2005-11-10
By Willow (Phoenixville, PA USA)
The Songs of Abelard Disc has the definitive Canzona on it. The recently-released H. Owen Reed disc has a much better La Fiesta on it as well.
2010-07-05
By Sherry Sayers (Mesa AZ)
After reading all the positive reviews I was so excited to use this...followed all directions. The 1st pizza came out great, but the 2nd time I used it the teflon started peeling off! Has this happened to anyone else? I am unable to use it as it now has a rusty smell...
2010-01-23
By Nik (Madison, Wi USA)
I remember these stories from when I was a kid.
Go Dog! Go!
The Best Nest
Are you my Mother
Now I can read them to my boys, and they are all in one book!
Its a great value!
And there are other stories in the book too.
A Fly Went By
Its Not Easy Being A Bunny
Put Me in the Zoo
2009-08-10
By Debra R. Haken
This is an excellent book that gives a very helpful guided prayer method.
I've used it in leading our Wednesday night prayer meeting as well as in my own personal prayer time. Dick Eastman helps make prayer creative, new, and refreshing!
2010-01-10
By Linda Regulski (Bayonne, NJ)
I bought these for my grandaughter for Christmas and she was thrilled with them, that's the best I could ask for!!!
2005-08-17
By cookieman108 (Inside the jar...)
Holy regurgitated film sequences, Batman! While watching The New Barbarians (1982) aka Warriors of the Wasteland aka I Nuovi barbari it's nearly impossible not to notice how much this Italian post apocalyptic exploitation flick takes from other, more popular and infinitely better produced films. Now I'll agree this kind of thing isn't limited to the Italian cinema, as Hollywood can be just as unoriginal (and often is), but in terms of brazenly reproducing plots and sequences, the Italians seemed to have few equals...I mean, nearly this entire film was lifted from The Road Warrior (1981), along with a few others, specifically the Clint Eastwood westerner A Fist Full of Dollars (1964), which was also an Italian film that stole from previously made Japanese film titled Yojimbo (1961). Oh well...as the saying goes `What was once old is new again"...or better yet, `If you haven't seen it, it's new to you'. Co-written and directed by Enzo G. Castellari, who would later further beat the genre into the ground with such classics as 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982) and Escape from the Bronx (1983), The New Barbarians stars Giancarlo Prete (Detective School Dropouts, Ladyhawke), George Eastman (Antropophagus, Sexy Nights of the Living Dead), and Fred `The Hammer' Williamson (Black Caesar, Mr. Mean), none of whom were strangers to the world of craptacular cinema. Also appearing is Anna Kanakis (2019: After the Fall of New York), Giovanni Frezza (Manhattan Baby), Massimo Vanni (1990: The Bronx Warriors), and Ennio Girolami (Escape from the Bronx), who looks so much like actor Lee Van Cleef its creepy...if Lee Van Cleef wore a crummy blonde wig.
As the film begins we learn the year is 2019, and the nuclear holocaust is over, but the nightmare is just beginning. There seems to be three groups wandering the wastelands of what was once civilized society;
1. Caravanning bands of survivors, clinging meekly to their precious humanity, constantly monitoring the radio airwaves, searching for signs of life, and surviving on the hope of finding other pathetic non-mutated souls like themselves (strength in numbers, I suppose).
2. Those once humans irrevocably altered by the atomic wastes, since transformed into feral, cannibalistic mutants (`nuff said).
3. The Templars, a gang of nihilistic fancy lads dressed in white who are self proclaimed `high priests of death chosen to make others pay for the crime of being alive' i.e. they want to kill everyone who isn't them.
And then there are the nomadic wanderers such as Scorpion (Prete) and Nadir (Williamson) who owe allegiance to no one but themselves, cruising the toxic landscape for purposes entirely their own. So anyway, basically the Templars ride around on shiny, modified go-karts raiding and pillaging whatever caravans they find, that is until Scorpion and Nadir get in the way, resulting in an all out, post apocalyptic blood brawl, the fate of all humanity hanging in the balance...or something like that.
One thing you have to understand before going into a movie like this is very rarely do they have a well-defined storyline. Usually the plot consists of a series of grabasstic events tied together in an awkward continuity that often makes little sense, but the hope is that the director had the good sense to load the film with a whole mess of exciting action sequences to offset this factor, to which there are some pretty good kill scenes (exploding craniums, etc.), but otherwise the whole affair was a rather tepid one. One scene featured the hero character, Scorpion, being dragged behind a vehicle with the intent on killing him, but since said vehicle was traveling at a speed of about 20 mph, his demise seemed highly unlikely. There's one scene that really made me laugh in that Scorpion, having a showdown near the with the main baddies, blasts one of them in the face, the end result being much like that of what one would see in a cartoon in that of an antagonistic character encountering an explosive device, said device detonating, and the character subsequently appearing charred and blackened. The main character of Scorpion was pretty listless, basically a poor apeing of Mel Gibson's Mad Max, with a dash of Clint Eastwood's the man without a name characters in his early westerns. Scorpion travels around in a modified (modified meaning goofy, useless tubing extruding from the hood, and a giant, transparent plastic bubble attached to the roof which glows with a sickly green light at night) muscle car, complete with weaponry cast off from a James Bond film. I think he was meant to be a dark, brooding figure with a sympathetic side, but he came off as a poor amalgam of characters seen in other, better films. And then there's Fred Williamson...the gung ho warrior, riding around in a rocket car that looks like it has a top speed of about 30 mph, firing explosive tipped arrows, garbed in what appears to be an outfit leftover from a homersexual gladiator movie (nice golden codpiece, Fred). And I agree with a fellow reviewer...the worst character was that of the slingshot toting' kid mechanic with the toothy, idiot grin. Oh how I desired to see something bad happen to him...I very rarely wish harm on real individuals, especially children, but characters in a movie are fair game, especially one as annoying as he was...as far as the bad guys go, there's the leader of the Templars, named the One (Eastman). He does all right, if you like your cinema fraught with ham, but he seemed unable to control his subordinates, specifically his lieutenants, as they were regularly disobeying orders with the intent on taking his position. The Templars, as a whole, were hardly menacing (a great many of them got murderlated during an opening sequence where they were raiding a relatively passive encampment of survivors), and a later sequence, one where they're torturing a captured Scorpion, confirmed my inferred beliefs towards their preferences towards the love we dare not speak. Some scenes of interest...watch as Scorpion has an intimate interlude in a transparent bubble tent with a rescued damsel with giant hair, and Fred Williamson's character spies on them from a distance...I guess in the post apocalyptic future, you get your kicks where you can find them. Another sequence involves a Templar with a purple mohawk suffering a severe case of the road rash...so very satisfying. The entire movie appears to have been shot in and around a vacant quarry, which was a let down as I was expecting the decaying remnants of once great cities as the backdrop, or, at least the hint of such...derelict automobiles set of fire didn't convey the sense of a post apocalyptic setting but rather a poorly secured junkyard haunted by pyromaniacs. Another aspect I found entirely annoying (besides the kid) was near the end the Templars ran off to raid a rather large encampment, to which we saw none of the ensuing carnage, but only the aftermath...a letdown, to say the least. There were fairly copious amounts of gooey violence, and there is some fun to be had here, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into...
Mediablaster/Shriekshow provide a good-looking widescreen (2.35:1) print, enhanced for 16X9 TVs, on this DVD, but I had a real problem with the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono as it was very soft, despite my raising the volume. In some scenes I couldn't even hear the dialog (perhaps that was for the best). Special features include a commentary track with director Enzo G. Castellari, an interview with Fred `The Hammer' Williamson, a washed out theatrical trailer for the film, and trailers for other Shriek Show releases like Duck! The Carbine High Massacre (2000), Hell High (1989), 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), and 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983). I would have given this release three stars on the virtue of its schlock value, but it lost a star due to poor audio.
Cookieman108
By the way, in the post apocalyptic future, if you're having trouble with your automobile due to engine problems, check under the hood for body parts...just a word of advice. Also, there are a couple of separate DVD releases of a film titled Warriors of the Wasteland available...it's the same film...I'm unsure the quality on those DVDs, though.
2005-08-04
By Brian Thomas (Eastern Washington)
This is a good CD that offers a broad range of literature. As for Eastman Wind Ensemble, they seem to lack a little emotion, but they sure have the technical aspects down. But this consists of classics from centuries of music, from Baroque (Toccatta in D Minor by J.S. Bach) to the postmodern (...and the Mountains rising nowhere). So if you are a fan of timeless wind ensemble, then this is the CD for you (and fortunately, it's inexpensive :-).
