"Actor: Vivian Stanshall"

• Black Joy | DVD | (08/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Black Joy is a lightly ironic British culture-clash comedy. Trevor Thomas heads the cast as a Guyanan youth who is under the delusion that life will be easier for him in London. No sooner does Thomas set foot in England than he gets tangled up in one disaster after another. The catalyst for most of Our Hero's travails is ""assimilated"" Caribbean Dave Beaton who delivers an antic performance as a streetwise con artist. Black Joy was adapted from Dar

• Beatles Magical Mystery Tour | DVD | (14/11/1997) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This 1968 oddity is probably a film only a total Beatlemaniac could love, but it carries both musical and historical resonance. It also gives intimations of what would happen in the next 30 years as artists gained more and more power over how they were presented. The roots of virtually any rock star's vanity project (including Prince's Under the Cherry Moon) can be traced to this little Liverpudlian home movie. Fresh from the success of their films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, and still under the influence of the intoxicants of the era, the Beatles set out to make their own fancifully psychedelic project. What they got out of it was, essentially, a knock-off album with a few good songs and a lot of filler, which is more than can be said for this alternately self-indulgent and mildly amusing British version of Ken Kesey's magic bus tour. Using some of their favourite actors (including Victor Spinetti, who was in their first two movies), the Beatles make an alternative British travelogue, stopping occasionally to sing songs like "I Am the Walrus" and "The Fool on the Hill." Strictly for completists. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com