"Actor: John Batten"

• War at Sea Box Set | DVD | (11/10/2010) from £14.39   |  Saving you £1.60 (11.12%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Titles Comprise: The Cruel Sea: The courageous story of the Battle of the Atlantic: a story of an ocean a ship and a handful of men. The brave crew are the heroes. The heroine is the ship. The only villain is the sea that man and war have made even more brutal... For Those In Peril: San Demetrio London: Set in 1940 during the battle of the Atlantic this is the true story of how the crew of the petrol tanker 'San Demetrio' was left with a near impossible task when she was torpedoed by the Germans. After the ship was torpedoed the crew abandoned ship in three lifeboats. Two are picked up by other ships in the convoy but the third drifts for days until its crew spies the burning 'San Demetrio' on... the horizon. Do they board the ship try to put out its fires and get it back to English shores or do they stay in the drifting lifeboat in the hope of being rescued?

• Yellow Submarine | DVD | (01/02/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This restored, animated valentine to the Beatles offers viewers the rare chance to see a work that's been substantially improved by its technical facelift, not just super-sized with extra footage. Recognising that its song-studded soundtrack alone makes Yellow Submarine a video annuity, United Artists has lavished a frame-by-frame refurbishment of the original feature, while replacing its original monaural audio tracks with a meticulously reconstructed stereo mix that actually refines legendary original album versions. What emerges is a vivid time capsule of the late 1960s and a minor milestone in animation. The music represents the quartet's zenith--Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The story line, cobbled together by producer Al Brodax and a committee of writers, is a broad, feather-light allegory set in idyllic Pepperland, where the gentle citizens are threatened by the nasty, music-hating Blue Meanies and their surreal arsenal of henchmen, with the Beatles enlisted to thwart the bad guys. Visually, designer Heinz Edelmann mixes the biomorphic squiggles, day-glo palette and Beardsley-esque portraits of Peter Max with rotoscoped still photographs and film; Edelmann's animated collages also nod to Andy Warhol and Magritte in properly psychedelic fashion, which works wonderfully with such terrific songs. High-orthodox Beatlemaniacs can still grouse that the animated Fab Four are (literally) flat archetypes, but that's missing the sheer bloom of the music or the giddy, campy fun of the visuals. Making sense of the story is second to submerging blissfully in the sights and sounds of this video treat. --Sam Sutherland