"Actor: David Crow"

• Urban Gothic - Series 1 | DVD | (08/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Urban Gothic is an interesting and original horror short story anthology format, uniting standard horror material with contemporary urban London settings. Writer Tom De Ville has a good ear for streetwise chatter and a reasonably acute sense of class and ethnic difference; his pieces that are essentially character-driven tend to be more successful than those that depend rather more on sensation and plot device. The London locations and young cast combine to make something surprisingly creepy. Highlights include the opening episode, "Deadmeat", in which a group of sensation-seeking young people, on the run from drug dealers and sexually rapacious employers, find a corpse with a look of horror on its face and decide to experiment with necromancy. In the fly-on-the wall documentary parody "Vampirology" a film crew follows a vampire on his nightly round of drinks with yuppie friends, before devouring a lost tourist. Keith-Lee Castle's portrait of a lost soul is remarkable, and the guest appearance of Ingrid Pitt, every vampire's favourite starlet, is hilarious. --Roz Kaveney

• HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Heartworn Highways is James Szalapski's fabled documentary about the rebirth of country music around Austin and Nashville in the mid-70's.This classic features Townes Van Zandt Guy Clark Rodney Crowell Charlie Daniels Steve Young Gamble Rogers David Allan Coe and Steve Earle amongst numerous others. Heartworn Highways is a movie that affords not only a rare insight into the lives of this unique set of maverick artists but also the opportunity to experience their inspiring and beautiful music in both an intimate setting and from an intensely personal perspective.This deluxe edition includes a transcribed interview with the Director Szalapski and additional written contributions from the other key players responsible for the movie's creation. If further includes over an hour of previously unseen footage and extra features that only serve to enhance the legendary status of Heartworn Highways.Features unreleased versions of:'Waitin' Around To Die' and 'Pancho And Lefty' by Townes Van Zandt.'Desperados Waiting For A Train' and 'L.A Freeway' by Guy Clark.'One For The One For Me' by John Hiatt.The First Ever Version Of 'Mercenary Song' by Steve Earle and the completely unreleased 'Darling Commit Me' and many many more.

• Wilt | DVD | (07/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on the hilarious novel by Tom Sharpe and starring Grif Rhys-Jones and Mel Smith, "Wilt" is a story of a disappearance, mistaken identity and a blow-up doll.

• Urban Gothic - Series 1 And 2 Complete | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Featuring both series 1 and 2 of the cult classic televison series. Behind the facade of London's shiny dockside developments its designer boutiques and coffee bars lie forgotten dark corners and darker secrets. It's a city where anything can happen and being young and pretty wont always save you. From vampire documentaries to alien-infested supermarkets from teenage necromancy to ghostly East End gangsters you'll find tales of the city to chill the blood in Urban Gothic.

• The Amazing Mr Blunden | DVD | (10/10/2005) from £50.00   |  Saving you £-44.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Amazing Mr. Blunden

• Green Mile, The / Pay It Forward / Proof Of Life | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.99

  The book was better" has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of movies. Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama The Green Mile (The Shawshank Redemption was the first) is a very faithful adaptation of King's serial novel. In the middle of the Depression, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) runs death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Into this dreary world walks a mammoth prisoner, John Coffey (Michael Duncan) who, very slowly, reveals a special gift that will change the men working and dying on the mile. With Darabont's superior storytelling abilities, his touch for perfect casting, and a leisurely 188-minute running time, his movie brings to life nearly every character and scene from the novel. Darabont even improves the novel's two endings, creating a more emotionally satisfying experience. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.comPay It Forward is a multi-level marketing scheme of the heart. Beginning as a seventh-grade class assignment to put into action an idea that could change the world, young Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a plan to do good deeds for three people who then by way of payment each must do good turns for three other people. These nine people also must pay it forward and so on, ad infinitum. If successful, the resulting network of do-gooders ought to comprise the entire world. While this could have turned into unmitigated schmaltz, the acting elevates this film to mitigated schmaltz. By turns powerful and measured, the performances of Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment can't make up for the many missteps in a screenplay that sanitises the look of the lower-middle class and expects us to believe that homeless alcoholics and junkies speak in the elevated manner of grad students. One may wonder how it would have been handled by the likes of Frank Capra, who could balance sentiment with humour, clearly Capra would never have let the ending of his version to take the nosedive into cliché and pathos that director Mimi Leder has allowed in this film. --Jim Gay, Amazon.comWhen someone in Proof of Life says "Don't leave me hanging", you can bet they're going to be left hanging. There's little room for delicacy in Tony Gilroy's screenplay, adapted from an article by William Prochnau and the book Long March to Freedom by kidnapping survivor Thomas Hargrove. A hint of romance between Russell Crowe (the soldier-turned-"K&R") and Meg Ryan adds tension as the story shifts back and forth to David Morse's captivity. Avoiding that pitfall, director Taylor Hackford crafts the plot as a latter-day Casablanca that unfolds on a grander canvas (at stunning locations in Ecuador) while favouring an exciting rescue-mission climax over the tragedy of an ill-timed affair. It might have worked better as a straightforward macho action flick (with David Caruso doing lively work as Crowe's gung-ho K&R cohort), but Proof of Life effectively conveys the two-sided torment of a hostage crisis. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• The Company Of Wolves | UMD | (30/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99