Amy Weber

Crackerjack 3 [VHS]
$14.95
When I stumbled across a home video release of Crackerjack 3, I bought it for a couple of reasons. First, I thought it was a "sequel" to a 1994 movie called Crackerjack, with Thomas Ian Griffith as a cop and Christopher Plummer as a neo-Nazi, clashing at a mountain resort over a complicated plan to steal millions in mob diamonds and to cover it up. That movie had lame writing and acting, but still managed to be a fairly entertaining low-budget knockoff of movies in the Die Hard mold. Second, I bought the movie because of Bo Svenson, who I had liked years earlier in "Walking Tall."

As Crackerjack 3 played, I could barely believe my eyes. The supposed "action" movie did not even try to be serious. It was sheer farce. The "Crackerjack" name was a misleading gimmick. There was no continuity with anything from before. The music, tone, pacing, acting, and characters were all suited for a bad comedy, not a drama. Everything in the film, including the rag-tag assortment of elderly ex-spies, assembled by Svenson to combat his corrupt successor as head of a covert spy agency, seemed to be played for an unfunny joke. The villain floundered as ineffectively as everybody else in the film. The story was so thin, disorganized, slow-moving, aimless, and boring that the only thoughts it provoked were of the clock and the fast-forward button.

I can honestly think of nothing good to say. This movie was as close to a pointless, worthless waste of time and money as any I have ever seen.

2007 Amy Weber 16 Month Calendar
$19.95
Just got this calendar for a birthday present, and OMG, if you werent in love with Amy Weber before seeing this, you will be in love (or lust) with her once you see her in these pics.

Each month is hotter than the one before; this calender is already up on my wall and will remain there for the entire year and beyond.

Thank you Amy for letting me wake up each morning to your sizzling pics!!

Offenbach: The Brigands
$17.99
Offenbach's music and Gilbert's libretto are both great fun, and the performances are too - especially allowing for the fact that this is really a "semi-professional" production. The acting is a little "comic opera-ish" and wooden, but this is if anything a plus. It is of course "authentic" in that it is how Victorian and Edwardian comic opera used to be staged. I rather like it anyway.

And, as nearly always with the Ohio Light Opera, this release does not have a competitor - if you want to hear this operetta in English then this is all there is!

What lets this CD set down in my opinion - and this goes to a lesser or greater extent to all this company's recordings, at the least the three I have purchased so far, is the quality of the sound. It is recorded "live" (i.e. presumably at an actual performance - although there is little or no evidence of an audience) - I wish it had been done in a proper studio instead!

Sound levels are generally very low (although they fluctuate a fair bit) and I actually had to make a "boosted" copy onto MD when I wanted to play some tracks on our local community radio station - just to get enough volume so our equipment at the station would broadcast it at a listenable level. Clarity is poor (the fault of the sound engineers rather than the performers, in the main) and it is very fortunate indeed that the set includes a full libretto. Otherwise some of Gilbert's best lines would be lost.

Both the "lost stars" in my assessment are for sound quantity and quality, anyway.

Amy Weber
$2.97