"Actor: Marilyn Sokol"

• The Basketball Diaries | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £18.13   |  Saving you £-5.14 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realise that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus interviews. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas | DVD | (07/11/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Classic Jim Henson production, available for first time on DVD in the UK. Also including performances by Frank Oz (Muppeteer), Paul Williams (songs), and Jerry Juhl (script). Christmas is approaching in Frogtown Hollow, and Emmet Otter and his Ma hope to buy gifts for each other. Unfortunately, Emmet doesn't make enough from the odd jobs he does, and Ma doesn't make enough as a laundress. They decide to compete in the Frog Town Hollow Talent Contest in order to win money, but Ma will have to hock Emmet's tool chest to buy a costume, and Emmet will have to put a hole in Emmet's washtub for his band!