"Actor: Ken"

• Suddenly | DVD | (14/09/2009) from £10.78   |  Saving you £-2.79 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Suddenly

• Drift Annual | DVD | (15/01/2007) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-3.49 (-34.90%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Grip video have combined all the drifting from their videos and created a ""Drift Yearbook"" of the past year. Grip Video takes you step by step through from elementary to advanced in six easy to understand lessons by Grip Video driver Ross Petty. If you've collected Grip Video before you definitely don't want to miss this one.

• Straw Dogs | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  According to critic Pauline Kael Straw Dogs was "the first American film that is a fascist work of art". Sam Peckinpah's only film shot in Britain is adapted from a novel by Gordon M Williams called The Siege of Trencher's Farm which Peckinpah described as a "lousy book with one good action-adventure sequence". The setting is Cornwall, where mild-mannered US academic David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) has bought a house with his young English wife Amy (Susan George) in the village where she grew up. David is mocked by the locals (one of whom is Amy's ex-boyfriend) and treated with growing contempt by his frustrated wife, but when his house comes under violent siege he finds unexpected reserves of resourcefulness and aggression. The movie, Peckinpah noted, was much influenced by Robert Ardrey's macho-anthropological tract, The Territorial Imperative. Its take on Cornish village life is fairly bizarre--this is a Western in all but name--and many critics balked at the transposition of Peckinpah's trademark blood-and-guts to the supposed peace of the British countryside. A scene where Amy is raped caused particular outrage, not least since it's hinted she consents to it. Not for the first time in Peckinpah's movies there are disquieting elements of misogyny, and it doesn't help that the chemistry between Hoffman and George is non-existent. (Impossible to believe these two would ever have clicked, let alone married.) But taken as a vision of irrational violence irrupting into a civilised way of life Straw Dogs is powerful and unsettling, and the action sequences are executed with all Peckinpah's unfailing flair and venom. Oh, and that title? A quote from Chinese sage Lao-Tze, it seems, "The wise man is ruthless and treats the people as straw dogs." The film was long withheld from home viewing in Britain by nervous censors, but this release presents it complete and uncut. --Philip KempOn the DVD: Straw Dogs is as jam-packed a disc as is possible for a film made before the days of obligatory "making of" features. Both the sound and visuals have transferred well, and, like the script, have aged well. There's a bumbling original interview in the style of Harry Enfield's Mr. Cholmondley-Warner, along with stills and original trailers. The new material includes a feature on the history of the film's censorship and commentaries by Peckinpah's biographers musing over interesting fan-facts (though none of the speakers have any first-hand experience of the making of the film). However, Katy Haber's commentary, and interviews with Susan George and Dan Melnick, offer a much more in-depth and intimate portrayal of the man and the making of the film. --Nikki Disney

• Day Of The Dead / Dawn Of The Dead | DVD | (25/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• Fists Of Vengeance | DVD | (27/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

• Battle Queen 2020 | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

• This Earth is Mine (Esta Tierra ES Mía) Spanish Import, Plays in English | DVD | (01/06/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Intermediate Clawhammer Banjo | DVD | (24/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.95

  Celebrated folk music tutor Ken Perlman introduces this DVD that explores the heritage and techniques of the Clawhammer Banjo tradition. Beginning with a look at the brush-thumb technique Perlman uses his expert knowledge and experience to guide you through: 1. Drop thumbing 2. Double thumbing 3. Drop thumb anticipation 4. Skip 5. Single-string brush-thumbing 6. Chords in double 'C' tuning. During the course of the tutorial all lessons are illustrated with authentic examples of traditional folk songs and Clawhammer favourites including The Meeting Of The Waters and Little Billy Wilson. By the end of the disc you will not only be fluent in a host of Clawhammer techniques but also have a repertoire of songs through which to master your Banjo chops all courtesy of one of the most acclaimed players of the style.

• Poor Cow | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  I fell in the family way when I was 18 and I got married to a right bastard". Ken Loach's debut feature tells the story of Joy, a young mother (Carol White) whose chauvinistic thug of a husband is thrown into prison. She takes up with one of his friends, lovable, kind-hearted burglar Terence Stamp, but he too ends up in jail.It's intriguing to compare Poor Cow with Cathy Come Home, which Loach made for TV with the same actress at around the same time. Both are about mums trying to make a go of their lives in adverse circumstances. Cathy Come Home, shot in black and white, is an altogether tougher film. Poor Cow, with its Donovan music, gaudy colour photography, star names, and incongruously bawdy humour, seems lightweight by comparison. Certain sequences--Joy making love in the hay or posing half-naked for lecherous amateur photographers--must surely make Loach grimace now. There are some powerful moments--Joy desperately looking for her son who has wandered off, unattended, onto a building site, or trying to escape from her abusive husband--which anticipate such later Loach films as Ladybird, Ladybird or Raining Stones. The scenes between Joy and Stamp are played with real tenderness and humour. Don't be surprised if you think you've seen them before--some of the footage of Stamp was used in Steven Soderbergh's recent thriller, The Limey. --Geoffrey Macnab

• North by Northwest (Deluxe Series) | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Cary Grant teams with Hitchcock for the fourth and final time in this superlative espionage caper judged one of the American Film Institute's Top 100 American Films and spruced up with a new digital transfer and remixed Dolby Surround Stereo. Grant plays a Manhattan advertising executive plunged into a realm of spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint) and variously abducted framed for murder chased and in another signature set piece crop-dusted. He also holds on for dear life from that famed carved rock (for which back lot sets were used). But don't expect the Master Of Suspense to leave star or audience hanging...

• Black Kiss | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Several producers and models from the entertainment industry are being killed one after another. The methods of murder are extremely atrocious and the dead bodies are decorated in an almost artistic manner. At the scene of each crime the perpetrator leaves a black lip print: who will be the next victim of the slayer in the deep darkness of Shinjuku?

• Hill Street Blues - Season 3 | DVD | (11/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  ""Let's be careful out there."" The complete second season of Steve Bochco's ground-breaking cop show. Episodes Comprise: 1. Trial by Fury 2. Domestic Beef 3. Heat Rash 4. Rain of Terror 5. Officer of the Year 6. Stan the Man 7. Little Boil Blue 8. Requiem For a Hairbag 9. A Hair of the Dog 10. Phantom of the Hill 11. No Body's Perfect 12. Santaclaustraphobia 13. Gung Ho 14. Moon Over Uranus 15. Moon Over Uranus: the Sequel 16. Moon Over Uranus: the Final Legacy 17. The Belles of St. Marys 18. Life in the Minors 19. Eugene's Comedy Empire Strikes Back 20. Spotlight on Rico 21. Buddy Can You Spare a Heart? 22. A Hill of Beans

• Memoirs of a Geisha - DVD and Book Giftpack | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Arthur Golden's blockbuster bestseller Memoirs Of A Geisha has been brilliantly brought to the big screen by Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall. The film opens in a remote Japanese fishing village in 1929 where two sisters Chiyo and Satsu are sold by their troubled father to people who place Chiyo in a classy geisha house known as an okiya in Gion and Satsu in a much more vulgar and dangerous district. Chiyo becomes a maid to Hatsumomo a cold controlling and calculating geisha who is instantly jealous of Chiyo's unusual beautiful eyes and childish innocence. Chiyo is befriended by Pumpkin another maid at the okiya but the two are soon driven apart. Chiyo is shown compassion by the Chairman and another more successful geisha Mameha who takes her under her wing as her little sister furthering the battle between Chiyo now called Sayuri and Hatsumomo. As Sayuri is trained in the art of being a geisha learning how to walk talk dance and serve (up to a point) in order to please and honor her distinguished male clients World War II looms on the horizon threatening to upend Japan and its old ways. Memoirs Of A Geisha is a lush sweeping historical and romantic Oscar-winning epic featuring gorgeous period costumes - primarily the exquisite kimono worn by the geisha. Featuring a fantastic cast of Ziyi Zhang (in her first English speaking role) Michelle Yeoh Ken Watanabe and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa with an enchanting score from John Williams. Winner of 3 Oscars for Best Costume Design Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

• A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £12.98   |  Saving you £10.00 (100.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  By this time, A Nightmare on Elm Street series was definitely flagging and no amount of overkill style from promising Finnish director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) covers for the fact that the screenplay (partially by LA Confidential Oscar winner Brian Helgeland) is a hash of thrown-together scenes and ideas with no coherence whatsoever. The pizza-faced child murderer returns from that limbo he inhabits between sequels and kills off all the characters left over from Part Three (the wonderfully named Tuesday Knight briefly takes over Patricia Arquette's role) before going after a new batch of uncharacterised, blatantly only-in-this-film-to-be-killed teens. The special effects highlight is a girl turning into a giant cockroach, though Harlin also includes more imaginative recurring and repeating nightmares. Lisa Wilcox is the new heroine, and Robert Englund finally gets top billing. --Kim Newman

• Alice in Wonderland | DVD | (19/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Alice In Wonderland

• Matewan | DVD | (11/02/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  John Sayles' masterpiece is one of the great films of American independent cinema. Oscar-nominated for cinematography the film is staged in the classic western tradition. The story concerns the small mining community of Matewan West Virginia and is set during the 20's. When the Stone Mountain Coal Company announces a cut in wages the miners response is strike action. A train arrives in town bringing black and Italian workers to replace them but on that same train is Joe Kenehan a union organiser whose aim is to unite all the diverse groups of workers to stand together. The bosses next move is to bring in some hired `muscle to keep the peace. As the tension and violence escalates the stage is set for a final showdown.

• Bonnie And Clyde | HD DVD | (31/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £25.99

• The Haunting Of Marsten Manor | DVD | (02/08/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Haunting Of Marsten Manor

• Brain From Planet Arous, The / Teenage Monster / Space Cadet | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  You have to credit the folks who put this double bill together. The Brain from Planet Arous, a low-budget alien invasion 1958 film, is one of those programmes that lingers in the memory as much for its title and impressively ludicrous giant-staring-transparent-brain monster as for its poverty row dramatics, in which the usually stiff John Agar grins evilly and flashes contact lenses when possessed by the creature and a good guy brain shows up to take over his dog to thwart the renegade cerebrum's plan for world domination. For this release, Brain is teamed with its original co-feature, a movie so bad you wouldn't buy it on its own but whose presence here is a pleasing extra. Whereas Brain from Planet Arous delivers exactly what its title promises, Teenage Monster is a cheat: rather than feature a mutant 1950s delinquent in a leather jacket, it's a melodramatic Western in which prospector's widow Anne Gwynne keeps her hulking caveman-like son (who seems to be well into middle-age) hidden, only for a scheming waitress to use the goon in her murder schemes. Brain is snappily directed, even when staging disasters well beyond its budget, while Teenage Monster drags and chatters and moans until its flat finale. On the DVD: The Brain from Planet Arous/Teenage Monster double bill disc is a solid showing for such marginal items, featuring not only the trailers for these attractions but a clutch of other 1950s sci-fi pictures (Phantom from Space, Invaders from Mars, etc.) and a bonus episode ("The Runaway Asteroid") from a studio-bound, live-broadcast juvenile space opera of the early 50s (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet) in which hysterical types in a capsule break off from the space programme to deliver ringing endorsements of gruesome-looking breakfast foods. --Kim Newman

• Ultimate Fighting Championship - 48 | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The UFC is the World's premiere mixed martial arts sports company bringing together various disciplines including karate jiu-jitsu kickboxing boxing and sumo. 'UFC48: Payback' features Ken Shamrock vs. Kimo Leopoldo and Frank Mir vs. Tim Sylvia for the UFC Heavyweight Championship.