"Actor: Rodney Bell"

• Mozart: Don Giovanni -- Zurich/Harnoncourt | DVD | (12/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  In this Zurich Opera House staging of Mozart’s darkly comic cautionary fable Don Giovanni the lighting and stage design keep the characters shaded in half-shadow: even Zerlina’s wedding feels like a subdued affair here, and the Don’s banqueting room is a suitably gloomy venue for the Stone Guest’s climactic visit for a spot of dinner and damnation. Both this staging and video director Brian Large’s filming play no tricks with the audience’s expectations, opting for a largely traditional presentation of this tragedy of swaggering bravado, cuckolded lovers and revenge from beyond the grave. Nikolaus Harnoncourt brings all the sensitivity of his historically informed approach to the orchestra pit. Heading a very strong cast are Rodney Gilfry, defiantly strong-voiced but also haughtily handsome as the seducing Don, and Cecilia Bartoli, a mercurial presence as Donna Elvira. Their scenes together crackle and fizz, even when Bartoli’s extremely ripe vibrato contrasts a little uncomfortably with Harnoncourt’s authenticity. Liliana Nikiteanu makes for a pretty, naïve Zerlina, convincingly torn between her Masetto (Oliver Widmer) and the animalistic attraction of the Don. Laszlo Polgar’s Leporello is wheedling and base, but still the inheritor of his master’s charisma; Isabel Rey and Roberto Sacca are solid as the colourless moralists Anna and Ottavio; while Matti Salminen’s powerful Commendatore isn’t expected to do anything more than stand still and declaim. Overall this is an excellent musical performance, unexceptionally staged. On the DVD: Don Giovanni on disc has a good 24-minute "Behind the Scenes" feature, including interviews with Cecilia Bartoli, Harnoncourt, Gilfry and Isabel Rey. There’s also a trailer for other ArtHaus releases. The 16:9 picture sometimes struggles to bring definition to the dimly lit sets; sound though is crisp and clean PCM stereo or Dolby 5.1. There are subtitles in five languages. --Mark Walker

• The Crossing | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £3.94   |  Saving you £-0.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Sam returns home after a lengthy absence to find his girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend. The two friends then end up in a drunken race where the question of who gets the girl will be decided at a train crossing...

• The Jack Bull | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £49.99   |  Saving you £-44.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Jack Bull was produced for and premiered on American television network HBO, but it's easily the most respectable job that feature director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, WarGames) has done in the past two decades. The title refers to a metaphorical Jack Russell terrier that, once it's annoyed enough to close its jaws on something, will hang on to the point of death. This terrier is Myrl Redding (John Cusack), a horse breeder of limited means who has a deeply entrenched sense of justice. His independence galls Henry Ballard (L Q Jones), the crusty land baron out to set his brand on most of the countryside. Ballard insults and cheats Redding several times over and his men beat Redding's Indian horse trainer and friend (Rodney A Grant). When Redding seeks redress from the law, its agents can't be bothered as the local magistrate is in Ballard's pocket. So Redding musters a vigilante army to enforce his own law. Scratch this handsome but rigorously unromanticised Western—a full hour passes without a shot being fired--and you find the classic Heinrich von Kleist book Michael Kohlhaas transposed to Wyoming Territory on the eve of statehood. The script--by the star/producer's dad, Dick Cusack--is sturdy and uncompromising and willing to engage the knotty ambiguities of embracing vigilantism even in a just cause. Badham's decision to treat the authorities (Scott Wilson, Jay O Sanders, John Goodman) as period caricatures is regrettable but John Cusack is solid as a figure of utterly matter-of-fact integrity. --Richard T. Jameson, Amazon.com

• The Crossing | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Sam returns home after a lengthy absence to find his girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend. The two friends then end up in a drunken race where the question of who gets the girl will be decided at a train crossing...

• Various Artists - Glory to Gloriana | DVD | (02/04/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £11.99