This controversial and daring film from director Lynne Stopkewich focuses on the simple yet complex life of a woman who yearns for more than her humdrum existence offers. Leila (Molly Parker) is bored. Married and working shifts as a clerk in a dilapidated motel she is secure but unfulfilled. Craving change and excitement she agrees to meet with a lonely male guest in the privacy of his room. In spite of the reputation she gets amongst the staff Leila begins a torrid affair wi
A real archaeological artefact from 1967, Good Times will be mostly of interest to anyone who wants to see a parade of fashions that Austin Powers would reject as too garish to be seen on the street in. The nothingy plot concerns then-married Sonny and Cher playing themselves as a one-note bickering sit-com couple, signing up with sinister film tycoon Mordicus (an impeccable George Sanders) to make a movie but not wanting to do the mouldy rags-to-riches hillbilly script on offer. Cher is supposed to be less interested than Sonny in making a movie--which might well have been the truth since she mostly lies around doodling outrageous fashion designs or contributing her strange sung-through-the-nose vocals as poor, goofy Sonny does all the hard work flogging life into skits that had been squeezed dry by the Monkees before being passed to him. The finale finds Sonny and Cher standing up for integrity and refusing to make a bad film even if it means they gets blacklisted all over town--a lesson it's a shame that they (especially Cher) didn't take to heart in their later careers. Astonishingly, this was the feature directorial debut of The Exorcist's William Friedkin, who fills the screen with colour, action and gaggery after the manner of the then-hip Batman TV show while focusing on screaming outfits that remain among the darnedest things you ever saw. Aside from a reprise of "I Got You, Babe", the score is a little light on the slim canon of S&C hits; the songs included are "It's the Little Things", "Good Times", "Trust Me", "Don't Talk to Strangers", "I'm Gonna Love You" and "Just a Name". The DVD extras include a few sketchy bios and a jump-to-a-song feature. --Kim Newman
The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov's breathtaking and critically acclaimed Emmy-nominated production. Baryshnikov was at the height of his career as a classical dancer in 1977 when he staged this beloved holiday classic for the American Ballet Theatre. Gelsey Kirkland had left the New York City Ballet to dance with the Russian superstar and their partnership was magical. In this Soviet-influenced version Baryshnikov casts himself as the hero who is transformed from a wooden figure to a soaring prince and Kirkland plays an adolescent girl of delicacy and vulnerability. Alexander Minz portrays Drosselmeyer a mysterious wizard who not only conjures the fantasy but aslo dances with the romantic couple. Kenneth Schermerhorn conducts the National Philharmonic in a fast-paced performance of Tchaikovsky's music. Celebrated by critics and public alike Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker delivers a brilliant and sparkling adaptation of the famous E.T.A. Hoffmann tale along with Tchaikovsky's classic score.
After marrying a handsome man she barely knows a woman experiences threatening calls and violent attacks from a mysterious woman who claims to be her new husband's former lover.
Welles' second-to-last feature, The Immortal Story is an adaptation of a book by Danish author Isak Dinesen and stars Jeanne Moreau. The year is 1860 in the Portuguese colony of Macao, Mr. Clay (Welles) is an aging, rich merchant, who is the subject of town gossip. He likes his clerk Levinsky (Roger Coggio), to read to him to help him relax in the evenings and one night he recounts a tale about a rich man who paid a poor sailor five guineas to father a child with his beautiful young wife. Mr. Clay has no wife and no heir to his fortune and resolves to make the story true...Levinsky approaches Virginie Ducrot (Moreau), another clerk's mistress, and strikes a bargain for 300 guineas. Now to find the sailor... Cast and Crew: Orson Welles / Jeanne Moreau / Roger Coggio / Norman Eshley. Director Orson Welles Awards and Reviews: Berlin International Film Festival 1968, Nominated Golden Bear, Orson Welles. A sumptuous experience' - Time Out The ending of is amongst the most beautiful and self-contained in all of Welles' cinema' - Senses of Cinema
John Wayne has brawled bare-knuckled gunned down desperadoes fought jungle wars and piloted the skies. But 'The Cowboys' gives him one of his juiciest roles as a leather-tough rancher who deserted by his regular help hires eleven greenhorn schoolboys for a cattle drive across 400 treacherous miles. When the dust settles Wayne gives one of his best performances. In The Cowboys Rex Reed wrote All the forces that have made him a dominant personality as well as a major screen presence seem to combine. Old Dusty Britches can act. Co-starring the equally memorable Roscoe Lee Browne Colleen Dewhurst and Bruce Dern 'The Cowboys' is exciting proof. This version never before released in the UK includes a previously deleted scene.
Shipwrecked and cast adrift Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters give Gulliver new bitter insights into human behaviour... A combination of live action and animation in a version of Jonathan Swift's satire.
Rough but charming drifter Sam Bass (Howard Duff) wanders the badlands of the USA, eventually landing in Denton, Texas. The stud soon attracts the attention of sweet shopkeeper Katherine Egan (Dorothy Hart), who happens to be the sheriff's sister. Also with her eye on Sam is Calamity Jane (Yvonne De Carlo), an infamous and wild frontierswoman. The town is gearing up for a big-money horse race and Sam wants to cash in on the action. He gets lucky with a star horse, and quickly rakes in the dollars. However, it's not long before Sam's luck starts to run out, both with horses and women. When disaster strikes, will he turn to crime for the way out?
Set in Houston Texas during the 1940's Carrie Watts lives with her hen-pecked son and his controlling wife. Entering the last years of her life she wishes that she could revisit the town of Bountiful the place where she grew up as a child. However her son and his wife are very reluctant to let her go for her health and financial reasons. Carrie decides that an escape attempt is due... Catching a bus to Bountiful she meets and strikes up a conversation with a young woman (Rebecca De Mornay) to whom she recounts the story of her life...
The Man Who Sells War. A Caribbean island in the mid-1800's. Nature has made it a paradise; man has made it a hell. Slaves on vast Portuguese sugar plantations are ready to turn their misery into rebellion - and the British are ready to provide the spark. They send agent William Walker (Marlon Brando) on a devious three-part mission: trick the slaves into revolt grab the sugar trade for England...then return the slaves to servitude. Colonialism and insurrection are explored in the searing epic Burn!. Both visually and narratively stunning Burn! glows with the fires of filmmaking genius. Genius is also evident in Brando's complex intelligent portrayal of a man who is both gentleman and scoundrel revolutionary and colonialist. And Ennio Morricone's haunting music memorably underscores the almost overwhelmingly powerful story.
Agent Jones gets tough Oriental style as she embarks on a mission to investigate Dragon Lady Bianca Javin (Stella Stevens) suspicious owner of the 'Casino of Gold'. Everybody is kung-fu fighting kicking up a storm and taking no prisoners in pursuit of two undercover agents who disappeared following an opium explosion. Teaming up with star fighter Mi Ling Jones gives the local triads a run for their money working a wardrobe of funky fashions whilst upping the ante in the action sta
Three more rollicking good tales starring Michael Palin in various guises. Written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones. 'The Testing Of Eric Olthwaite' 'Whinfrey's Last Case' and 'The Curse of The Claw'. The Testing of Eric Olthwaite: A Ripping Northern Yarn set in the dark days of the depression before Last of the Summer Wine started bringing jobs to the area. Eric's tough mining parents find their son so boring that they run away from home. Eric torn between love for his parents and lack of brain cells becomes involved with a hardened criminal. The rest is history. Whinfrey's Last Case: Dashing Gerald Whinfrey saves his country twice a week but in 1913 a German plot to start the First World War without telling anybody coincides with his holiday. Where do Whinfrey's priorities lie? Has he got any? A knockout tale of international intrigue. If only Dickens could write like this - Mrs Reg Dickens Eltham. The Curse of the Claw: Gothic terror comes to Maidenhead. A timely reminder of what happens when men dabble in the dark world of oriental superstition. Michael Palin aided by inexpensive plastic surgery plays old and young Kevin as well as Kevin's childhood hero Uncle Jack - an enormously cheerful physical disaster area who has every disease known to man usually at the same time.
John Thaw created one of Britain's most-loved TV detectives in this pilot episode that started the long-running Inspector Morse series, based on the novels by Colin Dexter. The brilliant, somewhat elitist police inspector who loves crosswords, classical music and the more-than-occasional pint of ale clumsily romances a woman (Gemma Jones) from his choir. When he finds her hanged in her apartment on the eve of their big recital, he suspects murder and muscles his way in on the investigation. The assigned investigators are convinced it's suicide except for the eager Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately), and they reluctantly team up to sort out a mystery tangled in blackmail, adultery, peeping neighbours (former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton) and mistaken identities. With his snooty temperament and lone-wolf lifestyle, the white-haired, Oxford-educated bachelor is a wonderful mismatch with the younger Lewis, a married man with a family and a rather less classical background (Whatley is a Geordie, though Lewis was a Brummie in the book). There's a quiet undercurrent of affection and respect almost from their first meeting that builds with each continuing Inspector Morse mystery, as well as an air of melancholia and loneliness beautifully developed in the script by future Oscar-winning writer/director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient). Morse's initial theories may be washouts (a series hallmark), but his relentless sleuthing, eye for clues and mind for puzzles dredges up the answer in the end, even as he loses the girl. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
Includes the seminal chillers: Die Screaming Marianne (1971) Marianne following the sudden death of her mother stands to inherit the family fortune along with several documents that could incriminate her corrupt judge of a father. Now her sister and her father both want their hands on Marianne's inheritance and they'll stop at nothing even murder to get it! House Of Whipcord (1974) A bizarre correctional institute is set up by a small group of people disillusioned
Adapted from Evelyn Waugh's Jazz Age satire, A Handful of Dust is a brutal story of a failed marriage with shattering consquences. James Wilby stars as a country gentleman, Tony Last, who loves rattling around his expansive estate, Hetton Abbey. Tony's wife, Brenda (Kristin Scott Thomas), however, pines for London's excitement and commences an affair in the city with penniless aristocrat John Beaver (Rupert Graves). The fallout of Brenda's betrayal includes a family tragedy and creative divorce settlement ultimately undone when fed-up Tony goes on a naturalist trek through Brazil and becomes the hostage of a mad, illiterate explorer (Alec Guinness). One might wonder whether it's more appropriate to laugh or tremble at these events, and director Charles Sturridge's handsome, graceful production ingeniously accommodates the story's streaks of dark comedy and horror. With brief, memorable supporting roles for Anjelica Huston and Stephen Fry.----Tom Keogh
As far as Disney is concerned, The Sword in the Stone was a portent of things to come, with slapstick upstaging storytelling, and cultural in-jokes substituting for wonder. Based on TH White's beloved novel The Once and Future King, this Disney version chronicles King Arthur's boyish adventures. There's much to enjoy here as coach Merlin the magician shows the young Arthur, nicknamed Wart, the skills that will help him become the future ruler of the Britons. The transformation sequences, where the boy is turned into a fish, a bird and a squirrel are vintage Disney. The oft-repeated scene of Merlin battling it out with mean old Madame Mim still is worth a few chuckles, but it underlines the problem with most of the film--most of its scenes are only played for laughs. References by Merlin to television and other items of modern life also mar the generally innocuous landscape. Younger children will like it, while older kids will find it slower compared with recent Disney films. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com
Craig Sterling (Damon) Sharron Macready (Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (Gaunt) are agents for an international intelligence organisation called NEMESIS. After a plane crash and being rescued by an unknown civilisation the trio make their way back Geneva to continue their work only to discover they have mysteriously developed super-human abilities like telepathy amazing memories and abnormal strengths. Instead of telling anyone about these developments they keep their secret quiet but use their new powers to help complete a range of dangerous assignments... This 8 DVD box set features all 30 episodes from the ITC series The Champions. Episodes Comprise: 1. The Beginning 2. The Invisible Man 3. Reply Box No. 666 4. The Experiment 5. Happening 6. Operation Deep-Freeze 7. The Survivors 8. To Trap A Rat 9. The Iron Man 10. The Ghost Plane 11. The Dark Island 12. The Fanatics 13. Twelve Hours 14. The Search 15. The Gilded Cage 16. Shadow of the Panther 17. A Case of Lemmings 18. The Interrogation 19. The Mission 20. The Silent Enemy 21. The Body Snatchers 22. Get Me Out Of Here! 23. The Night People 24. Project Zero 25. Desert Journey 26. Full Circle 27. Nutcracker 28. The Final Countdown 29. The Gun-Runners 30. Autokill
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