental and in-your-face, but with a bend toward the melodic. So it hurts in a good way.

The Kanpai record label flies under the radar, but I’ve been impressed with most everything they’ve put out, all of it in the ambient electronica category. Little Plastic Pilots’ self-titled disc is no exception, and it blips and bleeps along nicely, with a mysterious hint of Boards of Canada to it.

On the Double Crown label, Dr. Frankenstein is a surf-rock band and CRIME SCENES AND MURDER SONGS – CHAPTER III: THE DRAGON LOUNGE CONNECTION is their unnecessarily long-titled but mucho fun current album. The tracks move fast and furious on this one, as befitting the genre. Yes, these bands all kind of sound of the same, but Dr. F at least has a hint of the sinister, with titles like “AM 666″ and “She-Devils’ Stroll.” There’s a cool cover of “Goldfinger” as well as “Music to Watch Girls By,” but here, the “Watch” is replaced with “Murder.”

Three new discs where the packaging is the best thing about it:
• Head Control System’s MURDER NATURE – Exceedingly well-done graphics inside and out. Fairly lame metal music.
• Red Animal War’s SEVEN YEAR WAR – Booklet recalls 4AD heyday; band’s music does not. Not bad, but not engaging enough. The two live tracks are nice.
• The Finals’ PLAN YOUR GETAWAY – Comic-book sci-fi look is fun. Angry-emo-punk music is not.

If you’re familiar with Atari Teenage Riot, you know what to expect from the THREAT soundtrack. If not, let’s just say it’s not all bleep-bloop-happy like that Pac-Man cartridge, but insane breakbeat punk, more noise than music. If that’s your cup o’ Drano, this is the soundtrack for you. It also has a companion CD of music that inspired the film, with hardcore remix action.