ASIN: B0029KQO3Q

Category: DVD

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ASIN: B000059590

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £2.49

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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review
Foursquare in the gritty-but-hearwarming tradition of Brassed Off and The Full Monty comes Billy Elliot, the first film of noted British theatrical director Stephen Daldry. The setting is County Durham in 1984, and things ‘oop North are even grimmer than usual: the miners’ strike is in full rancorous swing and 11-year-old Billy’s dad and older brother, miners both, are staunch on the picket lines. Billy’s got problems of his own. His dad’s scraped together the fees to send him to boxing lessons, but Billy’s discovered a different aptitude: a genius for ballet dancing. Since admitting to such an activity is tantamount, in this fiercely macho culture, to holding up a sign reading “I AM A RAVING POOF”, Billy keeps it quiet. But his teacher, Mrs Wilkinson (Julie Walters, wearily undaunted) thinks he should audition for ballet school in London. Family ructions are inevitable.

Daldry’s film sidesteps some of the politics, both sexual and otherwise, but scores with its laconic dialogue (credit to screenwriter Lee Hall) and a cracking performance from newcomer Jamie Bell as Billy. His powerhouse dance routines, more Gene Kelly than Nureyev, carry an irresistible sense of exhilaration and self-discovery. Among a flawless supporting cast Stuart Wells stands out as Billy’s sweet gay friend Michael. And if the miners’ strike serves largely as background colour, there’s one brief episode, as visored and truncheoned cops rampage through neat little terraced houses, that captures one of the most spiteful episodes in recent British history. –Philip Kemp

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ASIN: B000Z63ZKG

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £9.62

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A 6 Disc collection of your favourite Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, containing the following six classic films:

Carousel; The King and I; Oklahoma!; The Sound of Music; South Pacific; State Fair;

Carousel – Spectacular staging dots this widescreen deluxe Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as Gordon MacRae brings a blustery energy to the lead role of Billy Bigelow, a drifter and ne’er-do-well carnival ‘barker’. The troubled soul finally settles down with a good woman (Shirley Jones) but then gets stabbed to death while committing a robbery. Many years later, an angel offers the roustabout the chance to return to earth for just one day to makes things right for his unhappy wife and the daughter he never had the chance to meet. Based on the French play “Lilion” by Ferene Molnar, Carousel ranks among the better Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, making it a classic by any standard. To boot, the film’s tale of love between Bigelow and wife Julie rivals that of any other 1950s musical. Songs from the outstanding score include ‘If I Loved You’, ‘June Is Busting Out All Over’, and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

The King and I – In 1955 this lavish production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway hit “The King and I”, starring Yul Brynner as the King of Siam and Deborah Kerr as the governess sent to look after his children, was the most expensive film ever mounted by 20th Century Fox. The 40 sets in ripe decors by Walter M Scott and Paul S Fox included a ballroom of black marble with jade and silk tapestries and a banqueting scene with a table that gives the impression of stretching to infinity. The costumes by Irene Sharaff, notably the hoop ballroom gown for Deborah Kerr and those for the ballet “The Small House of Uncle Thomas”, dazzle the eye in their delineation of Western manners and Oriental splendour. Brynner remains impressive as the King but his pidgin dialogue, inherited from Hammerstein’s book, with the dropping of the definite article takes some adjustment. Alfred Newman put his unique stamp on the music: the Overture offers an example of his luminous divided string sound, the climactic ballroom scene a full bodied orchestral reprise of “Shall We Dance?” as the camera pulls away to a high angle producing an exultant visual finish to this celebrated polka.

Oklahoma – The hit Broadway musical from the 1940s gets a lavish if not always exciting workout in this 1955 film version directed by old lion Fred Zinnemann (High Noon). Gordon MacRae brings his sterling voice to the role of cowboy Curly and Shirley Jones plays Laurie, the object of his affection. The Rodgers and Hammerstein score includes “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and “People Will Say We’re in Love”, and Agnes DeMille provides the buoyant choreography. Among the supporting cast, Gloria Grahame is memorable as Ado Annie, the “girl who cain’t say no”, and Rod Steiger overdoes it as the villainous Jud. –Tom Keogh

The Sound of Music – The most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio, The Sound of Music grows fresher with each viewing. Though it was planned meticulously in pre-production (save for the scene where Maria and the children take a dipping in an Austrian lake that nearly cost a life), on each viewing one is struck anew by the spontaneous almost improvisatory air of the acting, notably of Julie Andrews under Robert Wise’s direction. There are also the little human touches he brings to, for instance, the scene where Maria leads the children to the hills, over bridges and along tow paths where the smallest boy trips up and momentarily gets left behind: it creates a feeling that most of us have encountered. From the opening pre-credit sequence of muted excitement as the camera roves over the Austrian Alps (photographed in magnificent colour), where little phrases from the wind instruments on the soundtrack are flung as if on the breeze, foreshadowing the title song to follow, the production never puts a foot wrong.

South Pacific – The dazzling Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, brought to lush life by the director of the original stage version, Joshua Logan. Set on a remote island during the Second World War, South Pacific tracks two parallel romances: one between a Navy nurse (Mitzi Gaynor) “as corny as Kansas in August” and a wealthy French plantation owner (Rossano Brazzi), the other between a young American officer (John Kerr) and a native girl (France Nuyen). The theme of interracial love was still daring in 1958, and so was director Logan’s decision to overlay emotional moments with tinted filters–a technique that misfires as often as it hits. The comic relief tends to fall flat and an overly spunky Mitzi Gaynor is a poor substitute for the stage original’s Mary Martin. But the location scenery on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is gorgeous and the songs are among the finest in the American musical catalogue: “Some Enchanted Evening”, “Younger than Springtime”, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair”, “This Nearly Was Mine”. That’s Juanita Hall as the sly native trader Bloody Mary, singing the haunting tune that launched a thousand tiki bars, “Bali H’ai”. The movie is based on stories from James Michener’s book “Tales from the South Pacific”. –Robert Horton, Amazon.com

State Fair – Good old-fashioned hometown pride is on display in lavish Technicolor in this remake of the 1933 film, the only Rodgers and Hammerstein musical written directly for the silver screen. When the Frake family travels to the fair, Ma and Pa (Charles Winninger and Fay Bainter) enter contests while daughter Margy (Jeanne Crain) and son Wayne (Dick Haymes) both fall in love for the first time. State Fair is attractively photographed and energised by the vibrant performances of the talented lead actors and actresses, but the high point of the film is the colourful hoopla and hullabaloo of the fair itself, a bustling nexus of strange, wonderful, and hilarious characters brought to life by the fine supporting cast. Songs from the Academy Award-nominated score include ‘It’s a Grand Night for Singing’, ‘That’s For Me’, and the Oscar-winning ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’.

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ASIN: B001KQO0B8

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £4.06

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The Wonder Pets are a trio of classroom pets that work together during after-school hours to help needy animals around the world. In this animated Nick Jr. program, Linny the guinea pig, Ming-Ming the duckling, and Tuck the turtle respond to animals’ pleas for help from around the world by assembling a fly-boat from everyday items in their classroom and flying off to distant places like Greece, Japan, England, and the Nile river. Whether it’s a caterpillar who appears to be sick, a baby crane that’s too close to an erupting volcano, a hedgehog stuck in a hedge, or a crocodile with dirty teeth, the wonder pets can be counted on to work together to creatively solve any problem. Each 12-minute episode features cute children’s songs sung by real children and a wholesome message about the power of teamwork. (Ages 1 to 5) –Tami Horiuchi

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ASIN: B00004CZNL

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £1.99

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Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Hunting triumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that’s relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women’s melodrama in the 1930s and 40s: He’s crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.

Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet maths genius who ignores his gift in favour of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgård). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor’s former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past and, as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film’s beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck’s clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection and feeling for one another. –Dave McCoy

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ASIN: B001PBD0JG

Category: DVD

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ASIN: B0009WB4UY

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £4.50

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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review
The riveting subject of Downfall is nothing less than the disintegration of Adolph Hitler in mind, body, and soul. A 2005 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, this German historical drama stars Bruno Ganz as Hitler, whose psychic meltdown is depicted in sobering detail, suggesting a fallen, pathetic dictator on the verge on insanity, resorting to suicide (along with Eva Braun and Joseph and Magda Goebbels) as his Nazi empire burns amidst chaos in mid-1945. While staging most of the film in the claustrophobic bunker where Hitler spent his final days, director Oliver Hirschbiegel dares to show the gentler human side of der Fuehrer, as opposed to the pure embodiment of evil so familiar from many other Nazi-era dramas. This balanced portrayal does not inspire sympathy, however: We simply see the complexity of Hitler’s character in the greater context of his inevitable downfall, and a more realistic (and therefore more horrifying) biographical portrait of madness on both epic and intimate scales. By ending with a chilling clip from the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, this unforgettable film gains another dimension of sobering authenticity. –Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

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ASIN: B001EHF27E

Category: DVD

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ASIN: B000HEVTEA

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £5.38

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ASIN: B000G8NPWQ

Category: DVD

Price: New Prices From :- £3.97

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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review
To call this cut of Blade Runner‘long awaited’ would be a heavy, heavy understatement. It’s taken 25 years since the first release of one of the science-fiction genre’s flagship films to get this far, and understandably, Blade Runner: The Final Cut has proved to be one of the most eagerly awaited DVD releases of all time.

And it’s been well worth the wait. Director Ridley Scott’s decision to head back to the edit suite and cut together one last version of his flat-out classic film has been heavily rewarded, with a genuinely definitive version of an iconic, visually stunning and downright intelligent piece of cinema. Make no mistake: this is by distance the best version of Blade Runner. And it’s never looked better, either.

The core of Blade Runner, of course, remains the same, with Harrison Ford’s Deckard (the Blade Runner of the title) on the trail of four ‘replicants’, cloned humans that are now illegal. And he does so across an amazing cityscape that’s proven to be well ahead of its time, with astounding visuals that defied the supposed limits of special effects back in 1982.

Backed up with a staggering extra features package that varies depending on which version of this Blade Runner release you opt for (two-, four- and five-disc versions are available), the highlight nonetheless remains the stunning film itself. Remastered and restored, it remains a testament to a number of creative people whose thinking was simply a country mile in advance of that of their contemporaries. An unmissable purchase. –Jon Foster

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