MCBASTARD'S MAUSOLEUM: April 2025

Monday, April 7, 2025

SHAMELESS: THE COMPLETE SERIES (2011-2021) DVD Review

SHAMELESS: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Label: Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment

Region Code:

Rating: TV-MA

Duration: 7500 Minutes

Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles

Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)

Cast: William H. Macy, Emmy Rossum, Emmy® Award Winner Jeremy Allen White, Cameron Monaghan, Emma Kenney, Ethan Cutkosky, Shanola Hampton, Steve Howey, Noel Fisher, Joan Cusack.

Synopsis: Meet Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy): proud, working-class patriarch to a motley brood of six smart, spirited and independent kids who, without him, would be…better off. In Frank’s booze-addled view, parenting just eats into his hard-earned bar-crawling time around Chicago – so he leaves it to eldest daughter Fionna (Emmy Rossum) to hold down the fort. Bearing the de facto parent badge/burden, she’s donned the proverbial apron and makes sure her younger siblings do their chores, keep a clean-ish home, and everyone (no matter how small) works to keep the house lights on, as well as food on the table. Brothers Lip (Jeremy Allen White), Ian (Cameron Monaghan), and Carl (Ethan Cutkosky) use their intellect to break every rule in the book to survive and make the bank, while younger sister Debbie (Emma Kenney) would sooner steal her share, Toddle Liam, the youngest, is just happy to be along for the ride. The Gallaghers are irreverent, endearing, resilient – and they’re absolutely, wildly and unapologetically Shameless.

Audio/Video: Includes all 134 episodes from all 11 award winning seasons arrive on a 34-dic DVD set from WBDHE. Presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) the show looks solid in SD. Depth and clarity are pleasing, colors are well-saturated, black are solid, and while there is some minor compression artifacts and the show doesn't reach the heights of the season 1-9 Blu-ray releases they hold up well. Audio comes by way of English Dolby Digital 5.1 with optional English subtitles. it's a very front-centirc soundstage, but dialogue exchanges sound fine, there's no issues with hiss, distortion or sibilance, and the music cues and occasional use of directionals and atmospherics sound fine, but again not as full as an uncompressed track would have provided.

As far as extras go these are all recycled from past single season edition, nothing new. Seasons 1-3 are pretty stacked with featurettes, interviews and unaired scenes. Seasons 4-8 still have plenty of unaired scenes and just a couple of featurettes, seasons 9-10 only offer unaired scenes, and the final season 11 has unaired scenes and one featurette.

The 34-dic set arrives in two high capacity clear keepcase, you know - the cheap ones. One hold seasons 1-6, the other seasons 7-11, each with a single-sided wrap featuring a collage of the single season artwork on the front and a photo collage of characters from the show on the back. These are housed in a pretty flimsy keepcase with essentially the same artwork. Inside there's a 2-sided 3-panel insert that lists the special features for the seasons. The discs themselves have a different color for each season, listing which season and number of disc, but not listing any episodes or extras on them.

Special Features:

Season 1:

- Unaired Scenes

- Bringing Shameless to America

- Shameless: Bringing the Fun to Dysfunctional

- A Shameless Discussion About Sex

- Audio Commentaries on Pilot and Frank Gallagher Loving Husband, Devoted Father

- Shameless Season 2 Sneak Pak

Season 2:

- The Complicated Life of Fiona Gallagher

- The Art of Acting Drunk

- Writing the Shameless Version

- Shameless Actor Discussions

- The Shameless Christmas Carol Music Video

- Unaired Scenes

- A Shameless Look at Season 3

Season 3

- Where the Streets Have No Shame

- An Officer and a Gallagher

- The Many Sides of Sheila

- A Lip Off the Old Block

- Unaired Scenes

- Being Mandy & Mickey Milkovich

- A Messy Triangle: Lip, Karen and Manny

Season 4:

- Unaired Scenes

- Being Gallagher

- Shameless Neighbors

Season 5:

Unaired Scenes

- Shameless Sex Love

- Gentrify This!!!

Season 6:

- Unaired Scenes

- Shameless Shanola

- Running the Table: A Shameless Cob=nversation

Season 7:

- Unaired Scenes

- Growing Up Shameless

- The Shameless Politics of Frank

Season 8

- Unaired Scenes

- My Shameless Sister

- My Shameless Mentors

Season 9-10:

- Unaired Scenes

Season 11:

- Unaired Scenes

- Shameless Last Call

Buy It!

Amazon

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Sunday, April 6, 2025

WILD BILLY CHILDISH & THE CHATHAM SINGERS - STEP OUT! (2024) (Spinout Nuggets CD Review)

WILD BILLY CHILDISH & THE CHATHAM SINGER

- STEP OUT! CD (2024)

Label: Spinout Nuggets

Duration: 37 Minutes 12 Seconds

Tracklist:

1. Step Out

2. Fine and Mellow

3. I Can Tell

4. Beneath the Midnight Tree

5. Rollin' and Tumblin'

6. The Same Tree (Blues)

7. Upside Mine

8. I Love My Woman

9. I Just Want to Make Love to You

10. King Bee

11. Meet Me at the Bottom

12. I've Got Everything Indeed

Band:

Billy Childish on Vocals/Guitar

Juju on Vocals/Bass

Wolf Howard on Drums/Percussion

'Bludy' Jim Riley on Harp.

Synopsis: Wild Billy Childish has been recording and performing since the 1977 punk explosion. The Pop Rivets, Thee Milkshakes, The Headcoats and The Buff Medways being just a few outfits that Billy has run into the ground. But all that is just a hobby gone out of control - his day job is being an internationally exhibited artist, writer and vermin poet. Specializing in Chicago style Blues, The Chatham Singers have released five albums since 2005, via Hangman Records and Damaged Goods, and over a dozen 7" singles, some rarer than others, some worse than others. The Chatham Singers are Billy Childish on Vocals/Guitar, Juju on Vocals/Bass, Wolf Howard on Drums/Percussion and 'Bludy' Jim Riley on Harp. Here we have a full long player, which includes some of the songs from records only available as limited 45's, free at their sell-out shows. some of them recorded by The Hangman Field Recording Unit, and others at Bludy Jim's Ranscombe shack. Get Hip and Boogie Chillin'!

Back in the day I loved me some Thee Headcoats, a formidable Brit garage band fronted by Billy Childish, notable for their lo-fi albums with raucous tunes including some choice covers, including the Son House songs "John the Revelator" and "Death Letter Blues" years before The White Stripes got ahold of them. Childish's post-Thee Headcoats career is pretty fucking prolific, and I am ashamed to say that I have largely not kept up with his career, I had kid and got lame (sorry), at least until this new release from Spinout Nuggets arrived in my mailbox.

Quite a treat indeed are these 12 tracks of stripped down Chicago style blues, five Childish originals and seven tasty Childish-ized covers of traditional blues tunes, including both Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow" and the plaintive "I Love My Woman", Howlin' Wolf's "Meet Me at the Bottom", Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee", Willie Dixon's "I Just Want To make Love To You", Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'", and a take on Bo Diddley's "I Can Tell", some of which look to have only been previously available on hard to find 45s. The arrangements are sparse and direct, sounding like a terrific live in the studio, which I am sure they are, sounding slightly shambolic in the best sort of rough-hewn way. Childish's raspy yowl and twangy guitar intonations combined with the minimalist bottom end beat courtesy Juju on bass and drummer Wolf Howard, but I gotta say the secret ingredient here for me is the fantastic harmonica courtesy of 'Bludy' Jim Riley, often a haunting presence on tunes like the Childish penned "The Same Tree (Blues)", and the perfect accent on something like Howlin' Wolf's "Meet Me at the Bottom". This is the sort of album I can dig into when I'm sippin' lemonade o the back porch or getting rowdy on the weekend with a few brews - it's just got a terrific lo-fi bluesy vibe that I love, offering plenty of blues-drenched melancholic delirium.

The 12-song CD arrives in a Digipack CD sleeve from Spinout Nuggetss, and is also available on vinyl LP for the cool kids.

Buy It!

Amazon - CD

Amazon - Vinyl

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MAGILLA GORILLA: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1964-1966) Warner Archive Blu-ray Screenshots

MAGILLA GORILLA: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1964-1966)

3-Disc Blu-ray Set

Label: Warner Archive

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 539 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)

Director: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera

Cast: Allan Melvin, Howard Morris, John Stephenson, Mel Blanc

Direct from his Peebles Pet Shop habitat, Magilla Gorilla swings into the Blu-ray jungle, his inimitable goofiness and penchant for stumbling into trouble still intact to delight new generations of cartoon fans. As the naive ape demonstrates, primates and humans share similar situations. Magilla gets to be an Army draftee (Private Magilla, featuring famous news anchor Walter Crancake), a football player (Gridiron Gorilla), an astronaut (Planet Zero) and more, ever silly situation an occasion for laughs. You can also relish the frisky feuding of Punkin' Puss and Mushmouse in a rootin'-tootin' shooting gallery of hillbilly hilarity. Lightning-fast sheriff Ricochet Rabbit and his coyote deputy Droop-a-long round out the animated animal antics. All 23 original episodes of this Hanna-Barbera classic series have been newly remastered from 4K scans of the original negatives for pristine quality, along with eight bonus Magilla cartoons that are sure to please!

Audio/Video: REVIEW COMNIG SOON!

Episodes: