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• The Book Group - The Complete First Series | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £12.65   |  Saving you £7.34 (58.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Book Group, the creation of writer-director Annie Griffin, is a superb, Glasgow-based comedy-drama. Annie Dudek stars as Claire, the prissy and neurotic American expatriate who initiates the titular group with a view to meeting high-minded types like herself. Instead, she gets Dirka, Fist and Janice, three Scottish footballers' wives, the wheelchair-bound Kenny, a leisure-centre worker with ambitions to be a writer despite his apparent inarticulacy, the stubbly-faced football-mad Rab and the insufferable Barney, a post-grad student and heroin addict at whom Claire makes one of the most embarrassingly disastrous passes in TV history in the opening episode. The Book Group is a magnificent device for bringing an unlikely cast of characters together, supposedly out of a love of literature but in fact because each of them in their own way has pretensions or ambitions to make something different out of their lives. Waves of sexual longing between the group members are among the many things that interfere with the discussions of the texts, with Kenny in particular an object of fascination for both Dirka and Fist. With each episode cleverly themed around the chosen book of the week, The Book Group is hilarious yet wise, understated and often painfully melancholic, based on detailed character study rather than contrived situations or eye-catching melodrama. It is indispensable viewing. On the DVD: The Book Group's main extra is a poorly edited but absorbing sequence of interviews with all of the cast members except James Lance, who plays Barney. Rory McGann (Kenny), who comes from a non-acting background, is particularly interesting. --David Stubbs

• Les Misérables | Blu Ray | (18/07/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Deep In My Heart | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £2.79   |  Saving you £3.20 (114.70%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Given up for adoption as a baby Barbara Ann (Gloria Reuben) a child of mixed race is facing a life of confusion prejudice and isolation. Raised by a loving foster mother in a black neighbourhood she is suddenly torn from this happy existence and placed in a world with no friends no joy and no sense of family. But she survives and grows up to become the mother of five children. And it is then that Barbara Ann finds the courage to face her past to meet with the woman who gave bir

• The Lies Boys Tell | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £6.97   |  Saving you £2.01 (50.50%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Before he dies Ed Reece has got some unfinished business... Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas gives a terrific performance as an eccentric old man determined to revisit some milestones from his past and reconcile with his feuding family in this superb drama. With a brilliant witty script from Oscar winning Ernest Thompson (On Golden Pond). 'The Lies Boys Tell' also stars Craig T Nelson (Poltergiest) and the veteren character actress Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin).

• Hans Werner Henze ; Der Prinz Von Homburg | DVD | (18/10/2002) from £10.53   |  Saving you £15.72 (169.58%)   |  RRP £24.99

  An opera in three acts by one of Germany's most important contemporary composers - Hans Werner Henze. Musical direction comes from Wolfgang Sawallisch.

• The Revenant | Blu Ray | (02/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A soldier is killed in Iraq and then finds himself resurrected as a revenant, or one who has returned from the dead. He turns to his slacker best friend to help him manage his newfound thirst for blood, and the duo quickly realize that this zombie-fied state is a perfect opportunity to become vigilante crime fighters. However, their adventure quickly becomes more complicated and bloody than they expected as the movie escalates into a series of unexpected and horrifying twists.

• Bizet - Carmen (Mcvicar, Jordan, Lpo, Von Otter) | DVD | (12/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  'Carmen' is here restored to the original Opera Comique in a production from Glyndebourne. Music is under the direction of Philippe Jordan.

• Stage Fright | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £12.25   |  Saving you £-6.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Director Michele Soavi does the impossible by squeezing a few more drops of blood out from the slasher genre. Not only that, Soavi lensed one of the most beautiful and suspenseful horror movies of the 1980s. A genuinely haunting horror where the killer dressed as an owl goes to bloody work with a chainsaw that slices through flesh and bone...

• Essential Opera Collection | DVD | (11/10/2013) from £84.29   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Au Hasard Balthazar | DVD | (22/11/2004) from £32.37   |  Saving you £-12.38 (-61.90%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Taking man's inhumanity to man as its central theme 'Au Hasard Balthazar' traces the life of a donkey christened Balthazar by a group of young children from birth to death. Balthazar's story begins on a small farm in a rural district of France. Throughout his life he is owned by many of the locals returning to some of them more than once and is set various tasks from drawing a carriage to performing in a circus turning a grindstone to acting as a smuggler's means of transport.

• Cedar Rapids | Blu Ray | (19/09/2011) from £9.68   |  Saving you £13.30 (198.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a naive, small-town insurance agent named Tim Lippe (Ed Helms, The Hangover) goes to a convention in the big city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, his life gets turned inside out under the influence of three convention veterans. This sort of fish-out-of-water comedy could have been a flimsy excuse for broad slapstick and absurd high jinks; instead, in the confident hands of director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Chuck & Buck), Cedar Rapids becomes something more humane and, in a quiet way, more ambitious. Helms manages to make Tim genuine, a man-child but not a cartoon; the movie's situations skirt wackiness, yet always remain in the realm of something emotionally real. (The movie also reflects the influence of producers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who created the similarly character-rich movies Sideways, Almost Schmidt, and Election.) The whole cast hits the right notes, from such familiar faces as John C. Reilly (Magnolia, Talladega Nights), Anne Heche, and Sigourney Weaver to such stealthy character actors as Stephen Root (NewsRadio), Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (The Wire), and Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development). Cedar Rapids is sweet without being cloying, funny without being manic, and even a little sad at times, without ever turning up the violins on the soundtrack. It's an honest movie, and there are all too few of them out there. --Bret Fetzer

• Liebestraum | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (27.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) directs an incredibly sexy cast (Kevin Anderson Pamela Gidley and Kim Novak) in this tale of lust and murder -- one of the most visually stunning films of the '90s.

• Map Of The Human Heart | DVD | (14/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Magical adventure story of Avik and Albertine - and a love that survived decades of time impossible distances and the ravages of war.

• One Day | Blu Ray | (06/02/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Lone Scherfig directs this romcom, based on the best-seller by David Nicholls, about two friends who reunite every year on the anniversary of their first meeting. Since the day when they first met at their college graduation - July 15th,1988 - Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) have kept in touch, meeting up again on the same day each year. Over the following two decades, the ups and downs of the relationship between the idealistic Emma and wealthy ladies' man Dexter are revisited every July 15th, as they try to take stock of their lives, and attempt to discover what they've both been missing all along.

• Carmen | DVD | (12/02/2003) from £28.55   |  Saving you £1.44 (5.04%)   |  RRP £29.99

  All too often Bizet's great comic opera Carmen has been pared down to its basic bodice-ripping components, leaving its adored melodies with only torrid clichés to cling on to. Nothing of the sort happens here. David McVicar's 2002 production for Glyndebourne restores it to its rightful place as a stupendous musical entertainment. Bold, lusty, tightly directed and designed in sanguine shades of red and black, this Carmen spills and bustles across the stage and out of the screen like a living painting. At first glance, Anne Sofie von Otter is not an obvious choice for the title role, but just look at how she seizes and inhabits the character, wrenching her from the jaws of dark, sultry stereotype and rendering a complex modern woman. Her Carmen both revels in and is tormented by the ripe sexuality that fascinates her lovers and sets her apart from the other women. Von Otter's interpretation suggests it has its roots in a hinterland of wretched, bitter experience; the "Habanera", the "Gypsy Song" and the "Seguidilla" become multi-layered expressions of hope and desire: we never forget that for all its gusto, Carmen ends up a tragedy. And the men aren't ciphers. Laurent Naouri's proud Escamillo and Marcus Haddock's immature, damaged Don José are rounded, richly sung characters. So too, is Lisa Milne's touching Micaëla. All told, this Carmen is full-length, fibrous and, with conductor Philippe Jordan at the helm, a triumph. On the DVD: Carmen is spread over two discs, presented in anamorphic widescreen format that opens up the stage and capitalises on some refreshingly brisk camerawork. The sound quality (Digital Surround sound) is finely balanced. A rich set of extras includes fascinating short documentaries on various aspects of the production, from stage fights to characterisation and costume design. There's also a useful spoken synopsis and a stroll through the famous Glyndebourne Gardens. --Piers Ford

• West Of The Pecos / Nevada | DVD | (08/09/2008) from £6.50   |  Saving you £-0.51 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  West of the Pecos (1945): Robert Mitchum stars in this well plotted exciting Zane Grey Western. Thurston Hall and his daughter Barbara Hale are accosted by robbers en route to their Texas ranch from Chicago. This is only the start of their troubles as they encounter hold-ups horse stampedes and outlaws. Hiring Robert Mitchum and his sidekick to run their ranch leads to further problems because of Mitchum's checkered past. Plot twists and Suspense highlight this old west cla

• Season Of The Witch | DVD | (20/10/2008) from £5.38   |  Saving you £7.61 (58.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Filmed as Jack's Wife and briefly released in the US under the title Hungry Wives Romero's third film Season Of The Witch is the disturbing story of a suburban housewife's descent into extramarital sex and the occult.

• This Sporting Life | DVD | (31/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Prolific British filmmaker Lindsay Anderson weaves this small, evocative tale of young life at the crossroads in early 1960s Northern England. A rough, sullen young man (Richard Harris) working in the local coal mines begins to make a name for himself as a star rugby player, but even as he begins to fall in love he cannot escape the harsh realities of the bleak life around him. The rugby sequences in the film are striking, but no more so than the depiction of downtrodden people living in the shadow of industry and corruption that too often crushes their spirit. Harris in one of his first roles, is remarkably effective as an unlikeable but sympathetic figure trying against hope to savour the small joys life has to offer, and the film also features the debut of renowned actress Glenda Jackson. One of a series of working-class, character-driven British imports, This Sporting Life is one of the best on the field. --Robert Lane

• Bride Wars | Blu Ray | (18/05/2009) from £4.09   |  Saving you £20.90 (511.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Hathaway and Hudson star as best friends who are pitted against each other when their wedding dates clash. They compete for venues, services and guests, once it's clear that neither will step aside.

• Quiet Days In Clichy | DVD | (26/05/2003) from £28.33   |  Saving you £-10.34 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Considered to be the most daring and honest film adaptation of any of Miller's works Thorsen's 'Quiet Days In Clichy' is a provocative and graphic exploration of sexual liberation inventively and innovatively directed on location in Paris. Highlighting the film's beautiful monochrome visuals (Paris has rarely been shot with such affection) is a soundtrack of suitably ribald songs by the legendary Country Joe McDonald. Adapted by Danish filmmaker Jens Jrgen Thorsen from Tropic Of C