As a child, the work of strangely named Roald Dahl was possibly the most exciting. His stories capturing my childhood imagination like no other, plus it was a valid away for enjoying fart jokes without facing the disapproval from parents. So what direction will Dreamworks take with one of his most famous novels, The BFG.

The BFG (that’s Big Friendly Giant, and not a reference to that massive weapon in the Doom video games) is about a young girl who cannot sleep one night, and discovers a dream-collecting giant outside her house. The giant shows the girl his world, and they appeal to the Queen of England to help him capture other giants, who tend to eat children whenever they’re hungry.

The story has a magnificent visual scope, from the encounter with a giant, to his world, to the dreams and nightmares he can create, to the clash of worlds as the humans battle the evil giants. It’s a wonderful story that has already been made into a 1989 hand-drawn film. And of course plenty of Dahl’s other stories have made it to the big screen, ranging from the great (The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox) to the poor (Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

So what does Dreamworks have to offer. The company tends to be seen as a poor man’s Pixar, making technically apt films that rely on spoof humour to get laughs and tell cliched tales. But with Pixar now relying on tired sequels, perhaps it’s time for Dreamworks to step up their game (like they seemingly did with How To Train Your Dragon). It also helps that writer Melissa Mathison (E.T., The Indian in the Cupboard) is on board already.

Chalet Girl, the new British comedy starring Felicity Jones and Ed Westwick, is now available on SundanceNOW.com and cable VOD via Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Time Warner, and Bright House before it is available in theaters!

We just picked the winner for our giveaway.  Auriette is the winner, and she says, “British comedies tend to be smarter and better written than most American comedies, and that’s why I’d love the chance to see this.”

Well, Auriette that is a valid point and you get to see this funny British movie. Enjoy!

Pretty tomboy Kim (Felicity Jones) used to be a champion skateboarder, but now she flips burgers to support herself and her dad. Opportunity comes knocking when she flukes a winter-long catering job in one of the plushest ski chalets in the Alps. At first, Kim is baffled by this bizarre new world of posh people, vintage champagne, epic mountains and waist deep powder.

Then Kim discovers snowboarding, and her natural talent soon sees her training for the end-of-season competition, with a chance to win major prize money. But before she can become a champion again, Kim needs to overcome her deepest fears – and figure out what’s going on with Jonny (Ed Westwick), her boss’ handsome but apparently unavailable son.

The folks out at Entertainment One sent out a copy of Sanctuary: The Complete Third Season for us to review, and for those of you who like your television heavy on the science fiction, you should be abundantly happy here.

Sanctuary: The Complete Third Season follows a group of folks who form the Sanctuary Network, a group of people out to find the beasts of legend and give them a safe place to live. Because as it turns out, most of them exist. The third season kicks off with a battle against one such creature, Big Bertha, a giant spider with seismic manipulation capabilities who’s attached symbiotically to the chaotic goddess Kali. And from there, it’s going to go on as the Sanctuary Network goes hunting a wide array of these “abnormals”, as well as discovering themselves in the midst of a whole lot of troubles as they find the Sanctuary Network is part of something much, much larger than they think.

As science fiction goes, this isn’t half bad stuff. It’s partially episodic, and at the same time, builds these episodes into a much wider base that provides the long-term viewer with some very satisfying inside references and twists. The visuals are really rather impressive, even if the plot lines aren’t always there a hundred percent. Some of the stuff that goes on here is just downright preposterous, and sometimes, the show will even admit how outright lunatic things they portray are. But still, for a flight of fancy that goes particularly high, it does a pretty fair job of appealing to both casual and devoted viewers.

It’s sharp, but not really original–those thinking Torchwood when they get in on this puppy won’t be too far gone from the truth–and it’s clever, but not particularly witty. You probably caught this on the SyFy Channel once or twice, and it’s not going to be the high point of their lineup. But by like token, it won’t be the worst thing you’ve ever seen, either. I didn’t find it hard to keep up with, and frankly, I’d maybe seen a couple episodes before running through the third season. I was pleased.

Chances are, you will be too.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Sanctuary: The Complete Third Season an eight out of ten. It’s not perfect, not by any stretch, but it will still provide a lot of good old fashioned science fiction fun for those who like it short, episodic and full of monsters, only with a little extra complexity this time.

It may well be one of the longest running paranormal investigation shows ever–it may well be one of the only paranormal investigation shows still running–but Ghost Hunters has pulled in quite a following over the years. And the folks out at Image Entertainment sent out a copy of Ghost Hunters Season Six Part One for us to review, showing us that this one’s probably still got a ways to go.

Ghost Hunters Season Six Part One takes us out with TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, who goes forth to investigate reports of paranormal occurrences backed up by a host of potent high-tech hardware, including infrared cameras, digital recorders, EMF (Electro-Magnetic Field) detectors, and plenty more in a bid to locate the truth behind them. TAPS will be going to a variety of locations, from the season opening live 100th episode from Alcatraz all the way to the Orleans Zoo and Fort Ticonderoga.

Despite the fact that the series has been running for over a hundred episodes, TAPS founders Grant and Jason are still working the Roto-Rooter gig, which is something of a surprise. But the TAPS boys do something a little different from the ordinary; they don’t look for paranormal activity as they look for ways to explain it away. They don’t always succeed, but they’re quick to look for alternate explanations to the things they’ve seen, and that gives them a note of extra credibility in an industry that many don’t even recognize as actual science.

And while each episode is inherently similar to the other–TAPS goes somewhere, investigates for a while, sifts through the evidence and then shows off what was found (they even have labels for each segment: The Investigation, The Analysis, and The Reveal). Sometimes they’ll do two locations in one episode, but in the end, it’s always the same three basic elements.

It’s not hard to get bored with Ghost Hunters; watching Grant and Jason and company jump at…well…something, and follow it up with some variant on “what was that?” only to discover that we have absolutely no idea what it was that spooked them can get a bit dull. Still though, if you space it out over the space of a couple days, you’ll likely do a whole lot better than you would trying to belt these down all at once.

Still though, if you’re already fond of ghost hunting, then pretty much the seminal show in the field, Ghost Hunters, is going to be a pretty good time for you.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Ghost Hunters Season Six Part One a seven out of ten for putting together a reasonably solid presentation that gets a little repetitive at times, but taking this one in small doses will give you the best time overall.

You know, I love it when the folks out at Lions Gate ship over stuff that got its start on SyFy. They’ve made some pretty peachy monster movies so far, and while none of them will ever be mistaken for a really good movie, there’s nothing like a good monster movie to get the heart pumping and the popcorn munching. Get some friends together and some daquiris and you’ve got a Friday! And that’s just what we’ll get with Goblin, a SyFy Channel Original Movie that’s getting the video release treatment.

Goblin takes us out to Hollow Glen, where a group of villagers just celebrated Halloween by tossing a baby into a fire. Of course, the problem comes in when the baby’s mother, who turns out to be a witch, puts a heavy-duty death curse on the town, summoning up the titular goblin from the fire that her baby was chucked into. The goblin’s purpose? To slaughter every infant in the immediate vicinity. Fast forward just shy of a couple hundred years to the present era, where the goblin’s curse isn’t  as defunct as some might have thought.

This is some incredible cliche, right down to the crazy old man who gives away the entire plot in the first ten minutes. And yet, at the same time, it’s this incredible devotion to the cliche that makes this one a seriously entertaining popcorn muncher. And for all the cliches, there are still some pretty good scares in here. We’re talking about a monster that essentially flies around and is pretty much impervious to small arms fire and the like but for one whole day. It eats babies and kills whatever gets between it and a baby. The thing is not exactly a sympathetic character. If anything it’s a low-rent version of The Creeper from the Jeepers Creepers franchise except it doesn’t make things out of corpses. It just makes a lot of corpses.

The means to kill the Goblin is pure on horror movie logic, that is to say, there is none, but it doesn’t particularly matter because you’re too busy enjoying the various fight scenes. Scenery chewing, irrational behavior…it really doesn’t matter. You knew going in this wasn’t going to be a good movie, but in this case, when it gives up on good, it instead becomes fun. And fun is good enough for most anyone.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Goblin a seven out of ten for sacrificing good on the altar of fun, and the end result is a surprisingly watchable if mind-bogglingly stupid affair.

Nicolas Winding Refn featurette

Ryan Gosling featurette

Carey Mulligan featurette

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn throttles into the Hollywood fast lane with the precision-crafted action caper Drive.

Ryan Gosling stars as a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can’t help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac).

After a heist intended to pay off Standard’s protection money spins unpredictably out of control, Driver finds himself driving defense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of deadly serious criminals (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman). But when he realizes that the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash in his trunk-that they’re coming straight for Irene and her son-Driver is forced to shift gears and go on offense.

The movie was written by Oscar nominee Hossein Amini,The Wings of Dove, and adapted from the eponymous novel by James Sallis. The Wings of Dove is such a different movie than Drive. It’s hard to image they both were written by the same person.

Marvel has been rapidly issuing out new movies since their acquisition by Disney, and some of them have been better than others. The folks at Shout Factory sent out a new item from the Marvel Knights subclass called Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers for us to review. This one is going to be substantially different from most you’ve seen from Marvel, and if you like unique like I do, well, then you will be very happy here.

Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers takes us back out to Asgard, where Loki has achieved his dream of seizing the throne of Asgard. But his success has left the trickster god starkly unfulfilled, and he begins to wonder what went wrong. For that, he turns to his past, and gives us perspective on the longstanding rivalry between him and his brother Thor. Thus will a story spin out that provides perspective on the nemeses, and their places in the various plots that surround the land of the Norse pantheon.

This isn’t a typical Marvel animation in the sense you might think. See, it’s a Marvel Knights title, which is a little different from the standard Marvel. And this movie watches more like a comic book than like a movie; it’s a lot like X-Men: Gifted in that sense. There’s a lot of a lot of dialogue in here, and some of it is frankly a little thick. Loki’s weird metaphysical conflict as he wonders how the god of deceit and trickery can actually rule anything is pomposity made film.

But still, it’s a surprisingly literary experience from Marvel, which does a very interesting job of examining predestination, and one’s place in the universe. Trying to portray Loki as a sympathetic character isn’t an easy task–nor a very rational one, in all honesty–and it comes off more than a little whiny sometimes. But still, it’s hard not to look at this guy and think that, at least on some things, he’s got a point. They laugh at the guy’s mother, for crying out loud.

Still though, if you’re looking for a Marvel experience that’s vastly different from, and a little deeper than, the ordinary, well, you’ll get all you can ask for right here. This is some fairly impressive stuff, if still lacking in the more traditional measures. The ending, however, is a bit abrupt and a downright buzzkill, but probably the only ending that could have happened.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the depressing, wordy, but rather unique Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers a seven out of ten for taking a chance and doing something really new and different with the whole concept.

I’ll bet you didn’t imagine Alaska grew some absolutely massive vegetables. Strange way to kick off a DVD review, I know, but then, this is a strange DVD. The folks out at the Discovery Channel, backed up by their press agent Gaiam, sent out a copy of Alaska: The Edge Of Life for us to review. And it’s a strange one that has a lot more going for it than you might expect.

Alaska: The Edge of Life takes you up to Alaska, the biggest state in the United States, and one of the most otherworldly. And we’ll be going around all over to see a variety of impressive sights, the kind of which you can literally only find in Alaska. You’ll go from the water to the landscape and everywhere in between, as the folks at Discovery show you things you probably never would have seen had you never reached the far north.

And you will, rest assured, see some thoroughly amazing stuff. You’ll go up Mount McKinley, you’ll watch the Northern Lights, you’ll follow bears and go crab fishing just like the Deadliest Catch guys do. You’ll hit the Bering Sea, and check out bears, and see a host of things. But like I said in the opening paragraph, it won’t just be the biggest and wildest stuff–you’ll also see vegetables of enormous size. See, in Alaska, they’re close to the pole. And what this means is that they get a lot more sunlight during the summer months, and virtually none during the winter months. That in turn yields vegetables of unusual size as they’re constantly getting sunlight. The end result is, as you’ll see, a cabbage weighing nearly ninety pounds.

Like much of Discovery Channel’s fare, it’s going to feature a whole lot of strange things and things you probably didn’t already know. Invariably I end up learning something new from their stuff (this time, for example, I got an excellent explanation of hovercraft physics), and chances are you will too.

Between some absolutely breathtaking visuals, a whole lot of bizarre new information, and plenty of surprises, it’s hard not to enjoy Alaska: The Edge of Life. And it’s going to be amply worth your time to check this out. How amply?

The Screenhead Ten Scale believes it’s sufficiently amply worth your time to check this out that it gives Alaska: The Edge of Life an eight out of ten. A bit on the niche side, admittedly, but still having a lot of great parts to it to make it very much worth your time.

I have a DVD copy of Scream 4 to give away.

The horror movie is directed by Wes Craven and stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Anthony Anderson, Shenae Grimes and Lucy Hale.

The movie will hit the streets on October 4, 2011. The movie follows Sidney Prescott (Campbell), now the author of a self-help book, who returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. There she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey (Arquette) and Gale (Cox), who are now married, as well as her cousin Jill (Roberts).

Unfortunately Sidney’s appearance also brings about the return of Ghost Face, putting Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, along with Jill, her friends (Panettiere, Culkin) and the whole town of Woodsboro in danger.

Here’s what the critics have to say about Scream 4: “Pure genius.” (Richard Roeper, RichardRoeper.com) “The Best ‘Scream’ since the original! Funny, clever and scary as hell.” (Dan Jewel, Life & Style Weekly) “Full of surprises!” (Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald)

To enter, post your name and I will pick the winner October 4, 2011.

He’s done the time, now he might as well do the crime. Acclaimed indie filmmaker Malcolm Venville (44 Inch Chest) directs an all-star cast in the outrageous crime caper, Henry’s Crime, is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

I have picked the two winners for the giveaway. They are Cody and Jennifer Jenkins. They both answered the question correctly and were picked as the winners.

“With a terrific cast led by Keanu Reeves (The Matrix Trilogy), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) and a splendid James Caan (Misery), Henry’s Crime is a fun comedy with irresistible heist and heart” (Boxoffice Magazine). Reeves stars as Henry Torne, a wrongly accused man who winds up behind bars for a bank robbery he didn’t commit. After befriending a charismatic lifer (Caan) in prison, Henry finds his purpose — having done the time, he decides he may as well do the crime. But his outlandish plan to rob the very same bank spins wildly out of control, as he finds himself performing in a stage play and falling in love with the production’s seductive leading lady (Farmiga).