"Actor: Ruth Storey"

• In Cold Blood | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood is a faithful 1967 screen adaptation of Truman Capote's extraordinary non-fiction book about the course of two killers in this world--their lives, their senseless slaughter of an entire family, and their executions. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are remarkable as the murderers, but what has kept this film special over the decades is Brooks's blunt, clearheaded, and non-sensational approach to the story. (The term "semi-documentary" has been applied to Brooks's style on this film, and it's an entirely fair description.) The experience of watching In Cold Blood is naturally unsettling, but the director--as with Capote--leaves final judgments about justice to the beholder. --Tom Keogh

• Awake and Sing | DVD | (01/02/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Walter Matthau heads the cast of this television recreation of Clifford Odets' 1935 hit Broadway play, the first full-length work performed on the commercial stage by the legendary Group Theatre. This portrait of a Jewish family in a Bronx tenement perfectly captures the spirit of the Depression years, and is suffused with details of character and place that combine to be affecting even now. The Bergers, burdened by financial difficulties, have taken in a boarder - Max Axelrod (Matthau) - ...