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Review Optimum Home Entertainment / David Essex Double Bill - That'll Be The Day / Stardust [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Apted
  • David Essex
  • Billy Fury
  • Rosemary Leach
  • Keith Moon
  • Ringo Starr
  • Claude Whatham
Release date: 2007-02-26
Run time: 194 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £6.19

Review David Essex Double Bill - That'll Be The Day / Stardust [1973] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review ITV DVD / The Plank [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Jim Dale
  • Tommy Cooper
  • Eric Sykes
  • Graham Stark
  • Stratford Johns
Release date: 2004-10-18
Run time: 51 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.98

Review The Plank [1967] / ITV DVD:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Jolson Story, The / Jolson Sings Again [1946]
Actors & Directors
  • Barbara Hale
  • Bill Goodwin
  • Larry Parks
  • William Demarest
  • Ludwig Donath
  • Henry Levin
Release date: 2003-11-03
Run time: 217 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.77

Review Jolson Story, The / Jolson Sings Again [1946] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Cruel Sea [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Denholm Elliott
  • Virginia McKenna
  • Jack Hawkins
  • Stanley Baker
  • Moira Lister
  • Charles Frend
Release date: 2007-01-08
Run time: 121 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.75

Review The Cruel Sea [1953] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / 2001: A Space Odyssey (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Gary Lockwood
  • Keir Dullea
  • Robert Beatty
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • William Sylvester
  • Daniel Richter
Release date: 2008-03-03
Run time: 136 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.67

Review 2001: A Space Odyssey (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968] / Warner Home Video:


Review Universal Pictures Video / Never Forget : The New Musical based on the music of Take That
Release date: 2007-11-12
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.98

Review Never Forget : The New Musical based on the music of Take That / Universal Pictures Video:


Review ITV DVD / Reach For The Sky [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Lewis Gilbert (II)
  • Alexander Knox
  • Lyndon Brook
  • Kenneth More
  • Lee Patterson
  • Muriel Pavlow
Release date: 2003-04-14
Run time: 136 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.90

Review Reach For The Sky [1956] / ITV DVD:

Reach for the Sky was a box-office hit in 1956 and rightly remains a fondly regarded classic of British cinema. Kenneth More is ideally cast as Douglas Bader, the gifted pilot who loses both legs in a pre-war air crash, only to play a major role in the Battle of Britain, rise to the rank of Group Captain and become a war hero. Based on Paul Brickhill's biography, this is an "official" history maybe, but Lewis Gilbert's screenplay and direction are historically accurate and informed by that very British humour, of which More was a natural. The film is graced by a decent supporting cast and a typically "widescreen" score from John Addison. On the DVD: Reach for the Sky is vividly reproduced in 16:9 anamorphic format and decent mono. There are subtitles for the hard of hearing and detailed biographies of More, Gilbert and Barder. The original theatrical trailer is included, but it would also have made sense to include an interview or documentary footage of Bader himself. -Richard Whitehouse.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / A Bridge Too Far/The Great Escape/Battle Of Britain
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Caine
  • Edward Fox
  • Christopher Plummer
  • Charles Bronson
  • James Coburn
  • John Sturges
  • Richard Attenborough
  • Guy Hamilton
Release date: 2006-10-16
Run time: 490 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.01

Review A Bridge Too Far/The Great Escape/Battle Of Britain / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / The Maltese Falcon (2 Disc Special Edition) [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Humphrey Bogart
  • Mary Astor
Release date: 2007-02-05
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.29

Review The Maltese Falcon (2 Disc Special Edition) [1941] / Warner Home Video:


Review Pathe Distribution / Apocalypse Now [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Francis Ford Coppola
  • Robert Duvall
  • Martin Sheen
  • Dennis Hopper
  • Marlon Brando
Release date: 2004-10-18
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.13

Review Apocalypse Now [1979] / Pathe Distribution:

In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it was his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story "Heart of Darkness" into the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz(Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. The journey is fraught with danger involving war-time action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film's awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gunships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of "the smell of napalm in the morning. " Like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola's obsession (effectively detailed in the riveting documentary Hearts of Darkness, directed by Coppola's wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. -Jeff Shannon In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story Heart of Darkness onto the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. [+]
The journey is fraught with danger involving wartime action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film's awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images, and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gun-ships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways on a peasant sampan and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of "the smell of napalm in the morning". Like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola's obsession (effectively detailed in the riveting documentary Hearts of Darkness, directed by his wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review MGM Entertainment / Clint Eastwood Collection - A Fistful Of Dollars/The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/For A Few Dollars More/Hang 'Em High
Actors & Directors
  • Sergio Leone
  • Lee Van Cleef
  • John Wels
  • Marianne Koch
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Ted Post
  • Eli Wallach
Release date: 2007-08-13
Run time: 488 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £9.60

Review Clint Eastwood Collection - A Fistful Of Dollars/The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/For A Few Dollars More/Hang 'Em High / MGM Entertainment:

Contains the three great Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns: A Fistful Of Dollars; For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as well as Hang 'Em High. Sergio Leone's trilogy of operatic spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood made the former TV star into an international sensation as the scraggly, silent Man with No Name, a wandering rogue with a scheming mind and a sense of humour drier than the dusty, wind-scoured desert. With A Fistful of Dollars, a blatant rip-off of Kurosawa's cynical samurai hit Yojimbo, Leone transforms the Western hero into a crafty mercenary. The follow-up, For a Few Dollars More, teams Eastwood up in an uneasy alliance with Lee Van Cleef in a tale of revenge, but the masterpiece of the set is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an epic scramble for buried gold set against the violence of the Civil War. In this film good is a relative term as three criminals make a series of tenuous partnerships broken in double-crosses and betrayals in Leone's epic vision of the American southwest as endless deserts and clapboard towns infested with gunmen. This was a new kind of Western: cynical, violent, stylish, and austere. Eastwood's rough face and squinting eyes fill the widescreen frame in massive close-ups while Leone stages action in bold compositions on empty streets and stark landscapes. The guns ring out in cartoonish exaggeration, and the music, an eclectic, electric mix of buzzing guitar, human voice, and harmonica by Ennio Morricone, sets the whole thing in a world pitched between myth and modernity. Leone's shot-in-Spain trilogy ushered in a flood of Italian spaghetti Westerns, but none hold a candle to Leone's stylish classics. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. [+]
com Hang 'Em High-After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, LQ Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / A Man For All Seasons (Collector's Edition) [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Fred Zinnemann
  • Orson Welles
  • Paul Scofield
  • Wendy Hiller
  • Leo McKern
  • Robert Shaw
Release date: 2007-02-12
Run time: 116 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.34

Review A Man For All Seasons (Collector's Edition) [1966] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Robert Bolt's successful play was not considered a hot commercial property by Columbia Pictures-a period piece about a moral issue without a star, without even a love story. Perhaps that's why Columbia left director Fred Zinnemann alone to make A Man for All Seasons, as long as he stuck to a relatively small budget. The results took everyone by surprise, as the talky morality play became a box-office hit and collected the top Oscars for 1966. At the play's heart is the standoff between King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw, in young lion form) and Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield, in an Oscar-winning performance). Henry wants More's official approval of divorce, but More's strict ethical and religious code will not let him waffle. More's rectitude is a source of exasperation to Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles in a cameo), who chides, "If you could just see facts flat on without that horrible moral squint. " Zinnemann's approach is all simplicity, and indeed the somewhat prosaic staging doesn't create a great deal of cinematic excitement. But the language is worth savoring, and the ethical politics are debated with all the calm and majesty of an absorbing chess game. -Robert Horton.

Review MGM Entertainment / Bond Ultimate Collectors Casino Set [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Guy Hamilton
  • Terence Young
  • Lewis Gilbert
  • Donald Pleasence
  • Peter Hunt
  • George Lazenby
  • John Glenister
  • Sean Connery
  • Jill St. John
  • Telly Savalas
Release date: 2007-11-26
Run time: 2540 min.
RRP: £199.99
Price: £199.96

Review Bond Ultimate Collectors Casino Set [1962] / MGM Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - 2 Disc Special Edition [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Eli Wallach
  • Luigi Pistilli
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Aldo Giuffrè
  • Sergio Leone
  • Lee Van Cleef
Release date: 2004-04-26
Run time: 155 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.69

Review The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - 2 Disc Special Edition [1966] / MGM Entertainment:

This two-disc Special Edition presents the restored, extended English-language version of Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, now clocking in at almost three hours (actually 171 minutes on this Region 2 DVD as a result of the faster frames-per-second ratio of the PAL format). It includes some 14 minutes of previously cut scenes, with both Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach returning to the editing suite in 2003 to add their voices to scenes that had never before been dubbed into English (Wallach's voice is noticeably that of a much older man in these additional sequences). The extra material contains nothing of vital importance, but it's good to have the movie returned to pretty much the way Leone originally wanted it. The anamorphic widescreen picture is now also accompanied by a handsome Dolby 5. 1 soundtrack, making this the most complete and satisfactory version so far released. Film historian Richard Schickel provides an authoritative and engaging commentary on Disc 1. On the second disc there are featurettes on Leone's West (20 mins), The Leone Style (24 mins), Reconstructing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (11 mins) and a documentary about the historical background of the Sibley campaign, The Man Who Lost the Civil War (15 mins). In addition, there's a two-part appreciation of composer Ennio Morricone, Il Maestro, by film-music expert John Burlinghame. Tuco's extended torture scene can be found here, along with a reconstruction of the fragmentary "Socorro Sequence". In short, exemplary bonus features that will satisfy every Leone aficionado. [+]
-Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Bullitt (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Duvall
  • Simon Oakland
  • Jacqueline Bisset
  • Steve McQueen
  • Robert Vaughn
  • Peter Yates
Release date: 2005-07-18
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £4.85

Review Bullitt (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968] / Warner Home Video:


Review Acorn Media / Shakespeare ReTold [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • James McAvoy
  • Shirley Henderson
  • Sarah Parish
Release date: 2005-12-26
Run time: 320 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.20

Review Shakespeare ReTold [2005] / Acorn Media:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Italian Job, The [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Tony Beckley
  • Raf Vallone
  • Peter Collinson
  • Noel Coward
  • Michael Caine
  • Benny Hill
Release date: 2003-09-15
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.42

Review Italian Job, The [1969] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

The greatest Brit-flick crime caper comedy of all time, 1969's The Italian Job towers mightily above its latter-day mockney imitators. After Alfie but before Get Carter Michael Caine is the hippest ex-con around, bedding the birds (several at a time) and spouting immortal one-liners ("You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"). The inheritor of a devious plan to steal gold bullion in the traffic-choked streets of Turin, Caine recruits a misfit team of genial underworld types-including a lecherous Benny Hill and three plummy public-schoolboy rally drivers-and uses the occasion of an England-Italy football match as cover for the heist. In his final screen appearance, Noel Coward joyfully sends up his own patriotic persona, and there are small though priceless cameos from the likes of Irene Handl and John Le Mesurier. But The Italian Job's real stars are the three Mini Coopers-patriotically decorated red, white and blue-that run rings round every other vehicle in an immortal car-chase sequence, which preserves forever the British public's love affair with the little car. Quincy Jones provided the irreverent music, naturally, while the cliffhanger ending thumbs its nose at anything so un-hip as a resolution. It's all unashamedly jingoistic-ridiculously, gleefully, absurdly so-but the whole sums up the joie de vivre of the 1960s so perfectly that future historians need only look here to learn why the decade was swinging. On the DVD: The Italian Job disc contains three all-new documentaries-"The Great Idea" (conception), "The Self-Preservation Society" (casting), and "Get a Bloomin' Move On" (stunts)-which dovetail into a good 68-minute "making of" featurette. Contributors include scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin and Producer Michael Deeley, who also crops up on the sporadically interesting commentary track with author of The Making of The Italian Job, Matthew Field. The deleted "Blue Danube" waltz scene is also included, with optional commentary. [+]
The print is a decent anamorphic transfer of the original 2. 35:1 ratio, and the soundtrack has been remastered to Dolby 5. 1. The animated Mini Cooper menus set the tone perfectly. -Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Collection - Murder Ahoy / Murder At The Gallup / Murder Most Foul (4 Discs) (Box Set) (DVD)
Actors & Directors
  • James Bolam
  • Ron Moody
  • Charles Tingwell
  • George Pollock
  • Margaret Rutherford
  • Lionel Jeffries
Release date: 2004-02-02
Run time: 350 min.
RRP: £34.99
Price: £16.99

Review Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Collection - Murder Ahoy / Murder At The Gallup / Murder Most Foul (4 Discs) (Box Set) (DVD) / Warner Home Video:

Never mind purists who bemoan Margaret Rutherford's incarnation of Agatha Christie's celebrated spinster sleuth. These four British films, produced between 1961 and 64, are jolly good, regardless of their tenuous connection with Miss Marple as written, or with Christie herself. One of the films, in fact, Murder Ahoy, is an original screenplay credited as "an interpretation of Miss Marple. " And two others, Murder at the Gallop and Murder Most Foul were based on books featuring Christie's other famed detective, Hercule Poirot. " But no matter. The redoubtable Rutherford indelibly makes Marple her very own, or, as she proclaims to Inspector Craddock (Charles Tingwell), with whom she locks horns throughout all four films, "I am always myself. " Rutherford makes a formidable first impression in Murder She Said, based on Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, in which the armchair sleuth goes undercover as a servant after witnessing a murder on a train. In Murder at the Gallop, based on After the Funeral, where there's a will, there's murder. In Murder Ahoy, Marple discovers a ship of thieves. In Murder Most Foul, Marple deadlocks a jury and joins a theatrical troupe to prove the defendant's innocence. [+]
The Marple films are endearingly modest productions, redeemed by peerless performances and mostly sharp scripts. Ron Goodwin's theme music used in all four films is an irresistible piece of '60s symphonic pop that's a classical gas. None of the actors are suspect. Rutherford gets able support from her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, who portrays Marple's Watson-esque sidekick. Venerable character actors Robert Morley and Ron Moody enliven Gallop and Foul, respectively. And in Murder She Said, that's Joan Hickson, who would go on to acclaim as Miss Marple in the celebrated BBC series. But it's tough to steal a scene from Rutherford, whose Marple displays a keen mind, and, in Ahoy, surprising prowess with a sword! -Donald Liebenson.

Review MGM Entertainment / Exodus [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Ralph Richardson
  • Eva Marie Saint
  • Otto Preminger
  • Peter Lawford
  • Paul Newman
  • Lee J. Cobb
Release date: 2004-02-02
Run time: 199 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.95

Review Exodus [1960] / MGM Entertainment:

Otto Preminger's 1960 adaptation of Leon Uris's novel Exodus is a sprawling tale of the founding of modern Israel, starring Paul Newman as a resistance leader. The film works best as an example of Preminger's estimable skill with all levels of drama and action, but as a reflection upon history it is compromised by stereotypes, unpersuasive relationships and a certain moral ambivalence about issues related to the subject. There are good and exciting sequences, however, particularly one involving an effort to break through a British blockade and get to the homeland. -Tom Keogh.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Dr Who: The Dalek Collection (Dr Who And The Daleks & Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD + Dalekmania documentary) [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Cushing
  • Andrew Keir
  • Roberta Tovey
  • Ray Brooks (II)
  • Gordon Flemyng
  • Bernard Cribbins
Release date: 2006-09-25
Run time: 222 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.37

Review Dr Who: The Dalek Collection (Dr Who And The Daleks & Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD + Dalekmania documentary) [1965] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Browse Classics:

Models & Brands:
David Essex Double Bill - That'll Be The Day / Stardust [1973], The Plank [1967], Jolson Story, The / Jolson Sings Again [1946], The Cruel Sea [1953], 2001: A Space Odyssey (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968], Never Forget : The New Musical based on the music of Take That, Reach For The Sky [1956], A Bridge Too Far/The Great Escape/Battle Of Britain, The Maltese Falcon (2 Disc Special Edition) [1941], Apocalypse Now [1979], Clint Eastwood Collection - A Fistful Of Dollars/The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/For A Few Dollars More/Hang 'Em High, A Man For All Seasons (Collector's Edition) [1966], Bond Ultimate Collectors Casino Set [1962], The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - 2 Disc Special Edition [1966], Bullitt (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968], Shakespeare ReTold [2005], Italian Job, The [1969], Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Collection - Murder Ahoy / Murder At The Gallup / Murder Most Foul (4 Discs) (Box Set) (DVD), Exodus [1960], Dr Who: The Dalek Collection (Dr Who And The Daleks & Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD + Dalekmania documentary) [1965]

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