"Director: Alan Taylor"

• Palookaville | DVD | (02/10/2000) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-4.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Rus Jerry and Sid are desperate men. Broke and unemployed they're three not-so-wise guys whose get rich quick schemes never seem to go quite right. But their luck could be about to change. The trio decide to hit an armoured car and this time the plan is foolproof or so they'd like to believe....

• The West Wing - Season 1 Part 2 | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Aaron Sorkin's American political drama The West Wing, set in The White House, has won innumerable awards--and rightly so. Its depiction of a well-meaning Democrat administration has warmed the hearts of countless Americans. However, The West Wing is more than mere feel-good viewing for sentimental patriots. It is among the best-written, sharpest, funny and moving of recent American TV series. In its first series, The West Wing established the cast of characters who comprise the White House staff. There's Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), a recovering alcoholic whose efforts to be the cornerstone of the administration contribute to the break up of his marriage. CJ (Alison Janney) is the formidable press spokeswoman embroiled in a tentative on-off relationship with Timothy Busfield's reporter. Brilliant but grumpy communications deputy Toby Ziegler, Rob Lowe's brilliant but faintly nerdy Sam Seaborn and brilliant but smart-alecky Josh Lynam make up the rest of the inner circle. Initially, the series' creators had intended to keep the President off-screen. Wisely, however, they went with Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet, whose eccentric volatility, caution, humour and strength in a crisis make for such an impressively plausible fictional President that polls once expressed a preference for Bartlet over the genuine incumbent. Handled incorrectly, The West Wing could have been turgid, didactic propaganda for The American Way. However, the writers are careful to show that, decent as this administration is, its achievements, though hard-won, are minimal. Moreover, the brisk, staccato-like, almost musical exchanges of dialogue, between Josh and his PA Donna, for instance, as they pace purposefully up and down the corridors are the show's abiding joy. --David Stubbs

• Dick Tracy | DVD | (15/06/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This four disc collection features all fifteen episodes of the Dick Tracy serial made in 1937 and starring Ralph Byrd as the police detective. Byrd would return as Tracy almost ten years later but by then Morgan Conway had appeared as the detective in two films made by RKO Dick Tracy and Dick Tracy Vs Cueball. These two films can be found on disc four of this collection. Disc 1: The Serial Part 1 Disc 2: The Serial Part 2 Disc 3: The Serial Part 3 Disc 4: Dick Tracy & Dick Tracy V's Cueball

• The Sopranos - Complete HBO Series - Deluxe Edition | DVD | (24/11/2008) from £114.90   |  Saving you £15.09 (13.13%)   |  RRP £129.99

  Tony Soprano tries to be a good family man on two fronts - to his wife kids and widowed mother - and as a capo in the New Jersey mob. But when the pressures of work and family life start giving him panic attacks Tony begins seeing a therapist. These visits he keeps to himself because Tony has already identified his biggest problem - if one family doesn't kill him the other one will. The groundbreaking dramatic series from writer-producer David Chase stars James Gandolfini Lorraine Bracco Edie Falco Michael Imperioli and Nancy Marchand in an inside look at the family life of a modern-day mob boss. Part satirical loving homage to the influences of the great American gangster films part darkly comedic study of a New Jersey Italian-American family it is has become one of the most admired television series of all time.

• Nurse Jackie - Season 2 | Blu Ray | (18/04/2011) from £9.99   |  Saving you £25.00 (250.25%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Jackie Peyton is far from ordinary. As an ER nurse she navigates the rough waters of a crumbling healthcare system doing everything she can to provide her patients with the best care possible. Whether she's laying into a smug doctor for failing to heed her advice or forging the organ donor card of a man who just died Nurse Jackie is compelled to make sense of the chaos and to level the playing field whenever she can. Jackie's brand of justice is dished out alongside a daily diet of prescription pain medication...

• The West Wing - Complete Seasons 1-3 (Amazon.co.uk Exclusive) | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  This box set containing the complete first three series of The West Wing is available exclusively from Amazon.co.uk. Aaron Sorkin's American political drama The West Wing, set in the White House, has won innumerable awards--and rightly so. Its depiction of a well-meaning Democrat administration has warmed the hearts of countless Americans. However, The West Wing is more than mere feel-good viewing for sentimental patriots. It is among the best-written, sharpest, funniest and moving US TV series of all time. Martin Sheen leads a strong ensemble cast: his Jed Bartlet is such an impressively plausible fictional President that polls once expressed a preference for Bartlet over the genuine incumbent. Handled incorrectly, The West Wing could have been turgid, didactic propaganda for The American Way. However, the writers are careful to show that, decent as this administration is, its achievements, though hard-won, are minimal. Moreover, the brisk, staccato-like, almost musical exchanges of dialogue, between Josh and his PA Donna, for instance, as they pace purposefully up and down the corridors are the show's abiding joy. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 3) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £33.02   |  Saving you £-17.77 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• The Emperor's New Clothes | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena the residence in exile for the past six years of the great Napoleaon Bonaparte that exile is about to end. A secret network of loyal Bonapartists is poised to return the Emperor to Paris while a double will play his part on the island. When the Emperor arrives in Paris the double on St. Helena will reveal himself as an imposter and Napoleon will reclaim his throne. Disguised as able-bodied seaman Eugene Lenormand Napoleon sets off for Paris while his doppelganger the real Eugene Lenormand wakes up in his Emperor's bed. But things don't work out as planned. Napoleon's ship changes course and he misses a crucial link in his network of supporters. Arriving eventually in Paris alone and friendless he meets a widowed melon seller and the two forge an unlikely but life changing relationship while Napoleon waits impatiently for his moment. When his return to glory is thwarted by an unexpected turn of events on St. Helena Napoleon has to find another way to confirm his true identity while finally letting go of imperial dreams.

• Thor: The Dark World BD Steelbook | Blu Ray | (24/02/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Zavvi Exclusive Limited Edition Steelbook. Marvel's Thor: The Dark World continues the big-screen adventures of Thor the Mighty Avenger as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself. In the aftermath of Marvel's Thor and Marvel's The Avengers Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos...but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. To defeat an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand Thor sets upon his most dangerous and personal journey yet forced into an alliance with the treacherous Loki to save not only his people and those he loves...but our universe itself. Starring Chris Hemsworth Natalie Portman Tom Hiddleston Stellan Skarsgård Idris Elba Christopher Eccleston Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Kat Dennings Ray Stevenson Zachary Levi Tadanobu Asano and Jaimie Alexander with Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins as Odin Marvel's 'Thor: The Dark World' is directed by Alan Taylor produced by Kevin Feige p.g.a. from a story by Don Payne and Robert Rodat and screenplay by Christopher L. Yost and Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and is based on Marvel's classic Super Hero Thor who first appeared in the comic book 'Journey into Mystery' #83 in August 1962. Marvel's Thor: The Dark World continues the big-screen adventures of Thor the Mighty Avenger as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself.

• Dick Tracy - The Serial | DVD | (08/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99