"Actor: Charles Rosen"

• The Magnificent Seven | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £8.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (71.53%)   |  RRP £11.99

  Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! --Robert Horton

• The Magnificent Seven Collection | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turn samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa'sYojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars) and Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samuri was a natural for an American remake through this movie--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of 60s stardom: Steve McQueen, JamesCoburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum... followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride!--Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• The Temptations - The True Story | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  They started with street corner harmonising and became slick stage performers destined to become rhythm and blues royalty. This film tells the true story of the pressure that goes with one of the most successful Motown singing-groups in history The Temptations from their personal battles with drug and alcohol abuse to their bitter break up...

• The Temptations | DVD | (06/11/2006) from £44.99   |  Saving you £-41.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The true story of The Temptations the Soul vocal group of the 1960s as seen from the viewpoint of the last surviving member Otis Williams. Beginning from their humble origins in the late 50s and continuing through the 90s and the deaths of the other 4 members.

• Great Composers - Bach / Mozart | DVD | (01/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The BBC TV series Great Composers, broadcast in 1997, takes an introductory look at key figures of European classical music. Bach (1685-1750) is a difficult composer to survey historically, partly because his life as a professional musician was restricted to several provincial German towns. Yet the vast body of music he produced is well covered, with a representative sample performed mainly on instruments of Bach's day. There's also consideration of his cultural importance as the effective progenitor of modern European music and enough anecdotal evidence to suggest a lively, combative personality in his own right. The life of Mozart (1756-1791) is easier to document, with his years as a child prodigy travelling the European cultural circuit, the difficult adolescent years in Salzburg and Paris and the rise and fall of his freelance career in Vienna all amply illustrated here. Again, a well-chosen selection of music, accompanied by thought-provoking comments from a range of musicians and historians, gently exploding the myth of the Amadeus film in the process. This is informal, informing, and worth acquiring. On the DVD: The disc offers crisp Dolby 2.0 stereo and 4:3 ratio, with generous and well-chosen access points--13 for Bach, 16 for Mozart. Subtitles are offered in five languages, and you'll need to select the English option so that the German and Italian speaking contributors come with translation. Those with DVD-ROM can additionally access up-to-date articles on these composers. --Richard Whitehouse

• For Hire | DVD | (28/02/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  This 1997 thriller For Hire ponders the question of what terrible things a person might be persuaded to do, given the right circumstances and the right price. Rob Lowe plays Mitch, a Chicago cab driver trying to make it as an actor, married to the pregnant Faye. Among his clients are bestselling writer Lou Weber (Joe Mantegna), who befriends Mitch and confides in him that a drug dealer is trying to kill him. Over the next few days, Mitch begins to suffer severe stomach pains, collapsing in Weber's apartment after a fare and is diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer. With only a short time to live, he decides to take up Weber's offer to rub out his drug dealer stalker for $50,000, a nest egg for his family after he's gone. A not entirely unpredictable twist follows, hinted at by the Lucifer-like beard sported by Mantegna and the film alights only briefly to meditate on the potential for evil in all of us before resuming its journey along conventional, though certainly passable Hollywood thriller lines. An intriguing precept--it's just a slight shame that neither the players nor director's hearts seem really to be in this movie. On the DVD: Features a trailer. --David Stubbs

• The Magnificent Seven | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Yul Brynner stars as one of seven master gunmen who aid the helpless farmers of an isolated village pitted against an army of marauding bandits in this rousing action tale based on Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai. Released in 1960 John Sturges' masterpiece garnered an Oscar nomination for Elmer Bernstein (for Best Score) and launched the film careers of Steve McQueen Charles Bronson Robert Vaughn and James Coburn.

• Great Composers - Vol. 2 - Beethoven / Wagner | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The second volume of the BBC's excellent Great Composers series consists of two hour-long episodes devoted to Beethoven and Wagner respectively. The format in both cases is that of a standard "life and works" biography, but what makes these episodes so attractive is the high quality of the visual material and the engrossing nature of the insights offered from the contributors. For example, it's fascinating to hear the lead violin of the Lindsay Quartet discuss the personal significance of a certain Beethoven phrase just after Charles Rosen has drawn a parallel with the composer's use of form and the speeches of Robespierre. If this makes the whole project sound as wholesome and dull as dry muesli, everyone also seems alive to the human idiosyncrasies of the subjects: we learn, among other things, that the utterly humourless Cosima Wagner used to keep her husband's eyelashes and carry them around with her in a bag. The musical excerpts are both performed--by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra and other groups--and filmed with panache. Kenneth Branagh narrates. All in all, a good introduction to both composers.--Warwick Thompson

• Nothing Sacred | DVD | (18/02/2002) from £15.62   |  Saving you £1.37 (8.77%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Nothing Sacred (1937) in which Carole Lombard co-stars with Frederic March is one of her most delightful movie outings and her only feature in colour. The hilarious screenplay by Ben Hecht and James H. Street has her cast as Hazel Flagg a small town girl who mistakenly believes that she is dying of radium poisoning. March plays a newspaper reporter who in the best tradition of yellow journalism talks his editor into bringing her to New York for one last fling. The faultless direc