This is the universally acknowledged grandaddy of all Star Wars parodies and the only film to feature flying steam iron spaceships and 'Dynaspace' sound! It's time you were reunited with your old friends and fiends Fluke Starbucker Augie Ben Doggie Princess Ann-Droid Ham Salad and the evil Darf Nader!
A performance by the Paris National Opera Company choreographed by John Neumeier. Recorded at the Opera National De Paris in March 2005.
In 1987 moviegoers had yet to be crushed under the weight of the 1990s TV remake mania, and Dragnet comes off as fresh and funny. The line between parody and tribute can be hard to draw, but any marginally hip baby boomer who has ever watched Jack Webb's straight-laced Detective Joe Friday caught a glimmer of the comedic vein waiting to be mined beneath Dragnet's gritty Los Angeles streets. Dan Aykroyd plays Joe Friday, the straight-arrow nephew of Webb's iconic cop. This part was made for him (in fact, he's given top writing credit), and under his steely exterior you can tell he's having a ball delivering those rapid-fire recitations of regulations and deadpan expressions of moral outrage. Tom Hanks plays Pep Streebek, the laissez-faire narco agent who is Friday's new partner. Their assignment: bust the Pagans, a wild-and-woolly gang of dope fiends, deadbeats, and beatniks behind a bewildering array of bizarre robberies. Hilarity ensues. Friday and Streebek outfox a corrupt televangelist (Christopher Plummer), bicker over chili dogs and cigarettes, alternately revile and fawn over a porn millionaire (Dabney Coleman), wrestle a 30-foot-long anaconda, and rescue the virgin Connie Swail--the only girl capable of stealing Friday's heart. --Grant Balfour, Amazon.com
B.E.I.N.G
As the Nadesico heads for Mars and a deadly encounter with the Jovian menace new recruits a tragic death an enemy ambush a budding romance and a frantic battle all spice up the plot as the action really begins to heat up. Is it a recipe for disaster or mankind's last hope for salvation?
Featuring all 26 episodes from the fourth series of The Adventures Of Robin Hood. Episodes comprise: 1. Sybella 2. The Flying Sorcerer 3. The Lady-Killer 4. A Touch Of Fever 5. The Devil You Don't Know 6. The Loaf 7. Six Strings To His Bow 8. Tuck's Love Day 9. A Bushel Of Apples 10. The Truce 11. The Debt 12. The Oath 13. The Charm Pedlar 14. Goodbye Little John 15. The Reluctant Rebel 16. The Bagpiper 17. The Parting Guest 18. Hostage For A Hangman 19. Hue And Cry 20. The C
HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT is part of a four-part movie series made for Italian television under the umbrella title House of Doom. Legendary Italian horror maestros Umberto Lenzi and Lucio Fulci each contributed two films for the series: Lenzi made HOUSE OF LOST SOULS and HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT while Fulci offered HOUSE OF CLOCKS and SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS. Lenzi's second contribution to the series centres on a young man with a recurring nightmare in which he is running away from a pursuer and reaches the shelter of an old house only to have an ugly old woman boil his head in a big kettle. Sensing his underlying stress and anxiety his girlfriend suggests he take a relaxing holiday and the two drive to an old estate that belongs to her family. The nightmarish chills become reality when the young man reaches the house and realizes it's the same one from his dream...Lenzi refrains from his usual gore and splatter style and instead delivers an almost old-fashioned story bathed in chilling atmosphere and classic Freudian fears of witchcraft and haunted houses.
Leave it to Czech director Milos Forman (One Flew Over to Cuckoo's Nest) to make the most entertaining and offbeat celebration of the American Constitution ever filmed. You think the First Amendment was designed to protect Americans from offensive speech? Think again. The real glory of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--as brought to life in this splendidly quirky and alternately reverent and irreverent comedy--is that it ensures everyone's freedom by protecting a whole range of expression, from the banal to the outrageous. Scripted by the writers of Ed Wood (another affectionately twisted biography of a disreputably eccentric entertainment figure), The People vs. Larry Flynt applies a similar sort of exaggerated and telescoped editorial-cartoon sensibility to the wild life and times of Hustler skin-magazine publisher Larry Flynt. It's the great (and fictionalised-but-true) American story of how smut-peddler Flynt--the poor man's redneck Hugh Hefner--ended up appealing a libel case (brought by televangelist Jerry Falwell) to the Supreme Court and winning a major legal victory that affects all Americans. Terrific performances by Woody Harrelson as Flynt, grunge-star-turned-glamour-puss Courtney Love as his wife Althea, and Edward Norton as their lawyer (a composite character). --Jim Emerson
When Julie Ashbrook (Georgia Hatzis) helps her father fix up a hopelessly run-down house she is clearly unaware of the horrors that are about to follow. As her father leaves for other business in town she is plagued by bizarre phenomena. She calls up three of her friends to keep her company in the old run-down house. Supernatural occurences begin to haunt the friends and the situation becomes even more haunting when Julie's father returns from town only to be killed by a mysterious
Based on the series of novels written by Dorothy L Sayers in the 1920s and 30s, Lord Peter Wimsey was dramatised for TV by the BBC between 1972-5. Ian Carmichael, veteran of British film comedy, played the genial, aristocratic sleuth; Glyn Houston was his manservant Bunter. The pair are similar to PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Bertie Wooster (whom Carmichael played in an earlier TV adaptation) though here the duo are equal in intelligence, breezing about the country together in Wimsey's Bentley and stumbling with morbid regularity upon baffling murder mysteries to test their wits. Those for whom this series forms hazy memories of childhood might be surprised at its somewhat stagy, lingering interior shots, the spartan paucity of music, the miserly attitude towards locations, especially foreign ones, and the rather genteel, leisurely pace of these programmes, besides which Inspector Morse seems like Quentin Tarantino in comparison. It seems that initially the BBC was reluctant to commission the series and ventured on production with a wary eye on the budget. The Britain depicted by Sayers is, by and large, populated by either the upper classes or heavily accented, rum-do-and-no-mistake lower orders, which some might find consoling. However, the acting is generally excellent and the murder mysteries are sophisticated parlour games, the televisual equivalent of a good, absorbing jigsaw puzzle. There were five feature-length adaptations in all. "Clouds of Witness" sees Wimsey investigate the death of his brother the Duke of Denver's fiancée. --David Stubbs
A triple bill of classic Luis Bunuel films, comprising 'That Obscure Object Of Desire', 'Phantom Of Liberty' and 'The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie'. That Obscure Object Of Desire: A passenger on a train pours a bucket of water over a young girl at the platform. Seemingly a random act, the man recounts in flashback how he came to be so obsessed with the girl... Phantom Of Liberty: Perhaps Bunuel's most surreal film, consisting of a series of loosely realted vignettes. <...
Paul Horbiger movingly portrays the real-life Canio on whom the opera was based. In the opera's premiere Gigli is the Canio. The express the drama he colours his voice far more than any other Canio on film or record.The music in the film breathes beautifully presumably thanks to the conducting of the legendary Luigi Ricci. This is a rare recorded example of his work. (He is remembered as a coach to Gigli Olivero and others and was a composer in his own right).
Michel Gondry is one of the coolest indie directors on the planet. From music videos for Daft Punk & Bjork to feature film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starring Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey he has turned his hand to capturing the best of quirk. Now in The Thorn In The Heart Gondry turns his camera to a more intimate and personal subject his aunt Suzette teacher mother and matriach. In a warm but ultimately dramatic documentary he exposes secrets and emotions that run through all families.
Shot on the streets of Kingston and set to a rich reggae score by Sly and Robbie, the highest grossing film in Jamaican cinema (according to the producers) is a simple cops-and-gangsters thriller that drops the usual two-fisted cop clichés into the slums of a developing nation. Charismatic Paul Campbell (who starred in the previous Jamaican hit Dancehall Queen) is Capone, a Jamaican Dirty Harry who wades into shoot-outs with both guns blazing. His maverick reputation lands him in Kingston, his hometown, where he tracks a gun-smuggling scheme to his boyhood friend Ratty (Mark Danvers), now the ambitious right-hand man to the local kingpin. It's a familiar story and the timid script always chooses action over drama. Capone's violent methods are never questioned, even when he's faced with old friends instead of faceless hoods, and he is given unimaginable leeway to shoot his way through the criminal population. Shot on digital video and released to theatres in a smeary-looking transfer, the video release is mastered from the digital source and looks infinitely better than its theatrical incarnation: crisp, bright and vivid. The energetic style helps the picture overcome some of its generic cop-movie clichés, but the real draw is the street grit of clapboard houses, corrugated metal fences and concrete brick homes: the matter-of-fact poverty of Kingston's slums. --Sean Axmaker
Faced with a drought that threatens the existence of their community the village ancients send an inexperienced group of warriors on a search for the mythical lion Vitchua incarnation of the Red God to lift the curse and bring the vital rain back to their people...
A 1950s romantic comedy transported into the end of the swinging 60s, For Love Of Ivy, is an intriguing snapshot of a Hollywood coming to terms with a changing world. Made in 1968, the movie fizzes with the colours of a Day-Glo world and the stark contrast between urban and suburban life at the turn of the decade. The Ivy of the title is a house maid (Abbey Lincoln) who longs to head for those bright lights and give her life more of a purpose, much to the chagrin of the dysfunctional white family that she works for, who set about matchmaking her with suave businessman Jack Parks (Poitier) in an effort to dissuade her. Although initially appearing to play to type, Poitier's character develops both darker and lighter sides as the movie (based on his own story) develops and the film becomes far more interesting when it leaves the semi-comedic scheming behind and focuses on the burgeoning relationship between the two protagonists. To be honest, much on offer here has dated-especially the dialogue-and there are a few sexual and racial howlers, but the film has a sweet heart. On the DVD : Very, very little-scene selection and biographies of Poitier, Beau Bridges and musical director Quincy Jones. Lincoln--arguably the films true star--is totally ignored. The colours and beauty of the film however are given added impact by the crispness of DVD.-Phil Udell
In May of 1941 RKO Radio Pictures released a controversial film by a 25-year-old first-time director. That premier of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane was to have a profound and lasting effect of the art of motion pictures. It has been hailed as the best American film ever made and it's as powerful a film today as it was fifty years ago. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Through its unique jigsaw-puzzle storyline inventive cinemato
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