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Review Universal Studios / The Good Shepherd [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Gambon
  • Robert De Niro
  • Alec Baldwin
  • Keir Dullea
  • Matt Damon
Release date: 2007-04-03
Run time: 168 min.
Creator: Marcelo Zarvos
Price: £4.26

Review The Good Shepherd [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Universal Studios:


Review New Yorker Video / Lancelot of the Lake [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Luc Simon
  • Patrick Bernhard
  • Laura Duke Condominas
  • Robert Bresson
  • Humbert Balsan
  • Vladimir Antolek-Oresek
Release date: 2004-05-25
Run time: 80 min.
Price: £82.94

Review Lancelot of the Lake [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / New Yorker Video:


Review / Pride and Prejudice [1995]
Release date: 2000-11-27
Run time: 327 min.

Review Pride and Prejudice [1995]:


Review Panorama / Paradise [1982]
Actors & Directors
  • Willie Aames
  • Neil Vipond
  • Phoebe Cates
  • Tuvia Tavi
  • Richard Curnock
  • Stuart Gillard
Release date: 2008-06-24
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Paul Hoffert

Review Paradise [1982] / Panorama:


Review Walt Disney Video / Where the Red Fern Grows [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Lyman Dayton
  • Sam Pillsbury
  • Dave Matthews
  • Ned Beatty
  • Renee Faia
  • Dabney Coleman
  • Joseph Ashton
Release date: 2004-12-21
Run time: 86 min.
Price: £6.19

Review Where the Red Fern Grows [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Walt Disney Video:


Review Westlake Entertainment Group / David Copperfield [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Cyril Cusack
  • Helen Cotterill
  • Sinéad Cusack
  • James Donald
  • Isobel Black
  • Delbert Mann
Release date: 2003-10-28
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Malcolm Arnold
Price: £1.53

Review David Copperfield [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Westlake Entertainment Group:


Review MGM / The Wild Party [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Raquel Welch
  • Perry King
  • Tiffany Bolling
  • Royal Dano
  • James Ivory
  • James Coco
Release date: 2004-06-15
Run time: 109 min.
Price: £5.03

Review The Wild Party [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / MGM:


Review Showtime Entertainment / The Heart of Me [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Luke Newberry
  • Paul Bettany
  • Thaddeus O'Sullivan
  • Olivia Williams
  • Eleanor Bron
  • Helena Bonham Carter
Release date: 2005-04-01
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £4.92

Review The Heart of Me [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Showtime Entertainment:


Review TLA Releasing / Straight-Jacket [2004] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Matt Letscher
  • David Burke
  • Veronica Cartwright
  • Sam Pancake
  • Victor Raider-Wexler
  • Richard Day
Release date: 2005-06-07
Run time: 96 min.
Creator: Steve Edwards
Price: £6.46

Review Straight-Jacket [2004] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / TLA Releasing:


Review Showtime Entertainment / Charms For the Easy Life [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Susan May Pratt
  • Kenneth Mitchell
  • Joan Micklin Silver
  • Mimi Rogers
  • Gena Rowlands
  • Geordie Johnson
Release date: 2003-11-04
Run time: 111 min.
Price: £5.00

Review Charms For the Easy Life [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Showtime Entertainment:


Review Dd Home Entertainment / David Copperfield
Actors & Directors
  • David Troughton
  • David Yelland
  • Patricia Routledge
  • Anthony Andrews
  • Arthur Lowe
Release date: 2005-09-19
Run time: 325 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.95

Review David Copperfield / Dd Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Woman In White
Actors & Directors
  • Susan Vidler
  • Justine Waddell
  • Tim Fywell
  • Tara Fitzgerald
  • John Standing
  • Andrew Lincoln
Release date: 1998-06-01
Run time: 130 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £14.95

Review Woman In White / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Acorn Media / The Irish R.M. (1983) (Tv-Series)
Actors & Directors
  • Brendan Conroy
  • Lise-Ann McLaughlin
  • Robert Chetwyn
  • Peter Bowles
  • Anna Manahan
  • Bryan Murray
Release date: 1998-06-08
Run time: 310 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £4.99

Review The Irish R.M. (1983) (Tv-Series) / Acorn Media:


Review The Duchess of Duke Street / The Duchess Of Duke Street - Series 1 - Part 1
Release date: 2003-04-07
Run time: 459 min.
Price: £19.99

Review The Duchess Of Duke Street - Series 1 - Part 1 / The Duchess of Duke Street:


Review Lucero / Alborada (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Release date: 2006-10-17
Run time: 862 min.
Price: £7.23

Review Alborada (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Lucero:


Review Sony Pictures / The Lives of Others [Blu-ray] [2007] [US Import]
Actors & Directors
  • Martina Gedeck
  • Thomas Thieme
  • Sebastian Koch
  • Ulrich Mühe
  • Ulrich Tukur
  • Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Release date: 2007-08-21
Run time: 138 min.
Price: £15.67

Review The Lives of Others [Blu-ray] [2007] [US Import] / Sony Pictures:


Review HBO Home Video / The Gathering Storm [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Albert Finney
  • Linus Roache
  • Jim Broadbent
  • Vanessa Redgrave
  • Lena Headey
  • Richard Loncraine
Release date: 2003-02-04
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £4.31

Review The Gathering Storm [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / HBO Home Video:

The Gathering Storm is a fictionalised portrayal of Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine during their wilderness years of the 1930s. It deservedly won numerous awards, including an Emmy, BAFTA and Golden Globe in recognition of Albert Finney's wonderful central performance. Equally deserving were those for all aspects of the production design: period wardrobe, set dressing and use of location are equally impressive, apparently ensuring that this production has everything going for it in its depiction of pre-War Britain. The snag is that its restriction to TV movie format, a mere 90 minutes, excludes a lot of historical context that ought not to have been left out. Seeing Churchill's adoration of his wife (Vanessa Redgrave) or the family woes troubling Ralph Wigram (Linus Roache) is all very emotionally dramatic, but it uses precious screen time that might have been better devoted to highlighting the political situation abroad, or indeed the monarchy's situation at home. The enterprise smacks a little too much of sentimental contrivance, lionising Churchill in rose-tinted retrospect. True, some attempt is made to acknowledge the personality traits that excluded him both from office and popularity prior to Germany's re-building, but like so much else pertinent to the machinations of anticipating the war, these are glossed over for familial feel-goodery and button-pushing poignancy. This is a film that's easy to admire, but ought not to be mistaken for well-rounded history. On the DVD: The Gathering Storm doesn't look or sound quite as crisp and clear as you'd hope for a recent TV-movie transfer. That's down to some obvious grain in the picture, and the 2. [+]
0 surround audio that tends to lose quieter dialogue moments. There are extensive cast and crew biographies that will no doubt help international viewers place the naggingly familiar British faces. There's also the accumulatively enthusiastic commentary from director Richard Loncraine and producer Frank Doelger, which happily points many of them out. -Paul Tonks.

Review Image Entertainment / Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (Broadway Theatre Archive) [1975] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • David Clennon
  • Marian Mercer
  • Frank Langella
  • John Desmond (II)
  • Kevin McCarthy
  • George Ede
Release date: 2002-02-05
Run time: 117 min.
Price: £9.80

Review Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (Broadway Theatre Archive) [1975] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Image Entertainment:


Review DreamWorks / Road to Perdition [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Sam Mendes
  • Tyler Hoechlin
  • Rob Maxey
  • Liam Aiken
  • Jennifer Jason Leigh
  • Tom Hanks
Release date: 2003-02-25
Run time: 117 min.
Price: £2.89

Review Road to Perdition [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / DreamWorks:

A movie with an impeccable pedigree, Road to Perdition is director Sam Mendes' impressive follow-up to American Beauty, and features remarkable contributions from veteran cinematographer Conrad Hall, composer Thomas Newman and a cast of thespian brilliance led by Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law. Unfortunately, all their fine efforts have been lavished on an essentially predictable story, adapted from the graphic novel, which here unfolds in an overly leisurely fashion. The result is a movie that looks wonderful but feels a little too much like a contrived morality play. Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a family man but also a hit man in the employ of mob boss John Rooney (Newman). A surrogate father-figure to Sullivan, Rooney also has a wayward real son, Connor (Daniel Craig), whose duplicity leads to a deadly alienation between the Rooney family and Sullivan. Forced to go on the run with his own 12-year-old son, Michael junior (Tyler Hoechlin), Sullivan seeks both revenge and a way to prevent his boy from one day taking the same dark road as himself. Thus the Road to Perdition becomes both a literal and metaphorical journey for the protagonists. It wouldn't matter that there's little tension or doubt about the outcome, except that Hanks' character is all too clearly a decent chap at heart, thus undermining from the outset any sense of a real "journey" towards redemption. It remains a delight to see all the principals acting at their peak and so capably directed, but ultimately Road to Perdition seems like a series of magnificently staged set-pieces that doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts. On the DVD: Road to Perdition is presented in an anamorphic version of its original theatrical 2. [+]
35:1 ratio with accompanying Dolby 5. 1 or DTS sound options. Both picture and sound make the most of the impeccable photography and production design. Extras are a feature commentary from Mendes, a series of deleted scenes also with optional commentary, a standard HBO making of featurette, plus photos, text notes and a trailer for the CD soundtrack. -Mark Walker.

Review Criterion / The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection [1957] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Nils Poppe
  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Bibi Andersson
  • Bengt Ekerot
  • Gunnar Björnstrand
  • Max von Sydow
Release date: 1999-01-26
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £15.59

Review The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection [1957] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Criterion:

Ingmar Bergman's 1956 film, The Seventh Seal has been parodied by everyone from Woody Allen to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, but it remains one of the strangest and richest classics of world cinema. Max Von Sydow plays a knight returning from the Crusades to encounter an apocalyptic scenario inspired by the Book of Genesis. He plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot), sees a manacled witch, watches a band of flagellants go by-all of it foretelling an inevitable end to life. Unabashedly allegorical and lyrical and existing in a world unto itself, the film is enormously mesmerising no matter what one thinks of the weighty meanings Bergman has attached to it all. -Tom Keogh Ingmar Bergman's best-known film and deservedly so, 1957's The Seventh Seal is an allegorical study of death, God and the meaning, if any, of human existence. It is a film that every human being should see, addressing as it does our deepest hopes, anxieties, curiosities and fears. Yet it's also a magical and captivating experience, close to the state of a lucid dream. Max Von Sydow plays Antonius Block, the knight who has returned, gaunt, weathered and disillusioned, from the crusades, to find his home country in the grip of the plague. He is met by Death, in the pallid, hooded form of Bengt Ekerot, whom he challenges to a game of chess. The longer he can stave off defeat, the longer he can prolong the existence of himself and his own entourage, whom Block acquires in the form of his cynical squire a young family and a band of travelling players. [+]
Block's oft-expressed doubts and fears about his mortality and what lies beyond (hence the biblical Seventh Seal, which reveals this final secret to mankind) were especially relevant in the late 1950s, when the threat of the Bomb hung over mankind as did the threat of the plague many centuries before. The concluding Dance of Death image is, like the movie as a whole, harrowing, yet strangely enchanting. On the DVD: Presented in the original academy ratio, this is an excellent restoration, emphasising the cinematic use of light to contrast the carefree young players with the austere shades used to convey Block's anxiety-ridden ruminations. Notes from Bergman's memoirs discuss how the "Dance of Death" image came from wood carvings in a country church he frequented as a child, as well as the influence of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana on the film. Critic Ronald Bergan's additional notes largely echo Bergman's own. -David Stubbs.

Models & Brands:
The Good Shepherd [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Lancelot of the Lake [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Pride and Prejudice [1995], Paradise [1982], Where the Red Fern Grows [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC), David Copperfield [1970] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Wild Party [1974] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Heart of Me [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Straight-Jacket [2004] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Charms For the Easy Life [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), David Copperfield, Woman In White, The Irish R.M. (1983) (Tv-Series), The Duchess Of Duke Street - Series 1 - Part 1, Alborada (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Lives of Others [Blu-ray] [2007] [US Import], The Gathering Storm [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (Broadway Theatre Archive) [1975] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Road to Perdition [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection [1957] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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