"Actor: Charlie S Chaplin"

• Limelight - Dual Format Edition | Blu Ray | (28/03/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Limelight tells the story of a fading music hall comedian's efforts to help a despondent ballet dancer learn both to walk and feel confident about life again. The highlight of this moving Academy Award-winning film is the classic duet with Chaplin's only real artistic film comedy rival Buster Keaton. This Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray and DVD) features the film restored in HD

• Killer Barbys | DVD | (10/07/2017) from £12.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Killer Barbys are a touring rock band with a problem. They're stranded in the middle of nowhere and they need to find someone willing to put them up for the night. They end up at the mansion of the countess Von Fledermaus, an ancient woman shrouded in evil. She needs to fresh blood of young men to regain her lost youth, and the Killer Barbys are on the menu! Directed by the notorious sexploitation Director Jess Franco Starring award winning actor Santiago Segura (Blade 2)

• The Rolling Stones - Bridges To Babylon 1998 | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Like any good brand, the Rolling Stones know to preserve the formula even when updating the package, and this long-form concert video underscores that market strategy. As with each of their tours since the early 1980s, the quartet, augmented by a discreet auxiliary of backup musicians, gives the fans new eye-candy while dishing up a familiar set list spiked with Mick Jagger's lip-smacking vocals and Keith Richards' signature guitar riffs. The visual twists are at once spectacular and conservative: a cyclopean main stage design with massive pillars (presumably the Babylonian connection), a vast oval video screen (shades of Big Brother), and a hydraulic bridge enabling a mid-concert sortie into the audience, with the Stones playing a more stripped-down, intimate set on a small satellite stage. That huge physical setting doubtless made the live shows eye-filling rock spectacles, but the video crew necessarily accepts the limitations of the small screen, focusing more on close-ups of the band, rapid cuts, and racing, hand-held tracking shots to convey excitement while keeping the viewer close to the action. The evening's repertoire sticks to the band's most familiar hits, and if the Glimmer Twins occasionally slip their masks to let the routine show, the real wonder is how effectively they keep the playing focused. During the first half of the programme, the band's newest songs (especially "Saint of Me" and "Out of Control") elicit conspicuously higher energy from the band, if not the audience. But just as the show seems doomed to a certain anonymity, the escape onto the smaller, no-frills stage pumps up players and crowd alike, particularly when they launch into "Like a Rolling Stone", a cover that winds up sounding like a great idea too long deferred. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Killer Barbys | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

• Vampire Killer Barbys | DVD | (19/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  The Killer Barbys are a touring rock band with a problem. They're stranded in the middle of nowhere and they need to find someone willing to put them up for the night. They end up at the mansion of Countess Von Fledermaus an ancient woman shrouded in evil. She needs the fresh blood of young men to regain her lost youth and the Killer Barbys are on the menu!

• Charlie Chaplin - Limelight | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  One of Charlie Chaplin's most personal projects was 1952's Limelight for which he composed the unforgettably haunting score and which featured his son Sydney in a major supporting role. The result is a bittersweet masterwork, a May-September romance between an ascendant ballerina (Claire Bloom in only her second film) and a fading clown. Script and performances are superb, and though entirely studio-made, with London recreated in America, Chaplin's great visual sensibility ensures the production never feels stage-bound. The story harks back to the glory years of Music Hall and in fictionalised form draws heavily on Chaplin's experiences as recounted in his superb autobiography. More affectionate and philosophical than the comparable Sunset Boulevard (1950), the story movingly echoes A Star is Born (1937) and The Red Shoes (1948), while one brilliant touch is the inclusion of Chaplin's fellow "silent" era star, Buster Keaton as his stage partner. Comedy is not forgotten, but this is at heart a moving reflection on the passage of time, a deeply autobiographical work in which the never seen background of the Great War is an ironic contrast to Chaplin's celebration of youth, theatre, music, love and life itself. On the DVD: Limelight is presented in the original 4:3 black and white with excellent mono sound and a picture which apart from a little unobtrusive grain is absolutely immaculate. Also included are French and Italian-dubbed versions and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 version of the soundtrack, which simply adds unnecessary spatial processing to the mono original. The disc features multiple subtitle options, including English for hard of hearing. Disc 2 features a very useful six-minute introduction by David Robinson and an excellent 26-minute new documentary featuring contributions from Claire Bloom, Sydney Chaplin and Bernardo Bertolucci. One remarkable extra is Chaplin's entire Oscar-winning 58-minute score available as 36 separate musical cues in excellent mono. There is a four-minute scene that was included in the original release of the film and later cut, an unfinished short from 1919, The Professor (6 min), which introduces the flea circus idea developed in Limelight, as well as English and Italian trailers. Also included is a nine-section photo gallery and selection of posters, as well as two extracts from Chaplin reading Footlights, the unpublished novel upon which he based the film. Finally, 15 minutes of colour home movies show the star with his family in 1950 and more remarkably, revisiting the London of his youth in 1959. --Gary S Dalkin