"Actor: Cliff Morgan"

• Nureyev | DVD | (24/11/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £11.99

  No performer on the world stage received so much acclaim and publicity as Rudolf Nureyev and no one gave away so little about their private life and thinking. In this television biography made some twelve months before his death in 1993 Nureyev tells his own story in his own words and recalls turning points in his career. The programme traces Nureyev''s life starting out from his home town of Ufa in the shadow of the Ural Mountains half way between Moscow and Siberia. When filming took place there Ufa had changed very little since his departure thirty years before. The school was still there and so was the modest wooden house which his family shared with two others. The green curtains still hung at the old theatre where he saw the ballet performance which changed the course of his life. Nureyev''s sister his head mistress and the dance teacher who first discovered him (101 years old at the time this programme was made) all recall the solitary rebel. At the Kirov Theatre the prima ballerina who was his first partner remembers the student who emerged as the most brilliant dancer of his generation. The cameras were also allowed to film Nureyev on his Mediterranean island of Li Galli which once belonged to another Russian dancer Massine. Nureyev''s dancing career has been extensively chronicled on film and television. This definitive biography incorporates extensive archive material and documents Nureyev''s career with footage of his greatest roles and the most important events in his life

• Charly | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Released in 1968, Charly is a period-piece from the summer of love when "natural" was nirvana, the air hummed with the mantra "Everybody's beautiful", and all ills stemmed from institutional monoliths such as Science, Government, Education, and Religion. It is adapted from Daniel Keyes' novel Flowers for Algernon and its hero, Charly (Cliff Robertson), is 30 years old and mentally handicapped. His innocent sweetness makes him superior to most able-minded folk, whether they're the bigoted dolts he sweeps floors for or the ambitious scientists who see him as the human equivalent of Algernon, a mouse they've surgically (but impermanently) smartened up. Naturally, post-op Charly, sporting a genius IQ, "sees things as they are". Trotted out as the neurosurgeons' poster boy, he stands up to the "learned" audience--shot as faceless, inhuman interrogators. He's every 60s flower child, berating his "elders" for blighting their brave new world. The one reward Charly derives from his higher IQ is sex. In a lengthy montage resembling a retro TV commercial, he and his teacher (Claire Bloom, a madonna with an eternal Mona Lisa smile) romp through Edenic gardens, their embraces hallowed by sunlight glinting through leaves, moonlight glinting on water, and sappy Ravi Shankar music (stylistic clichés also include embarrassing outbreaks of split screens and multiple small screens within the frame, notably when rebellious Charly turns biker). Robertson's performance is well-meaning but mawkishly sentimental. Still, in the penultimate moments when Charly begins to slide back into mental illness, the actor achieves a genuine tragic gravity, and he became a surprise Oscar winner for his pains. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com