Journey to the rough n' rowdy West and join the misadventures of two outlaws as every episode of Alias Smith and Jones comes to DVD! Kid Curry (Ben Murphy) and Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) are two ex-bandits who just want to walk the straight and narrow. But before the governor will give them amnesty, they're going to have to live their lives as Thaddeus Jones and Joshua Smith, avoid the bounty hunters on their old personas! Created by Glen Larson (Magnum P.I., Knightrider, Buck Rogers) the inspired TV version of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
With a remarkable cast headlined by Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry Thomas, WWII army comedy Private's Progress was one of the major British hits of 1956. Carmichael is Stanley Windrush, a naïve young soldier who during training falls in with the streetwise Private Cox (Attenborough). Windrush's uncle is the even more ambitiously corrupt Colonel Tracepurcel (Price), who plans to divert the war effort to liberate art treasures already looted by the Germans. The first half of the film is quite pedestrian, though the pace picks up considerably once the heist gets underway, and the cheery tone masks a really rather dark and cynical heart. Carmichael's innocent abroad quickly wears thin, but Attenborough and Price steal the film, as well as the paintings, with typically excellent turns. With a nod in the direction of Ealing's The Ladykillers (1955) the film also anticipates the attitudes of both The League of Gentlemen (1959) and Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22 (1961), though lacks the latter's greater sophistication. The cast also contains such British stalwarts as William Hartnell, Peter Jones, Ian Bannen, John Le Mesurier, Christopher Lee and David Lodge, and was sufficiently popular to reunite all the major players for the superior sequel, I'm Alright Jack (1959). On the DVD: Private's Progress is presented in black and white at 4:3 Academy ratio, though the film appears to have been shot full frame and then unmasked for home viewing so there is more top and bottom to the images than at the cinema. The print used shows constant minor damage and is quite grainy, though no more than expected for a low-budget film of the time. The mono sound is average and unremarkable, and there are no special features. --Gary S Dalkin
This morning they were playing ping-pong in the hospital rec room. Now they're lost in New York and framed for murder. This was never covered in group therapy. Michael Keaton heads an all-star cast in this irresistible comedy about four mental patients who are seperated from their therapist on the way to a baseball game. A chronic liar with a violent streak Billy (Michael Keaton) finds himself on the loose in New York City with his fellow group-therapy patients: Henry (Chri
Set in the Second World War when Nazi Germany occupied Italy. This film deals with the Vatican's involvement in the entire movement during the occupation of Rome.
Barry McKenzie a loud-mouthed sex crazed innocent travels to London to get a cultural education. His Aunt Edna Everidge accompanies him to keep him out of harm's way. Barry's adventures take him from the Australian colony of Earl's Court to Rickmansworth and the strange perversions of England's upper classes then along the hippie trail meeting the swindlers of the British music industry before landing him back in London this time among the poofters and lezzas of Notting Hill.
This box-office hit from 1969 is an important pioneer of the American independent cinema movement, and a generational touchstone to boot. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play hippie motorcyclists crossing the Southwest and encountering a crazy quilt of good and bad people. Jack Nicholson turns up in a significant role as an attorney who joins their quest for awhile and articulates society's problem with freedom as Fonda's and Hopper's characters embody it. Hopper directed, essentially bringing the no-frills filmmaking methods of legendary, drive-in movie producer Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors) to a serious feature for the mainstream. The film can't help but look a bit dated now (a psychedelic sequence toward the end particularly doesn't hold up well) but it retains its original power, sense of daring and epochal impact. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Rocky Colt and Tum Tum find themselves in action again as they get drawn into a struggle between an American Indian tribe and a ruthless businessman who is dumping toxic waste on their land.
Bernardo Bertolucci does the nearly impossible with this sweeping, grand epic that tells a very personal tale. The story is a dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the emperors of China. It follows his life from its elite beginnings in the Forbidden City, where he was crowned at age three and worshipped by half a billion people. He was later forced to abdicate and, unable to fend for himself in the outside world, became a dissolute and exploited shell of a man. He died in obscurity, living as a peasant in the People's Republic. We never really warm up to John Lone in the title role, but The Last Emperor focuses more on visuals than characterisation anyway. Filmed in the Forbidden City, it is spectacularly beautiful, filling the screen with saturated colours and exquisite detail. It won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. --Rochelle O'Gorman
In 1957's The Naked Truth Terry Thomas plays a dodgy peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton by a gutter press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). One fascinating element in this picture is the portrayal of those relationships that could be only suggested in a period of tighter censorship, such as Peter Sellers' TV personality and Kenneth Griffith as his dresser, whose gay relationship is only faintly etched in here. More overt is the characterisation of a masculine looking authoress, known only by her initials, but sporting Agatha Christie's hairdo. The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee, as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. On the DVD: The Naked Truth comes to DVD in 4:3 ratio and with a mono soundtrack. The only extra feature is a trailer. More TT tomfoolery can be found in the three-disc Terry Thomas Collection. --Adrian Edwards
Jon Voight heads an all star cast as feared and revered ex-Ranger Captain Woodrow Call seizes his dream to drive a herd of mustang from texas to Montana. Barbara Hershey Rick Schroder Lois Gossett Jr. William Petersen and Oliver Reed hit the saddle as Captain Call's single vision unites them all in a powerful struggle against hustlers Indian warriors each other and the volatile wilds of the West itself in a fight that's far more than a dream; it's their destiny...
Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) is searching for a wife. Because of a complicated situation he needs a mate so he can qualify as king of the land. The 3-foot-tall despot has already banished all the fairy tale characters from his land resulting in a diaspora of familiar bedtime figures. Shrek (Mike Myers) and the obnoxious Donkey (Eddie Murphy) factor in when Farquaad concludes that he needs dragon-slaying assistance. The woman he wants is the beautiful Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) who's imprisoned in a castle by said dragon. To cut a deal to keep his house the antisocial Shrek accepts the mission except he falls in love with the princess he's been ordered to find!
Marilyn Monroe sizzles in this tense masterful thriller. While the seductive Rose Loomis (Monroe) and her husband George (Joseph Cotten) vacation in a charming guest cabin at spectacular Niagara Falls Rose and her lover plot to kill George. But things go terribly wrong and soon an innocent honeymooning couple find themselves swept up in the crime.
This box-office hit from 1969 is an important pioneer of the American independent cinema movement, and a generational touchstone to boot. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play hippie motorcyclists crossing the Southwest and encountering a crazy quilt of good and bad people. Jack Nicholson turns up in a significant role as an attorney who joins their quest for awhile and articulates society's problem with freedom as Fonda's and Hopper's characters embody it. Hopper directed, essentially bringing the no-frills filmmaking methods of legendary, drive-in movie producer Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors) to a serious feature for the mainstream. The film can't help but look a bit dated now (a psychedelic sequence toward the end particularly doesn't hold up well) but it retains its original power, sense of daring and epochal impact. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
The hit of the 1969-1970 season, Department S was an attempt on the part of television company ITC to create a "with-it" follow-up to the The Saint and Man in a Suitcase series which were starting to look staid by then. The department of the title is notionally part of Interpol, a group managed by the first of many black TV top cops (here Denis Albana Peters), and assigned all the bizarre cases The Avengers hadn't handled. Often they would come up against modern variations on the classic "locked-room" or "paradox" mysteries so favoured in crime fiction, mysteries which verge on the sort of phenomena The X Files would later specialise in (except no aliens appear in Department S). The supposed leads are Action-Man-type Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) and English-rose computer whiz Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nichols), but the break-out character is the flamboyant Jason King (Peter Wyngarde), a mystery writer and puzzle-solver notable for his Fu Manchu facial hair and an enormous wardrobe of safari suits, ruffled shirts, flared trousers and velvet jackets. King was the only male character on TV to be as fashion-conscious as the Avengers girls, and his preening peacock attitudes--along with the scripts' above-average mysteries--made this essential viewing for the Age of Aquarius. Volume One includes the following episodes: "Six Days", in which a missing airliner turns up but the passengers have no idea that they've lost six days, with Peter Bowles; and "The Trojan Tanker", in which a mystery woman is found in a luxury suite concealed inside an oil tanker, with Simon (Doomwatch) Oates. --Kim Newman
Released to box-office indifference in 1986, Manhunter introduced Hannibal Lecter and established the rules of the modern race to find serial killer thriller five years before The Silence of the Lambs packed cinemas everywhere. This was Michael Mann's third feature, reuniting William L Petersen and Dennis Farina from his debut Thief (1981) as FBI agents hunting the killer dubbed "The Tooth Fairy". Petersen's Will Graham is the man who put Lecktor (as it is spelt here) behind bars, and as in Lambs consults with the Doctor, played with understated malevolence by Brian Cox. Manhunter is an exceptionally well-photographed film: Mann's regular cinematographer Dante Spinotti created sparse, elegantly framed, often mono-chromatically lit compositions which are essential to the shifting psychological moods. The performances are very good, and the typically 1980s, Vangelis-esque electronic score effectively sustains tension. Once the killer is introduced the scenes with Joan Allen have a genuinely unsettling, almost surreal quality. There is at least one serious plot flaw--how does "The Red Dragon" get his letter to Lecktor? Manhunter never packs the sheer excitement of Lambs, nevertheless, it is a powerful and compelling thriller which remains far superior to the third instalment in the series, Hannibal (2001). On the DVD: In addition to the trailer there is a revealing 10-minute conversation with Dante Spinotti in which he explains how he created the very distinctive look of Manhunter. Also included is a more general 17-minute retrospective "making-of" documentary. This is good but too short, the extras failing to live up to the wealth of material on the Lambs and Hannibal DVDs. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 image is generally very good, being just a little soft in one or two early scenes. The sound is listed as Dolby Digital 5.1, but appears to replicate the main stereo signal in the rear channels. Audio is none the less powerful and clear, though lacks the sheer edge and atmospherics of some more recent thrillers. --Gary S Dalkin
Though he gets solo above-the-title billing, Will Hay was no more a solo comedian than Groucho Marx. Teamed with sidekicks Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt the trio formed one of British cinema's greatest comedy gangs. Oh, Mr Porter!, one of their finest vehicles, finds Hay as congenial William Porter, an inept railway worker who is shunted off to the dead-end job of stationmaster in Buggleskelly, Northern Ireland. The delight of the film is in the interplay between Hay and Marriott, the single-toothed dotty old-timer, and Moffatt, the chubby smart kid, as they fail the most basic requirements of their jobs but come up trumps when investigating the ghost of One-Eyed Joe and his haunted mill. --Kim Newman One of Will Hay's brisker comic efforts, 1936's Convict 99 sees Dr Benjamin Twist, Hay's clueless schoolmaster, caught in a case of mistaken identity and invited to head up a prison for especially hard-boiled criminals. It's a typical outtake from Hay's bizarrely lawless universe in which, for all his harrumphing and bluster, he's unable to exercise any sort of discipline whatsoever over the men in his charge. Hay plays exactly the same character from film to film, one so ill-equipped for any situation he's equally suited for all. Whereas Twist is an incompetent who somehow muddles through, Hay the comic actor is a master of timing and double-takes who knows precisely how to create the air of a shambles. --David Stubbs
Set in a strange, colourful land populated by fairy tale characters, Shrek is a hilarious comedy that will win over audiences of children and adults alike. Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is a fearsome green ogre living in isolation in his own cosy little swamp. He is not receptive to visitors, and fends off the occasional party of torch-wielding villagers with ease. But when the power-hungry Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) turns Shrek's swamp into a relocation camp for dozens of banished fairy-tale characters (including some pesky dwarves, wolves, and fairies) Shrek's quiet, introverted life is ruined. Joined by the talkative Donkey (Eddie Murphy), Shrek makes his way to Farquaad's realm of Duloc, where the Lord promises to make Shrek an offer: He will rid Shrek's land of the unwanted visitors if Shrek will go on a simple quest to free Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from her remote, dragon-guarded castle and convince her to marry Farquaad. On their quest, Shrek and Donkey run into a number of bizarre situations, and Shrek finds himself realising that he isn't quite the fearsome monster he has always made himself out to be. Reinventing the traditional fairy tale adventure, Shrek features gorgeous computer animation, a unique sense of humour, and compelling characters - especially Murphy's lovable Donkey.
Hedonism isn't just for breakfast anymore. Or so learns TV commercial director Paul (Peter Fonda) on his first LSD trip: a mind-blowing passage through surreal images and stroboscopic light shows... Written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman 'The Trip' takes you to a whole new world of extreme beauty and sheer terror on a passport the size of a stamp!
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