"Actor: Marc Robert"

• Neither Heaven Nor Earth | DVD | (31/07/2017) from £4.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Afghanistan 2014. Approaching the withdrawal of troops, Captain Antarès Bonassieu and his squad are assigned to monitor a remote valley of Wakhan, Afghanistan, on the border of Pakistan. Despite their determination, control of this so-called calm sector will gradually crumble as soldiers start to mysteriously disappear one by one

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 1) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Sorority House Massacre | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £32.90   |  Saving you £-29.91 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  A group of girls are terrorised by a knife-wielding killer who is drawn to their sorority house because of mysterious past connections.

• The Desperate Hours | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Director William Wyler's suspense classic marks the only time cinema giants Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March worked together. And the result is everything you'd expect: taut terrifying and terrific. Bogart plays an escaped con who has nothing to lose. March is a suburban Everyman who has everything to lose - his family is held hostage by Bogart. As The Desperate Hours tick by the two men square off in a battle of wills and cunning that tightens into an unforgettable fear-drench

• The Toolbox Murders | Blu Ray | (18/01/2022) from £39.59   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Uncle Adolf | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £22.96   |  Saving you £-2.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  This major new TV drama broadcast on ITV1 explores the real Hitler through the relationship with his teenage niece Geli Raubal... As the shells rain down on his battered Berlin Bunker in 1945 a bitter and defeated Hitler remininisces about the major events in his life - from his meteoric rise to notoriety to his obsession with his adored niece Geli Raubal. Starring Ken Stott (The Vice & Messiah) and brought to life by BAFTA award-winning writer Nigel Williams this is the r

• A Hazard Of Hearts | DVD | (29/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  A Hazard of Hearts, dramatised for television in 1987, could hardly be a better demonstration of Barbara Cartland's unique status as the most critically reviled, yet widely read, romantic novelist. The qualities which feed both points of view are present in abundance. There are the certainties of a wafer-thin plot: vulnerable but plucky young heiress falls on hard and tragic times, sails through mortal danger and escapes the clutches of lecherous older man, chastity intact, before claiming enigmatic and devastatingly handsome Lord for her own at the last minute. There are the pantomime characters, atrocious dialogue-by-numbers, set-piece scenes involving duels and smugglers, tight breeches and heaving bosoms. Produced by Lew Grade and the team behind The New Avengers and The Professionals, this is 90 minutes of camp hokum crammed to bursting point with stars clearly having the time of their lives. Helena Bonham Carter, her face like an earnest, worried raisin, is the heroine Serena, with Marcus Gilbert as her paramour. But Diana Rigg's evil Lady Harriet steals the show. To be watched without shame. On the DVD: A Hazard of Hearts is presented in 4:3 video format with a Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack which is splendid for Laurence Johnson's florid themes. The transfer has the appropriately soft-focus look and feel of a 1980s miniseries. The stately home settings certainly provide a sense of quality, but the disc has no extras. --Piers Ford

• The Iceman Cometh | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Acclaimed director John Frankenheimer's definitive staging of Eugene O'Neill's play. Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece is often referred to as the greatest work of 20th century American theatre centring on a crowd of misfits wastrels anarchists alcoholics prostitutes and barflies drinking away their troubles and making grandiose plans. When Hickey arrives for his yearly drunken bender to celebrate landlord Harry Hope's birthday each character's dreams and aspirations melt away wi

• Lilies | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Lilies an extravagantly mannered revenge fantasy opens in a men's prison in Quebec in 1952. A certain Bishop Bilodeau is lured into hearing the dying confession of a prisoner Simon Doucet only to be held captive by the gay contingent in the prison and forced to watch their re-enactment of a play This play however soon turns into the story of a lethal gay triangle set in a Catholic boy's school 40 years earlier involving an 18 year old Bilodeau Simon and doomed third party Val

• Dark Power | DVD | (27/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Before the Aztecs there were the Toltecs a native race about which little is known. One of their strange customs was to bury themselves alive and return from the dead to seek revenge on the living on the anniversary of their burial. Unfortunately for a group of students and their friends the house where they live was built on a Toltec burial ground. Tonight is the anniversary and a group of undead Toltec sorcerers are hungry for blood... Vintage B-movie Western star Lash LaRue wi

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vol. 2) | DVD | (21/05/2001) from £6.03   |  Saving you £6.96 (115.42%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• Hustle : Complete BBC Series 1 & 2 Box Set | DVD | (03/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £45.99

  Hustle follows the fortunes of a gang of five expert con artists let loose on the streets of London. They are specialists in the way of the grifter and all are keen to liberate cash from the amoral and undeserving. From faking film sets and expensive paintings to double-crossing the duplicitous head of a bank's security system, the con is on! Season 1: 1. The Con Is On 2. Faking It 3. Picture Perfect 4. Cops And Robbers 5. A Touch Of Class 6. The Last Gamble

  Season 2: 1. Go...

• Jealous God | DVD | (20/02/2006) from £18.98   |  Saving you £-7.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  In an industrial town in Lancashire during the mid-1960s Vincent Dungarven's mother wants him to be a Roman Catholic priest and he half thinks that he has the vocation. He is a reserved young man a schoolmaster and at thirty has never been in love. One day he visits the local library and encounters Laura a new librarian. Fascinated by her beauty and charm he overcomes his shyness and asks her out. She accepts and soon he falls passionately in love with her for although she is a

• The World Is Not Enough | UMD | (01/12/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In his 19th screen outing The World is Not Enough, Ian Fleming's super-spy is once again caught in the crosshairs of a self-created dilemma: as the longest-running feature-film franchise, James Bond is an annuity his producers want to protect, yet the series' consciously formulaic approach frustrates any real element of surprise beyond the rote application of plot twists or jump cuts to shake up the audience. This time out, credit 007's caretakers for making some visible attempts to invest their principal characters with darker motives--and blame them for squandering The World is Not Enough's initial promise by the final reel. By now, Bond pictures are as elegantly formal as a Bach chorale, and this one opens on an unusually powerful note. A stunning pre-title sequence reaches beyond mere pyrotechnics to introduce key plot elements as the action leaps from Bilbao to London. Pierce Brosnan undercuts his usually suave persona with a darker, more brutal edge largely absent since Sean Connery departed. Equally tantalising are our initial glimpses of Bond's nemesis du jour, Renard (Robert Carlyle), and imminent love interest, Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), both atypically complex characters cast with seemingly shrewd choices and directed by the capable Michael Apted. The story's focus on post-Soviet geopolitics likewise starts off on a savvy note, before being overtaken by increasingly Byzantine plot twists, hidden motives and reversals of loyalty superheated by relentless (if intermittently perfunctory) action sequences. Bond's grimmer demeanour, while preferable to the smirk that eventually swallowed Roger Moore whole, proves wearying, unrelieved by any true wit. The underlying psychoses that propel Renard and Elektra eventually unravel into unconvincing melodrama, while Bond is supplied with a secondary love object, Denise Richards, who is even more improbable as a nuclear physicist. Ultimately, this world is not enough despite its better intentions. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com On the DVD: There are three different documentaries on this disc, as well as a "Secrets of 007" featurette that cuts between specific stunt sequences, behind-the-scenes footage and storyboards to reveal how it was all done, and a short video tribute to Desmond Llewelyn ("Q"), who died not long after this movie was released. The first "making of" piece is presented by an annoyingly chirpy American woman and is aimed squarely at the MTV market (most fascinating is watching her interview with Denise Richards in which the two orthodontically enhanced ladies attempt to out-smile each other). "Bond Cocktail" gamely distils all the essential ingredients that make up the classic Bond movie formula--gadgets, girls, exotic locations and lots of action. Most interesting of all is "Bond Down River", a lengthy dissection of the opening boat chase sequence. Director Michael Apted provides the first commentary, and talks about the challenges of delivering all the requisite ingredients. The second commentary is less satisfactory, since second unit director Vic Armstrong, production designer Peter Lamont and composer David Arnold have little in common. There's also the Garbage song video, and the booklet has yet more behind-the-scenes info. The anamorphic CinemaScope picture and Dolby digital sound are as spectacular as ever. --Mark Walker

• Curse Of The Puppet Master | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-116.70%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Andre Toulon's living puppets are back in Curse of the Puppet Master, this time in the possession of Dr. Magrew (George Peck), who runs a house of marvels and is experimenting to create the perfect being, without all the inner conflict and torment of humans. To do so, he recruits a talented young woodcarver named Tank (Josh Green). But Magrew's plans get complicated when his daughter (appealingly played by Emily Harrison) falls for the young man. Fans of the Puppet Master series will probably enjoy this sixth instalment. The three leads are well cast, the production design shows some imagination, and the script works--until the abrupt and nonsensical ending. The puppets also seem less animated than in previous films; nevertheless, they still manage to get their whacks in. Trivia factoid: director "Victoria Sloane" is one of several stage names used by David DeCoteau, who also directed instalments numbers three and seven in the series.--Geoff Miller, Amazon.com

• James Bond Ultimate Collection - Vol. 1 - Goldfinger/Diamonds Are Forever/The Man With The Golden Gun/The Living Daylights/ | DVD | (06/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Volume 1 of the Bond Ultimate Collection featuring the first five 007 adventures. Titles Comprise: 1. The World Is Not Enough (1999) - Pierce Brosnan 2. Diamonds Are Forever (1971) - Sean Connery 3. Goldfinger (1964) - Sean Connery 4. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) - Roger Moore 5. The Living Daylights (1987) - Timothy Dalton For individual synopses and special features please refer to the individual Ultimate Editions of the bond movie.

• TDK DVD Opera And Ballet Sampler - 2004 And 2005 Catalogue Highlights | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £7.98   |  Saving you £-2.99 (-59.90%)   |  RRP £4.99

  1. Beatrice di Tenda: Ah! Se un'urna e a me concessa (Vincenzo Bellini)2. Kiss Me Kate: So in love with you (Cole Porter)3. Manon: En fermant les yeux (Jules Massenet)4. Rusalka: Mesicku na nebi hlubokem (Song to the Moon) (Antonin Dvorak)5. Excelsior: Obscurantism (Romualdo Marenco)6. Cosi fan tutte: Non siate ritrosi...E voi ridete? (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)7. War and Peace: Kakoye pravo oni imyeyet (Sergei Prokofiev)8. Don Pasquale: Tornami a di che m'ami (Gaetano Donzetti)9. Lulu: Wenn sich die Menschen (Lulu's Song) (Alban Berg)10. Coppelia; Mazurka (Leo Delibes)11. Platee: Formons les plus brillants concerts (Jean-Philippe Rameau)12. Carmen: Les voice! Voici la quadrille! (Georges Bizet)13. Otello: Oh! Mostruosa colpa! (Giuseppe Verdi)14. Siegfried: Was strahlt mir dort entgegen? (Richard Wagner)15. Lucie de Lammermoor: Qu'une letter en ma misere (Gaetano Donizetti)16. Giselle: Pas de deux - Scene (Adolphe Adam)17. Turandot: Non piangere Liu (Giacomo Puccini)18. Paquita: Pas de deux (E. Deldevez and L. Minkus)19. Adriana Lecouvreur: Io son l'umile ancella (Francesco Cilea)20. Don Quichotte: Duel Don Quichottte & Gamache (Ludwig Minkus)21. Gotterdammerung: Ungeheure Macht wird dir (Richard Wagner)22. Le Coq d'Or: Otwets mne sorko swetilo (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)23. Le nozze di Figaro: Gente gente all'armi all'armi! (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

• Toolbox Murders | Blu Ray | (26/01/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Arizona Colt - Mediabook - Cover A (+ DVD) | Blu Ray | (10/11/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vols. 1-3) | DVD | (23/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £32.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs