"Actor: Hiep Thi Le"

• Heaven And Earth | DVD | (28/06/2013) from £11.01   |  Saving you £9.97 (124.31%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

• Oliver Stone Collection | DVD | (04/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.99

  Director Oliver Stone is celebrated in this four-film, six-disc box set collection that includes two-disc "director's cut" versions JFK and Any Given Sunday respectively, plus Heaven and Earth and the documentary Oliver Stone's America. JFK is that rarest of things, a modern Hollywood drama which credits the audience with intelligence. Epic in length--this 198-minute director's cut runs 17 minutes longer than the cinema version--Oliver Stone's film has the archetypal story, visual scale and substance to match; not just a gripping real-life conspiracy thriller, but a fable for the fall of the American dream. Stone's DVD commentary is thoughtful, eloquent and considered. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and the anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 picture are both first-class. The second disc contains 53 minutes of deleted and extended versions of scenes, all of which are available with or without commentary by Stone, a 10-minute video interview with the real "X", and a half-hour examination of documents only declassified in the wake of the film's release. Any Given Sunday is a massive 150-minute American football drama which, for all its ferocity and cynicism, is as soft-centred and clichéd as any Rocky-style underdogs-make-good crowd-pleaser. This is the director's cut with Stone's commentary ranging far and wide: he is far more interesting and thought-provoking to listen to than his film is to watch. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 image and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack are both flawless. The loaded second DVD includes Jamie Foxx's audition video, a routine 27-minute making-of documentary, music videos, outtakes set to music, and 33 minutes of deleted/alternative scenes with optional commentary from Stone. DVD-ROM and other features complete an exceptional package. Heaven and Earth follows Platoon (1986) and Born of the Fourth of July (1989) to conclude Stone's Vietnam War trilogy. Where Stone won Best Director Oscars for both previous films, Heaven and Earth proved a box-office disaster and went unrecognised by the Academy. It's hard not to think that racism underlay the commercial failure, for where the hit movies addressed the sufferings of white American soldiers played by Hollywood stars, Heaven and Earth focused on the fundamental victims, adapting the true story of a young Vietnamese woman, Le Ly, who goes from village girl to freedom fighter to wife of a US marine struggling to adjust to life in America to reconciliation in Vietnam. Superbly made, with a stunning performance by Hiep Thi Le as Le Ly, and powerful support from Tommy Lee Jones, this is intelligent, harrowing filmmaking which attempts to understand and bridge the divide between nations traumatised by war. Unfortunately heavily cut to bring it down to a multiplex-friendly running time, the often brilliant 135 minutes on show suggest a longer modern classic ended-up on the cutting room floor. The DVD features an incisive commentary by Stone, who alone of major Hollywood directors fought in Vietnam. Confirming that Heaven and Earth was heavily cut is the inclusion of 48 minutes of deleted/extended scenes, including a vastly extended 22-minute opening, Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 picture are excellent. Oliver Stone's America is a 53-minute interview in which Stone talks candidly about his films, concentrating on the trio included in the Oliver Stone Collection, firing off considered opinions at a rapid rate. Also included is Stone's student film, Last Year in VietNam, clearly influenced by the French New Wave in general and L'Année dernière à Marienbad (1961) in particular. --Gary S Dalkin

• Classic War Movies Collection - Heaven And Earth/Escape To Victory/Gettysburg/Memphis Belle | DVD | (21/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Heaven And Earth (1993): From three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone -- whose Platoon took you to the Vietnam battlefront and whose Born On The Fourth Of July took you to the American homefront -- comes an acclaimed movie about the fight to survive on both fronts. Tommy Lee Jones and Joan Chen turn in award-caliber performances (Peter Travers Rolling Stone) in the powerful story of a man who fought a woman who endured...and a love caught up in the explosive wartime upheaval of a land and a people caught between Heaven And Earth. Escape To Victory (1981): The battlefield: a stadium in occupied Paris. The armies: German all-stars vs. ragtag Allied POWs. The objective: demonstrate another proof of Aryan superiority. Guess who wins? Better yet guess who cleverly uses the match as a means of escape? Sylvester Stallone Michael Caine and Max von Sydow star in this rouser directed by the legendary John Huston. The climatic match is a heart-in-the-throat hat-in-the-air exhibition of brute force and balletic grace featuring soccer legends Pele Bobby Moore Osvaldo Ardiles Co Prins Mike Summerbee and more. Gettysburg (1993): Summer 1863. The Confederacy pushes north into Pennsylvania. Union divisions converge to face them. Two great armies will clash at Gettysburg site of a theology school. For three days through such legendary actions as Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge the fate of one nation indivisible hangs in the balance. The bloodiest battle fought on American soil comes to the screen in a powerful production. Tom Berenger Jeff Daniels Martin Sheen Richard Jordan and more play key roles in this magnificent epic based on Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'The Killer Angels' filmed at actual battle locations and rigorously authenticated. Memphis Belle (1990): During spring 1943 they took to the war-torn skies for the most dangerous mission in defence of freedom. If the ten-man crew of the bomber Memphis Belle returned they would receive a hero's welcome and renew flagging public morale. But the odds were stacked heavily against them in the true courageous story of the brave fly-boys who each fought mortal fear while fighting the enemy together.

• Shark In A Bottle | DVD | (19/06/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Guy Normal is an everyday sort of guy as his name suggests. Stuck in a boring badly paid job as a postman in Phoenix Arizona it seems unlikely he will ever realise his ambitions of a laid back new life surfing the waves off the coast of Australia. But one day Guy becomes the sole survivor of a headline-grabbing postal massacre and is forced to go on the run. The cops mistakenly think he's an ice-cold killer and so do a deadly organisation of assassins-for-hire run by the sinister Ben Gazzara They recruit Guy in best Nikita fashion brainwash him into forgetting his past identity and set him loose to kill on their behalf - with totally unexpected and blackly comical results...