MARLON BRANDO (The Godfather) gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turnedlongshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry, a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry's deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (12 Angry Men's LEE J. COBB) and Johnny's right-hand man, Terry's brother, Charley (In the Heat of the Night's ROD STEIGER), as the authorities close in on them. Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of ELIA KAZAN (Gentlemen's Agreement) and savory, streetwise dialogue by BUDD S CHULBERG (A Face in the Crowd), On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for best picture, director, actor, supporting actress (North by Northwest's EVA MARIE SAINT), and screenplay. Special Edition Features: New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition Alternate presentations of the feature restoration in two additional aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen) Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS -HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition Commentary featuring authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young New conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones Elia Kazan: Outsider (1982), an hour-long documentary New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with scholar Leo Braudy, critic David Thomson, and others New interview with actress Eva Marie Saint Interview with director Elia Kazan from 2001 Contender, a 2001 documentary on the film's most famous scene New interview with longshoreman Thomas Hanley, an actor in the film New interview with author James T. Fisher (On the Irish Waterfront) about the real-life people and places behind the film Visual essay on Leonard Bernstein's score Trailer PLUS : A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Almereyda and reprints of Kazan's 1952 ad in the New York Times defending his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, one of the 1948 New York Sun articles by Malcolm Johnson on which the film was based, and a 1953 Commonweal piece by screenwriter Budd Schulberg
Stephen Fry and John Bird star as spin doctors Charles Prentiss and Martin McCabe bringing the popular and satirical Radio 4 comedy Absolute Power to BBC 2. Written by media commentator Mark Lawson writers Andy Rattenbury (Teachers) and Guy Andrews (Chancer) Absolute Power casts a witty and acerbic eye on the machinations of PR gurus and does for the PR industry what Drop The Dead Donkey did for the newsroom. Stephen as Prentiss and John as McCabe are a
Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is a fifth generation Pittsburgh cop. Formerly a homicide detective he publicly challenged the police department including several of his family members about the identity of the serial killer who took his father's life. Convinced that a newly active serial killer is the same gunman who murdered his father - despite the fact that another man is already behind bars for that crime - Hardy is working out of his jurisdiction to catch the killer. The maverick
One of the last decent Carry On movies, Carry On Abroad is a 1972 venture into the world of package holidays. After this, the series descended into unfunny coarseness as opposed to camply laboured double entendre, culminating in the dreadful Carry On Emanuelle. Here, publican Sid James and dutiful mother's son turned sex maniac Charles Hawtrey are among a brace of Brits heading for the "paradise island" of Elsbels. Kenneth Williams is the out-of-his-depth tour operator, reverting to the sort of effete types he played in the 1950s, Peter Butterworth a pre-Manuel-style manager of a half-built hotel. A series of disasters ensue, with the entire gang landing up in jail following a fracas in a brothel at one point, but everyone finds romantic and sexual fulfilment in a quaint disco finale. This includes a gay character who is "dissuaded" from his homosexuality in a typical example of the thoroughly reactionary subtext that constitutes the really naughty bit of most Carry On films. Nonetheless, this throwback to an imaginary time when the lewdest innuendo of a dirty old man was greeted by young females with a flirty "Ooh, saucy!" is enjoyable on condition that you enter into its seaside-postcard spirit. June Whitfield is fine as a sexually uptight wife, Kenneth Connor a model of red-faced frustration as her wimpish husband. On the DVD: Sadly, no extra features except scene selection. The picture is a 4:3 ratio full-screen presentation. --David Stubbs
Season six of Buffy's exciting vampire vanquishing adventures. Episodes Comprise: 1. Bargaining - Part 1 2. Bargaining - Part 2 3. After Life 4. Flooded 5. Life Serial 6. All The Way 7. Once More With Feeling 8. Tabula Rasa 9. Smashed 10. Wrecked 11. Gone 12. Doublemeat Palace 13. Dead Things 14. Older And Far Away 15. As You Were 16. Hell's Bells 17. Normal Again 18. Entropy 19. Seeing Red 20. Villains 21. Two To Go 22. Grave
After starring in the now-legendary Dollars trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, LQ Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Roots recounts one family's struggle to resist American slavery. The gripping story is told through four generations, from the capture of Kunta Kinte in Africa to his transport to Colonial America in brutal conditions through successive generations fighting to win their freedom in the Civil War. Based on Alex Haley's best-selling novel which has resonated with millions of Americans, ROOTS⢠reveals powerful, universal truths about the resilience of the human spirit. Extras: Bonus disc with Roots⢠: A History Revealed feature on it.
Sidney Poitier and James Garner put in excellent performances as men on either side of the colour divide forced to fight side by side against the might of the Apache Indians...
The Western Desert. 1942. Rommels Afrika Korps have driven the British Army back to Cairo and are poised for a final attack. Now, all the Nazis need to know is where the 8th Army will make their last stand. Two Nazi agents are sent into Cairo to seize the plans and find themselves caught up in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse in the sleazy nightclubs and back streets of the city.
Murder by Decree has the distinction of being not only one of the best Sherlock Holmes films, but one of the best pastiches (i.e., a Holmes fiction created by someone other than author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) featuring the late-Victorian detective. Christopher Plummer is very good as Holmes, and James Mason redeems the many mishandled screen portrayals of Dr John Watson with a rare, insightful performance. The story may not be unique in post-Doyle Holmes adventures--the private investigator pursues Jack the Ripper during the latter's murderous reign in foggy London--but the script by John Hopkins (Thunderball) is keenly intelligent, developing concentric circles of power and evil with great subtlety. Before losing himself in Porky's, director Bob Clark did a masterful job of surprising audiences with Murder by Decree, convincing viewers they were watching one kind of drama but then unleashing something very different, very unsettling. --Tom Keogh
The seventh and final season of Buffy's vampire vanquishing adventures. Episodes Comprise: 1. Lessons 2. Beneath You 3. Same Time Same Place 4. Help 5. Selfless 6. Him 7. Conversations With Dead People 8. Sleeper 9. Never Leave Me 10. Bring On The Night 11. Showtime 12. Potential 13. The Killer In Me 14. First Date 15. Get It Done 16. Storyteller 17. Lies My Parents Told Me 18. Dirty Girls 19. Empty Places 20. Touched 21. End Of Days 22. Chosen
In its fourth season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to change its formula radically. Two major characters--the vampire-with-a-soul Angel and Cordelia, the queen bitch of Sunnydale High--had gone off to be in their own show, Angel, and soon after the start of the season Willow's werewolf boyfriend Oz left when Seth Green needed to concentrate on his film career. Buffy and Willow started college, where they met new characters like Riley, the All-American Boy with a double life, and Tara, the sweet stuttering witch; but Xander and Giles found themselves at something of a loose end. Several characters were subjected to the radical re-envisioning possible in a show that deals with the supernatural: the blond vampire Spike came back and soon found himself with an inhibitor chip in his head, forced into reluctant alliance with Buffy; the former vengeance demon Anya became passionately smitten with Xander. Not all fans were happy with the central story arc about the sinister Dr Walsh (Lindsay Crouse) and her Frankensteinian creation Adam, though Crouse's performance was memorable. The strength of Season Four was perhaps most in impressive stand-alone episodes like the silent "Hush", the multiple dream sequence "Restless" and the passionate, moving "New Moon Rising", in which Oz returns, apparently cured, only to find that Willow is no longer waiting for him. This was one of the high points of the show as a vehicle for intense acting, perhaps only equalled by "Who Are You?", in which the evil slayer Faith takes over Buffy's body and Sarah Michelle Gellar gets to play bad girl for once. --Roz KaveneyOn the DVD: Buffy Season 4 was a hit and so is this sublime box set. The commentaries for "The Initiative", "This Year'sGirl", "Superstar" and "Primaveral" are all well above average, but are nothing compared to "Hush" and "Restless" where Joss Whedon gives out all the information and insights any fan would dream of. The four featurettes included are a pleasure to watch, especially the evolution of the sets for the show. The scripts, trailers and cast biographies complete the set and make for a decent addition to your Buffy archive. The soundtrack is in 2.0 Dolby surround, but the image is as grainy and dark as the previous seasons on DVD. --Celine Martig
The complete fifth season of Buffy's vampire vanquishing adventures. Episodes comprise: 1. Buffy Vs. Dracula 2. Real Me 3. The Replacement 4. Out Of My Mind 5. No Place Like Home 6. Family 7. Fool For Love 8. Shadow 9. Listening To Fear 10. Into The Woods 11. Triangle 12. Checkpoint 13. Blood Ties 14. Crush 15. I Was Made To Love You 16. The Body 17. Forever 18. Intervention 19. Tough Love 20. Spiral 21. The Weight Of The World 22. The Gift
Zavvi Exclusive Steelbook with emboss finish. This product is limited to 4000 copies. It is the year 2035. In 1996 an unknown and lethal virus wiped out five billion people and only one percent of the population has now survived the decimating plague. In a grave new world in which the planet's surface has become uninhabitable the few remaining humans must live underground and rely on time travel to try to preserve their fate. A convict reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemy which he's told was spread by a mysterious Army of the Twelve Monkeys. He must locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can determine whether the cataclysm can be stopped before it is started. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 six years earlier than expected is arrested and locked up in a mental institution where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly a psychiatrist and Jeffrey Goines the insane son of a famous scientist... Special Features: The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys Theatrical Trailer Twelve Monkeys Archive Feature Commentary with Director Terry Gilliam and Producer Charles Roven
Directed by Charles Crichton, who would much later direct John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob is the most ruefully thrilling of the Ealing Comedies. Alec Guinness plays a bowler-hatted escort of bullion to the refineries. His seeming timidity, weak 'r's and punctiliousness mask a typically Guinness-like patient cunning. "I was aware I was widiculed but that was pwecisely the effect I was stwiving to achieve". He's actually plotting a heist. With more conventionally cockney villains Sid James and Alfie Bass in tow, as well as the respectable but ruined Stanley Holloway, Guinness' perfect criminal plan works in exquisite detail, then unravels just as exquisitely, culminating in a nail-biting police car chase in which you can't help rooting for the villains. The Lavender Hill Mob depicts a London still up to its knees in rubble from World War II, a world of new hope but continued austerity, a budding new order in which everything seems up for grabs; as such it could be regarded as a lighter hearted cinematic cousin to Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece The Third Man. The Lavender Hill Mob also sees the first, fleeting on-screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence. --David Stubbs
The seventh and final series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins with a mystery: someone is murdering teenage girls all over the world and something is trying hard to drive Spike mad. Buffy is considerably more cheerful in these episodes than we have seen her during the previous year as she trains Dawn and gets a job as student counsellor at the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High. Willow is recovering from the magical addiction which almost led her to destroy the world, but all is not yet well with her, or with Anya, who has returned to being a Vengeance demon in "Same Time, Same Place" and "Selfless", and both women are haunted by their decisions. Haunting of a different kind comes in the excellent "Conversations with Dead People" (one of the show's most terrifying episodes ever) where a mysterious song is making Spike kill again in spite of his soul and his chip. Giles turns up in "Bring on the Night" and Buffy has to fight one of the deadliest vampires of her career in "Showtime". In "Potential" Dawn faces a fundamental reassessment of her purpose in life. Buffy was always a show about female empowerment, but it was also a show about how quite ordinary people can decide to make a difference alongside people who are special. And it was also a show about people making up for past errors and crimes. So, for example, we have the excellent episodes "Storyteller", in which the former geek/super villain Andrew sorts out his redemption while making a video diary about life with Buffy; and "Lies My Parents Told Me", in which we find out why a particular folk song sends Spike crazy. Redemption abounds as Faith returns to Sunnydale and the friends she once betrayed, and Willow finds herself turning into the man she flayed. Above all, this was always Buffy's show: Sarah Michelle Gellar does extraordinary work here both as Buffy and as her ultimate shadow, the First Evil, who takes her face to mock her. This is a fine ending to one of television's most remarkable shows. --Roz Kaveney
Workmen unearth prehistoric skulls while carrying out excavations on the London Underground. Very soon a strange and malevolent force is unleashed.
The sixth series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed the logic of plot and character development into some gloomy places. The year begins with Buffy being raised from the dead by the friends who miss her, but who fail to understand that a sacrifice taken back is a sacrifice negated. Dragged out of what she believes to have been heavenly bliss, she finds herself "going through the motions" and entering into a relationship with the evil, besotted vampire Spike just to force her emotions. Willow becomes ever more caught up in the temptations of magic; Xander and Anya move towards marriage without ever discussing their reservations; Giles feels he is standing in the way of Buffy's adult independence; Dawn feels neglected. What none of them need is a menace that is, at this point, simply annoying--three high school contemporaries who have turned their hand to magical and high-tech villainy. Added to this is a hungry ghost, an invisibility ray, an amnesia spell and a song-and-dance demon (who acts as rationale for the incomparable musical episode "Once More With Feeling"). This is a year in which chickens come home to roost: everything from the villainy of the three geeks to Xander's doubts about marriage come to a head, often--as in the case of the impressive wedding episode--through wildly dark humour. The estrangement of the characters from each other--a well-observed portrait of what happens to college pals in their early 20s--comes to a shocking head with the death of a major character and that death's apocalyptic consequences. The series ends on a consoling note which it has, by that point and in spite of imperfections, entirely earned. --Roz Kaveney
Inspired by the "Space Seed" episode of the original series, the classic swashbuckling scenario of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was much more of a success with fans than the somewhat turgid drama of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film reunites newly promoted Admiral Kirk with his nemesis from the earlier episode--the genetically superior Khan (Ricardo Montalban)--who is now seeking revenge upon Kirk for having been imprisoned on a desolated planet. Their battle ensues over control of the Genesis device, a top-secret Starfleet project enabling entire planets to be transformed into life-supporting worlds, pioneered by the mother (Bibi Besch) of Kirk's estranged and now-adult son. While Mr. Spock mentors the young Vulcan Lt. Saavik (then-newcomer Kirstie Alley), Kirk must battle Khan to the bitter end, through a climactic starship chase and an unexpected crisis that will cost the life of Kirk's closest friend. This was the kind of character-based Trek that fans were waiting for, boosted by spectacular special effects, a great villain (thanks to Montalban's splendidly melodramatic performance), and a deft combination of humour, excitement, and wondrous imagination. Director Nicholas Meyer (who would play a substantial role in the success of future Trek features) treats the film as "Horatio Hornblower in space", and then adds lots of spicy seafaring Moby Dick references, plus a sprinkle of Shakespearean tragedy and World War II submarine thriller, all driven along by one of composer James Horner's finest scores. Wrath of Khan set the successful tone for the films that followed. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
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