"Actor: Paul Sh"

• Puccini - La Boheme (Levine, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra) | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £13.58   |  Saving you £0.40 (3.78%)   |  RRP £10.99

  Puccini - La Boheme (Levine Metropolitan Opera Orchestra)

• Sex Pistols - The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle | DVD | (13/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sex Pistols star in Julien Temple's at times surreal at times hilarious factional documentary that charts the rise and fall of punk's most notorious band through the eyes of its calculating and grandiose manager Malcolm McLaren played here with full Machiavellian swagger. Written and directed by Temple whilst he was still a film student it mixes animation and midgets with footage of some of the Sex Pistols' most electrifying live performances. Originally released in UK theatres in 1980 the film presents the band's success as an elaborate scam perpetrated by McLaren to make ""a million pounds"" at the expense of record companies outraged moralists the British Royal Family - and even the fans and band members themselves. As the film's original tagline stated The Great Rock Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is the film that incriminated its audience. As the brief but beautiful period of punk rock is now as far away from 2007 as 1976/77 was from the end of World War 2 it will be hard for anyone under 35 to comprehend just how shocking this film was and the incredible controversy it caused as depressed Britain blighted by inner city riots and waking to the birth of Thatcherism lurched into the Eighties. However watching it again it is still immensely powerful just as riveting still retains the capability to shock and is as valid now as it was then. More than 25 years after their break-up the Sex Pistols' music continues to influence punk and post-punk bands the world over - and The Great Rock Rock 'n' Roll Swindle shows why. It helped add to the band's already riotous reputation with scenes of Sid Vicious attacking a Parisienne prostitute (with a French tart) the subversive Queen's Silver Jubilee Day concert on the Thames in 1977 their infamous appearance on the ""Bill Grundy Show"" and underage female nudity. It even had to contend with the death of Sid Vicious who died between the ending of filming and its theatrical release. But it is the Sex Pistols music that emerges as the films biggest star: performances of ""Anarchy In The UK"" ""God Save The Queen"" and ""Holidays In The Sun"" are mesmeric while Vicious' ""My Way"" maintains an air of tragedy and exquisiteness at once. Tenpole Tudor (ingeniously called ""Tadpole"" by Irene Handl in the film) weighs in with vocals on ""Who Killed Bambi"" and ""Rock Around The Clock"" and even on-the-run Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs turns up to sing on ""No One Is Innocent"" and ""Belsen Vos A Gasser"". Having spawned the phrase ""making cash from chaos"" it's worth remembering that the Sex Pistols were voted the ""1977 Young Businessmen of the Year"" by their antitheses in the City of London..

• Rounders | DVD | (07/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A little drunk on its own arcane exotica as a gambling movie, Rounders is a film that takes us inside a world of high-stakes card players but falls short on such essentials as character development and relationships. Still, it is a real curiosity, written by a couple of guys (David Levien and Brian Koppelman) who appear to know something about the dark underbelly of card hustling for fun and profit. Matt Damon stars as a reluctant law student who can't put aside his subterranean career of playing poker and blackjack for big money. After he loses his post-grad nest egg to a weird Russian kingpin (John Malkovich)--and also loses his disgusted girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) in the process--Damon's character turns to an unreliable old buddy (Edward Norton) for a dangerous game of sharking wherever there happens to be a game underway: frat boys, cops, bad dudes, you name it. Norton appears to be living out every young actor's fantasy of re-creating Robert De Niro's prot! otypical head case in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and while his performance is burdened by obvious quotation marks, his estimable talent still shines through. Damon's charm and intelligence bring some oomph to the curiously flat proceedings, and while his hushed, soul-bearing scenes with Martin Landau (as a law professor who takes a shine to the kid) seem gratuitous, they're still nice to watch. Behind all this is director John Dahl (Red Rock West), who is not exactly at the top of his game here but who brings his distinctive toughness to the crime-noir tone.--Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• A Beautiful Mind | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £4.98   |  Saving you £20.01 (401.81%)   |  RRP £24.99

  A Beautiful Mind is an award-winning movie if ever there was one. This biopic of mathematician John Forbes Nash is two parts Shine to one part Good Will Hunting. Scripted by Akiva Goldsman (Lost in Space) and directed by Ron Howard (The Grinch)--both trying to get sincere and serious after previous movies--it showcases a big, compelling performance from Russell Crowe as a genius whose eccentricities turn out to be down to a genuine mental illness. Though his early work as a student offered a breakthrough that eventually won him the 1994 Nobel Prize, Nash goes off the deep end in later life. The film works better in the early paranoid stretches--which include a wonderful 1950s spy movie parody as Nash is sucked into an imagined world of fighting commie atom spies--than it does with the inspirational ending, where Nash’s handicaps are overcome so he can triumph at the end. Crowe's genuinely fine work still seems a bit Shine/Rain Man/Forrest Gump-ish in mannerism, yet experience shows this can be a powerful career move. Crowe gains sterling support from Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Paul Bettany and Christopher Plummer--some playing a mere character in Nash’s world. --Kim Newman

• Rawhide: The Complete Series | DVD | (11/08/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Scorpio | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £15.23   |  Saving you £-2.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Though not quite a classic, director Michael Winner's Scorpio is still an underrated espionage thriller that was well attuned to the political cynicism of its time. Burt Lancaster plays Cross, a CIA operative who dates back to the agency's earliest days as the OSS. Scorpio (Alain Delon) is a protégé of Cross, and one of Cross's best friends in a netherworld where everyone's allegiances, personal and political, are in question. Higher-ups within the intelligence agency decide that Cross knows too much and is better off eliminated; at first, Scorpio refuses the job until the CIA frames him on a phoney narcotics bust and coerces him into the assignment. The two men play a game of global cat-and-mouse as Cross consorts with his Russian counterparts--fellow ageing dinosaurs in a young man's game. Cross's links with the Russians go back to the days of the Spanish Civil War and the time when Cross was given the ironic label of "premature anti-Fascist" by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The incredibly convoluted plot is rife with double-crosses and reverse double-crosses, in an environment in which nothing is quite as it seems and no one is to be trusted. Winner infuses enough energy and excitement into the film's many action segments to make Scorpio worthy of comparison to John Frankenheimer's best political thrillers. The director also throws in several curveballs, such as the zither music during a meeting in a Vienna café (shades of The Third Man) and the preposterous device of disguising Lancaster as an African-American priest. The best line must be "I want Cross, and I want him burned!" --Jerry Renshaw

• Party At The Palace | DVD | (01/07/2002) from £11.30   |  Saving you £8.69 (76.90%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Party At The Palace starts with Queen Guitarist Brian May--who looks more than ever like a haircut with a person growing from beneath it--playing "God Save The Queen" on the roof of Buckingham Palace; seemingly missing the point of his obvious inspiration, Jimi Hendrix's apocalyptic subversion of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. Unbelievably, and theoretically impossibly, it goes downhill from there. It can only be assumed that the bill for the Queen's Jubilee was assembled by an ardent republican. The concert is a motley assortment of has-beens and time-wasters, a curious number of whom felt it proper to celebrate the monarch's 50 years by singing old Motown songs badly. The concert also features an extended plug for Queen's (that's the Band) risible musical We Will Rock You and Lenny Henry shouting. Bewilderingly Party At The Palace is not only redeemed, but made worth owning, by the four-song set by Brian Wilson with his version of "God Only Knows"--accompanied by Andrea Corr—-offering a heartbreakingly earnest performance. The concert ends with a pantomime version of "All You Need Is Love". Party At The Palace is the night rock & roll gave up. On the DVD: Party at the Palace is presented in 16:9 format. Songs can be selected by title or by artist. There are subtitles in French, German and Spanish. Proceeds from the sale of the DVD, "after the deduction of costs and expenses in relation to its production and distribution", will be donated to the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Trust. --Andrew Muller

• Prime Suspect 5 - Errors Of Judgement | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison has been transferred to Manchester and finds herself in a world she does not know surrounded by people she cannot trust and invloved with a man she cannot have. Her latest case is destined only to make things worse...

• Just Good Friends - Series 1 And 2 | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Episodes from John Sullivan's comedy series in which East End bookmaker Vince Pinner (Nicholas) who thinks he is Gods gift to women may just have met his match in up-market girl Penny Warender (Francis)... Contains all 14 episodes from Series One and Two.

• Fortress 2 | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  7 years on from the original Fortress movie, Brennick and his family are still on the run from the Mental corporation.

• The Complete First of the Summer Wine | DVD | (06/08/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £26.99

  A prequel to Roy Clarke's original Last of the Summer Wine and featuring Peter Sallis, First of the Summer Wine takes place in a small Yorkshire village.The action revolves around the antics of the young Compo, Clegg and Seymour and their usually level-headed female counterparts, all of whom are grappling with the world around them, their youth, and their experiences with the opposite sex - usually with hilarious consequences.Set between May and September 1939 as Hitler's Nazi Germany and Great Britain become increasingly poised for war the characters' lives are about to be changed forever.This four disc set contains both series and the pilot episode.

• In Dreams | DVD | (29/01/2001) from £22.27   |  Saving you £-2.28 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Anyone who has seen and loved Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves should feel right at home in his offbeat psychological thriller In Dreams. A sexy, very adult take on "Little Red Riding Hood", Wolves unreeled as a series of surreal fairy tales interwoven within the heated dreams of a young girl verging on womanhood. The film's patron saints were Freud and Jung (as sifted through Jordan's wickedly fertile imagination), and the duo is very much aboard for In Dreams as well. Here's a film that takes place entirely in dreamtime, where the dark, violent fantasies of Claire Cooper (Annette Bening)--wife, mother and illustrator of children's books--play out unpoliced by superego, conscience or society. On the face of it, Claire's a clairvoyant whose mind becomes more and more possessed by child-killer Vivian Thompson (Robert Downey Jr.). Cops and shrinks refuse to take her seriously until she loses her own daughter and much, much more. Tapping into weird images of her soulmate's childhood, when he was abused by a hateful mother in a house now submerged in a nearby reservoir, Claire comes closer and closer to her gender-shifting bad boy (and his latest victim). From start to finish, In Dreams dwells in hyper-reality. Whether leeched of or drenched in colour, slipping eerily through an underwater world, rushing madly toward catastrophe--every hallucinatory shot is saturated with menace. It's the kind of potent, unresolved menace that haunts your waking day after a particularly unsettling nightmare. Watch this gorgeous film through Claire's mind, where she and her murderous doppelganger act out a terrible Oedipal drama driven by sex and jealousy. Bening and Downey deliver superb, risky performances, and Darius Khondji's cinematography, with almost every frame punctuated by blood-reds, is sensuously dreamlike. In Dreams is one of those great, flawed films that reaches for more than it ultimately achieves. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com

• Orson Welles - Screen Legends | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  What more is there to say about Orson Welles? One of the most talented and enigmatic artists that Hollywood has ever seen this box set gathers several films in his oeuvre for your viewing pleasure. Citizen Kane (Dir. Orson Welles 1941): 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 hai

• Doctor Who - The Movie | DVD | (13/08/2001) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made to re-launch television's most famous time traveller, Doctor Who: The Movie is an expensive feature-length episode which attempts to continue the classic series and work as a stand-alone film. Transporting the remains of the Master, Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor is diverted to San Francisco in 1999. Regenerating in the form of Paul McGann, the Doctor gains a new companion in heart surgeon Dr Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) and must stop the Master from destroying the world. All of which might have been fine, had not the most eccentrically British of programmes been almost entirely assimilated by the requirements of American network broadcasting. Matthew Jacobs' screenplay is literally nonsense, dependent on arbitrary, unexplained events while introducing numerous elements that contradict established Doctor Who mythology. The Tardis is re-imagined as a bizarre pre-Raphaelite/Gothic folly, while the Doctor, now half-human, becomes romantically involved with his lady companion. From the West Coast setting to metallic CGI morphing, from the look of Eric Roberts as the Master to a motorcycle/truck freeway chase, director Geoffrey Sax borrows freely from James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Doctor Who fans should feel relieved this travesty was not successful enough to lead to lead to a series, though McGann himself does have the potential to make a fine Doctor. This is the slightly more violent US TV edit, rather than the cut version previously released on video. On the DVD: There are two BBC trailers and a Fox promo "introducing the Doctor" to American audiences. The interview section features Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Eric Roberts, Daphne Ashbrook, director Geoffrey Sax and executive producer Philip Segal, twice. The main interviews are on-set promotional sound-bites. However, Segal's second interview was filmed in 2001 and finds him spending 10 minutes explaining why the programme turned out as it did, and coming very close to apologising for it. He also offers a two-minute tour of the new Tardis set. Alongside a gallery of 50 promotional stills is a four-minute compilation of behind-the-scenes "making of" footage. There are alternative versions of two scenes, though the "Puccini!" scene is so short as to be pointless. As usual with Doctor Who DVDs there are optional production subtitles and these offer a wealth of background information. Four songs used in the film are available as separate audio tracks, and John Debney's musical score can be listened to in isolation. Finally there is a commentary track by Geoffrey Sax, which contains some interesting material but does tend to state the obvious a lot. The sound is very strong stereo and the 4:3 picture is excellent with only the slightest grain. --Gary S Dalkin

• Utopia - Series 1 | Blu Ray | (11/03/2013) from £11.98   |  Saving you £15.00 (150.15%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Utopia is a cult graphic novel rumoured to have predicted the worst disasters of the late twentieth century. Dismissed as the fevered imaginings of a madman by most, and idolised by a handful, only one thing seems certain about Utopia: come into contact with it and you won't be safe for long. When a small group of normal people, including survivalist geek Wilson Wilson, Ian an IT consultant, Becky, a post grad student and Grant, an 11 year old boy, find themselves in possession of the manuscript of Utopia, they realise they are at the centre of a nightmarish conspiracy turned real. Targeted by the silent but deadly Arby working for a shadowy organisation known only as The Network, they are left with one option if they want to stay alive: they have to run, avoiding even being caught even on CCTV. The Network is everywhere: in government, in business, in charge. A secret organisation constrained neither by borders nor common morality. Nobody knows what their plan is, just that they will stop at nothing to find the original manuscript of Utopia. And there's one question on everyone's lips...Who is Jessica Hyde? Utopia asks what if the conspiracy nuts are right? What if people are trying to control our lives, doctor our food, experiment upon us, kill us? Fast, terrifying, funny and brutal, you'll be on the edge of your seat wondering if can really trust anyone...?

• The Last Dragon | DVD | (29/08/2005) from £5.38   |  Saving you £14.61 (271.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From the makers of 'Walking With Beasts' comes a documentary look at the mystical creature that is the Dragon. Fantasy becomes reality in this two hour special that imagines what the world would have been like if these incredible fire-breathing creatures actually did exist. Through vivid dramatic recreations stunning computer animation and life like models of internal organs viewers will get to see the Dragon from inside out. Narrated by acting legend Ian Holm.

• Hi-De-Hi - Series 1 And 2 | DVD | (03/03/2003) from £5.09   |  Saving you £19.90 (390.96%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The Hi-De-Hi! gang is in for a big surprise at the start of the new holiday season when Jeffrey Fairbrother (Simon Cadell) becomes head of entertainment at Maplin's Holiday Camp. Gladys Pugh (Ruth Madoc) can't take her eyes off him and wannabe Yellowcoat Peggy (Su Pollard) looks like she might get her dream job. But what's in store for the campers? This release features every episode from Series One and Two of Hi-De-Hi!. Episode titles: Desire In The Mickey Mouse Grotto The Bea

• House Of Wax | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Car troubles and a spooky waxworks museum spell trouble for a gang of US teens in this horror re-make.

• Kidnapped | DVD | (23/05/2005) from £5.25   |  Saving you £-1.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  In the politically divided Scotland of 1751 orphaned Davie Balfour leaves the peace of his idyllic Lowland home to seek out his inheritance from his estranged uncle. But before he can claim his rightful fortune young Davie is launched on an extraordinary and amazing adventure where he must battle with slave-traders evade capture by the British army's finest troops and learn some harsh truths about himself along the way' Fortunately for Davie he is helped in his quest by the one ma

• Poldark - Series 1 - Part 1 | DVD | (05/05/2003) from £4.54   |  Saving you £13.45 (296.26%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Welcome to Cornwall England's westernmost county. The year is 1780 and the political and social atmosphere is as stormy as the sea that pounds the rocky shores. Into this landscape Captain Ross Poldark (Robin Ellis) returns from the American war to take up his inheritance and take up with his beloved Elizabeth (Jill Townsend). But with false reports of his death having reached Cornwall ahead of him what will he find? And what of the young urchin Demelza (Angharad Rees) the new ho