"Actor: Marian Diamond"

• The Armando Ianucci Shows | DVD | (04/09/2006) from £7.45   |  Saving you £2.54 (34.09%)   |  RRP £9.99

  From the writer and producer behind such comedy heavyweights as The Day Today Knowing Me Knowing You...With Alan Partridge and I'm Alan Partridge as writer / performer comes Armando Ianucci's very own incisive and sometimes downright vicious comedy series. With the inventive and unpredictable Ianucci at the helm each episode loosely follows a theme where he'll comment upon human behaviour through his quirky gaze poking fun at all those who deserve it and probably those who don't as well. Joined by Hugh an old man who talks about the old days and the East End Thug who has a unique way of problem solving there has never been a more entertaining way of looking at the peculiarities of modern existence! Produced and cut with deftness the show initially received little media attention however it has since become a firm cult favourite and deserves its place in the cannon along side the likes of Alan Partridge and Brasseye. Episodes Comprise 1. Episode #1.1 2. Work 3. Mortality 4. Communication 5. Episode #1.5 6. Neighbours 7. Reality 8. Imagination

• Madame Bovary | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £7.36   |  Saving you £8.63 (117.26%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Trapped on a small provincial French farm with her widowed father Emma dreams of marrying her way up the social ladder to lead a glittering fairytale life amid the bright lights of the big city. To escape she marries a young doctor Charles Bovary but his dull pedestrian ways and lack of ambition soon leave her disenchanted and dreaming of a grander life elsewhere. Enchanted by stories of the many affairs of Mary Antoinette and the great romances she finds in novels Madame Bova

• Tale of A Vampire | DVD | (23/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A cross-cultural oddity, Tale of a Vampire feels like a 1970s British horror movie retranslated from the Japanese and mounted as a vehicle for Julian Sands. Director-writer Shimako Sato takes a gloom-haunted approach to the undead, allegedly influenced by the necrophile romanticism of Edgar Allan Poe (it claims to be based on Poe's poem "Annabel Lee") but also draws on the popular blood-sucking posiness of Anne Rice's bestselling novels. Alex (Sands), is a style-conscious vampire whose white shirts are always immaculate although he spends most of his nights messily pouring gore over his face. Living in a spartan docklands pad, Alex haunts a library of long-forgotten lore where he sets his cap at a young woman (Suzanna Hamilton) who may be the reincarnation of his lost love. Unfortunately, a hat-wearing rival vampire (Kenneth Cranham) has been nurturing a grudge against Alex for lifetimes and sticks his oar in, complicating the relationship between vampire and willing victim, setting up for a big stake-shoving climax. For all its vampire feuds and dodgily S&M-flavoured blood-drinking scenes, this is somewhat staid and solemn, with few locations and a low budget abstraction reminiscent of those old episodes of The Avengers where they could only afford to build a corner of a set and there wasn't any money left to hire actors. While Sands, with aptly vampirish poise, and Cranham, with a sinister Southern accent, are interesting and poised antagonists, making the most of Sato's allusive dialogue, heroine Hamilton lets the side down with an awkward performance that hardly suggests anyone worth giving up immortality for. Cranham's character is supposed to be Poe himself, oddly transformed from his historical stature: he seems to have put on a bit of weight since his death in 1849, but Cranham's sly nasty way of ordering gruesome nouvelle cuisine and tormenting a harmless crackpot is aptly Poeish. The slow-paced film takes a long time to confirm what is obvious from the outset (even from the title) and then shudders to a halt with all the characters' fates left vague. However, it has a unique and disturbing atmosphere--the few familiar vampire images of a bloody Sands are outweighed by weirder moments like Cranham's presentation of a pale Hamilton, tied to a bed with red ribbons, as an offering to his nemesis--that makes it more insidiously memorable than many of its higher-budgeted, splashier cousins. On the DVD: A no-frills (no trailer, no cast notes, no nothing), full-screen presentation, which sometimes cramps Sato's careful compositions, this also has a mixed blessing transfer which lends a mouldy or rusty fuzz to some of the blacks in the many night scenes. There is, however, a nice animated menu. --Kim Newman

• Girl On A Motorcycle | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Caught midway between 1970s soft-porn clunker The Story of O and Bunuel's sado-masochistic fantasy Belle de Jour, the 1968 erotic curio Girl on a Motorcycle is one of Marianne Faithfull's chief claims to notoriety. She stars as Rebecca, a leather-clad, former bookstore clerk in search of sexual fulfilment who flees her dependable schoolteacher husband for a dangerous liaison with Daniel (Alain Delon), a dashing Professor addicted to speed. The story is told entirely in flashbacks as Rebecca rockets along the road, having donned her leathers and walked out on her sleeping husband at the crack of dawn. It all must have seemed fairly daring and provocative in 1968, providing viewers with ample opportunities to view a naked Faithfull at the height of her allure. But today the existential musings of the lead character seem achingly pretentious, the erotic symbolism merely gawky and unintentionally amusing: the sight of Alain Delon with a phallic pipe dangling from his mouth is like something out of a Rene Magritte painting. The sex scenes between Delon and Faithfull are all swamped in a polarised visual effect that, while garish and psychedelic, is dated and distinctly unerotic. Director Jack Cardiff is better known as a cinematographer on classics such as The African Queen and Black Narcissus. Among Cardiff's other directorial credits is a worthy adaptation of DH Lawrence's Sons & Lovers, but Girl on a Motorcycle is a saucy road movie with no final destination. On the DVD: This DVD version is misleadingly presented as being the fully restored and uncut version of the film. Yet it was the US version not the European one that was heavily cut (and titillatingly re-titled "Naked Under Leather"). The restoration certainly does not refer to the print quality: although the colours are vivid and bright, the print used to master the DVD (in 16:9 anamorphic format) is extremely grainy and, at times, speckled with dirt and scratches. Included as one of the special features, a theatrical trailer loaded with innuendo shows just how much the film was marketed to a prurient audience. Director Jack Cardiff provides an audio commentary but has few revelatory things to say about his film beyond technical considerations, and even makes several clunking errors (recalling his casting decisions concerning a scene that takes place in a provincial German café, he raves about how he strove to find authentic French locals!). He does reveal that the film's use of a voice-over was inspired by the internal monologue that forms the basis of James Joyce's Ulysses. Given Cardiff's age and experience one feels that he must have more interesting anecdotes and insights, making this commentary feel like a wasted opportunity. --Chris Campion