Action
Rod Lott
Hitting video one week after "Tekken" is "The King of Fighters," and the two share an awful lot in common: The live-action films are based on video-game franchises, more or less skipped theaters, place style over substance, and flirt with unresolved daddy issues as a subplot.

Action
Rod Lott
Swords and sandals: Once a matinee mainstay, the adventure subgenre is now all but extinct, kept alive by the occasional Conan movie or Titans clash. DVD helps, too, such as three new offerings from Warner Archive.

Television series
Rod Lott
XXIV, VXI, XXX, IV, X — hell, it's all Greek Roman to me. All I know for sure is that each and every box set that has been or will be released of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is worth owning. Since the new Volume XXIV falls into that category, it, too, qualifies.

Western
Rod Lott
Before he became Itay’s master of horror, Dario Argento knocked out a few screenplays, including one of Sergio Leone's legendary Western epics, Once Upon a Time in the West. Lesser-known is 1969's The Five Man Army. That's too bad, because it brings an “international all-star team” approach to the spaghetti Western, and doesn’t forget the all-aces Ennio Morricone score!

OKG7 things to do
Gazette staff
Let your ears take a stab at a kick-ass resurgence of classic rock when The Sword returns to town. The band will unsheathe tracks from its brand-new disc, Apocryphon, at ACM Performance Lab, 329 E. Sheridan. Doors open at 8 p.m. tonight, with Eagle Claw and Gypsyhawk also on the bill. Tickets are $15-$18. Visit ticketstorm.com.

Wednesday

Television series
Rod Lott
I think the best way to review a box set of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be to list all the references made by and/or targets of the Satellite of Love crew in those episodes, to demonstrate their true depth and breadth.

But that’d also be the worst, because we’d be here all day.