"Actor: James McEachin"

• Buck and the Preacher (1972) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (26/09/2022) from £21.84   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  !With his rousingly entertaining directorial debut, SIDNEY POITIER (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) helped rewrite the history of the western, bringing Black heroes to a genre in which they had always been sorely underrepresented. Combining boisterous buddy comedy with blistering, Black Powerera political fury, Poitier and a marvellously mischievous HARRY BELAFONTE (Carmen Jones) star as a tough and taciturn wagon master and an unscrupulous, pistol-packing preacher, who join forces in order to take on the white bounty hunters threatening a westward-bound caravan of recently freed enslaved people. A superbly crafted revisionist landmark, Buck and the Preacher subverts Hollywood conventions at every turn and reclaims the western genre in the name of Black liberation. Special Features New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack New interview with Mia Mask, author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western Behind-the-scenes footage featuring actor-director Sidney Poitier and actor Harry Belafonte Interviews with Poitier and Belafonte from 1972 episodes of Soul! and The Dick Cavett Show New interview with Gina Belafonte, daughter of Harry Belafonte English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: An essay by critic Aisha Harris

• 2010 : The Year We Make Contact | DVD | (11/09/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  No director could ever have hoped to repeat the artistic achievement of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and nobody knew that better than Peter Hyams, who made this much more conventional film from the first of three sequel novels by Arthur C Clarke. Whereas Kubrick made a poetic film of mind-expanding ideas and metaphysical mysteries, Hyams shouldn't be blamed for taking a more practical, crowd-pleasing approach. In revealing much of what Kubrick deliberately left unexplained, 2010 lacks the enigmatic awe of its predecessor, but it's still a riveting tale of space exploration and extraterrestrial contact, beginning when a joint American-Soviet mission embarks to determine the cause of failure of the derelict spaceship Discovery. Having arrived at Discovery near the planet Jupiter, the American mission leader (Roy Scheider) and his Russian counterpart (Helen Mirren) must investigate the apparent failure of the ship's infamous onboard computer, HAL 9000, as well as the meaning of countless mysterious black monoliths amassing on Jupiter's surface (an interpretation Kubrick originally left up to his viewers). Meanwhile, Earth is on the brink of nuclear war, and an apparition of astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) appears repeatedly to promise that "something wonderful" is about to happen. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Buck And The Preacher | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Buck (Poitier) an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determined to return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West...

• Play Misty for Me | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £9.60   |  Saving you £0.38 (5.75%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Clint Eastwood (making his very assured directorial debut) is a poetry-spouting stud-muffin DJ stalked by a maniacally amorous fan after a misguided one-night stand in this enjoyably schlocky, undeniably effective film about good intentions gone murderously wacky. Although many of the very 1970s trappings presented here may ultimately be too dated to be taken seriously (including a highly self-indulgent jazz number and a hilariously gooey seduction number between Eastwood and Donna Mills), the core premise of infatuation taken out of bounds remains uncomfortably plausible--and was influential enough to be appropriated by one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. (Here's a hint--it starred Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and a very unfortunate bunny rabbit.) A well-staged and occasionally very frightening thriller worth watching for Jessica Walter's peerlessly unhinged performance alone. Frequent Eastwood collaborator Don Siegel (director of Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff and The Beguiled, to name but a few) has a nice cameo as Murphy, the moustachioed, chess-playing bartender. --Andrew Wright, Amazon.com

• Play Misty For Me | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Clint Eastwood (making his very assured directorial debut) is a poetry-spouting stud-muffin DJ stalked by a maniacally amorous fan after a misguided one-night stand in this enjoyably schlocky, undeniably effective film about good intentions gone murderously wacky. Although many of the very 1970s trappings presented here may ultimately be too dated to be taken seriously (including a highly self-indulgent jazz number and a hilariously gooey seduction number between Eastwood and Donna Mills), the core premise of infatuation taken out of bounds remains uncomfortably plausible--and was influential enough to be appropriated by one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. (Here's a hint--it starred Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and a very unfortunate bunny rabbit.) A well-staged and occasionally very frightening thriller worth watching for Jessica Walter's peerlessly unhinged performance alone. Frequent Eastwood collaborator Don Siegel (director of Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff and The Beguiled, to name but a few) has a nice cameo as Murphy, the moustachioed, chess-playing bartender. --Andrew Wright, Amazon.com