"Actor: Ning Li"

• Mad Detective | Blu Ray | (13/02/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  2007's largest grossing film at the Hong Kong box office - the smash-hit Mad Detective - is one of the freshest and most satisfying films from that country in a decade. The traditional Hong Kong police film is turned on its head: the imaginative twist being our hero - Detective Bun (a role created for Lau Ching Wan) - who has the ability to 'see' people's inner personalities or hidden ghosts. Breaking new ground and establishing new cinematic rules, Johnnie To's latest giddily entertaining collaboration with Wai Ka Fai radically raises the level of storytelling in modern film. This ingenious realisation of a supernaturally gifted copper is fast-paced and furious, yet also complex and disturbingly funny.Detective Bun (Lau Ching Wan) was recognised as a talented criminal profiler until he sliced off his right ear to offer as a gift at his chief's farewell party. Branded as 'mad' and discharged from the force, he has lived in seclusion with his beloved wife May (Kelly Lin) ever since. Strangely, Bun has the ability to 'see' a person's inner personality, their subconscious desires, emotions, and mental state. When a missing police gun is linked to several heists and murders, hotshot Inspector Ho (Andy On) calls on the valuable skills of his former mentor Bun to help unlock the killer's identity. However, Bun's unorthodox methods point to a fellow detective and take a schizophrenic turn for the worse...

• Puccini: Madame Butterfly -- 1995 film version | DVD | (04/03/2002) from £23.82   |  Saving you £-3.83 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Like the finest of film scores with its fluid beauty and succession of intensely romantic tunes, Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly has a surprisingly cinematic feel. In 1995 director Frederic Mitterand exploited this quality of the story, exposing a young woman's disillusionment against a backdrop of cultural chasms. Shot on location, with Tunisia doubling convincingly as a turn of the century Nagasaki, this Butterfly shines with fragile beauty. The house becomes a brilliantly used set; airy and full of the scent of flowers and at the same time a cage for the trapped woman. Archive footage of bygone Nagasaki is used skilfully to underline the distance between the 15-year-old bride and Pinkerton. Purists may prefer a more traditionally robust, stage-bound Butterfly, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more visually heartbreaking interpretation. Chinese soprano Ying Huang doesn't rock the rafters with her vocal power; hers is a tender, delicately observed performance. Tenor Richard Troxton's self-seeking Pinkerton is well sung. Overall, this is a haunting cinematic treatment of an enduringly popular opera. On the DVD: Madame Butterfly is presented in a letterbox widescreen format (enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions). The Dolby Digital surround soundtrack engulfs the listener in some of Puccini's most memorable tunes, stringing you out and leaving you emotionally spent. The main special feature is a charming portrait of Ying Huan, providing interesting insights into how the film was made and how she won the role. --Piers Ford

• Jack and Diane | DVD | (28/10/2013) from £8.98   |  Saving you £9.00 (128.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sexy thrilling and exciting plus Kylie as you've never seen her Jack and Diane is anything but your usual lesbian tale. When Jack and Diane meet one hot summer meet sparks immediately fly. The relationship is as powerful as either have ever felt. But when Jack announces she has to move away their intensity manifests itself in a way neither was expecting.

• Little Red Flowers | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the semi-autobiographical novel Could be Beautiful by Wang Shuo the best-selling 'bad boy' of contemporary Chinese literature Little Red Flowers is a poignant and touching drama. Directed by independent producer and award winning director Zhang Yuan (Beijing Bastards Seventeen Years) Little Red Flowers tells the story of Qiang (Dong Bowen) a four-year-old little rebel... a clever child with sparkly eyes and a precociously indomitable will. His father deposits him at a well-appointed residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing since his parents are often away. Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society. But it's not so easy for Qiang to adapt to this kind of carefully organized minutely scrutinized collective life. A fierce individualist in miniature he tries but fails to conform to the model his teachers enforce. Yet he still craves the reward that the other students win: the little red flowers awarded each day as tokens for good behaviour. But Qiang doesn't win any flowers: he can't yet dress himself and doesn't play together with the other kids. He even dares to talk back to the strict Teacher Li (Zhao Rui) and Principal Kong when they try to impose some discipline on him. Gradually his charisma and bravado start to win over his classmates: their stealthy little rebellions gain steam when he succeeds in convincing everyone that Teacher Li is a child-eating monster in disguise. When their attempt to capture her is thwarted Qiang's resistance develops a more disturbing dimension and he is forcibly ostracized from his companions. Will he succumb to the adult-enforced conformity around him or will he insist on growing up his own way by his own rules?

• Blind Shaft | DVD | (26/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A gritty and sardonic portrait of modern China as epitomized by two Chinese con-men and their system for making money from owners of illegal coalmines.

• Soursweet | DVD | (07/03/2011) from £12.84   |  Saving you £-3.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Lily and Chen move from Hong Kong to London to make their fortune. Enterprising Lily runs her own restaurant but she fails to persuade Chen who prefers the security of a job as a waiter in London's Chinatown. Soho which forms the backdrop of much of the action is Britain's nerve centre for the Chinese Mafia - the Triads. In the back streets and illicit gambling dens the film gives a rare insight to the Machiavellian exchanges between rival Triad gangs. Trying to pay off his father's gambling debts; the innocent Chen accepts money from a Triad member only to find that he is expected to pay for it by doing a heroin run. Terrified he falls in with Lily's plan to move away and start up a business. However back in Soho a high ranking Triad member is planning to overthrow his leader and Chen's unpaid debt could turn him into a pawn in a horrifying violent power struggle.

• The Missing Gun | DVD | (12/07/2004) from £6.73   |  Saving you £13.26 (197.03%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A small-town cop wakes up one morning after a wild night at celebration to discover that his gun a rare state-issued firearm loaded with three bullets is missing. As he attempts to retrace his steps from the previous night his ex-girlfriend turns up dead; and the bullet appears to be from his gun! Now in order to clear his name and convince the authorities that he's not the killer he must race against time to find the gun before the other two bullets find their next victims...

• Wonder Seven | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Seven orphans each with his or her own skill operate as a secret police bringing criminals to justice. However when a mission goes wrong the group winds up falsely accused of murder and must clear their collective name by bringing the real criminals to justice...

• L'Incoronazione Di Poppea - Monteverdi | DVD | (01/08/2005) from £16.10   |  Saving you £13.89 (86.27%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Almost four decades before creating his Poppea Monteverdi wrote in the preface to his fifth book of madrigals The modern composer must create his works solely on the basis of the truth - a credo to which the music of his final opera is utterly faithful.Poppea is a potent work from opera's first true creator and pioneering genius. The fact that at the close of this highly charged 'dramma in musica' he allows evil to triumph over good (albeit temporarily) has frequently led to his being decried as amoral.Monteverdi's timeless masterpiece which creates a deep involvement in performers and audiences alike is brilliantly captured in this High Definition live recording of Pierre Audi's moving and beautifully style production from Het Muziektheater Amsterdam in 1994.