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Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Sex And The City - Season 5
Actors & Directors
  • Sarah Jessica Parker
Release date: 2008-05-12
RRP: £34.99
Price: £10.00

Review Sex And The City - Season 5 / Paramount Home Entertainment:

It was a short but sweet fifth season for Sex and the City, as HBO's resident comediennes found themselves affected by forces beyond their control-the pregnancies of both Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda). A truncated shooting schedule to accommodate the actresses forced this season to be reduced to a mere eight episodes, and indeed, you can tell both actresses are expecting. (Carrie's wardrobe became more outlandish and more concealing than usual. ) Still, the actresses and creators forged ahead, creating a handful of episodes that if short in content were long on emotion and laughs. Whereas the fourth season found all four grappling with various relationships, the fifth season focused on the perils of being single, with a new intensity lacking in the previous sexcapades. Carrie and Miranda wrestled with their solitary lifestyles, albeit with new attachments-Miranda had new baby Brady and single motherhood, while Carrie found herself in the world of publishing as the author of a real-life book of her columns. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) wondered if she'd ever find another man, while Samantha (Kim Cattrall) finally got rid of the one that had been vexing her far too much, hotelier Richard (James Remar). If the season as a whole felt less than the sum of its parts, those parts were some of the best comedy in the show's history, from Samantha's anointment as the "Michiko Kakutani of vibrators" to Carrie's stressful, one-degree-from-fiasco book launch party. (And fear not, Chris Noth's Mr. Big does pop up now and again. [+]
) The season's climactic episode, "I Love a Charade," found all four at the straight wedding of a seemingly gay pal (Nathan Lane) and contemplating their future with a wry, bemused tone. It was one of the series' best episodes ever, equally touching and funny, and grounded the show in an emotional maturity that announced that after all their wild travails, these women had truly grown up. -Mark Englehart.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Sgt. Bilko
Actors & Directors
  • Phil Silvers
  • Harvey Lembeck
  • Herbie Faye
  • Paul Ford
  • Elisabeth Fraser
Release date: 2006-09-25
RRP: £29.99
Price: £11.50

Review Sgt. Bilko / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Only Fools and Horses - The Complete Series 1 [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicholas Lyndhurst
  • David Jason
  • John Challis
  • Roger Lloyd-Pack
Release date: 2000-11-20
Run time: 200 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.06

Review Only Fools and Horses - The Complete Series 1 [1981] / 2 Entertain Video:

Regularly touted as one of the best British sitcoms ever, Only Fools and Horses kicked off in 1981 when mobile phones were the size of bricks and wine bars were the ultimate places to hang out in. The formula was simple enough: Cockney wideboy Derek Trotter (brilliantly played by David Jason) dreams of better things for himself while sharing a cramped council flat in the nicely named Peckham tower block Nelson Mandela House with his unworldly brother Rodney and his sweet but doddery old granddad. Trouble is, Del's endless money-making schemes (such as his attempt to flog a consignment of one-legged turkeys, or his plan to sell bottled tap water) inevitably backfire, like the knackered old Robin Reliant van he uses to cart around all this faulty gear. Created by John Sullivan, who also sings the very catchy theme tune, Only Fools and Horses is a wonderful mix of dodgy but loveable characters (such as Del Boy's dimwit friend Trigger), knockabout slapstick (no-one falls down with as much comedic grace as Jason) and brilliantly crafted dialogue. Sadly, Leonard Pierce who played Granddad died in 1983; but his armchair in the Trotter household was filled in 1985 by Buster Merryfield as Uncle Albert (an old merchant seaman who bores Del and Rodney with tales of his war days). The show ran to seven series and ended with characteristic warmth in 1991, when Del Boy became a father; but the Trotters made occasional returns to the small screens with six hugely popular one-off Christmas specials. As Del Boy himself might say: "Lovely jubbly". -Edward Lawrenson.

Review Touchstone Home Video / Muriel's Wedding [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Toni Collette
  • P.J. Hogan
  • Roz Hammond
  • Sophie Lee
  • Rachel Griffiths
  • Bill Hunter
Release date: 2006-06-15
Run time: 101 min.
Creator: Tony Mahood
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.14

Review Muriel's Wedding [1995] / Touchstone Home Video:

Ever since the late 1970s when the Australian New Wave was in full surge, Down Under directors have delivered movies that often hit you like news from another planet. Offbeat characters, weird narrative twists and a tart mixture of laughs and catastrophe-this is the juice that fuels such flicks as Proof, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Strictly Ballroom, Heavenly Creatures and, most certainly, Muriel's Wedding. Directed by PJ Hogan (who would go on to helm the Hollywood hit My Best Friend's Wedding), this little gem follows tradition by featuring an authentic misfit: Muriel (Toni Collette), a great, overweight horse of a girl obsessed with getting married and the music of ABBA. Appropriately, we first meet Muriel at a wedding, all trussed up in a leopardskin number she's boosted for the occasion. When her snotty peers insist that she give up the bridal bouquet to someone who might actually get hitched, when one of the guests turns out to be a clerk in the very store where Muriel ripped off her outfit, you've just got to laugh, she's such an unmitigated mess. A loser, her philandering politician father (Bill Hunter) calls her-along with his doormat wife and his other couch-potato offspring. But this movie's no exercise in geek-bashing. As Muriel takes up with feisty Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) and moves from Porpoise Spit to the big city, her good-hearted grin and zest for life draw us in despite hilarious gaffes and mishaps. (Making out with a boy for the first time, Muriel suddenly finds herself awash in styrofoam: the oaf has unzipped the beanbag chair instead of her skin-tight leather pants. ) Muriel's Wedding covers territory Hollywood would banish from a comedy-Rhonda's cancer, the suicide of Muriel's mother, a marriage of convenience to an arrogant athlete-yet, like its heroine, it never loses its sense of humour, its will to move on to whatever good thing might happen next. [+]
Everyone in the idiosyncratic cast is terrific, but it's Toni Collette's Dancing Queen who makes Muriel's Wedding a cinematic celebration you won't forget. -Kathleen Murphy.

Review 2 Entertain Video / In Sickness And In Health - Series 1 [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Una Stubbs
  • Warren Mitchell
  • Dandy Nichols
  • Eamonn Walker
Release date: 2008-06-09
Run time: 210 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £8.36

Review In Sickness And In Health - Series 1 [1985] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Burn After Reading [Blu-ray] [2008]
Actors & Directors
  • Joel Coen
  • J.K. Simmons
  • Tilda Swinton
  • Ethan Coen
  • George Clooney
  • Brad Pitt
  • John Malkovich
Release date: 2009-02-09
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £14.98

Review Burn After Reading [Blu-ray] [2008] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Ally McBeal - The Complete DVD Collection
Actors & Directors
  • Peter MacNicol
  • Greg Germann
  • Lucy Liu
  • Jane Krakowski
  • Calista Flockhart
Release date: 2007-11-19
Creator: David E. Kelley
RRP: £74.99
Price: £38.14

Review Ally McBeal - The Complete DVD Collection / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Mean Girls (Special Collector's Edition) [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Lindsay Lohan
  • Rachel McAdams
  • Mark Waters (VIII)
  • Amy Poehler
  • Tim Meadows
  • Tina Fey
Release date: 2004-10-18
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £3.35

Review Mean Girls (Special Collector's Edition) [2004] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

The cutting wit of Tina Fey (the first female head writer for US comedy breeding ground Saturday Night Live) brilliantly fuses pop culture and smart satire. Fey wrote Mean Girls, in which a formerly home-schooled girl named Cady (Lindsay Lohan) gets dropped into the sneaky, vicious world of the Plastics, three adolescent glamour-girls who dominate their public high school's social heirarchy. Cady first befriends a couple of art-punk outsiders who persuade her to infiltrate the Plastics and destroy them from within-but power corrupts, and Cady soon finds the glory of being a Plastic to be seductive. Mean Girls joins the ranks of Clueless, Bring It On, and Heathers, cunning movies that use the hormone-pressurized high school milieu to put the dark impulses of human nature-ambition, envy, lust, revenge-under a comic microscope. Fey manages to skewer everyone without forgetting the characters' hapless humanity; it's a dazzling and delightful balancing act. -Bret Fetzer.

Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm / A Lot Like Love [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Amanda Peet
  • Jeremy Sisto
  • Kal Penn
  • Nigel Cole
  • Ali Larter
  • Ashton Kutcher
Release date: 2005-10-24
Run time: 107 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.87

Review A Lot Like Love [2005] / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm:

The words "subtle" and "Ashton Kutcher" rarely appear in the same sentence, but here goes: A Lot Like Love, a romantic comedy starring Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet, is surprisingly and pleasantly subtle. The story starts when Emily and Oliver meet on a flight to New York and have a tryst in the airplane bathroom. After a day's dalliance, they part and don't meet again for four years-when they meet, spend a day together, part, and don't meet again until. you begin to get the idea. The script could have been dangerously cute, but director Nigel Cole (who helmed the delightful Calendar Girls) carefully steers Peet and Kutcher, two actors not generally noted for their grasp of character nuance, towards fairly three-dimensional portrayals of two floundering twentysomethings who can't seem to find the right moment. There are a few rom-com cliches-at one point, Oliver serenades Emily in front of an audience of her neighbors-but most of the movie is low-key, engaging, and smacks of actual human experience. -Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.

Review Warner Home Video / QI - A Quite Interesting Game [Interactive DVD] [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Fry
  • Ian Lorimer
Release date: 2005-11-14
Run time: 277 min.
Creator: John Lloyd
RRP: £17.99
Price: £12.10

Review QI - A Quite Interesting Game [Interactive DVD] [2005] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Ace Ventura - Pet Detective/Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Courteney Cox
  • Dan Marino
  • Jim Carrey
  • Tone Loc
  • Sean Young
  • Steve Oedekerk
  • Tom Shadyac
Release date: 2007-10-22
Run time: 171 min.
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.82

Review Ace Ventura - Pet Detective/Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls [1993] / Warner Home Video:

The 1994 box-office hit that turned comedy maniac Jim Carrey into Hollywood's first $20-million man, this gag-filled no-brainer stars Carrey as the titular rubber-faced gumshoe who tracks down lost pets for his heartbroken clients. Ace's latest case involves the apparent kidnapping of the Miami Dolphins' team mascot, Snowflake the dolphin. His investigation is a source of constant aggravation for Miami police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (Sean Young), who turns out to be packing more than a pistol under her skirt. Friends fans will appreciate the presence of Courtney Cox, who remains admirably straight-faced as the Dolphins' publicist and Ace's would-be girlfriend, but of course it's Carrey who steals the show with shameless abandon. Carrey's hyper antics made Ace Ventura: Pet Detective one of the bestselling videos of the 1990s. This inevitable sequel finds Jim Carrey reprising his role as the world's greatest pet detective. His latest case, the disappearance of a rare African white bat, draws him out of his spiritual retreat at a Tibetan monastery following the tragic outcome of his previous case. That traumatic experience, which makes for a hilarious opening-scene send-up of the Stallone thriller Cliffhanger, prompts Ace to venture to Africa, where he goes native with the tribe that hired him to find their symbolic bat. From that point anything goes, with Carrey pushing the boundaries of good taste (what, you were expecting good taste?) up to and including his now-infamous "birth" scene from the backside of a mechanical rhinoceros. Hey, don't be ashamed if you find yourself laughing. [+]
-Jeff Shannon.

Review Entertainment in Video / She's The Man [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Hagerty
  • Amanda Bynes
  • Vinnie Jones
  • Andy Fickman
  • Channing Tatum
  • Alex Breckenridge
Release date: 2006-07-24
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £1.03

Review She's The Man [2006] / Entertainment in Video:

Shakespearean comedy and American high school are a match made in heaven-or Hollywood, at any rate. Somehow the exaggerated emotions and budding hormones of adolescence are perfectly suited to Shakespeare's twisty plots, and She's the Man is a perfect example. Viola (Amanda Bynes, What a Girl Wants) is furious when she learns that her high school, Cornwall, has cut the girl's soccer team-so furious that she takes advantage of her twin brother Sebastian (James Kirk, Final Destination 2) skipping town for a few weeks to take his place at his school, Illyria, so she can join the soccer team there. But her disguise as her brother leads to complications when she falls in love with her soccer-playing roommate and the girl he's in love with falls in love with "Sebastian". Bynes may not be entirely persuasive as a high school boy, but she's got the charm and sprightliness to make the audience follow her anyway. The clever script walks a fine balance, treating the situation realistically enough to make Viola's efforts matter, but zipping along quickly enough that we don't worry too much about the details. As Duke and Olivia-the other two parts of the love triangle-Channing Tatum and Laura Ramsey combine sex appeal with engaging sweetness; the excellent supporting cast includes David Cross (Arrested Development), Julie Hagerty (Airplane! ), and former British soccer star Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). All in all, a delightful bit of fun. [+]
-Bret Fetzer.

Review Warner Home Video / Arsenic And Old Lace [1944]
Actors & Directors
  • Cary Grant
  • Jean Adair
  • Frank Capra
  • Raymond Massey
  • Peter Lorre
  • Josephine Hull
Release date: 2001-05-07
Run time: 113 min.
Creator: Philip G. Epstein
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.95

Review Arsenic And Old Lace [1944] / Warner Home Video:

In 1941, when Frank Capra filmed Arsenic and Old Lace, he was in the midst of his string of social-concern pictures. So this uncharacteristic property must have seemed like a vacation; it's a straight farce, played at full tilt and closely adapted from the Broadway play. Almost all of the action takes place on a single set: the old home of the Brewster sisters (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair), those dear, dotty old ladies who mix up a very special elderberry wine. Very special. As their nephew Mortimer (Cary Grant) discovers on the eve of his wedding, the two ladies have been spiking the wine with poison and sending lonely gentleman callers off to the great beyond. More specifically, they've been burying them in the cellar with the help of nutty Uncle Teddy, who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt (and thus digging the Panama Canal down in the basement). The ominous happenings are made more sinister with the arrival of another menacing relative (RaymondMassey) and his quack doctor (Peter Lorre), who look and act like refugees from a horror movie. Played completely over the top, this movie offers up lots of bracing slapstick, with Grant run to near exhaustion by the galloping insanity of his family. Although Capra shot the film in 1941, prior to his making military films during World War II, the film was not released until 1944; the contract stipulated that the movie not come out before the play ended its enormously successful run. -Robert Horton.

Review Warner Home Video / Chuck - Complete Season 1 [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Sarah Lancaster
  • Yvonne Strahovski
  • Joshua Gomez
  • Scott Krinsky
  • Zachary Levi
Release date: 2008-08-18
Run time: 562 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £13.05

Review Chuck - Complete Season 1 [2007] / Warner Home Video:

Zachary Levi was born to play Chuck. A computer nerd who finds himself thrust into the role of a Government secret agent, it's a career-making role in a television show that's got plenty to offer, whether you're along for the action or the comedy. Every episode from Chuck's first season is gathered together in this set, and thus we get to see how a geek effectively became a wannabe-Jack Bauer. It goes without saying that Chuck has a lot of fun with its premise, and it happily asks you to suspend your disbelief as plausibility quickly goes out of the window. But so what? For when the action and comedy are as strong as they are with Chuck, that proves to be no price to pay whatsoever. Mix in the surprisingly high production values and the very witty scripts, and you have a surprise hit of a show that's hard not to warm to. One of the chief reasons for this is Levi in the title role, but Chuck also boasts good supporting turns from the likes of Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski. It also packs a surprising amount into its 13 episodes, and displays an ambition and verve that serves the show exceedingly well. What's more, it also leaves you positively thirsting for more. Highly recommended. [+]
-Jon Foster.

Review Playback / Last of the Summer Wine - Series 5 & 6 [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Brian Wilde
  • Peter Sallis
  • Bill Owen
Release date: 2007-03-05
Run time: 445 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £10.99

Review Last of the Summer Wine - Series 5 & 6 [1979] / Playback:


Review Warner Home Video / Everything Is Illuminated [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Elijah Wood
  • Liev Schrieber
  • Boris Leskin
  • Eugene Hutz
  • Zuzana Hodkova
  • Laryssa Lauret
Release date: 2006-03-27
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.49

Review Everything Is Illuminated [2005] / Warner Home Video:


Review Russell Brand / Russell Brand Menage A Trois Collection - Russell Brand - Live/Russell Brand - Doing Life - Live/Russell Brand - Ponderland
Release date: 2008-11-24
Run time: 277 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £20.95

Review Russell Brand Menage A Trois Collection - Russell Brand - Live/Russell Brand - Doing Life - Live/Russell Brand - Ponderland / Russell Brand:


Review Warner Home Video / You've Got Mail [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Nora Ephron
  • Katie Sagona
  • Parker Posey
  • Tom Hanks
  • Meg Ryan
  • Greg Kinnear
Release date: 1999-08-23
Run time: 114 min.
Creator: Miklós László
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.78

Review You've Got Mail [1999] / Warner Home Video:

By now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot. The underlying narrative is an even more old-fashioned romantic pas de deux that is casually hooked to a newfangled device. The script, cowritten by the director and her sister, Delia Ephron, updates and relocates the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner, to contemporary Manhattan, where Joe Fox (Hanks) is a cheerfully rapacious merchant whose chain of book superstores is gobbling up smaller, more specialized shops such as the children's bookstore owned by Kathleen Kelly (Ryan). Their lives run in close parallel in the same idealized neighbourhood yet they first meet anonymously, online, where they gradually nurture a warm, even intimate correspondence. As they begin to wonder whether this e-mail flirtation might lead them to be soul mates, however, they meet and clash over their colliding business fortunes. It's no small testament to the two stars that we wind up liking and caring about them despite the inevitable (and highly manipulative) arc of the plot. Although their chemistry transcended the consciously improbable romantic premise of Sleepless, enabling director Ephron to attain a kind of amorous soufflé, this time around there's a slow leak that considerably deflates the affair. Less credulous viewers will challenge Joe's logic in prolonging the concealment of his online identity from Kathleen, and may shake their heads at Ephron's reinvention of Manhattan as a spotless, sun-dappled wonderland where everybody lives in million-dollar apartments and colour co-ordinates their wardrobes for cocktail parties. [+]
-Sam Sutherland.

Review South Park / South Park - Season 1 [1997]
Release date: 2007-10-22
Run time: 310 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £12.79

Review South Park - Season 1 [1997] / South Park:


Review Acorn Media / The Good Life - Series 2 [1975]
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Eddington
  • Felicity Kendal
  • Penelope Keith
  • Bruce Bould
  • Richard Briers
Release date: 2004-03-15
Run time: 206 min.
Creator: John Esmonde
RRP: £24.99
Price: £10.50

Review The Good Life - Series 2 [1975] / Acorn Media:


Models & Brands:
Sex And The City - Season 5, Sgt. Bilko, Only Fools and Horses - The Complete Series 1 [1981], Muriel's Wedding [1995], In Sickness And In Health - Series 1 [1985], Burn After Reading [Blu-ray] [2008], Ally McBeal - The Complete DVD Collection, Mean Girls (Special Collector's Edition) [2004], A Lot Like Love [2005], QI - A Quite Interesting Game [Interactive DVD] [2005], Ace Ventura - Pet Detective/Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls [1993], She's The Man [2006], Arsenic And Old Lace [1944], Chuck - Complete Season 1 [2007], Last of the Summer Wine - Series 5 & 6 [1979], Everything Is Illuminated [2005], Russell Brand Menage A Trois Collection - Russell Brand - Live/Russell Brand - Doing Life - Live/Russell Brand - Ponderland, You've Got Mail [1999], South Park - Season 1 [1997], The Good Life - Series 2 [1975]

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