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Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Cheers - Series 3 [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • George Wendt
  • Rhea Perlman
  • Shelley Long
  • Ted Danson
  • Kirstie Alley
Release date: 2004-09-06
Creator: Les Charles
RRP: £34.99
Price: £11.10

Review Cheers - Series 3 [1983] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Season 3 of Cheers enriched television history in a lot of ways, most notably by introducing Kelsey Grammer as psychiatrist Frasier Crane while also bidding an off-screen farewell to Nicholas Colasanto, the actor who played Coach. Grammer's beloved character, who remained on NBC for 20 unbroken years (including the long-running Frasier), is ushered into the Cheers family when he meets barmaid Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) in a very funny, Emmy-nominated episode suggesting the neurotic course of their future romance. Meanwhile, Sam (Ted Danson), having fallen off the wagon due to his own tempestuous love affair with Diane, has to endure Frasier's questions about how to be intimate with the brainy babe. Elsewhere in Cheers' sardonic community, Cliff (John Ratzenberger), in a sweet but barbed episode, meets a woman (Bernadette Birkett) at a costume party and is afraid of re-introducing himself later. Norm (George Wendt) becomes aware of his mortality and decides to move to Bora Bora, and Sam (in another Emmy-nominated show) has to explain how he got shot in his posterior. Other good things: "The Heart Is a Lonely Snipe Hunter," in which the men of Cheers cruelly initiate Frasier in the manly art of snipe-hunting, and "Bar Bet," starring Jacqueline Bisset as a woman Sam must marry before a certain date or lose the bar forever. -Tom Keogh.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Luis Bunuel collection [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Luis Bunuel
  • Jean Sorel
  • Catherine Deneuve
  • Michel Piccoli
Release date: 2007-01-22
Run time: 776 min.
RRP: £44.99
Price: £25.87

Review Luis Bunuel collection [1965] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Cinema Club / Comfort And Joy [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Patrick Malahide
  • Alex Norton
  • Clare Grogan
  • Bill Paterson
  • Bill Forsyth
  • Eleanor David
Release date: 2004-10-04
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Paddy Higson
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.85

Review Comfort And Joy [1984] / Cinema Club:


Review MGM Entertainment / Fellini's Roma [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Gonzales Falcon
  • Fiona Florence
  • Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez
  • Britta Barnes
  • Federico Fellini
  • Pia De Doses
Release date: 2003-04-28
Run time: 114 min.
Creator: Bernardino Zapponi
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.61

Review Fellini's Roma [1972] / MGM Entertainment:

Federico Fellini's 1972 ode to the city of Rome is far from a coherent narrative, but as a selection of images and sounds celebrating the famed Italian capital, it's dazzling and hugely enjoyable. Stylistically, it's a perfect bridge between the excesses of Satyricon and the nostalgia of Amarcord, and it showcases the true love that Fellini had for the Eternal City. Mixing autobiographical flashbacks with the travails of a present-day movie company making a film about the city (headed up by Fellini himself), Roma is an impressionistic tour de force, delivered via Fellini's unique cinematic vision. If you can't tolerate Fellini's larger-than-life approach, the sometimes-garish colours, or the circus atmosphere, you'll probably find Roma insufferable. But fans of Fellini will be in seventh heaven, especially during some of the wonderful set pieces-a music dance hall performance that's interrupted by bombing during World War II; a papal fashion show that's so surreal it must be seen to be believed; and a breathtaking sequence in which the film crew, tagging along with an archaeological dig, happens upon an ancient Roman catacomb and watches as the beautiful murals disintegrate before their eyes. Through it all, Fellini's passion for Rome (and moviemaking) shines through, especially in the film's climax, a dialogue-free sequence of motorcycles roaring through the city at night, a tour that ends at the magnificent Colosseum. At that marriage of past and present, Roma is about as perfect as cinema can get. -Mark Englehart.

Review Artificial Eye / You the Living [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Roy Andersson
Release date: 2008-07-14
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.96

Review You the Living [2007] / Artificial Eye:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Going Straight - The Complete Series [1978]
Actors & Directors
  • David Swift
  • Ronnie Barker
  • Nicholas Lyndhurst
  • Patricia Brake
  • Richard Beckinsale
Release date: 2004-10-04
Run time: 180 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.49

Review Going Straight - The Complete Series [1978] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Husbands And Wives [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Mia Farrow
  • Sydney Pollack
  • Juliette Lewis
  • Woody Allen
  • Woody Allen
  • Judy Davis
Release date: 2002-04-15
Run time: 103 min.
Creator: Thomas A. Reilly
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.93

Review Husbands And Wives [1992] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

In Husbands and Wives, another typical Woody Allen exploration of relationships between screwed-up New Yorkers, the drama centres on two married couples who have been close friends for years. When Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) announce they're breaking up, it exposes the cracks in the relationship between Gabe and Judy (Allen and Mia Farrow). The shenanigans that result are touching, funny and horribly true to life. Jack finds himself a cliché trophy blonde, Sam-an aerobics instructor-and thinks he's got it made until she expounds the eternal truths of astrology to his friends, humiliating him in the process; Gabe, meanwhile, finds himself increasingly drawn to his precocious student, Rain-beautifully portrayed by Juliette Lewis-while Judy and Sally get involved with the same guy (though not simultaneously), the shy but alluring Michael (Liam Neeson). The touch of genius is to have an off-screen narrator, with whom the main characters share their innermost thoughts, thus drawing the viewer right into the emotional heart of the movie. This is vintage Woody, with gentle but witty observations of human failings. On the DVD: Husbands and Wives is delivered in widescreen with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. The only extra features are trailers for both this and Allen's previous movie, Manhattan Murder Mystery. In addition the audio set-up option is in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Finnish. -Harriet Smith.

Review ITV DVD / Northern Lights And City Lights Box Set (With Xmas Lights Bonus Disc)
Actors & Directors
  • Robson Green
  • Mark Benton
  • Nicola Stephenson
  • Tony Dow
  • Sian Reeves
  • Paul Seed
Release date: 2007-05-14
RRP: £29.99
Price: £15.27

Review Northern Lights And City Lights Box Set (With Xmas Lights Bonus Disc) / ITV DVD:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who - Spearhead From Space [1970]
Actors & Directors
  • Caroline John
  • Jon Pertwee
Release date: 2001-01-29
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.86

Review Doctor Who - Spearhead From Space [1970] / 2 Entertain Video:

"Spearhead from Space" launched Doctor Who into the 1970s with not only a new Doctor, Jon Pertwee, but a new assistant, the scientist Liz Shaw (Caroline John) and a regular place in the show for UNIT and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney). It also marked the debut of the programme in colour and saw the Doctor stranded on Earth after Patrick Troughton's last adventure, "The War Games" (1969). Not only that, but it proved the only serial in the show's history to be entirely shot both on film and location, giving it a uniquely cinematic feel. Regenerating in a country hospital, the Doctor finds himself helping the Brigadier investigate an unusual meteorite and its links with a sinister doll factory. The Autons are cybernetic killers-anticipating The Terminator by some 15 years-and the sequence in which they break through high-street shop windows to slaughter pedestrians remains a chilling highpoint of Doctor Who's entire history. Things do turn silly with a subplot involving a waxworks museum, while the ultimate battle with the Nestine consciousness is more likely to induce laughter than fear, but as vintage television nostalgia this is fast-moving splendidly characterised entertainment. -Gary S. DalkinOn the DVD: The remastered picture and sound are exceptional for a 1970 TV show. Obviously in 4:3 and mono, this DVD offers technical quality easily as good as many feature films. There is a very friendly, if not especially informative, commentary from Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John, and subtitles that offer background facts and figures. [+]
With an amusing five-minute recruiting film for UNIT, repeat trailers and a gallery including previously unpublished photos, this excellent DVD is a Doctor Who fan's dream come true. -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Wood - Dvd The [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Rick Famuyiwa
  • Omar Epps
  • Richard T. Jones
  • Elayn Taylor
  • Sean Nelson
  • Duane Finley
Release date: 2001-06-04
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Todd Boyd
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.09

Review Wood - Dvd The [2000] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / Le Plaisir [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Simone Simon
  • Claude Dauphin
  • Danielle Darrieux
  • Jean Gabin
  • Gaby Morlay
  • Max Ophüls
Release date: 2006-09-18
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Jacques Natanson
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.98

Review Le Plaisir [1952] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review Warner Home Video / Three Kings [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Cliff Curtis
  • David O. Russell
  • Spike Jonze
  • Ice Cube
  • George Clooney
  • Mark Wahlberg
Release date: 2005-04-18
Run time: 114 min.
Creator: John Ridley
RRP: £13.99
Price: £1.55

Review Three Kings [2000] / Warner Home Video:

A confident hybrid of M*A*S*H, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Dr. Strangelove, Three Kings is one of the most seriously funny war movies ever made. Improving the premise of Kelly's Heroes with scathing intelligence, it explores the odd connection between war and consumerism in the age of Humvees and cellular phones. Writer-director David O. Russell's third film (after Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster) is a no-holds-barred portrait of personal conscience in the volatile arena of politics, played out by one of the most gifted filmmakers to emerge in the 1990s. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich) play a quartet of US soldiers who, disillusioned by Operation Desert Storm, decide to steal $23 million in gold hijacked from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's army. Getting the bullion out of an Iraqi stronghold is easy; keeping it is a potentially lethal proposition. By the end of their mercenary mission, the Americans can no longer ignore war-time atrocities, and conscience demands their aid to Kuwaiti rebels abandoned by President George Bush's fickle war-time policy. This is serious stuff indeed, but Russell infuses Three Kings with a keen sense of the absurd, and the entire film is an exercise in breathtaking visual ingenuity. Despite a conventional ending that's mildly disappointing for such a brashly original film, Three Kings conveys the brutal madness of war while making you laugh out loud at the insanity. [+]
-Jeff Shannon.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Honest - Series 1 - Complete [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Sean Pertwee
  • Amanda Redman
  • Danny Webb
  • Burt Kwouk
  • Matthew McNulty
Release date: 2008-02-18
Run time: 300 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £3.97

Review Honest - Series 1 - Complete [2007] / Contender Entertainment Group:


Review Entertainment in Video / Happiness [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Dylan Baker
  • Jon Lovitz
  • Lara Flynn Boyle
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman
  • Todd Solondz
  • Jane Adams
Release date: 2000-05-15
Run time: 134 min.
Creator: Ted Hope
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.43

Review Happiness [1999] / Entertainment in Video:

At times brilliant and insightful, at times repellent and false, Happiness is director Todd Solondz's multi-story tale of sex, perversion and loneliness. Plumbing depths of Crumb-like angst and rejection, Solondz won the Cannes International Critics Prize in 1998 and the film was a staple of nearly every critic's Top 10 list. Admirable, shocking, and hilarious for its sarcastic yet strangely empathetic look at consenting adults' confusion between lust and love, the film stares unflinchingly until the audience blinks. But it doesn't stop there. A word of strong caution to parents: One of the main characters, a suburban super dad (played by Dylan Baker), is really a predatory paedophile and there is more than an attempt to paint him as a sympathetic character. Children are used in this film as running gags or, worse, the means to an end. Whether that end is a humorous scene for Solondz or sexual gratification for the rapist becomes largely irrelevant. Happiness is an intelligent, sad film, revelatory and exact at moments. It's also abuse in the guise of art. That's nothing to celebrate. [+]
-Keith Simanton.

Review Contender Home Entertainment Group / Three and Out [2008]
Actors & Directors
  • Mackenzie Crook
  • Imelda Staunton
  • Colm Meaney
Release date: 2008-09-15
Run time: 106 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.98

Review Three and Out [2008] / Contender Home Entertainment Group:


Review Orbit Media Ltd. / The Cat And The Canary [1939]
Actors & Directors
  • Bob Hope
  • John Beal
  • Paulette Goddard
  • Elliott Nugent
  • Douglass Montgomery
  • Gale Sondergaard
Release date: 2004-03-01
Run time: 72 min.
Creator: Walter DeLeon
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.59

Review The Cat And The Canary [1939] / Orbit Media Ltd.:


Review Cinefile / Pot Luck & Russian Dolls - The Pot Luck Double Pack (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk) [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Romain Duris
  • Cécile De France
  • Judith Godrèche
  • Cédric Klapisch
  • Audrey Tautou
  • Kelly Reilly
Release date: 2008-01-07
Run time: 246 min.
Creator: Yelena Yatsura
RRP: £24.99
Price: £11.97

Review Pot Luck & Russian Dolls - The Pot Luck Double Pack (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk) [2002] / Cinefile:


Review 4dvd / Secrets And Lies [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Phyllis Logan
  • Brenda Blethyn
  • Timothy Spall
  • Mike Leigh
  • Marianne Jean-Baptiste
  • Claire Rushbrook
Release date: 2007-09-17
Run time: 136 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.34

Review Secrets And Lies [1996] / 4dvd:


Review Momentum Pictures / Me Without You [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Anna Popplewell
  • Sandra Goldbacher
  • Michelle Williams
  • Anna Friel
  • Cameron Powrie
  • Ella Jones
Release date: 2002-10-14
Run time: 108 min.
Creator: Laurence Coriat
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.97

Review Me Without You [2001] / Momentum Pictures:

Sandra Goldbacher's intense drama of friendship and betrayal Me Without You was not especially liked by UK reviewers, but opened in the US to rave reviews. Carrying the relationship between two teenagers through their student days and into adulthood, it shows the more obviously charismatic Marina (Anna Friel) as parasitic on her more intelligent friend Holly (Michelle Williams) and then utterly devastated when Holly tries to break away (a brief epilogue shows them still involved years later). Best known for her role in Dawson's Creek, Michelle Williams (whose English accent is impeccable) gives a finely nuanced performance; Anne Friel runs the gamut from drug-induced stupor to malice to hysteria with a staginess that is only partly the character's. There are solid performances from Trudy Stiler as the neurotic ex-croupier mother who is part of Marina's problem and Kyle McLachlan as the oddly passive lecturer whom both seduce. The film is good on the passage of time-it has a fine eye for the fashion disasters of 1970s to 90s Britain-yet it's somehow disingenuous in its avoidance of emotional subtext. It's overly partial, too: Holly is obviously a stand-in for the writer-director. On the DVD: Me Without Your is presented in a widescreen visual ratio of 2. 35:1 with Dolby 5. 1 digital sound that gives full weight and intensity to a soundtrack which revisits a well-chosen selection of obvious and obscure tracks from the period. It has no extra features. [+]
-Roz Kaveney.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Juno [Blu-ray] [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Jason Bateman
  • Jason Reitman
  • J.K. Simmons
  • Jennifer Garner
  • Michael Cera
  • Ellen Page
Release date: 2008-06-09
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £13.25

Review Juno [Blu-ray] [2007] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Somewhere between the sharp satire of Election and the rich human comedy of You Can Count On Me lies Juno, a sardonic but ultimately compassionate story of a pregnant teenage girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption. Social misfit Juno (Ellen Page, Hard Candy, X-Men: The Last Stand) protects herself with a caustic wit, but when she gets pregnant by her friend Paulie (Michael Cera, Superbad), Juno finds herself unwilling to terminate the pregnancy. When she chooses a couple who place a classified ad looking to adopt, Juno gets drawn further into their lives than she anticipated. But Juno is much more than its plot; the stylised dialogue (by screenwriter Diablo Cody) seems forced at first, but soon creates a richly textured world, greatly aided by superb performances by Page, Cera, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the prospective parents, and J. K. Simmons (Spider-Man) and Allison Janney as Juno's father and stepmother. Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) deftly keeps the movie from slipping into easy, shallow sarcasm or foundering in sentimentality. The result is smarter and funnier than you might expect from the subject matter, and warmer and more touching than you might expect from the cocky attitude. Page's performance is deceptively simple; she never asks the audience to love her, yet she effortlessly carries a movie in which she's in almost every scene. That's star power. [+]
- Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.

Models & Brands:
Cheers - Series 3 [1983], Luis Bunuel collection [1965], Comfort And Joy [1984], Fellini's Roma [1972], You the Living [2007], Going Straight - The Complete Series [1978], Husbands And Wives [1992], Northern Lights And City Lights Box Set (With Xmas Lights Bonus Disc), Doctor Who - Spearhead From Space [1970], Wood - Dvd The [2000], Le Plaisir [1952], Three Kings [2000], Honest - Series 1 - Complete [2007], Happiness [1999], Three and Out [2008], The Cat And The Canary [1939], Pot Luck & Russian Dolls - The Pot Luck Double Pack (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk) [2002], Secrets And Lies [1996], Me Without You [2001], Juno [Blu-ray] [2007]

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