"Director: Alan Lewens"

• Steely Dan - Aja (Classic Albums) | DVD | (01/12/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  Pioneering pop/jazz band Steely Dan formed by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in the early 70's had already secured five US Top 40 albums before the release of AJA in 1977. However was to prove to be the biggest selling album of Steely Dan's illustrious career reached Number 3 in the US Billboard chart spending a year in the Top 40 there and also reaching number 5 in the UK. AJA was the first British Top 10 hit for Steely Dan and also the first album by Becker and Fagen as duo. Becker and Fagen renowned for their relentless perfectionism in the recording studios recall the history of an album that was a year in the making but rewarded by a prestigious Grammy Award and three major hit singles Peg Deacon Blues and Josie. Michael McDonald later of the Doobie Brothers who did guest backing vocals on AJA British rock performer and songwriter Ian Dury record producer Gary Katz and the legendary session musicians who worked on AJA also contribute to this fascinating documentary. Steely Dan's AJA has proved to be one of the most outstanding jazz-rock albums in the history of popular music. This is a vivid portrait of a 70's record that is still as fresh and as memorable more than two decades after its release a true Classic Album.

• Grumpy Old Men | DVD | (15/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The BBC has handpicked a multitude of grumpy world-weary entertainers politicians and broadcasters and made them discuss what is wrong with Britain today. The show side-steps political correctness and taps a rich vein of sardonic eloquent and well informed grumpiness that gets right to the nub of each issue. Topics up for discussion include Tony Blair Pop Idol mobile phones tipping and Christmas!

• Shirley Bassey - Divas Are Forever | DVD | (10/02/2000) from £16.63   |  Saving you £-10.64 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Shirley Bassey is show business royalty and Divas Are Forever is an inspired attempt to create a documentary around a concert given during the Diamond Awards Festival in Belgium. The setting is perfect, with the Dame rising supremely above the innate vulgarity of the event. You can cut straight to the songs if you want, and you won't be disappointed: all her hits are here, from "Goldfinger" to "Big Spender". The voice is clearly one of the great instruments of popular music. She seems to regret being pigeonholed as "Bassey the belter", but her vocal chords weren't built for small rooms or smoky nightclubs. Each number is a high-octane emotional set piece in which she always stops just short of travestying her own inimitable style. The real interest, though, lies in the glimpses of the star's life on the road. There are some splendidly sticky moments that leave her flunkies dodging the barbs. The tantrum she throws during the video shoot with the Propellerheads for "History Repeating" is a gem. And the negotiations for her to be presented with a jewel as the "surprise" climax to her concert leave you with no doubt that this diva knows her own worth. --Piers Ford

• Steely Dan - Aja | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Originally produced for cable and home video as a documentary project, the Classic Albums series offers in-depth profiles of enduring rock and pop albums built around first-person interviews with the artists, producers and musicians that created them. That audio focus creates an ironic, largely perceptual problem for DVD release, since the segments aren't intended to replace the original audio recordings, only to expand upon them: these are conventional DVDs, not harbingers of true audio DVD optimised for sonic resolution, and they are not mixed to exploit surround playback. If you haven't heard these albums, nearly all of them landmarks in late 20th century pop, then this isn't the place to start, and Aja magnifies that issue through the very high standard of the original audio recording, itself a true audiophile work. If you do know the album, however, the Classic Album presentation is a handsomely produced, revealing companion. --Sam Sutherland

• Maria Callas: Life and Art | DVD | (26/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.38

  Long before the media's obsession with celebrity scaled its current heights, Maria Callas commanded headlines and column inches equal to any of the jet-setting elite of her time. In those terms alone, and much as opera purists might flinch at the idea, she was the Madonna of her day. But that is only one reason why her legend extends well beyond her place in the pantheon of great sopranos and so long after her death in 1977. An excellent companion to Tony Palmer's 1987 documentary La Divina, this documentary provides a well-rounded picture of an extraordinary talent who defended her art with the courage of a tigress, but whose turbulent private life gave her little except restless grief. It is crammed with concert footage and archive interviews. She was, as one of the contributors Franco Zeffirelli says, a genius of hair-raising stature and one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. But she was also a rather fragile human being. The tension between the two makes the telling of her story utterly compelling. The DVD includes chronologies of Callas' life and the many roles she played during her career. --Piers Ford