The Remains of the Day is one of Merchant-Ivory's most thought-provoking films. Anthony Hopkins is a model of restraint and propriety as Stevens, the butler who "knows his place"; Emma Thompson is the animated and sympathetic Miss Kenton, the housekeeper whose attraction to Stevens is doomed to disappointment. As Nazi appeaser Lord Darlington, James Fox clings to the notion of a gentleman's agreement in the ruthless political climate before World War Two. Hugh Grant is his journalist nephew all too aware of reality, while Christopher Reeves gives a spirited portrayal of an American senator, whose purchase of Darlington Hall 20 years on sends Stevens on a journey to right the mistake he made out of loyalty. As a period drama with an ever-relevant message, this 1993 film is absorbing viewing all the way. On the DVD: the letterbox widescreen format reproduces the 2.35:1 aspect ratio with absolute clarity. Subtitles are in French and German, with audio subtitles also in English, Italian and Spanish, and with 28 separate chapter selections. The "making-of" featurette and retrospective documentary complement each other with their "during and after" perspectives, while "Blind Loyalty, Hollow Honour" is an interesting short on the question of appeasement and war. The running commentary from Thompson, Merchant and Ivory is more of a once-only diversion. --Richard Whitehouse
Season 9 Volume 49:9.18 Arthur's Mantle:Daniel finds Carter's laptop hooked up to an unfamiliar device, which shifts its users to an alternate dimension. Teal'c is investigating a planet of Jaffa warriors. He believes that Volnek, a warrior, may have been brainwashed by the Ori, and he finds himself in an intense match with the violent warrior.9.19 Crusade:Vala reappears with important news. She learned that the Ori have steadily been building an army and constructing a fleet of ships, and plan to stage a massive crusade. Now, SG-1 is left only with the uncertainty of their friends safety and the doom they are soon to face.9.20 Camelot:Upon receiving a lead on an Ancient device, the team travels to the village of Camelot. Carter learns that the device has the ability to completely obliterate the Ori's galaxy. To the team's horror, the first Ori ships begin arriving before she returns. SG-1 prepares for their biggest battle yet.
This exuberant comedy tells the story of an old man who is to inherit a large legacy from a distant cousin but only if he can prove he is in need. Determined to get the bequest he tries to fritter away all his remaining cash but just can't seem to stop making money! One of several popular early-thirties comedies by director Norman Lee noted for his collaborations with Leslie Fuller and Josser creator Ernie Lotinga Money Talks boasts a rare appearance by legendary East-End boxing champion Jack Kid Berg ( the Whitechapel Windmill ). It is featured here in a new High Definition transfer from the original film elements, in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. SPECIAL FEATURE: Image gallery
Swordfish Log on. Hack in. Go anywhere. Steal everything. John Travolta stars as Gabriel Shear a sinister mastermind with an elite criminal crew who are desperately trying to access information locked inside a complicated computer system that contains government secrets and if they can hack it a billion payday... Basic Legendary drill instructor Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel Jackson) takes six Ranger cadets on a training mission to Fort Clayton in the Panamanian jungle but only two remain alive. The two survivors are uncooperative and give wildly differing accounts of what actually happened. Former Ranger and DEA agent Tom Hardy (John Travolta) currently on suspension for allegedly accepting a bribe is called in to try and separate the truth from the lies and find out what really happened. Collateral Damage: A firefighter (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing. Frustrated by the government's stalled investigation and haunted by the thought that the man responsible for murdering his family might never be brought to justice he takes matters into his own hands and tracks the bomber to Columbia...
A slick, smart vehicle for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Housesitter offers an acceptably daffy premise and enough inventive business to sustain it through to the, not unexpected, happy ending. Architect Martin builds a dream home for his childhood sweetheart (Dana Delaney) only to be rejected when he proposes marriage. After a one-night stand, Hawn--a daffy waitress with a gift for making up improbable but convincing lies--moves into Martin's house and tells his parents (Donald Moffatt, Julie Harris) and the whole community that she is his surprise new wife. When he sees how this impresses Delaney, Martin goes along with the charade, encouraging wilder and wilder fictions and doing his best to join in so that he can rush through to a divorce and move on to the woman he has always wanted. Hawn has to recruit a couple of winos to pose as her parents and impress Martin's boss into giving him a promotion, but we glimpse her real misery at his eventual intention to toss her out of the make-believe world she has created because her own real background is so grim. Its sit-com hi-jinx are manic enough not to be strangled by an inevitable dip in to sentiment towards the end, and Hawn, who always has to work hard, is better matched against the apparently effortless Martin than in their subsequent pairing in Out-of-Towners. Martin, often wasted in comparatively straight roles, has a few wild and crazy scenes as Hawn prompts him into joining her improvised fantasies. Director Frank Oz, a frequent Martin collaborator (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger), is the model of a proper, competent, professional craftsman when he sets out to put a comedy together--but the film misses streaks of lunacy or cruelty that might have made it funnier and more affecting. On the DVD: The disc offers a pristine widescreen non-anamorphic transfer, letterboxed to 1.85:1. There are no extra features to speak of, just text-based production notes, cast and director bios, plus a trailer and an assortment of language and subtitle options. --Kim Newman
Surveillance is a fast moving conspiracy thriller set in contemporary Britain. Adam is a teacher. He lives in the countryside and comes to London to club and pick-up guys on the net. But one of these men carries deadly information about an affair with a gay Royal. There are those who would stop at nothing to keep the heir to the throne's sexuality a secret including murder.
Step through the stargate with SG-1 a team of soldiers and scientists as they travel instantaneously to other planets to explore forge alliances defuse crises establish trade investigate ancient mysteries and defend Earth from such hostile forces as the Goa'uld and the Replicators. Episodes comprise: 12. Collateral Damage 13. Ripple Effect 14. Stronghold
The opera Siegfried.
Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Mothers. Daughters. The never-ending story of good vs. evil... After years of mother-daughter tension Siddalee (Bullock) receives a scrapbook detailing the wild adventures of the 'Ya-Yas' her mother's girlhood friends... (Dir. Callie Khouri 2002 Cert. 12) Two Weeks' Notice: Attorney Lucy Kelson wants to save the world. Instead she's choosing ties and interviewing prospective girlfriends for her handsome and hapless billion
For a first feature from a 24-year-old director, George Washington is an amazingly assured piece of work. The titles misleading: this is no biopic of Americas first President, but a poetic, richly atmospheric rhapsody set in a rundown industrial town in the American South. Given this backdrop, and a predominantly black cast, you might expect an angry study of social deprivation and racial tension, but Green has no such agenda. Instead, he derives a shimmering, heat-hazed beauty from his images of rusting machinery, junkyards and derelict buildings, and if the overall tone is tinged with sadness, its mainly from a sense of universal human loss. The action, such as it is, moves at its own slow Southern pace, following a group of youngsters, black and white, over a few high-summer days. Things do happen--a couple decide to elope, one boys saved from drowning, another gets killed--but theyre presented in an oblique, understated fashion that owes nothing to conventional Hollywood notions of narrative. With one exception, the cast are all non-professionals, mainly youngsters who director-writer David Gordon Green found in and around the town where the film was made, Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Shooting in a semi-improvised fashion, Green draws from his young cast remarkably spontaneous performances and dialogue (often their own) full of unselfconscious poetry. Drawing on a wide range of influences--among other things he cites Sesame Street, documentaries and such 70s classics as Deliverance, Walkabout and especially Terrence Malicks Days of Heaven--Green has fashioned a film thats fresh, tender and utterly individual. And it looks just gorgeous: belying the tiny budget, Tim Orrs widescreen photography lavishes mellow softness on images of dereliction and small-town decay. Never has dead-end poverty been made to look so attractive. On the DVD: George Washington comes on a disc generously loaded with extras. Besides the obvious theatrical trailer we get two of Greens early short films, Physical Pinball and Pleasant Grove (both clearly dry runs for the main feature), an 18-minute featurette about the films reception at the Berlin Film Fest and a deleted scene of a community meeting. This scene, the short Pleasant Grove and the movie itself also offer a directors commentary--or rather a directors dialogue, as Green shares the honours with one of his lead actors, Paul Schneider. Their laconic, unpretentious comments enhance the whole experience enormously. The film has been transferred in its full scope ratio (2.35:1) and looks great. --Philip Kemp
Redemption - Part 1: The SGC has come under attack from Anubis who has a device that can use one Stargate to destroy another. With a wormhole dialed in to Earth's stargate the SGC can not contact its off-world allies for help. Carter works furiously to find a solution... Redemption - Part 2: Teal'c is off world attending his wife's funeral; his son believes she would not have been killed if Teal'c had not joined the fight against the Goa'uld. Wanting proof that the Goa'uld are not gods and can be stopped he insists that Teal'c allow him to join in battle so he can see for himself what the war is all about. Together they search for Anubis... Descent: SG-1 heads for the now abandoned Goa'uld mothership that once belonged to Anubis and now houses a downloaded version of Thor's mind. Frozen: The SGC's study of the Antarctic Gate site reveals a woman buried in the ice who is revived. Unwittingly carrying a deadly disease she poses a deadly threat to the team.
The 1994 film Stargate was originally intended as the start of a franchise, but creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were distracted celebrating their Independence Day. Episodic TV treatment was the natural next step. In the roles of Colonel Jack O'Neill and Dr. Daniel Jackson are Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks. They're joined by Captain Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) and guilt-stricken former alien baddie Teal'c (Christopher Judge) to form the teacher's pet primary unit SG-1 With a seemingly endless network of Stargates found to exist on planets all across the known universe, their mission is to make first contact with as many friendly races as possible. Chasing their heels at almost every turn are the "overlord" Goa'uld--the ancient Egyptian gods who are none too chummy after the events of the original film. The welcome notion of a continued plot thread sees offshoots that follow the reincarnation of Daniel's wife, Sam's father literally joining a renegade faction of the Goa'uld and Jack in an unending quest to out-sarcasm everyone. There's something of The Time Tunnel to the show's premise, but amid a dearth of derivative lookalikes, Stargate has held its own with stories that put the science fiction back into TV sci-fi. On this DVD: Picking up a week after the Season Three cliff-hanger "Nemesis", the Fourth Season finds the SG team split apart to win a few "Small Victories". Providing a nice change of scenery for the show, O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped aboard a Russian submarine fending off the remaining Replicator threat. Carter meanwhile is whisked away by Thor to come up with her best "stupid idea" to save the Asgard homeworld. Then the show respectfully broaches the subject of racial tolerance found on a planet at war on "The Other Side". The material is handled superbly by guest star Rene Auberjonois (formerly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Odo). A little comic relief is provided in "Upgrades". When Tok'ra scientist Anise/Freya (Vanessa Angel) shows off some fabled technology the team are initially cautious. But the armbands give the wearer increased strength and speed, and in no time at all Jack, Sam and Daniel are abusing them. The fun of seeing them at a local restaurant ordering multiple rare steaks gives way to practical use when it's revealed that arch-enemy Apophis is constructing a new battleship. If the Tok'ra's duplicity is off-putting to the SGC this time, it's nothing compared to seeing Anise/Freya again in "Crossroads". O'Neill notices the "sparkage" between Teal 'c and visiting Jaffa-babe Sho'nac. When she states she has a way for the Tok'ra to obtain information about the Goa'uld from her placid symbiote, it's just bound to go bad. --Paul Tonks
Step through the stargate with SG-1 a team of soldiers and scientists as they travel instantaneously to other planets to explore forge alliances defuse crises establish trade investigate ancient mysteries and defend Earth from such hostile forces as the Goa'uld and the Replicators. Prototype: The team finds an underground laboratory and a man frozen in a stasis pod - Khalek a prisoner of a Goa'uld. But Khalek was not his prisoner - Khalek was his creation. Daniel's in
The 1994 movie Stargate was originally intended as the start of a franchise, but creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were distracted celebrating their Independence Day. Episodic TV treatment was the natural next step. Since neither Kurt Russell nor James Spader would be able to commit, it gave the producers licence to tinker with the cast and the universe they'd explore. Replacing the roles of Colonel Jack O'Neill and Dr Daniel Jackson respectively are Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks. They're joined by Captain Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) and guilt-stricken former alien baddie Teal'c (Christopher Judge) to form the teacher's pet primary unit SG-1 With a seemingly endless network of Stargates found to exist on planets all across the known universe, their mission is to make first contact with as many friendly races as possible. Chasing their heels at almost every turn are the "overlord" Pharaonic Goa'uld--the ancient Egyptian Gods who are none too chummy after the events of the original film. The welcome notion of a continued plot thread sees offshoots that follow the reincarnation of Daniel's wife; Sam's father literally joining a renegade faction of the Goa'uld; and Jack in an unending quest to out-sarcasm everyone. There's something of The Time Tunnel to the show's premise, but amid a dearth of derivative look-a-likes, Stargate has held its own with stories that put the science fiction back into TV sci-fi. On the DVD: To resolve the Season Two cliffhanger "Out Of Mind", General Hammond rounds up every conceivable ally to rescue the SG-1 team from Hathor's clutches and gets a much-needed field trip in the process. "Into the Fire " is actually a weak opening for the new year, but does boast some impressive visuals as Hammond and Brat'ac pilot a shuttle through an open Stargate (euphemistically called "threading the needle"). In the next episode, the team are troublingly advised that the ancient God of Evil--"Seth"--has been hiding on Earth for thousands of years. Daniel miraculously tracks him down in about five minutes through a quick surf on the Web! In "Fair Game" O'Neill is "beamed up" to his chum the Asgard Thor in the middle of Carter's promotion to Major. Thor warns him that the Goa'uld System Lords are miffed about his team thwarting Hathor in "Out of Mind". All manner of underhand trickery and subterfuge then follows at a treaty meeting between three representatives and the hapless Jack. "Legacy" on the other hand is a strange connection back to Season Two's "Holiday" when Daniel suffers a mental breakdown courtesy of scientist Ma'chello. Some unnerving imagery (slugs in the ear akin to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) makes this one of the series' darker instalments. --Paul Tonks
Step through the stargate with SG-1 a team of soldiers and scientists as they travel instantaneously to other planets to explore forge alliances defuse crises establish trade investigate ancient mysteries and defend Earth from such hostile forces as the Goa'uld and the Replicators. Episodes comprise: 15. Ethon 16. On The Grid 17. The Scourge
A beautiful woman and her gang of criminals attempt to match their wits with Sherlock Holmes in this murder/mystery set in Dartmoor and London's antique auction rooms. Rathbone and Bruce gave the screen's greatest interpretation of the legendary detective duo created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Stargate is an intergalactic gateway developed by an ancient civilization that links other planets from other solar systems to ours. The U.S. Air Force assembles a Stargate team for interstellar peace-keeping missions. Boasting incredible special effects sequences rapid-fire pacing and awesome scenes of alien warfare Stargate SG-1 is your gateway to pulse-pounding sci-fi action!
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