"Actor: Gail Boggs"

• EDtv | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £5.50   |  Saving you £4.49 (81.64%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The third entry of 1998-99's cinematic TV trilogy kind of got lost in the shuffle following The Truman Show, an art film masquerading as a blockbuster, and Pleasantville, a heartfelt feel-good movie masquerading as a special-effects extravaganza. Edtv is nothing more than it appears: a scruffy comedy about fame and its discontents. Matthew McConaughey stars as Ed, a white-trash rube who gets his own dawn-to-midnight TV series in which every aspect of his life, no matter how sordid or dull or embarrassing, becomes mass entertainment (it inverts Truman by having the protagonist invite the pervasive cameras). Predictably, fame makes him miserable and, unsurprisingly, he finds a way out of his predicament. Albert Brooks covered this same territory in the funnier Real Life, and it's probably not the best idea for a load of comfy celebs to preach to us about how difficult fame is. But the film is cannily cast, including a number of performers who themselves have fallen victim to stupid media tricks (McConaughey, Ellen DeGeneres as the network executive, Elizabeth Hurley as a vamp hitching her star to Ed's and Woody Harrelson as Ed's even dumber brother). Structurally, the movie is a mess. It looks as if the filmmakers had the choice between making a fully realised, two-and-a-half-hour-long movie that no one would sit through or one that clocks in under two hours but has a lot of plot holes; they opted for the latter (Hurley's character disappears, practically without comment). Still, there are enough laughs to keep things moving and as a shaggy dog tale it's decent fun. --David Kronke, Amazon.com --This text refers to another version of this video.

• And God Created Woman | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £14.08   |  Saving you £5.91 (29.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Despite being directed by Roger Vadim, this And God Created Woman is not the 1956 classic but a loose remake from some 30 years later (1987) which attempts to update the original's themes. Rebecca De Mornay takes the central role, this time as Robin, a woman released from jail on parole due to her recent marriage to Billy (Vincent Spano). Once on the outside, she pursues her dreams of rock stardom and enters into a love triangle with state governor elect, James Tiernan (Frank Langella). Whereas Vadim's own original film may have exuded unspoken sexual tension (in no small part due to its star, Brigette Bardot), any pretence of subtlety here is lost as De Mornay sheds her clothes at every possible opportunity in the film's series of soft porn sex scenes, all accompanied--as indeed is virtually every moment of the film--by an appalling 80s rock soundtrack. The acting is uniformly awful, with De Mornay taking the prize for the worst performance of all, fighting a losing battle for the viewer's attention with her seemingly ever-growing hair. Indeed, And God Created Woman is best recommended to those who gleefully indulge in the worst that the cinematic arts have to offer and it would easily feature in a top ten of most awful films of recent years.On the DVD: Alongside the chapter selection facility, the various filmographies point to what a waste of potential talent this film is. With the picture quality unable to improve on the TV-movie feel of the whole project, the audio presents the horrible American rock backing in all its glory--despite that fact the music sequences are amongst the most laughingly unconvincing ever committed to celluloid. --Phil Udell

• Ghost | DVD | (31/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A romantic thriller in which yuppie banker Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) is murdered but returns to Earth as a ghost to protect his grief-stricken young girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore) and solve his own murder. As he cannot communicate directly with his love he turns to fake medium Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) for help. Nobody is more shocked than Oda Mae to discover she has the genuine power to contact the dead. Goldberg won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance a