"Actor: Samuel"

• The Art Of Action | DVD | (17/02/2003) from £3.49   |  Saving you £9.50 (73.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson 'The Art of Action' features a star-studded array of celebrity interviews with some of the world's premier action experts including the likes of Jackie Chan Jet Li Ang Lee John Woo Chow Yun Fat Michelle Yeoh Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung. As well as this myriad of stars 'The Art of Action' also features highlights from hit movie such as 'Charlie's Angels' 'The Matrix' 'Crouching Tiger' 'Face Off' 'Rush Hour 2' 'Hard Boiled' 'Enter the Dragon'

• Jazz Club Highlights 1990 | DVD | (22/02/2002) from £15.49   |  Saving you £4.50 (22.50%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Jazz Club Highlights 1990 was recorded live at the Theaterhaus Jazz Festival in Stuttgart and is not to be confused with The Fast Show sketch of the same name. This concert showcases 11 contemporary and veteran jazz artists, with a number from each featured. At one end of the spectrum are the likes of Steps Ahead, whose baggy trousers and ponytails bespeak an unhealthy penchant for third-generation jazz/funk/rock fusion. Michael Kerstang's Baterie also indulges in too much guitar twaddle, with a lengthy drum solo thrown in. A refreshing contrast is struck by Beirut's Rabih Abou-Khalil on "Dusk", the pensive, acoustic strains of his traditional Oud unspoilt by a contemporary setting. Sixties new-jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp offers "Mama Rose", a track reminiscent of John Coltrane in his unbridled mid-60s mode, though with an astringency to his playing that is all his own. John Zorn & Naked City represent the avant-garde here with the excellent "Mystery Song", a free interplay of claustrophobic sax squiggles and decaying electronic drones. This release also affords a rare opportunity to witness the late and rather great Michel Petrucciani and his Trio. Just three feet tall, due to a condition known as "glass bones", Petrucciani, with the aid of a special device to work the pedals nonetheless forged a sweeping and vivaciously romantic jazz piano style. Sadly, he died aged just 36. On the DVD: no extras at all on this 85-minute set, but the soundtrack options, including Dolby 5.1, offer excellent clarity.--David Stubbs

• Born And Bred - Series 4 - Part 2 | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Part 2 of the fourth series of Born and Bred starring Richard Wilson and Maggie Stead.

• Claudio Abbado In Rehearsal | DVD | (17/05/2002) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-1.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Claudio Abbado in Rehearsal has the eminent conductor rehearsing Verdi's Requiem Mass both at the La Scala Opera House and the church of San Marco in Milan where Verdi's choral masterpiece was first performed. This new performance was given in 1985 to mark the 200th birthday of the Italian national poet Alessandro Manzoni, with whom Verdi shared aspirations for a united Italy. The camera dwells a good deal on Abbado, whose concentration seems well nigh tangible as he raises his arms and throws out his chest to communicate the power of Verdi's music. Abbado takes much care with his soloists, gives strong leads, checking the reverberant acoustic of San Marco with a lift of the head during the thunderous "Dies Irae". We eavesdrop on a piano rehearsal with two of his soloists as he keeps the rather musically wayward mezzo on course and works with Samuel Ramey, his bass, to intensify his hushed delivery of "More stupebit" ("Death and nature stand aghast"). We also see Monserrat Caballe, who can float a note pianissimo like no other soprano, have an unexpected fit of the giggles when beginning her "Libera me". Some reservations in director Norbert Beilharz's treatment of the "Lux Aeterna" require comment. His concept of juxtaposing a well-dressed audience with pictures from tombstones and statues as a reminder of the transience of human life grows wearisome after a while, as does his commentary and translation of the Latin, already on screen as subtitles, which masks some of the most poignant music in the score. On the DVD: Claudio Abbado in Rehearsal has one major disappointment: the lighting. Neither the San Marco Church or the interior of La Scala is well lit. There are brief trailers for three other ArtHaus Musik productions, including a film about Callas and Abbado conducting the Mozart Requiem in a splendid baroque church in Salzburg where the brilliance of the picture, stunningly lit, really shows up the deficiencies of this film. To hear Abbado conduct the Verdi Requiem where everyone performs as though their lives depended on it, try the version he recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic in January 2001. --Adrian Edwards

• Deep Blue Sea / Space Cowboys / Sphere | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £30.99

  With a voracious trio of mako sharks wreaking havoc, Deep Blue Sea dares to up the ante on Jaws, but director Renny Harlin trades the nuanced suspense of Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster for the trickery of the digital age. In other words, why build genuine terror when you can show ill-fated humans getting torn into bloody chunks? It's inevitable that Saffron Burrows should end up in her underwear like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, but even then the movie offers a credible reason for the strip-down; that Deep Blue Sea can be simultaneously ridiculous and sensible is just another one of its shlocky charms. Space Cowboys is a slice of cornball Americana that's so much fun you'll be tempted to stand up and salute. Director and costar Clint Eastwood manages to turn what might have been ludicrous into a jubilant tribute to age and experience, and Space Cowboys succeeds as two movies in one--a comedy about retired pilots given one last shot at glory and an Apollo 13-like thriller with all the requisite heroics. Space Cowboys earns its wings, once again demonstrating Eastwood's comfort with any genre he chooses. From yet another derivative science fiction novel by Michael Crichton comes the equally derivative and flaccid movie Sphere, in which three top Hollywood stars struggle to squeeze tension and excitement out of material that doesn't match their talents. There are moments of high intensity and psychological suspense, and the stellar cast works hard to boost the talky screenplay. But it's clear that this was a hurried production (Hoffman and director Barry Levinson made Wag the Dog during an extended production delay), and as a result Sphere's look and feel is like a film that wasn't quite ready for the cameras. Though it's by no means a waste of time, it's undeniably disappointing. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Mobile Suit Gundam Seed - Vol. 8 | DVD | (05/12/2005) from £4.03   |  Saving you £15.96 (79.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  ZAFT launches Operation Spitbreak and anticipates the destruction of the Earth Alliance. Meanwhile the Archangel is charged with protecting JOSH-A in Alaska without the aid of the Strike Gundam. Moreover the high command transfers several key members of the Archangel's staff to other vessels before the battle! On the other hand the Atlantic Federation has been prepared for ZAFT's attack for a long time now. With one swift attack they hope to turn the tables on the ZAFT forces and

• Ricky Gervais' Extras (Episodes 1-6) | UMD | (28/11/2005) from £10.94   |  Saving you £14.04 (176.60%)   |  RRP £21.99

• Pitch Black / XXX / The Fast And The Furious | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Pitch Black (Dir. David N. Twohy 2000): It's evil vs. evil in an electrifying showdown that USA Today calls the best excuse to root for the bad guy since Arnold in the original Terminator. The daylight can burn you but the darkness will kill you. From the mind of the writer of The Fugitive comes the pulse-pounding sci-fi thriller Pitch Black. Experience the psychological terror when a group of marooned passengers must face a pack of terrifying creatures whose only weakness is the light. With little power and dwindling numbers the doomed passengers turn to a vicious convict (Vin Diesel) with an appetite for destruction and eerie eyes that can guide them through the darkness. XXX (Triple X) (Dir. Rob Cohen 2002): This amped action drama stars Vin Diesel as Xander (aka Triple X) a rebellious extreme sports star with a mission to defy authority and create anarchy. In the dramatic opening scene of the movie Xander pulls an outrageous series of stunts with the help of a band of similar-minded jocks broadcasts the whole event live onto the Internet with a network of strategically placed digital cameras and then avoids being captured by the squadron of police who pursue him. When Triple X is later taken into custody Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) a representative from a government agency hires the chiseled athlete and turns him into a secret agent with a mission to travel to Prague and collapse a dangerous terrorist cell operated by Yorgi (Martin Csokas) and the seductive Yelena (Asia Argento). Triple X is quickly drawn into Yorgi's lair a stunning chateau situated in the mountains that is equipped with every high-tech modern amenity imaginable along with a sizeable team of extra-large Slav bodyguards a laboratory staffed by top scientists and an always-ready gaggle of gorgeous concubines. Non-stop stunts pounding hard-core music elaborate sets and inventive costumes make this Rob Cohen-directed adrenaline overload a visually exciting aurally engaging highly entertaining success. The Fast & The Furious (Dir. Rob Cohen 2001): A nitro-burning joyride that makes outstanding use of special effects innovative camera work and a nonstop throbbing soundtrack. From the opening sequence the film never drops below the red line. Roaring along at breakneck speed Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew meet on the streets of L.A. each night to show off their high-powered racers. When new guy Brian (Paul Walker) wants to add his fuel to the fire he can't getup the money to race but offers up his car as collateral. In their tiny jacked compacts Dom Brian and Edwin (Ja Rule) burst into a high-gear race with Brian nearly beating perennial champion Dom. But in the final moments he loses the race and his car. Brian's debt is quickly cleared however when he saves Dom both from the cops and from a potentially violent encounter with Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) a rival gang lord. Dom takes Brian under his wing--a decision that disgusts his gang but delights his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster).

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £11.80   |  Saving you £-6.81 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. But this time around, all three characters have moved several notches down the ethical scale. Robinson, who in the earlier film played a college professor who kills by accident, here becomes a downtrodden clerk with a nagging, shrewish wife and unfilled ambitions as an artist, a man who murders in a jealous rage. Bennett is a mercenary vamp, none too bright, and Duryea brutal and heartless. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. When it was made the film hit censorship problems, since at the time it was unacceptable to show a murder going unpunished. Lang went out of his way to show the killer plunged into the mental hell of his own guilt, but for some authorities this still wasn't enough, and the film was banned in New York State for being "immoral, indecent and corrupt". Not that this did its box-office returns any harm at all. On the DVD: sparse pickings. There's an interactive menu that zips past too fast to be of much use. The full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne adds the occasional insight, but it's repetitive and not always reliable. (He gets actors' names wrong, for a start.) The box claims the print's been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp

• The Mel Gibson DVD Legacy | DVD | (09/12/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £61.99

  Includes the following 8 great films: Lethal Weapon Lethal Weapon 2 Mad Max Maverick Payback Tequila Sunrise What Women Want Conspiracy Theory

• Double: The Other Guys / Hot Fuzz | DVD | (10/10/2011) from £2.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (77.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise:The Other Guys:Misfit NYPD detectives Gamble and Hoitz (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) are sentenced to life behind the desk. They hate each other and the monotony of their meaningless jobs, as they're forced to live in the shadow of the two biggest and most badass cops on the force (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson). But when those guys go down for the count, opportunity knocks for Gamble and Hoitz. Stumbling onto what could be one of the biggest crimes in years, can The Other Guys step up their game to solve the case without killing each other and destroying NYC in the process? From the director of Step Brothers and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.Hot Fuzz:Messers Pegg and Frost return with this rollickingly hilarious take on the cop action movie. Top London cop, Constable Nicholas Angel (Pegg), finds himself reassigned to the sleepy West Country village of Sandford. The quaintness is soon to be interrupted though as a series of grisly accidents sweeps the village. Convinced of foul play Angel and his new partner, Danny Butterman (Frost) swing into action!

• S.W.A.T. | DVD | (25/10/2004) from £19.65   |  Saving you £-6.66 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An imprisoned drug kingpin offers a huge cash reward to anyone that can break him out of police custody and only the LAPD's Special Weapons and Tactics team can prevent it.

• DRAUßEN IN MEINEM KOPF | DVD | (02/11/2018) from £13.68   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Thriller Films | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Films include:
  
  LEGEND OF THE MUMMY 2
  Archaeology students find a Mummy in a temple. Little do they realise that the Mummy was the evil servant of an ancient rain god who again plans to unleash his evil power.
  
  DEF BY TEMPTATION
  Bond comes to New York to sort out his future. Little does he know the terrors that await him. A sexy succubus is hell bent on destroying Joel through her powers of satanic seduction.
  THE PEACEKEEPER
  The briefcase containing the code for the...

• S.W.A.T./Inside Man | DVD | (02/06/2008) from £5.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (116.86%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This boxset contains the following films: S.W.A.T (Dir. Clark Johnson) (2003): An imprisoned drug kingpin offers a huge cash reward to anyone that can break him out of police custody and only the LAPD's Special Weapons and Tactics team can prevent it. Inside Man (Dir. Spike Lee) (2006):Acclaimed actors Denzel Washington Clive Owen and Jodie Foster come together to explore the lure of power the ugliness of greed and the mystery of a perfect robbery in a combustible new crime drama from Spike Lee. The hardbitten but unorthodox Detective Fraiser (Washington) pits his wits against a high-class bank robber Dalton Russell (Owen) following the robbery of a Manhattan bank. As the chase unfolds political corruption and hidden agendas threaten to destabilise an already volatile situation.

• Drive-In Movie Memories | DVD | (14/03/2011) from £20.08   |  Saving you £-0.09 (-0.50%)   |  RRP £19.99

  What began as an auto parts owner's business venture to make some easy money accidentally became a magical place where romance, fun and a sense of community flourished. This film chronicles the drive-in's birth and development, its phenomenal popularity with audiences of all ages, its tragic decline, and its inevitable comeback as a classic form of Americana. Described by Variety as 'slick and entertaining,' Drive-In Movie Memories includes photos and footage from the mid-1930s until ...

• Fury | DVD | (22/07/2013) from £4.00   |  Saving you £8.99 (224.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  After twenty-five years in prison, Foley (Samuel L. Jackson) is done with the grifter's life. When he meets an elusive young woman named Iris (Ruth Negga), the possibility of a new start looks real. But his past is proving to be a stubborn companion.

• Horror Box Set | DVD | (14/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Night Of The Living Dead (Fullscreen 4:3 / English - Dolby (1.0) Mono / Cert. 18) At a cemetery in the American south a flesh-eating zombie rises from the dead to claim the first victim of a nightmarish plague. Increasing in number the hideous cannibals gather outside a farmhouse where seven desperate mortals shelter from the gathering night and the hideous clawing of the undead outside. The Howling 6: The Freaks (Fullscreen 4:3 / English - Dolby (2.0) Stereo / Cert. 18) A mysterious drifter wanders into a desolate desert town in search of the man who put a curse on him that causes him to become a werewolf every full moon... Def By Temptation (Fullscreen 4:3 / English - Dolby (2.0) Stereo / Cert. 18) A female vampire is hell-bent on destroying a party of college students with her power of satanic seduction... The Legend Of The Mummy 2 (Fullscreen 4:3 / English - Dolby (2.0) Stereo / Cert.15 Six young archaeology students discover the remains of an ancient Aztec mummy and accidentally unleash the fury of an evil god...

• Sign Of The Killer | DVD | (29/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In this spine-tingling and visually stunning thriller Samuel L. Jackson is Romulus Ledbetter a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave. When Romulus finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree the authorities - including his police officer daughter (Aunjanne Ellis) - claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by prominent art photographer David Leppenraub (Colm Feore). But how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?

• XXX/Chronicles Of Riddick | DVD | (28/07/2008) from £6.97   |  Saving you £6.02 (86.37%)   |  RRP £12.99

  xXx (Dir. Rob Cohen) (2002): In the dramatic opening scene of the movie Xander pulls an outrageous series of stunts with the help of a band of similar-minded jocks broadcasts the whole event live onto the Internet with a network of strategically placed digital cameras and then avoids being captured by the squadron of police who pursue him. When Triple X is later taken into custody Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) a representative from a government agency hires the chiseled athlete and turns him into a secret agent with a mission to travel to Prague and collapse a dangerous terrorist cell operated by Yorgi (Martin Csokas) and the seductive Yelena (Asia Argento). Triple X is quickly drawn into Yorgi's lair a stunning chateau situated in the mountains that is equipped with every high-tech modern amenity imaginable along with a sizeable team of extra-large Slav bodyguards a laboratory staffed by top scientists and an always-ready gaggle of gorgeous concubines. The Chronicles Of Riddick (Dir. David Twohy) (2004): The wanted criminal Riddick arrives in Helion Prime and finds himself against the invading Necromongers an army that plans to convert or kill all humans...