Bill Hicks' legacy has been compiled into one Collector’s Limited Edition box set to capture every commercially released album and special as well as over ten hours of unreleased performances and a photo book with many rare and never before seen photos. Spread out across 12 CDs and 6 DVDs
The children of Mars are growing tired of the regimented life on their planet desperate for some of the fun they see Earth children enjoying via the television. Martian sage Chochem advises the Martian council that what they need is a Santa Claus like figure but rather than find one of their own they decide to kidnap Earth's Santa along with two children. Can Santa Claus help the Martians and return to Earth to complete making toys for the children of his own planet?
Once again returning to the genre to which he was perhaps best-suited, director Lewis Milestone traces the fate of a Marine platoon during WWII. The film stars Richard Widmark as the no-nonsense Lt. Carl Anderson, an officer charged with the responibility of leading his unit on a scouting mission to capture prisoners from an experimental rocket-launching facility and bring them back for interrogation. Among his platoon are veterans Pidgeon Lane (Jack Palance), Doc (Karl Malden), and Sgt. Zelenko (Neville Brand), as well as raw recruits Coffman (Robert Wagner) and Cpl. Stuart Conroy (Richard Hylton). Anderson is skilled at subtly motivating the varied group of characters, while suffering himself from crushing headaches. The platoon attacks the island, taking losses on the heavily defended beach. When they try to take a strategic ridge, they're pinned down by rocket fire whose source is impossible to locate. In desperation, Anderson is ordered to take a hand-picked patrol behind enemy lines to bring back prisoners. After some painful losses, they finally return with prisoners. Despite occasional war movie cliches, this is a solid, exceptionally well acted effort, which gives full weight to the terrible human cost of war. The film is also notable for great performances by Malden, Palance, Widmark, Webb, and the very young Wagner.
After some years making a name for himself as a serious actor and television presenter, Lenny Henry in Pieces sees the comedian return to the world of the TV sketch show. Having always struggled to find a suitable format for his comedy (remember Delbert Wilkins?), Henry has this time settled on a fairly frantic style, with mixed results. The best bits, as has often been the case with his material, come when he draws on the rich vein of West Indian humour, particularly the more mature characters. When he heads more for the middle of the road, however, Henry starts to falter. The movie pastiches are largely uninspired, ironically coming across as little more than cast offs from French and Saunders, and the show is lacking in the energy that so infuses Henry's stand up routines. There certainly are some good characters (Weekend Dad and the homo-erotic trawlermen Pete and Steve especially) but after a while the lack of variety in even these creations becomes frustrating. Such repetition works in the superior ensemble piece of The Fast Show, but this falls flat over the course of the eight episodes. Looks like Lenny Henry might need to go back to the drawing board. On the DVD: Lenny Henry in Pieces has a running time of nearly four hours, so the lack of extras may be understandable but is no less disappointing. The interactive menu is handy for skipping through some of the less engaging moments but is not detailed enough to help pinpoint specific scenes. The audio and picture quality is good enough television quality. Additional material is limited to 14 minutes of cringingly unfunny out-takes, further proof (if it were needed) that watching someone forget their lines over and over again does not necessarily mean great comedy. --Phil Udell
Its Friday night and the girls are getting ready for a big night out. The boys they are meeting up also making their preparations for a wild night ahead. They meet and all seems to be going well the drinks are going down quick and fast and the four women and four lads seem to be well paired off for a night of wild raging. The couples go their own way until 4 am when Emma arrives at Jeans in bad shape accusing Mike an NFL player of rape. When arrested he says he is innocent
12 Dogs of Christmas - It's Christmas time and it looks to be a dismal season for motherless 12-year-old Emma O'Connor who has been sent to her unwelcoming Aunt Delores. On her arrival Emma is caught in the middle of a town war over the 'No Dogs allowed' law. With the help of her schoolmates, an unlikely band of grown-ups and a diverse canine corps of over 60 dogs, Emma attempts to win over the citizens of Doverville by staging a holiday pageant, 'The 12 Dogs of Christmas', and in doing so, may save not only the dogs but herself. 12 Dogs of Christmas 2 - The dogs of Doverville are in trouble again... but Emma is back to save them in a song-filled, seasonal extravaganza. Mean-spirited mogul Finneas plots to shut down the local puppy orphanage, unless Emma can come up with the money to save it. With the help of some friends, she races against time to put together a musical holiday event that just might save the day
Roughnecks is the computer-animated TV spin-off from director Paul Verhoeven's live-action sci-fi shoot-'em-up Starship Troopers. Verhoeven had already seen his Robocop movie spun-off into animated television with mixed results, so when it came to Starship Troopers he wanted Roughnecks to be a little different (the director acted as Executive Producer on the series). The style of computer animation here recalls, if anything, the little green soldiers from the Toy Story movies. Backed by an unending techno-based score (despite which the series has won several awards for sound editing), the 20-minute episodes are like viewing brilliantly conceived "cut scenes" from computer games. The series concept begins by taking the movie's characters, giving them different origins---and then forgets about a bug home-world in favour of a mobile threat that can appear anywhere. With souped-up combat suits that better acknowledge Robert Heinlein's original novel, the technological look and feel also owes a significant debt to Aliens. This first collection edits together the opening five episodes to make a 100-minute self-contained movie about a crawling infestation on Pluto. You'll know where shows start and end by the narration. The story is all to do with set-up as we meet the titular Roughnecks: Rico, Dizzy, Doc, Jenkins, Higgins and Razak. Between missions of rescue and mercy, a love triangle is established, Rico's heroics and Higgins' cowardice are explored and more bugs are wasted than you can possibly keep count of. The finale's discovery of "Bug City" will test anyone for arachnophobia. --Paul Tonks
Writer-director Sam Raimi's extremely stylized, blood-soaked follow-up to his creepy Evil Dead isn't really a sequel; rather, it's a remake on a better budget. It also isn't really a horror film (though there are plenty of decapitations, zombies, supernatural demons, and gore) as much as it is a hilarious, sophisticated slapstick send-up of the terror genre. Raimi takes every horror convention that exists and exaggerates it with mind-blowing special effects, crossed with mocking Three Stooges humour. The plot alone is a genre cliché right out of any number of horror films. Several teens (including our hero, Ash, played by Bruce Campbell in a manic tour-de-force of physical comedy) visit a broken-down cottage in the woods--miles from civilization--find a copy of the Book of the Dead, and unleash supernatural powers that gut every character in sight. All, that is, except Ash, who takes this very personally and spends much of the of the film getting his head smashed while battling the unseen forces. Raimi uses this bare-bones story as a stage to showcase dazzling special effects and eye-popping visuals, including some of the most spectacular point-of-view Steadicam work ever (done by Peter Deming). Although it went unnoticed in the cinemas, the film has since become an influential cult-video favourite, paving the way for over-the-top comic gross-out films like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive.--Dave McCoy
Jimmy Dworski is a happy-go-lucky convict who breaks out of prison and finally gets a life - somebody else's! When Dworski finds the daily planner that literally runs the life of ultra-organized executive Spencer Barnes (Charles Grodin) all hell breaks loose! With newfound cash credit cards and the keys to a Malibu mansion the imposter Dworski embarks on an all-expenses-paid trip to ""Easy Street"" while posing as the high-powered Barnes. Meanwhile Spencer's life is turned upside down as he hunts through the jungles of Los Angeles for his beloved book: when these oddball opposites finally meet it's a comedic collision you won't soon forget!
Cops are supposed to be the protectors of society men of the law. But living in a world of moral absolutes it has become less and less unusual to see a cop go off at the deep end. Detective Stevie Grimes (Jack Conley) kept his faith in the brotherhood of the badge and always managed to stay on the right side of the law. But for the past year he has been suspended on trail for the accidental shooting of a young boy. The trail ends in a 'hung jury' and finally after twelve months Stevie is reinstated but the possibility that the state may retry the case still remains forcing him to relive the nightmare.
Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit transfers wonderfully to the screen in this BBC adaptation (with a screenplay by Winterson). Jess is the adopted daughter of evangelical Christians living in the northwest of England in the 1960s. Her mother wants Jess to be a missionary, but when she falls in love with Melanie, Jess begins to realise that there is more to life than church. When Jess' mother begins to suspect the girls of "unnatural passions" she tries to destroy their relationship with the help of Pastor Finch (Kenneth Cranham) and his congregation. But their efforts--including a terrifying attempt at exorcism--only push Jess further away. Jess eventually understands that the only way to survive is to escape, and she sets her sights on a place at Oxford. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is both a broad comedy and a moving coming-of-age story. Charlotte Coleman is perfect as the teenage Jess, attempting to reconcile her religious devotion and her adolescent passion, but the film belongs to Geraldine McEwan as Jess' mother. McEwan obviously relishes Winterson's script, and she creates a character both monstrous, ridiculous and surprisingly sympathetic. It's a difficult role to carry off, but McEwan succeeds. Her performance is the high-point of this award-winning, provocative film. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com
In a white hot flash of light, and with no warning, one minute our moon is there, the next it's gone. Then, a second flash. And that's the last thing anyone on Earth can remember. 11 months later, it's not post- apocalyptic; it's apocalyptic as Earth has been sucked through a wormhole, literally ripping our planet from the inside out. With bizarre disasters and civilization collapsing, our heroes must find a way to survive and get to safe ground before it's too late.
Differing from the original release this special edition DVD contains the three part bogeylicious story (as seen on the BBC) and over an hours worth of bogey picking extras! Based on two very different worlds; the home of 'drycleaners' (that's humans to you and I) and the dark damp world of Bogeydom where Fungus and his family live it s'not quite the life of slime you'd expect. Fungus' job is to venture 'up top' to scare drycleaners. Unfortunately one adventure backfires creating the Bogeypeople's worst crisis - a Drycleaner has discovered their existence.... This is repulsive yet strangely compulsive viewing for all the family!
It's 10pm the night before Walnut Lakes neighbourhood supermarket closes its doors forever. The owners and night crew have a long shift ahead of them - longer than they think. Weird things start happening. The phone lines are cut, and the night crew start dying, one by one, in the most gruesome ways imaginable.
When the fleet puts in at San Francisco sailor Bake Baker tries to rekindle the flame with his old dancing partner... A jamboree for fans of Hollywood musicals with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.
15 years after his death (16/12/61 - 26/2/94) Bill Hicks is now more popular than ever and is widely seen as one of the best comedians of the modern era. However in America where he challenged institutions and accepted ways of thinking he suffered censorship and was never truly recognised by a wide audience. In the country which enshrines freedom of speech in its constitution his story is truly about what it means to be an American. Now Bill's remarkable story is brought to life in American: The Bill Hicks Story a feature-length documentary which combines live action with a stunning new animation technique manipulating 1 000s of photographs to uniquely immerse the audiences in his world which is re-told from the point-of-view of the people who shared it with him.
KLITSCHKO tells the captivating story of the boxing world's most famous brothers: Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko.
When the quiet German village of Altdorf is taken over by an SS platoon which proceeds to enforce Hitler's ideals upon its inhabitants, a kindly pastor questions the agenda of 'The New Order' while members of his parish turn a blind eye to the insidious indoctrination. Before long, he is punished for his vocal opposition and is sent to Dachau, where, despite the abuse and brutality which he suffers, he refuses to give in to the madness and inhumanity of National Socialism. Adapted from Ernst Toller's 1939 play of the same name, and based on the true story of Protestant minister Martin Niemöller, Pastor Hall is the impressive third feature from the Boulting brothers (Brighton Rock). Starring Wilfrid Lawson (Pygmalion) as the iconic pastor, and Nova Pilbeam (Young and Innocent) as his formidable daughter, the film was one of the first anti-Nazi dramas ever made and had its original production delayed by British censors who were not yet ready to be openly critical of Hitler's regime. A bold and stirring tribute to the universal power of faith, courage and personal conviction, Pastor Hall has been newly restored from 4K scans of the nitrate duplicate negative by Powerhouse Films and is finally available on Blu-ray for the first time in the world. Product Features New restoration from a 4K scan of the nitrate duplicate negative by Powerhouse Films Original mono audio Matthew D Hockenos on Martin Niemöller (2022): the author of Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis discusses the life and legacy of the German pastor Richard Falcon on 'Pastor Hall' (2022): the ex-BBFC examiner discusses the film's history with the British Board of Film Censors Newsreel footage (1946): extract from Welt in Film featuring Niemöller speaking about post-war German guilt The Dawn Guard (1941): short film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Pastor Hall actors Percy Walsh and Bernard Miles as members of the Home Guard Minefield! (1944): documentary short film produced by Roy Boulting for the Army Film Unit New and improved subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Fiona Kelly, archival articles, new writing on the short films, and film credits World premiere on Blu-ray Limited edition of 4,000 copies for the UK and US All extras subject to change
It's Global Worming! During the first day of his new school year a fifth grade boy squares off against a bully and winds up accepting a dare that could change the balance of power within the class.
When a carefree playboy (John Payne) joins the Marine Corps he tests the skill and patience of the tough veteran sergeant (Randolph Scott) who tries to whip him into a real Marine. But as his training proceeds the recruit's cocky selfishness is replaced by selfless valour and he eventually earns the love of a beautiful Navy nurse (Maureen O'Hara)...
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy