The Balkans 1939. British professor Guy Pringle (Kenneth Branagh) arrives in Romania with his new bride Harriet (Emma Thompson) and becomes enmeshed in the politics of anti-fascism. Despite Harriet's serious misgivings Guy's social circle soon includes members of the British Secret Service who want to involve him in dangerous missions and a downtrodden prince who zeroes in on Guy's generous nature and winds up living with the Pringles. Thus the stage is set for this mesmerizing story of marriage tested by accidental betrayal callous insensitivity and a world in upheaval. Based upon the autobiographical novels of best-selling author Olivia Manning and set in places as far-flung as Bucharest Athens and Cairo Fortunes of War is majestic in both its scope and its vision.
Comedic madness in Spike Milligan's ground-breaking, wild, subversive and nonsensical BBC sketch comedy series from 1969 1980. Simply Media are delighted to announce release of Q: The Almost Complete Collection on DVD 20th November 2017, containing all surviving episodes from Qs 5-9 in this 5-disc set, on DVD together for the very first time. Originally shown by the BBC from 1969-1980, this BAFTA-nominated series is considered a landmark in British Comedy. The fast-paced, anarchic sketch comedy will delight fans of the series and Spike Milligan's work. Written by and starring BAFTA-winner Spike Milligan in a variety of silly outfits and outlandish situations involving idiot Boy Scouts, Adolf Hitler, and the Royal Family. The original Q5 of 1969 was heralded as the inspiration behind Monty Python's Flying Circus, which debuted a few months later. It's also one of the best showcases of Spike's surreal and eccentric humour. Sketches come in thick and fast, and jump from one plot point or location to another with no explanation, and sometimes no apparent conclusion. Bizarre, yes. Funny, most definitely! Terry Jones and I adored the Q... shows , recalled Michael Palin for Spike's biography, [Milligan] was the first writer to play with the conventions of television. The BBC initially delayed re-commissioning the ground-breaking Q series until the Monty Python series ended, despite the impact Q had already had on the world of alternative comedy, and at a time when Kenny Everett and Not the Nine O'clock News were further testing the limits of TV Comedy. However, the popular Q returned over 6 years later for four further series. It is clear to see Monty Python in Spike's work, with Life of Brian's Chris Langham on the writing team and Monty Python's Flying Circus director Ian MacNaughton directing some episodes. For Q8 and Q9, direction was taken over by the talented BAFTA-winning Ray Butt (Only Fools and Horses). Spike leads a fantastic cast of co-performers including John Bluthal (The Vicar of Dibley), Bob Todd (Superman III), John D. Collins (Allo Allo), Peter Jones (The Rag Trade), and Margaret Nolan (Goldfinger), Alan Clare (Rising Damp) and a self-parodying David Lodge in yet more surreal, outrageous and determinedly under-prepared sketches and musical interludes. Enjoy all the madness and mayhem of Spike Milligan's Q again with this landmark DVD collection.
Although he has no plans to step aside as the head of Waystar Royco, the international media conglomerate controlled by his family, aging patriarch Logan Roy is contemplating what the future holds. He has lingered in the limelight longer than even he thought he would, and now family members want to run the company as they see fit. Despite a best-laid succession plan, tempers flare over Logan's intentions. Kendall Roy, Logan's eldest son from his second marriage and a division president at the firm, is the heir apparent. As Kendall attempts to solidify his eventual takeover, he and the three other Roy children face a difficult choice as company control and family loyalties collide.
Set in a fictitious suburb rather like, say, Pinner (only more so), The Thin Blue Line is the wickedly funny story of a rather down-at-heel police station headed by Inspector Raymond Fowler (Rowan Atkinson), a pompous, repressed but well-intentioned anachronism who wants to do the right thing but who is constantly hampered by his own shortcomings, not to mention his blundering CID colleagues. Atkinson expertly balances his character's inflated sense of self-importance with the insight born of old-school police values, for which his galumphing, shiny-suited CID counterpart, DI Grim (David Haig) has no time at all. Strongest among the supporting cast is Sgt Pauline Dawkins (Serena Evans), who also happens to be Fowler's live-in lover--a moral dilemma that his traditional values won't allow him to resolve. He salves his conscience by avoiding sex with her whenever possible, an amusing subplot enhanced by Evans's brilliant performance--she positively vibrates with contained, ladylike lust in a manner only equalled by Penelope Keith in the classic sitcom To the Manor Born. Scripted by Ben Elton, this series manages to satirise provincialism, institutionalised pig-headedness and dated moral values in one fell swoop, while also being chock-full of quick-fire, Blackadder-esque dialogue. --Roger Thomas
Physics Professor Dr Pederson (Kirk Douglas) and underground leader Straud (Richard Harris) must convince British Intelligence that the Nazis are planning to build the A-bomb. The Norse Hydro Plant at Telemark is central to enemy strategy and the Allies decide to send in a task force to destroy it. Legendary director Anthony Mann (Winchester 73 El Cid The Fall of the Roman Empire) tells the story of nine courageous and indomitable Norwegians without whom the Second World War may ha
BRUCE WILLIS IS JOHN McCLANE, a New York cop who flies to L.A. on Christmas Eve to visit his wife at a party in her company's lavish high-rise. Plans change once a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), seize the building and take everyone hostage. McClane slips away and becomes the only chance anyone has in this beginning-to-end heart-stopping action thriller.
Relentlessly intelligent, gloriously uninhibited and occasionally controversial, QI has engaged the brains of discerning quiz fans for over a decade, garnering no fewer than ten prestigious TV awards and multiple BAFTA nominations. Hosted by Stephen Fry and co-starring stalwart player/resident whipping boy Alan Davies, these shows feature David Mitchell, Noel Fielding, Phill Jupitus, Ross Noble, Sue Perkins, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr, Jeremy Clarkson, Sandi Toksvig, Jo Brand, Johnny Vegas, Jason Manford, Victoria Wood and many others joining the ranks of cleverclogs and dunderheads sparring with the famously erudite quizmaster. Each show questions of such brain-boggling difficulty or baffling obscurity that a correct answer is a near-impossibility; instead, points are deducted for answers that are both obvious and wrong, and awarded for incorrect answers which are, nevertheless, Quite Interesting! From Knees and Knockers to Levity and Merriment, this thirteen-disc set offers an unmissable meander though the complete Series K to M .
Swashbuckling BBC TV adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel. The lavish BBC costume drama based_on Alexandre Dumas' classic novel set in the early 1800s sees Alan Badel leading_a distinguished cast in the greatest tale of betrayal, adventure, romance and revenge the world has ever known. Edmond Dantes is a brave and honest young man whose peaceful life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes are abruptly shattered when he is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune Unlawfully sentenced to the infamous island prison of Chateau D'If, Edmond is destined to spend the rest of his days behind bars. When Edmond audaciously escapes the island he sets off to find the treasure and exact revenge on those who wronged him. This 12-part BBC series is now widely considered to be one of the finest adaptations of the legendary story.
Stephen Poliakoff's film about a brother and sister raised separately who finally meet again. She is married to a man of ostentatious wealth; whilst her brother has a job monitoring developments in London's Docklands. In the overheated moneyed climate of the financially-centred late 1980s the two begin a forbidden incestuous affair.
Master rifle sharpshooter Matt Quigley (Selleck) moves from the U.S. to Australia as a hired hand on an Australian ranch. He thinks his job will be to get rid of the dingoes plaguing the ranch but instead the ranch owner Elliot Marston (Rickman) wants him to kill the Aborigines. When Quigley refuses and turns the job down Elliot is incensed and tries to kill him. Quigley however manages to escape into the bush and takes the beautiful Cora (Laura San Giacomo) into the wilderness
Every family has its traditions, but for the Roys, they include lying, backstabbing and all sorts of other chicanery. Beginning where the first season dramatically left off, Season 2 follows the Roysmedia tycoon Logan (Brian Cox) and his four grown childrenas they struggle to retain control of their empire amidst internal and external threats. As Kendall (Jeremy Strong) deals with fallout from his hostile takeover attempt and guilt from his involvement in a fatal accident, Shiv (Sarah Snook) stands poised to make her way into the upper-echelons of the company, while Roman (Kieran Culkin) reacquaints himself with the business by starting at the bottom, and Connor (Alan Ruck) launches an unlikely bid for president.
Everything clicked in this 1994 action hit, from the premise (a city bus has to keep moving at 50 mph or blow up) to the two leads (the usually inscrutable Keanu Reeves and the cute-as-a-button Sandra Bullock) to the villain (Dennis Hopper in psycho mode) to the director (Jan De Bont, who made this film hit the ground running with an edge-of-your-seat opening sequence on a broken elevator). This is the sort of movie that becomes a prototype for a thousand lesser films (including De Bont's lousy sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control), but Speed really is a one-of-a-kind experience almost anyone can enjoy. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
As the private eye of private eyes, Steve Martin is Rigby Reardon. He s tough, rough and ready to take anything when Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) appears on the scene with a case: her father, a noted scientist, philanthropist and cheese-maker has died mysteriously. Reardon immediately smells a rat and follows a complex maze of clues that lead to the Carlotta Lists . With a little help from his friends , Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Laughton, etc, Reardon gets his man. An exciting, action-packed film the way 40s films used to be!
The extended editions of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings present the greatest trilogy in film history in the most ambitious sets in DVD history. In bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's nearly unfilmable work to the screen, Jackson benefited from extraordinary special effects, evocative New Zealand locales, and an exceptionally well-chosen cast, but most of all from his own adaptation with co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, preserving Tolkien's vision and often his very words, but also making logical changes to accommodate the medium of film. While purists complained about these changes and about characters and scenes left out of the films, the almost two additional hours of material in the extended editions (about 11 hours total) help appease them by delving more deeply into Tolkien's music, the characters, and loose ends that enrich the story, such as an explanation of the Faramir-Denethor relationship, and the appearance of the Mouth of Sauron at the gates of Mordor. In addition, the extended editions offer more bridge material between the films, further confirming that the trilogy is really one long film presented in three pieces (which is why it's the greatest trilogy ever--there's no weak link). The scene of Galadriel's gifts to the Fellowship added to the first film proves significant over the course of the story, while the new Faramir scene at the end of the second film helps set up the third and the new Saruman scene at the beginning of the third film helps conclude the plot of the second. To top it all off, the extended editions offer four discs per film: two for the longer movie, plus four commentary tracks and stupendous DTS 6.1 ES sound; and two for the bonus material, which covers just about everything from script creation to special effects. The argument was that fans would need both versions because the bonus material is completely different, but the features on the theatrical releases are so vastly inferior that the only reason a fan would need them would be if they wanted to watch the shorter versions they saw in theaters (the last of which, The Return of the King, merely won 12 Oscars). The LOTR extended editions without exception have set the DVD standard by providing a richer film experience that pulls the three films together and further embraces Tolkien's world, a reference-quality home theater experience, and generous, intelligent, and engrossing bonus features. --David Horiuchi
According to legend, the dark, forbidding edifice of Daemons' Roost was once home to a sorcerer named Jacob Surtees, who harnessed the powers of Hell to subjugate his victims. Living there today is the veteran film director Nathan Clore, whose output of schlock horror movies in the Seventies generated its own brand of terror among cinema audiences. His health now failing, he has summoned home his stepdaughter Alison, to share with her, finally, the dreadful truth about what happened to her family there when she was just a child. Were her mother and sisters really killed by demonic forces? And what is the macabre background to the seemingly impossible death of her husband Stephen's first wife - in a locked room murder that became known as the Striped Unicorn Affair? The chilling solution to it all is one that will tragically resonate with events in Jonathan Creek's own distant past
For four years, the crew of the NSEA Protector donned their uniforms and set off on thrilling and often dangerous missions in space--then their series was canceled.
Combining dark comedy with dramatic intrigue, Gringo joyrides across the border into Mexico, where all is not as it seems for mild-mannered American businessman Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo).
Hit man Martin Q Blank (John Cusack) is in an awkward situation. Several of them, actually. He's attending his high school reunion on an assignment; he's got a rival hit man (Dan Aykroyd) on his tail; and he's going to have to explain to his old girlfriend (Minnie Driver) why he stood her up on prom night. Grosse Pointe Blank is an amiable black comedy, cowritten by Cusack and directed by Jonathan Demme protégé George Armitage (Miami Blues), has the feel of Demme's Something Wild and Married to the Mob--which is to say its humour is dark and brightly coloured at the same time. Cusack and Driver are utterly charming--as is the leading man's sister, Joan, who plays his secretary. (Cusack received an Oscar nomination for her next role, in In & Out.) Alan Arkin is also very funny as Martin's psychiatrist. --Jim Emerson
This visual and musical masterpiece features Yul Brynner's Academy Award winning performance an unforgettable Rodgers and Hammerstein score and brilliant choreography by Jerome Robbins. This masterful musical celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2006! It tells the true story of an English woman Anna Leonowens (Kerr) who comes to Siam as schoolteacher to the royal court in the 1860s. Though she soon finds herself at odds with the stubborn monarch (Brynner) over time Anna and the Kin
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