"Actor: Art Smith"

• The Royle Family - The Complete Series 2 | DVD | (06/11/2000) from £4.94   |  Saving you £15.05 (304.66%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On paper, The Royle Family doesn't sound that promising: a working-class family from Manchester sit in their cluttered living room, watch the telly and argue over domestic details (the arrival of a telephone bill, for instance, provides the big dramatic event of the first episode, which aired in September 1998). But from such small everyday incidents, Royle Family creators Caroline Aherne and Dave Best (who play young couple Denise and Dave) have crafted one of the most successful shows on British television: a comedy about the joys and frustrations of family life that's warm, honest and very, very funny--Britain's answer to The Simpsons, whose success the show rivalled when it started broadcasting on BBC2 (the programme jumped channels to BBC1 for its second series).The Royle Family marked an on-screen reunion for Brookside-actors Ricky Tomlinson (who plays bearded, big-hearted, banjo-playing Jim Royle) and Sue Johnston as his wife Barbara, the driving force behind the Royle household. It is smart casting because The Royle Family is as much a soap opera as a situation comedy. Now in its third series, The Royle Family has seen its characters develop like real folk. Denise and Dave got married and now have a little sprog; Barbara starts menopause (how many sitcoms are brave enough to use that for laughs?) and Denise's kid brother Anthony shakes off his surly adolescence when he turned 18 in series two. Unlike Oasis, who provide the shows theme song "Halfway Round the World", this programme just keeps getting better.But no soap--not even Brookside in its dafter moments--has one-liners as brilliantly crafted as The Royle Family. (The scripts from the series are available to buy.) Slouched in his armchair, Jim's dour running commentary on the TV shows that are on at the time are particularly priceless: Changing Rooms, for instance, boils down to "a Cockney knocking nails into plywood... Is this what its come to?" Not quite: because as long as the Royle Family are around, there is something worthwhile to watch. --Edward Lawrenson

• The Buddy Holly Story | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Buddy Holly laid the foundations for a generation of popular music with his ground-breaking combination of country music and rhythm and blues. This film tells his story from it's explosive beginning to its tragic end with Gary Busey giving an electrifying Oscar nominated performance (Best Actor 1978) as the young genius from Lubbock Texas who changed the tune of rock 'n' roll history. Young Buddy's studious appearance gave no hint of the 'new music' which was about to take the worl

• Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid : The Movie & More (2 Disc Special Edition) | DVD | (14/08/2006) from £7.85   |  Saving you £12.14 (154.65%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Best of enemies. Deadliest of friends. They are fast friends and worse foes. One is Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) a law unto himself. The other is the law: Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) who once rode with Billy. Set to a bristling score by Bob Dylan (who also plays Billy's sidekick Alias) and with a `Who's Who' of iconic Western players Sam Peckinpah's saga of one of the West's great legends is now restored to its intended glory. For the first time since it left

• A Goofy Movie | DVD | (05/02/2001) from £5.98   |  Saving you £10.01 (167.39%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Even as Disney has revelled in the success of its high-end animated features, it occasionally sneaks a lesser effort into cinemas, based on one of the many TV shows with which it dominates daytime TV. This one is based on perennial Disney favourite Goofy's adventures in domesticated bliss. Goofy is now a single dad; when son Max gets blamed for a prank gone wrong at school, Goofy blames himself and decides that, for his vacation, he's going to get away with Max alone. Of course, this is no treat for Max, who has just met the girl of his dreams and harbours no wish to spend the summer touring America with his square dad. The vacation is one disaster after another, though they aren't particularly funny disasters; the culmination involves Goofy's efforts to get Max backstage at a big rock concert. --Marshall Fine

• Matrix Trilogy, The / The Matrix / The Matrix Reloaded / Matrix Revolutions | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £15.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (31.60%)   |  RRP £20.99

  The Wachowski Brothers trilogy is brought together on this fantastic boxed set. The Matrix: Perception: The Everyday World is Real. Reality: That World is a hoax an elaborate deception spun by all-powerful machines of artificial intelligence that control us. Mind blowing stunts. Techno-slamming visuals. Megakick action. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne lead the fight to free humankind in The Matrix the cyber thriller that you will watch again and again. Written and Direc

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £8.08   |  Saving you £4.91 (60.77%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror collection proves that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, 2001, Harry Potter, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Tron get the inimitable Simpsons skewering in this shockingly funny collection of four mostly classic episodes. Best is "V" in which no TV and no beer make Homer go crazy in "The Shinning" ("You mean The Shining", Bart corrects. "Shh, you want to get sued?" Homer reprimands him). "VI" contains the ambitious, computer-animated "Homer3". "VII" features aliens Kang and Hados's finest quarter half-hour as they assume the identities of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. "XII" boasts the star power of Pierce Brosnan as the voice of a mechanised house that falls in love with Marge and lures Homer to his apparent death with "unexplained bacon". For Halloween and beyond, this crypt-kicking collection is full of screamingly funny treats. --Donald Liebenson

• The Buddy Holly Story (Reissue) Blu-Ray | Blu Ray | (22/02/2021) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Buddy Holly laid the foundations for a generation of popular music with his ground-breaking combination of country music and rhythm & blues. This film tells his story from its explosive beginning to its tragic end with Gary Busey giving an electrifying, Oscar® nominated performance (Best Actor - 1978) as the young genius from Lubbock, Texas, who changed the tune of rock n roll history. Young Buddys studious appearance gave no hint of the new music which was about to take the world by storm. His unique brand of rock n roll catapulted him and the Crickets to national stardom in just three short years with hits such as Thatll Be The Day and Peggy Sue. Despite opposition from the mainly redneck Texas community, his mother who nagged him to get a proper job and his girlfriend who wanted to tame him - by the age of 22, Holly had it all but the trials and tribulations of fame began to take its toll and his brilliant career ended in tragedy all too quickly. The Buddy Holly Story is one of the best biopics ever produced for cinema and features 12 of his greatest hit songs as well as winning the 1978 Academy Award TM for Best Score Adaptation. Its dynamic tribute to one of the most influential rock n rollers of all time and his legacy. Audio Commentary from the Director Steve Rash and Gary Busy Origintal Theatrical Trailer Play film with isolated score track

• The Hot Spot | DVD | (19/05/2003) from £29.49   |  Saving you £-16.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Hot Spot is best known to lecherous film buffs for Jennifer Connelly's topless scene, but this sultry southern noir deserves more than prurient interest. It's arguably Dennis Hopper's best directorial effort (OK, so that's not saying much), and Charles Williams' source novel Hell Hath No Fury finds Hopper in a comfortable B-movie milieu, riffing on Double Indemnity with an overripe tale of sex, greed and blackmail in an unnamed Texan town. Fresh from the final season of Miami Vice, Don Johnson stars as a shifty drifter, conning his way into a salesman job on a used-car lot, where the boss's insatiable wife (Virginia Madsen) offers him sexual favours and a lovely secretary's (Connelly) innocence is threatened by a percolating scandal. Nobody's really innocent, of course, and Hopper spices this languid web of secrets with enough trashy misbehaviour to qualify The Hot Spot as a bona fide guilty pleasure. --Jeff Shannon

• In a Lonely Place | Blu Ray | (16/05/2016) from £17.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (55.59%)   |  RRP £27.99

  One of the classics of the noir psychological thriller, In a Lonely Place is one of Humphrey Bogart's finest performances. He is almost unbearably intense as Dixon Steele, a screenwriter with high standards and a nasty temper who finds himself under suspicion when Mildred, a hat-check girl he knows, is found murdered. Immediately he gets an alibi from a neighbour, Laurel, and equally quickly, he recognises that this is a woman who meets his standards: the question is, as suspicion of his involvement in Mildred's death continues, can he make himself meet hers? This is a wonderful study in trust and suspicion and the limits of love; Bogart's performance is impressive simply because he is prepared to go well over the limits of our sympathy in the name of emotional truth. The scene where he explains imaginatively to a cop and his wife how the murder might have happened is a spine-chilling, creepy portrait of amoral artistic brilliance. Gloria Grahame is equally fine as the woman who lets herself love him, for a while. On the DVD: In a Lonely Place comes with an excellent documentary in which Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential) explains the importance of the film to him and discusses its place in the work of Bogart and the director Nicholas Ray; there is also a quick interesting documentary about the restoration and digitisation of classic films. The film is presented with a visual aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and with restored Dolby Surround sound that does full justice to the film's snappy dialogue and the moody George Antheil score. --Roz Kaveney

• American Graffiti | Blu Ray | (25/07/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This Academy Award-nominated classic voted one of the American Film Institute's top 100 Films Of All Time features the coming-of-age of four teenagers on their last summer night before college. Rediscover drag racing Inspiration Point and drive-ins all over again in this nostalgic look back at the early '60s. The incredible soundtrack brings you the most memorable rock 'n' roll hits of the era. Directed by George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola this classic stars Harrison Ford Richard Dreyfuss Ron Howard Suzanne Somers Cindy Williams Wolfman Jack and Mackenzie Phillips. Capture the heart of America's last age of innocence with American Graffiti.

• Ally McBeal - Season 2 | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-0.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Join the whimsical Ally McBeal both in and out of the courtroom to watch her defend and prosecute the most flamboyant and comical cases whilst at the same time falling in and out of relationships. The introduction of icy Nelle Porter (Portia de Rossi) often known as 'sub-zero Nelle' and the tempestuous Ling Woo (Lucy Liu) into the firm creates an ever intriguing element of love and hate in Season 2. Amusing to some but a cause of great anguish to others both of them capture the h

• Final Destination 1, 2 and 3 Box Set | DVD | (24/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Three features. We're going to tell you not once, but twice. You can't cheat what fate has in store for you, particularly if it involves death. FINAL DESTINATION 1 and FINAL DESTINATION 2 are considered by fans and critics alike as the thinking persons' horror films, showing the usual group of teens put in the peculiar position of - could it be - having to use their smarts to outwit the grim reaper. This package of films is a roller coaster ride of funs and thrills. See individual titles for complete descriptions of this fabulously fun duo. Also includes 'Final Destination 3'.

• Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen | DVD | (25/10/2004) from £4.74   |  Saving you £11.25 (237.34%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When a teenager is forced to leave behind her beloved Big Apple in a family move, she has problems adjusting to life in surburban New Jersey.

• Pompeii - The Last Day (winner of 3 EMMY awards, BAFTA nominated) (BBC) | DVD | (21/08/2017) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £10.28   |  Saving you £5.71 (55.54%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is both adored and detested for its combination of sumptuous beauty and revolting decadence. Few directors polarise audiences in the same way as Peter Greenaway, a filmmaker as influenced by Jacobean revenge tragedy and 17th-century painting as by the French New Wave. A vile, gluttonous thief (Michael Gambon) spews hate and abuse at a restaurant run by a stoic French cook (Richard Bohringer), but under the thief's nose his wife (the ever-sensuous Helen Mirren) conducts an affair with a bookish lover (Alan Howard). Clothing (by avant-garde designer Jean-Paul Gaultier) changes colour as the characters move from room to room. Nudity, torture, rotting meat, and Tim Roth at his sleaziest all contribute the atmosphere of decay and excess. Not for everyone, but for some, essential. --Bret Fetzer

• A Private Function | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The story's setting is 1947 England where hard-hit Brits won't let mandatory food rationing keep them from celebrating the wedding of the future queen to Lt. Phillip Mountbatten. But there may be no public banquet for citizens in a Yorkshire town. The contraband guest of honour they've pampered and fattened has been pignapped!

• Queen & Slim | DVD | (08/06/2020) from £7.19   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man (Daniel Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith), are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly become a symbol of trauma, terror, grief and pain for people across the country. As they drive, these two unlikely fugitives will discover themselves and each other in the most dire and desperate of circumstances and will forge a deep and powerful love that will reveal their shared humanity and shape the rest of their lives. Bonus Features Feature Commentary with Director/Producer Melina Matsoukas and Writer/ Producer Lena Waithe A Deeper Meaning Melina & Lena Off The Script On The Run With Queen & Slim

• Eroica | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £29.93   |  Saving you £-4.94 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  By the time the first public performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) took place in Vienna in 1805 a privileged few had already heard the work at a private play-through at the Lobkowitz Palace. Nick Dear's award-winning period drama starring Ian Hart as Beethoven brings to life the momentous day that prompted Haydn to remark 'everything is different from today'.

• Ally McBeal, Series 5 Box Set 1 | DVD | (10/02/2003) from £10.65   |  Saving you £9.34 (87.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The fifth season was the last series of Ally McBeal, and probably the least satisfying. While always at least slightly entertaining, it was troubled by two conflicting imperatives: first, to steer its neurotic characters and multiplicity of sub-plots towards a coherent and credible resolution; second, to sustain another series of a programme which had, by now, exhausted all the plot possibilities that were remotely believable. The result is a bemusing onslaught of new characters (Ally's Mini-Me Jenny and a barely distinguishable phalanx of lantern-jawed male leads), celebrity cameos (Edna Everage, Christina Ricci, Barry White, Matthew Perry, Jon Bon Jovi), several storylines that would test the credulity of any of the curiously indulgent judges before whom Ally's firm practises (notably the arrival of a 10-year-old daughter that Ally didn't know she had) and one misbegotten attempt to anchor the programme to the real world (the "Nine One One" episode, an unwatchably mawkish allegory about the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States). Granted that Ally McBeal was never intended to be realistic drama, but when the programme spirals entirely off into the realms of the surreal, any possibility of the sort of identification with the characters on which the programme once relied is lost. Though not without its moments, the sudden redemption of Fish, always the best-written character, is deftly handled. Series Five will be of chief interest to adherents who stuck with it through the first four and so wanted to see how it all ends; in keeping with the central character's defining motifs of solipsism and self-pity, it does so with a whimper. On the DVD: Ally McBeal has episode selector on each disc, and a scene selector within each of those. The final disc contains two short and desultory documentaries on the series billed, somewhat hopefully, as "Special Features". A French audio soundtrack is available, as are subtitles in English, French and Dutch. –-Andrew Mueller

• Larry McMurtry's Streets Of Laredo | DVD | (13/06/2005) from £8.08   |  Saving you £16.91 (209.28%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Streets Of Laredo is the third title in the Lonesome Dove Saga. An exhilarating tale of legend and heroism continues the epic of the waning years of the Texas Rangers. Captain Woodrow Call is long in the tooth but still a legendary hunter. He is hired to track down a young Mexican train robber and killer Joey Garza. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker a witless deputy and one of the last remaining members of the Hat Creek outfit Pea-Eye Parker. Their long chase leads the