The powers that be are calling The Elephant in the Living Room too big of a movie to ignore. I guess they are right because in the documentary we see a five hundred pound African lion attacking cars on a freeway, a sixteen foot Burmese Python in a restaurant parking lot and a panther running loose in a residential neighborhood.

The Elephant in the Living Room takes viewers on a journey deep inside the controversial subculture where the most dangerous animals on earth are kept as common household pets. Director Michael Webber follows Tim Harrison, a leading authority and the man responsible for the rescue and capture of “domesticated” exotic animals, as he works through the flood of calls he receives of dangerous predators roaming the inner-city and nearby suburbs. Tim deals with a ten-foot alligator walking through the streets of a mid-western town, a gaboon viper lurking in a garage and countless other sightings of cougars, tigers, lions, bears and reptiles.

The lives of two men intersect in the midst of this extraordinary film that brings light to the world of exotic pets. One, Tim Harrison, a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet, and the other, Terry Brumfield, a man who is overcoming depression through a close connection with his pet African lion. Winner of five BEST DOCUMENTARY awards, The Elephant in the Living Room delivers the emotional story with exclusive interviews and never before seen footage of this highly controversial topic.

Screenhead has one copy to giveaway. To enter the giveaway post your name and we will pick the winner November 21, 2011.

U.S. Residents Only

Of hundreds of active volcanoes in the world, over three-quarters are part of the explosive Ring of Fire, a 30,000-mile region encircling the Pacific Ocean. Explore this fiery and earthquake-prone region to learn the causes of eruptions and how 500 million people have adapted to – even embraced – living in their volatile shadow … from miners in Chile eking out a perilous living from the sulfur produced in the heart of active volcanoes to macaque monkeys luxuriating in naturally formed hot mineral springs in Japan’s remote “Hell Valley.”

Narrated by Robert Foxworth and featuring breathtaking cinematography, including extensive aerial photography, from the U.S., Japan, Chile, Indonesia and the Philippines, where – at great personal risk – the world’s top geologists, anthropologists, computer animators and filmmakers spent over seven years documenting this unpredictable and awe-inspiring phenomenon.

Tropical Rainforest takes you deep into some of the most exotic and mysterious jungles on Earth for a one-of-a-kind exploration.

A spectacular and unforgettable journey into the heart of the remote and far-flung rainforests of Australia, Costa Rica, French Guiana and Malaysia, this globally important adventure explores these disappearing jungle habitats and gives us a rare, intimate look at the lush foliage and incredibly diverse array of inhabitants.

From extreme close-ups to tree-top panoramas, experience these treasured environments on their own terms—with curious insects, gaudy frogs, startling snakes, vibrant birds, extraordinary animals, exotic plants and dazzling flowers. Will thousands become extinct before they can even be discovered?

Both Ring of Fire Blu-ray and Tropical Rainforest Blu-ray hit the streets July 16, 2011. I have two copies of each to giveaway to two people. Please post your name and I will pick the winners July 16th.

Vampire movies have always been kind of a strange batch. We’ve had some truly great ones–Salem’s Lot (either one, really, including the sequel), John Carpenter’s Vampires, 30 Days of Night–and of course, a legion of truly lesser pieces. And sometimes, we’ve had some vampire movies that have just been indescribable. One of those titles comes to us via the IFC, who sent out a copy of Vampires.

Basically, three years before the film was released, a company was contracted to shoot a documentary about the vampire community in Belgium. Sounds bizarre on the surface, but they took the deal and dispatched a film crew. Their sound man was promptly devoured. Subsequent attempts actually went worse, if you can believe that, until they sent out just one last crew under what were called “perfectly safe conditions”. Considering that the film is actually dedicated to the film crew–as well as one crewman’s arm–the end result is going to be only marginally better than previous ventures.

Vampires is chilling for many reasons, but the biggest one is that these vampires believe that they’re performing a valuable service to the community. They genuinely believe they’re helping society by kidnapping people and draining them of their blood. Frankly, it’s enough to make you think that  vampire hunters are our greatest natural resource, if these egomaniacal amoral psychotics are actually out there.

And yet, at the same time, Vampires is a real sight to see. This is a documentary devoted to an entirely fictional community, and yet, at every length, it’s believable. This is what you’d expect a movie about vampires to look like, and that’s strange enough in its own right. I mean, seriously–when’s the last time you saw a viable documentary about vampires? And even better, a fictionalized documentary? That’s just what the IFC will put on, and that makes Vampires a really rare and unique find that’s as chilling as it is compelling. It’s even got some funny bits in it that can’t be denied.

It’s hard to believe that a believable documentary about vampires can actually exist, especially given that vampires themselves don’t actually exist. You get an incredible look at their culture, their ceremony, their rules and guidelines, everything. They even do a great follow-up piece keeping up with a vampire clan that was forced to move.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Vampires a full ten out of ten by virtue of its sheer uniqueness. There is very little, if anything, out there that’s like this. This is a beautiful little movie, and vampire fans are going to love this.

Neil Young “Here We Are In The Years” On DVD June 21
In-depth documentary tracing the enormous range of artists and
genres Neil has drawn inspiration from…

Despite remaining a hugely original singer, songwriter, performer and, let’s face it, human being, across a career spanning almost fifty years, Neil Young has never been immune to the influence of others. This will be of no surprise to anyone with even a hint of interest in the man and his music, but only those who have studied their subject in depth will be aware of the enormous range of artists and genres Neil has both been affected by and drawn inspiration from, much of which, if one knows where to look, is apparent in Young’s incredible catalogue.

This film traces the astonishing musical journey of Neil Young from the day he first heard Elvis to his most recent offerings, via numerous talented artists who assisted in his creation of, arguably, the finest body of work to emerge during the rock era.

I have three copies of Neil Young’s Music Box to give away!  To enter the giveaway, post your name and I will pick the winners June 28, 2011.

Extra features include extended interviews, digital biographies, beyond DVD and more.

Neil Young with Crosby and Nash: Party In The USA
It’s always a treat when Neil Young stops by, and this time David Crosby and Graham Nash were on hand to help him with Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party In The USA.’

Documentary fans, strap in, because the folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of The Cove, and if you like documentaries, water scenery, or the environment, you’re going to be all over this one like Shark Week on chum.

The Cove follows a group of free divers and environmentalists, especially former dolphin trainer on the set of Flipper Ric O’Barry, who’ve made a horrible discovery out in a secret cove in Japan, near the town of Taiji. And what they find going on in there has deep ramifications for huge swathes of the ecosystem as we know it. But their discovery isn’t without risk, and there are those who want to keep this find silent. But The Cove exists as a monument to those who wouldn’t remain silent, despite the dangers around them.

The first several minutes of The Cove are actually profoundly confusing. Something very, very significant is going on in front of us, but we don’t know just what that something is and won’t know for quite some time into the movie. And we know it’s significant; they keep beating around the bush, describing how O’Barry’s colleagues are dying off, and how shady events are going on, sometimes tied to major names like Sea World.

And when The Cove isn’t being oblique, it’s downright beautiful. There are plenty of amazing scenes of underwater vistas and dolphins moving in rapid fashion, and it’s really impressive to see. But this beauty almost seems contributory to many of the issues that end up facing dolphins. By the time you figure out what Taiji’s secret is, and how it relates to everything else that’s going on, it’s not hard to end up feeling downright horrified by what you’re seeing.

But in the midst of your horror, you’ll also get some really exciting moments in which you watch the environmentalists fighting back, using bizarre and outlandish methods.

The end result is an attention-grabbing concept that melds espionage, outright action, and a beautiful oceanic documentary in one fell swoop. It’s impossible not to follow this obsessively, and does a magnificent job of compelling attention.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Cove a full ten out of ten. It’s hard not to enjoy a movie like this that not only manages to pack a bit of action and adventure into a documentary about dolphins, but also create a compelling, haunting piece that will keep your attention very nicely throughout the entire piece. Even the run time, around ninety minutes, is just right. Everything about this is just right.

You remember, not so long ago, when we covered Ice Road Truckers. Well, the folks out at the History Channel have stepped up the game, and they sent a copy of IRT: Deadliest Roads for me to review. And if the Ice Road left your  blood running cold, rest assured, Deadliest Roads will blow your mind.

IRT: Deadliest Roads takes us from the Dalton, or the Ice Road, in the frozen north to the wilds of India, where some of the Ice Road drivers find themselves in a whole new world. Driving trucks with wooden frames in highly dense traffic onto nightmarishly tight mountain passes to conduct valuable goods to hydroelectric construction projects in the areas around the Himalayas.

Where Ice Road Truckers made your blood run cold with endless expanses of white and cold and ice and worse, IRT: Deadliest Roads makes things even worse by offering a whole new set of hazards. For instance, you might remember Alex as the “King of the Ice Road”, a man who made all sorts of deliveries down the hazardous Dalton. But here, he manages to have multiple accidents before even leaving New Delhi. There are incredibly tight mountain passes that crumble before your very eyes, three-figure temperatures, and trucks that develop weird mechanical problems at a drop of a hat.

Seeing how people drive in India is also somewhat of an unusual cultural experience. I hate driving in major cities myself, but driving in India would likely drive me…insane.  Watching them crawl over these hairsbreadth passages, sometimes in the dark, surrounded by the twisted metal wreckage of other cars is a harrowing experience unlike any other.

And yet, the Ice Road Truckers manage to pull off load after load. And frankly, it’s hard to believe they do it. I tell you this, even just the first episode wracked my nerves pretty good just watching it. When Lisa–you’ll remember her from the original History Channel program too–actually said “I want to go home to the Dalton, where it’s safe”, I knew we were up against something fundamentally different than anything we’d seen before. And we were.

Folks, you’ve got to see this to believe it, and if you haven’t already seen it, this is exactly what you need to see. It’s mind-bending, nerve-wracking stuff, and frankly, I got goosebumps on more than one occasion.

If you want a terrifying experience in some downright beautiful scenery, this is exactly where you need to be.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives IRT: Deadliest Roads a full ten out of ten for giving us an experience I thought would never come out of television: actual scares.

When a DVD series kicks off its presentation with “Much of what you are about to see and here is graphic in nature, and may be disturbing to sensitive viewers”, you know you’re in for something that won’t leave you watching the clock. That’s just what we’ll get with The Third Reich, a copy of which the folks out at the History Channel sent out our way to review.

The Third Reich comes in a two disc package, taking up about three hours total. And in it, you’ll get two sides on those discs: The Rise, and then, The Fall. It will follow the German people, using their own film footage, as they found themselves in the midst of a horror partly of their own creation, asking questions that seldom get asked, like how and why a society would hand over power to a man like Adolf Hitler. And when you discover these answers–and while you discover them too–you will find they’re significantly more disturbing…and plausible…than you ever thought.

This is not the normal dose of History Channel–you won’t see a whole lot of one lone man screeching in German to crowds of adulating followers. What you will see is a lot of things you probably haven’t seen before. Some of what you’ll see is actually illegal to show in Germany, which is even more compelling.

And compelling really is the best way to describe these proceedings–downright frightful things will happen right in front of you. The whole thing looks like a train wreck that you can’t stop staring at, a train wreck you’ve seen before yet you know there’s no way to stop. And yet, viewed in this light, suddenly the whole Nazi regime makes a kind of dark, horrible sense. Looking at starving people living in the midst of horror makes it understandable–though not condonable–that they would turn to the direction they did.

You will see things here that are not only new, but alarming. You will see bodies in the streets, desperate people, small children surrounded by horror and all around it the darkly-tinged, comparative mania of people actually living a normal life, complete with dance contests and scenes from carnivals. They even have a term for it: howling with the wolves.

It’s dark, it’s terrifying, it’s scarier than most horror movies you’ll see in recent memory, and it’s all true. This is the power and the terror that is The Third Reich, and the History Channel has really knocked it out of the park with this one.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Third Reich a ten out of ten for being probably the most unique, and most disturbing, presentation the History Channel has put on to date.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent out a copy of The Last Play at Shea, and while it may look like a jumbled up mess, the end result will prove to be a lot more coherent than you might expect.

The Last Play at Shea combines two greats of their era–Billy Joel and his last concert at Shea Stadium, former home of the New York Mets. What you’ll get here meanwhile, isn’t so much that final concert so much as it is bits of that concert as well as a set of interviews with musicians, sports figures, and everybody else whose life was touched in some way by Shea Stadium.

This isn’t so much a documentary as it is an attempt at a touching, tearful remembrance of a place that has a lot of meaning to a whole lot of people. There’s a phrase that resonates with most every Mets fan: “It’s a dump, but it’s our dump.”. That’s the phrase that will stick with you for the length and breadth of the movie. You’ll learn about how Shea Stadium got its start, how Billy Joel got his start (which is actually related to Shea Stadium’s start), and how the two essentially grew up together until their strange ultimate connection.

It’s a little bizarre to think of a musical career and a stadium basically growing up together, but it actually makes some sense. And the interspersion of their lives is strange to say the least, but at the same time, so perfectly apt. It’s bizarre. By all indications this should be a mess. It’s almost like two separate documentaries stitched together and presented as one, but the two complement each other so well that it makes perfect sense. And that’s disturbing.

This isn’t a bad movie, not by any stretch. It’s strange, it’s a little disturbing, but it’s a story of two interesting subjects who share a whole lot of parallels, parallels you’d never see coming, but parallels that exist all the same.

If you have any kind of interest in the history of New York, Billy Joel or Shea Stadium, you’ll want to see this. If you have an interest in all three, you must have this. A bit niche, I know, but it certainly does cover that niche abundantly well.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Last Play At Shea a seven out of ten for being one of the strangest documentaries I’ve ever seen, but at the same time, one of the most absolutely informative.

The folks out at Image Entertainment sent over a copy of  Ronald Reagan: An American Journey for us to review, and it will be pretty engaging, if you’re prepared to work through some pretty hefty conservative bias.

Ronald Reagan: An American Journey follows Reagan’s political career, from its beginnings in California all the way up to his Presidency, as shown through film clips, interviews, and other footage that shows off Reagan’s political career, and in turn, a chunk of his life.

This is a rose-colored glasses view, make no mistake. When you consider that the production company that put it together is called “Enduring Freedom Productions”, you know they’re not going to be really objective (they referred to the event that cued Nixon’s resignation as “the tragedy of Watergate”). And listening to Reagan talk about stopping deficits is a strange sort of thing, a clever mix of hypocrisy and sheer hammering weird.

And that’s what it’ll be, all through the “movie”: a gigantic ego-stroking puff piece geared to show Reagan in the greatest possible light. There will be no mention here of naps, or astrology, and certainly not “Mommy”. You settle in for Ronald Reagan‘s American Journey, well, you’re going to get a journey down the big eight-lane highway, lined with rosebushes, and with cheering crowds on either side. You won’t be taken to the poor side of town. The free speech zone is in another county. You’re going to get Reagan as dyed in the wood Republicans everywhere see him, as Ronaldus Maximus, as the grand hero of twentieth century Republicans everywhere, as well as the role model for the twenty-first century.

Fair? No. Well put together? Mostly. If you discard the hefty bias (there is a bit here about Iran-Contra here, but it seems rather glossed over), then you’ll get an interesting, if right-slanted, look at some major history of the 1980s and a bit earlier.

It’s got that sunny, morning-in-America feel to it that the entire Reagan presidency had, and it almost makes you feel bad to look at it too closely and see that some of the gold is merely gilt. But if you’re ready for a look at the eighties, not necessarily too accurate a look, then Ronald Reagan: An American Journey is waiting for you.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Ronald Reagan: An American Journey a six out of ten for being slanted, biased and sunny, and if you’re looking for a shot of optimism in dark times, well, this is a good place to look.

The folks out the Discovery Channel–via press agent Gaiam–sent over a copy of The Science of Sex Appeal for us, and it may well be one of the strangest items from the Discovery Channel I’ve seen in a while. And from a network that gave me Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs, well, that’s saying something.

The Science of Sex Appeal, essentially, studies just that: how the various genetic imperatives that a human body contains determine just what we find attractive. There are, as it turns out, a whole lot of those imperatives, and they go back and forth over the centuries, from Plato and beyond, to ratios and symmetry and even more than that. What is it that makes an ideal? Turns out it’s a lot of different factors working together, and most of which you can’t even measure on your own without computers and a background in chemistry.

They are going to be patently exhaustive about this one, and I do mean EXHAUSTIVE. There’s information in here about ratios, about measurements, about chemicals, about mental shortcuts, the combination of cues, and most everything under the sun. They did this entire segment–roughly ten minutes or so–that talk about walks. Walks! How people WALK is a significant part of this whole movie.

Now, the question here is, do you really want to hear about this? Obviously, everyone wants to know how to be more attractive to the opposite sex. But as it turns out, much of it is beyond your control. The sound of your voice, the shape of your face…and there’s precious little way to alter them. No diet plan, no book, nothing can change your voice or facial shape or inherent walk, things controlled by bone structure and other things.

As it turns out, though, there are ways to modify this. For instance: hey ladies!  Scientific studies have PROVED you’ll date a jerk with a nice car because he has a nice car! You may not want to believe you’re that shallow–and maybe you personally aren’t–but as it turns out, scientifically, women do. Seriously–they actually ran a test on this, showing pictures of various men. And they took the guy who started out at the very lowest on the scale and gave him a software job making $375,000 a year. Suddenly, he went from a four on a ten scale to a perfect ten. Same guy. It was unbelievable.

Oh, and guys–don’t ever, EVER, smell like a girl’s dad. Or brother, or any near relative. Women are huge odor trackers, and if you smell at all like a relative, you’re going to intrinisically repel them.

But here’s the issue: will you want to watch this DVD? The question comes down to, do you want to spend ninety minutes going over the minutiae, over and over, or are you not prepared to watch incredibly detailed analyses relating to sex appeal?

If you can answer that question yes, then this will tell you everything you ever wanted to know and some things you didn’t even know you could. If you answer no, then I’m sorry, but you need to stay well far away from this.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the highly niche The Science of Sex Appeal a six out of ten for being deep but not broad, a spectacularly in-depth look at that which is more driven by science than first we knew.