"Actor: ANDY JAMES"

• Keys To Tulsa | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £8.94   |  Saving you £-2.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Keys To Tulsa is a murderously irreverent tale of sex intrigue and humour in the deep dark South. Eric Stoltz heads an all-star cast as Richter Boudreau the black sheep son of a black sheep manoeuvring through a wonderfully bizzare coterie of characters as he finds himself pushed back into the world of wealth and provilege that spawned him. As he becomes the inadvertent pawn in a dangerous scheme of blackmail Richter must at last face the hypocritical values and petty jealousies of smalltown America. What emerges is a dramatic and potentially deadly journey through his past present and future.

• Angel: Complete Season 3 | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £13.99   |  Saving you £66.00 (471.77%)   |  RRP £79.99

  In the third series of Angel the titular vampire with a soul was forced to stand alone thanks to the (temporary) death of his beloved Buffy and her show's move to a new network, with no crossover between the two allowed. He returns from seeking peace in a demon-haunted monastery to find the LA Angel Investigations team fighting supernatural crime in his absence. Fred is still haunted by the nightmare dimension from which they rescued her; Cordelia's visions get ever more painful and debilitating. The schemes of the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart become every more imaginative and dragon lady Lilah Morgan becomes even more of an enemy when lusting after Angel. Unbelievably, Darla, Angel's vampire sire and lover, turns up, pregnant with his child and is tortured by inexplicable motherly feelings as well as a raging thirst for human blood. For a few episodes things go pretty well--but Angel's enemies, both those he has made in his quest for redemption and those he made when he was unadulterated evil, are still out there. Stephanie Romanov comes into her silky own in this series, making Lilah Morgan all the more seductively evil because she is clear about the choices she has made; the satanic law-firm of Wolfram and Hart are this show's most inspired creation. As the series moves to its close, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) has hard choices to make. The devastating climax is compulsive viewing and this series also contains one of the most impressive single episodes of the entire show: in "Waiting in the Wings" writer, director and creator Joss Whedon comes up with a classic ghost story as Angel and his crew go to the ballet and find a performance that is literally timeless. On the DVD: Angel, Series 3 DVD box set is generously stocked with extra features--a season overview, commentaries on three episodes, a documentary on the way scripts are transferred to screen, and an overview of the story of the doomed vampire Darla. Of especial interest to fans are two deleted scenes--one from the ballet episode "Waiting in the Wings", in which Amy Acker (Fred) and Alexis Denisof (Wesley) dance a pas de deux at once touching and hilarious, and the other a hilarious scene from "Cordy", the cute situation comedy in which Cordelia stars in an alternate universe. --Roz Kaveney

• Angel: Complete Season 2 | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £79.99

  It is with this second series that Angel, the darker Los Angeles mean-streets spin-off from Buffy, comes entirely into its own. Angel, the vampire with a soul and rather too much hair gel, is driven partly by his need for atonement and partly by his anger at the manipulations of the satanic law firm Wolfram and Hart, especially the morally equivocal Lindsey (Christian Kane). At the end of the previous season, they set his emotional destruction in motion by bringing back from hell Darla, the vampire who turned him, whom he loved for centuries and then killed to save Buffy. Julie Benz's soft-voiced passion--"God doesn't want you, but I still do"--makes her a perfect tragic foil for David Boreanaz's "billowy coat King of Pain" hero and mid-season offers further cause for Angel's despairing rage at his failure to save Darla from being turned vampire again. There is a nice balance of comedy, horror and the starkly tragic here--fake swamis, accursed shrouds, sexually abused telekinetic assassins all come into the mix along with Angel's gang of sidekicks--pedantic Wesley, abrasive Gunn, flighty clairvoyant Cordelia--and a new and wonderfully improbable character who starts as a running joke and becomes so much more--the Host (Andy Hallett), a green demon with red horns, eyes and hair, who sees into the souls of those who sing karaoke at his bar. And in a four-part finale, the group's friendship with the green karaoke demon Lorne sends them off to his home dimension to rescue Cordelia, right wrongs and acquire an important new character. On the DVD: Angel, Season 2 on disc presents all the episodes in their original 16x9 widescreen format (2.35:1), which enables viewers to see shots as they were originally conceived, for example in impressive moments like the march of the four vampires through a burning Shanghai or the climaxes of the mediaeval Pylea sequence. The sound is a sumptuous Dolby Surround 2.0. The first Pylea episode, "Over the Rainbow", has a commentary by its director Fred Keller; the 1959 flashback episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" has a commentary by writer Tim Minnear. There are also featurettes on the set designs--specifically concentrating on the huge hotel set which dominates Season 2. --Roz Kaveney

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 6 | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Deep Space Nine's sixth series began ambitiously with a six-part story arc devoted to the Dominion War. This was a brave move in many ways, but a sensible one too. Whereas other SF shows wouldn't commit to showing the impact of war (Babylon 5), here there were numerous visible sacrifices. Characters were frequently kidnapped and held prisoner, allowing screen time for other members of the ever-growing cast (at its peak there were as many as 18 individuals with speaking roles per episode). This year also introduced the idea of Starfleet Intelligence and its sinister Section 31; alliances were built only to crumble almost immediately; Sisko led a suicide mission and at long last his destiny as the Emissary took a serious turn. Amid all this sturm und drang the writers felt it necessary to inject some levity. In fact, there was so much comedic sidetracking this year it actually seemed sometimes as if they were afraid of the series’ dark tone. Witness: Quark undergoing a temporary sex change, leading a Magnificent Seven-style band of Ferengi (with a cameo from Iggy Pop), Morn's non-speaking character being sorely missed, the blend of Troi and Guinan into 60's crooner Vic Fontaine and, in one fan favourite episode ("Far Beyond the Stars"), Sisko having visions of himself and the crew as 1950s staff writers on pulp magazine Incredible Tales. There were also cute reconciliations amongst Worf's extended family (leading to Trek's first cast wedding), and even the revelation of Bashir's genetically enhanced origins quickly became a subject for easy jokes. Any of these events would have been satisfactorily cute if the war had ended and the show had moved on. But confusing the viewer, every so often the battle would be rejoined mid-episode. The clinching proof that no grand design was really at work was in the sudden and brutal dispatch of Dax. Actress Terry Farrell gave sufficient forewarning of having had enough of the show, but specifically asked not to be killed off. Despite all the jarring humour scattered about after the strong opening, the show seemed unable to avoid reverting to shock tactics for its finale. All of which hardly made the promised final year seem a particularly enticing prospect. --Paul Tonks

• The Adventures Of Pluto Nash | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £5.49   |  Saving you £8.50 (154.83%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Adventures of Pluto Nash was shelved for nearly two years, and when it was finally released, hardly anyone noticed. In the interim, Eddie Murphy made the marginally better Showtime and started fishing for a career revival that wasn't a sequel to his previous hits. In the satirical, lunar-colony hash of Pluto Nash, Murphy's a variant of Casablanca's Rick Blaine in the year 2087, happily running the moon's hottest nightclub, refusing a buyout offer from a greedy gambler, and suffering the consequences with his sidekick robot (Randy Quaid in yet another thankless role) and newest employee (Rosario Dawson, before doing similar time in Men in Black II). A visual hybrid of Total Recall and A.I., this nearly laughless comedy would be a total write-off if it weren't for Murphy's stalwart attempt to jump-start the flagging humour. He's got the chops of a superstar, but only when his collaborators are on the same page. --Jeff Shannon

• Night Falls On Manhattan | DVD | (04/06/2001) from £12.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (53.89%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The dominant themes of director Sidney Lumet's distinguished career are in full force in Night Falls on Manhattan, a moral melodrama involving a young district attorney (Andy Garcia) who takes on a career-making case only to uncover his father's possible involvement in pervasive police corruption. Balancing personal ethics and political compromise in a high-wire act of power and its abuse, Lumet relies on dialogue and superb performances (including those by Ron Leibman, Richard Dreyfuss and Lena Olin) to achieve a devastating impact. The script (based on the novel Tainted Evidence by Robert Daley) is too smart and Lumet's direction too sure-footed to fall back on the black-and-white exploits of conventional criminals and their crimes. The movie's moral framework (like that of Lumet's earlier film Q&A) is more realistic, dealing in the grey areas between right and wrong where misdeeds can arise from the best intentions. At the centre of Garcia's dilemma is his father, a seasoned New York cop played so convincingly by Ian Holm that you'd never guess the actor was British. Although it received mixed reviews when released in 1997, Night Falls on Manhattan ranks among Lumet's finest films. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Birdy | DVD | (17/04/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Based on William Wharton's transcendent novel of the same name, this film is about many things: friendship, war, and, of course, birds. The framing device is an effort by a horribly scarred combat soldier (Nicolas Cage) to break through to his best friend, Birdy (Matthew Modine), hospitalised after seemingly being driven mad by fighting in the Vietnam War. Cage then flashes back to their boyhood, where Birdy, a canary aficionado, was considered the school weirdo but managed to be a solid companion none the less. Directed by Alan Parker, it works best as a coming-of-age story, but misses the bizarre psychological transferences of the book, in which Birdy imagines himself within the world of canaries he creates in his bedroom at his parents' house. Modine is fine as an out-of-it misfit enraptured by his own little universe. --Marshall Fine

• Angel: Complete Season 5 | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £49.99   |  Saving you £30.00 (60.01%)   |  RRP £79.99

  Lives were upended--and some co-opted--in the fifth and final season of Angel, as the denizens of Angel Investigations found themselves taking on one of their scariest endeavors ever: corporate life. After making a literal deal with the devil (or something distinctly devil-like), Angel (David Boreanaz) moved his team from their crumbling hotel to the high-rise digs of law-firm-from-hell Wolfram & Hart, his reasoning being they could better fight the forces of evil from the inside, and with more resources to boot. Clever maneuvering or easy rationalization? A few members of Angel's team accused him of selling out (as did a number of viewers), but as with most of the show's previous four seasons, Angel somehow took a dubious premise and mined it for gold. And with one core cast member gone (Charisma Carpenter, whose Cordelia was immersed in a deep coma), it seemed as if the show, from within and without, would suddenly fall apart--that is, until Angel's longtime nemesis Spike (James Marsters) showed up, fresh from his sacrificial roasting at the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Let the vampire games begin! With Buffy off the air, fans flocked to Angel's last season to get their fix of Joss Whedon's "Buffyverse" in any form they could, and the addition of Spike was a shrewd one, albeit not enough to keep the show from getting canceled. And for the first half of the season, the creative forces behind the show seemed to be toying ruthlessly with the audience. Spike was around, but not entirely corporeal; Angel himself became sullen and withdrawn; and most horrifically, sweetheart scientist Fred (Amy Acker) and former watcher Wesley (Alexis Denisof) underwent traumas that would test even the most devoted viewer. However, just when you'd be about to throw in the towel, things started changing for the better--Spike became a permanent fixture (both in the flesh and on the show), Angel's secret motives were revealed, and the introduction of demon warrior Illyria, who proved to be the show's answer to Buffy's sardonic demon-made-human Anya, was a welcome breath of fresh air. Creatively, Angel also came up with some of its best episodes, including "Smile Time" (where Angel is turned into a puppet – really!) and "You're Welcome" (the show's 100th episode, which marked the bittersweet return of Carpenter's Cordelia). The ending of the series was deliberately ambiguous, and not everyone made it through alive, but in going out kicking, it was a proper sendoff for a show that always fought the good fight. --Mark Englehart

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 7 | DVD | (22/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  The seventh and final series of Deep Space Nine came down to loose ends, tying some existing ones together and allowing others to unravel. Symptomatic of the unwillingness to let DS9 go was the immediate arrival of a replacement Dax, though poor Nichole deBoer as Ezri Dax had to have known she'd already missed the boat. Her appearance encouraged last-minute romances to blossom, with Bashir finally getting some action, Odo finally getting together with Kira and Sisko finally proposing to Kassidy. Another contributing cute factor were numerous trips to the Holosuite wherein the all-knowing Vic Fontaine dished out philosophical advice. That was when the crew weren't in there to play baseball against the Vulcans or when Nog wasn't commiserating about the loss of a leg. Oh yes, and don't forget the war! There was an early announcement that the show would attempt a 10-part resolution to the Dominion War, but viewers could be forgiven for forgetting all about it with so much sentimental distraction. When the horrors of war did resurface, they at least injected a few surprises into the mix. Odo and his ambiguously "evil" Founders were hit with a melting disease, prompting a backstabbing race for the power of developing and owning a cure. The original baddie Cardassians finally settled on the Federation's side. Contrary to these interesting twists, however, were the unexpected turns taken by matters relating to Sisko's spiritual destiny. Suddenly the mystery of the wormhole and an entire religious belief system was reduced to the problem of translating correctly the words of a sacred book. The struggle to join with some evil aliens significantly diluted the attempt at resolving what had begun seven years before in the show's pilot episode. Ultimately, Sisko's destiny, as with all those who'd followed him to the open-ended climax, was to be decided elsewhere. In a move that was either bold and daring--or possibly born of desperation for not having thought things through properly--the show's storylines were to be continued in a series of spin-off books. --Paul Tonks

• Angel: Complete Season 4 | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £79.99

  As the fourth series of Angel starts, everything is still as we left it: Angel has been sunk to the bottom of the sea in an iron box by his inexplicable and vindictive son Connor and Cordelia has been summoned to higher realms to await orders. Gunn and Fred are left in the Hyperion Hotel, unsure about what has happened to their friends, and Lilah is working hard to seduce Wesley to the dark side. In the first few episodes, some of this is resolved but it's almost immediately replaced by far worse crises: prophesies of doom accumulate more rapidly even than usual in this wonderfully gloomy show and a horned rock-like Beast rains fire on Los Angeles. This last year is Angel's most tightly dramatic season yet--with a story arc of surprising intensity punctuated by the show's usual wit and sexiness. On the DVD: Angel, Series 4 is presented on disc in Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound with a visual aspect ratio of 16:9. It comes with insightful, and often hilarious, commentaries on seven of the 22 episodes as well as featurettes--a series overview, profiles of the characters of Jasmine and the Beast, a farewell to the Hyperion Hotel (the characters' base for three seasons) and a discussion of the apocalypse that Angel has to deal with from episode seven onwards). It has subtitles in English, French, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish and has the option of the soundtrack dubbed into French. --Roz Kaveney

• Once Upon A Crime | Blu Ray | (05/12/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  An out of work actor (Richard Lewis) and a just-jilted woman (Sean Young) find they are competing to return a lost dachshund to it's owner and collect the $5,000 reward. They go from Rome to Monte Carlo together but when they find the owner, he has been murdered and they are the prime suspects, along with a compulsive gambler (John Candy) and a hideous American (James Belushi).

• Out Of Towners | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-4.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Neil Simon's curious comedy The Out-of-Towners concerns a pair of non-New Yorkers (Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis) having a hellish visit to the Big Apple on the eve of a job interview for Lemmon's character. Made in 1970 and directed by Arthur (Love Story) Hiller, this hectic film almost seems ahead of its time when compared to more recent misery-piled-on-misery comedies such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The couple in this film endure everything that can go wrong on a trip, including being forced to spend the night in a mugger-happy Central Park. The strange element in Simon's script, though, is that Lemmon's character is so unpleasant. A middle-class, uptight guy who can't believe that New Yorkers in the service profession don't perform their jobs slavishly, he's kind of a one-note joke that quickly wears thin. It was remade with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn in 1999. --Tom Keogh

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 5 | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Deep Space Nine's fifth series was a turning point from which there was no going back. Character and information overload took over, and the complicated twists and turns in the build up to war either hooked viewers securely, or sent them away with a headache. The Klingon faction instigated by Worf's arrival was occasionally played for laughs, but mostly their hard-headed personalities made all efforts at diplomacy moot. In the opening episode a chilling possibility is proposed as to why might be: have the Changelings infiltrated already and replaced key personnel? Some fans saw this as a flawed X-Files-style development. Nevertheless it sowed a seed of insidious suspicion from here on, affecting all the principal casts' relationship with one another, even allowing Odo and Quark an opportunity to confess a degree of friendship. Expanding on the new theme of duplication, the crew also made numerous trips to their Mirror Universe counterparts. As well as new uniforms and the milestone 100th episode, Nana Visitor and Alexander Siddig comically got to disguise the arrival of their child during filming. More laughs came from the fan favourite "Trials and Tribble-ations" with CG allowing Sisko and crew to interact with Kirk and a cameo from Leonard Nimoy. Avery Brooks began taking a backseat as of this year, partly a result of the now-overcrowded cast. Although Sisko's destiny would be foreshadowed by his first vision and the introduction of the Pah-wraiths, the Captain was in an increasingly sulky mood. Brooks only directed one episode, allowing room for regulars LeVar Burton and Rene Auberjonois to do more behind the camera. Joining them were Alexander Siddig, Michael Dorn and even Andrew Robinson. Available space started to seem hardly deep enough. --Paul Tonks

• The Man From Elysian Fields | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Add The Man from Elysian Fields to the list of essential movies about the pains of writing. This wry comedy-drama charts the frustrations of a financially strapped novelist (Andy Garcia) as he desperately and secretly agrees to be an "escort" for ladies who need, err, escorting. This leads him into a Faustian bargain to help a beautiful client (Olivia Williams) whose husband, a once-great, now-dying writer (a mighty James Coburn), is struggling with a final work. Of course the fact that the men are sharing a project and a woman complicates matters--and Garcia's loyal wife (Julianna Margulies) is curious about all these nights spent away. The movie explores different levels of compromise and betrayal, yet it remains tartly amusing throughout. And it has a glorious casting inspiration: the director of the mysterious escort service is played by Mick Jagger, looking decadently elegant and purring like a vaguely satanic Siamese cat. --Robert Horton

• Gasaraki (Vol.7): In the Spider's Web | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  As Yushiro struggles desperately to rescue Miharu the noose around the neck of the free world begins to tighten. As the US and Japan find themselves driven to the brink of war the very fabric of civilization begins to unravel. Caught in the crossfire the TA Team must make the difficult decision of whom and what to fight for in a war that no one can possibly win. Apocalypse approaches in Gasaraki!

• James Stewart - Screen Legends - Westerns | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  James Stewart was one of the great western icons and this collection houses several of his finest efforts. The Man From Laramie (Dir. Anthony Mann 1955): Will Lockhart comes to a small town to find the man who sold rifles to the Apaches and caused the death of his brother a cavalry officer. Beaten and nearly killed by cohorts of the arms dealer he also becomes embroiled with a ranch baron and his overwrought son. Father and son are plotted against by their treacherous for

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 1 | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Of all the spin-off TV incarnations of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine had the hardest job persuading an audience to watch. By all accounts, Gene Roddenberry had concerns about the idea before his death in 1991. It took two more years to develop, and when it finally aired in 1993 reasons for that concern were evident right away. The show was dark (literally), characters argued a lot, no one went anywhere and the neighbouring natives were hardly ever friendly. Yet for all that the show went against the grain of The Great Bird's original vision of the future, it undeniably caught the mood of the time, incorporating a complex political backdrop that mirrored our own. In the casting, there was a clear intent to differentiate the show from its predecessors. Genre stalwarts Tony Todd and James Earl Jones were considered for Commander Sisko before Avery Brooks. The one let down at the time was that Michelle Forbes did not carry Ensign Ro across from TNG, but when the explosive Nana Visitor defiantly slapped her hand on a console in the pilot episode, viewers knew they were in for a different crew dynamic. In fact, the two-part pilot show ("The Emissary") is largely responsible for DS9's early success. Mysterious, spiritual, claustrophobic, funny and feisty, it remains the most attention-grabbing series opener (apart from the Classic original) the franchise has had. The first year may have relied on a few too many familiar faces--like Picard, Q and Lwaxana Troi--but these were more than outweighed by refreshingly detailed explorations of cultures old and new (Trill, Bajoran, Cardassian, Ferengi). As it turned out, Deep Space Nine was the boldest venture into Roddenberry's galaxy that had been (or ever would be) seen. On the DVD: Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Series 1's hour of special features is split between seven featurettes that really would have worked better edited together. Covering the show's origins and most aspects of Year One's production design, they all crib from interviews with actors and crew from the 1992 shoot (exclusively so in the 10 "Hidden Files"). Other interviews conducted in 1999 and 2002 tend to be more revealing, although the solo section on Major Kira is curiously lacking in recent input. While the designers describe their work with passion, creators Michael Piller and Rick Berman come off as stiff and lacking in knowledge. Hopefully this is something that will improve through the next six box sets. The interactive CD-ROM to build a DS9 database on your PC is something that will become more involving, too. Obviously the most important thing is the episodes themselves, and despite the lack of a commentary to enhance the best of them, sound in 5.1 and the crisp full-frame picture do them ample justice. --Paul Tonks END

• Cimarron Strip - The Judgement | DVD | (26/10/2009) from £7.09   |  Saving you £-1.10 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Trail boss Joe Bravo and his men attempt to cash a 0 cheque at the Hardesty bank but their request is denied and they turn rowdy ransacking the bank. They discover a vault containing 0 000 but are prevented from stealing it by Bravo much to one gang member's displeasure. When they ride into Cimarron they are quickly arrested for their escapade by Marshal Jim Crown an old friend who knows only too well about Bravo's chequered past. Sensing an opportunity Crown 'sentences' Bravo to 90 days as a Deputy Marshal in Hardesty. With a wolf guarding the sheep and his old pack sniffing around the bank Bravo must prove himself the lawman Crown believes him to be.

• Some Things Never Die | DVD | (19/03/2001) from £6.54   |  Saving you £9.45 (59.10%)   |  RRP £15.99

• Last Breath | DVD | (26/09/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  With a marriage built on shifting sand a husband and wife find themselves imprisoned by a sadistic killer - forced to make choices that will ultimately determine their family's survival or demise.