"Actor: Brid Brennan"

• Dancing at Lughnasa | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £9.98   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Two-time Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep stars in this beautifully crafted ensemble drama from director Pat O'Connor (Circle Of Friends) adapted from the internationally acclaimed play by Brian Friel. Rural Ireland 1936. It's a pivotal time for the five unmarried Mundy sisters. Europe is on the brink of war their small village is on the verge of incredible change and the sisters have troubles of their own. The head of the household is the imperious eldest sister Kate (Streep) barely holding the family together with income from her teaching job. Her sisters saintly caretaker Agnes (Brid Brennan); the simple-minded Rose (Sophie Thompson); earthy Maggie (Kathy Burke) and the romantic Christina (Catherine McCormack) all do piecework and odd jobs to support themselves and Christina's beloved illegitimate young son Michael. Into their lives come two men who threaten to disrupt this delicate family union: Michael's errant father Gerry (Rhys Ifans) and the sisters...brother (Michael Gambon) a mentally unbalanced priest returning from decades of missionary work in remote Africa. Despite their hardships the sisters are able to embrace life and all its complexities and dance with joy in their hearts. Dancing At Lughnasa is a poignant drama featuring brilliant ensemble acting gorgeous photography and music by Grammy Award-winning composer Bill Whelan (Riverdance).

• South Riding | DVD | (07/03/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Andrew Davies' sparkling adaptation of Winifred Holtby's acclaimed novel. Insightful warm and full of memorable characters South Riding tells a fraught love story and paints a panoramic portrait of a between-the-wars Yorkshire community. In depression-hit Thirties Britain Sarah Burton returns from London to her Yorkshire hometown to take up the post of headmistress at a struggling girls' school. Full of ambition she is determined to create a great school and inspire her girls. As Sarah struggles against the crippling poverty of the district she meets those at the heart of the local community: her brilliant but poor student Lydia Holly; the county's first woman Alderman Mrs Beddows whose sensible demeanour belies a girlish heart; the noble but ludicrous Methodist preacher Councillor Huggins; Sarah's socialist suitor Joe Astell and the proud haunted and almost ruined landowner Robert Carne - a man Sarah finds herself drawn towards even though he stands for everything she detests... Engrossing and entertaining South Riding vividly brings to life a rural community on the brink of change.

• The Last Picture Show | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £19.19   |  Saving you £-6.20 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on the novel by Larry McMurty The Last Picture Show is a more bitter than bittersweet drama about growing up and winding down in the dusty nowhere town of Anarene, Texas, during 1951-52. Unusually shot in black and white while the rest of Hollywood was going psychedelic in 1971, it's an interesting contrast with the rock 'n' roll nostalgia of American Graffiti (the films share a key moment in which the boy who is leaving town gives a precious car to his stay-at-home friend and both make oblique references to Vietnam). It visits a recent past already nostalgic for a heroic Western era and discovers that whatever was wonderful has already gone by the time of these teenagers. Introspective Timothy Bottoms and outgoing Jeff Bridges are best friends and stalwarts of the school's losing football team. Cybill Shepherd is the blonde teen queen who innocently spreads chaos, ditching long-time boyfriend Bridges to run with a richer, faster set. She steals Bottoms away from an older married woman (Cloris Leachman) which prompts a vicious falling-out between Bottoms and Bridges. As the kids run around heedless, the town's older generation remember their own wilder days and wonder how they came to be so unhappy. Ben Johnson, in Academy Award-winning form, is "Sam the Lion", the wise old cowboy who runs the movie house and pool hall. He muses about his long-ago affair with Shepherd's feisty mother (Ellen Burstyn), who is currently throwing herself at a callous oilman stud (Clu Gulager). A soap in essence but director Peter Bogdanovich plays it as a John Ford-style "closing of the frontier" Western, with ugly-beautiful images of a West that has swapped cattle for oil but failed to strike it rich. He layers in evocative snatches of Hank Williams among the whistling winds and the whining locals. It perhaps has a tragedy too many in its last act and can't quite work up the tears with an actual martyrdom, but it does deliver a signature line of wistful regret, "nothing's been right since Sam the Lion died".On the DVD: this is an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 version of the 121-minute 1974 re-release, with one additional scene for Eileen Brennan's waitress, now labelled "the director's cut". It boasts a great sounding mono track, with alternate soundtracks and subtitles in a bunch of languages; a tiny promo piece from 1974 with a Bogdanovich interview; a solid hour-long retrospective documentary with interviews from a lot of the cast and crew (including future director Frank Marshall, an assistant and bit-player) and some trailers. Oddly, Bogdanovich has done a full-length commentary for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane but not for his own best film. --Kim Newman

• Brooklyn | Blu Ray | (29/02/2016) from £7.55   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  BROOKLYN is the story of a young woman, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan; Atonement) who moves from a small town in Ireland to Brooklyn, where, unlike home, she has the opportunity for work, a future - and love, in the form of Italian-American Tony (Emory Cohen; The Place Beyond The Pines). However, when Eilis returns temporarily to Ireland she finds herself absorbed into her old community, but now with eligible Jim (Domhnall Gleeson; About Time) courting her. As she repeatedly postpones her departure back to America, Eilis finds herself confronting a terrible dilemma - a heart-breaking choice between two countries and two futures. Special Features: Deleted Scenes Interviews Featurette

• Felicia's Journey | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £6.61   |  Saving you £-0.62 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A lonely middle-aged catering manager (Bob Hoskins) spends all of his time studying tapes of an eccentric TV chef (Arsine Khanjian).

• Trojan Eddie | DVD | (11/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A small time businessman on the make fancies himself for the big time but spends his days fetching and carrying for the local traveller community leader John Power who just happens to be a forceful and dangerous Godfather of the local travelling community. A tense story of violent retribution interwoven with wicked Irish humour.

• Ghostwatch | DVD | (25/11/2002) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  BBC TV's legendary 1992 Halloween special caused a storm of controversy. The programme went out as a 'live' telecast about a haunted house on a London estate with Michael Parkinson as anchor man in the studio Mike Smith presenting the phone-in Sarah Greene as the reporter in the house itself and Craig Charles as the Outside Broadcast interviewer. According to the press at least in the days following transmission it caused a wave of panic among the British viewing public similar

• Texasville | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Director Peter Bogdanovich revisits small-town Texas life in the long-awaited sequel to his 1971 masterpiece 'The Last Picture Show'. It's been over 30 years since Duane Jackson Sonny Crawford and Jacy Farrow graduated from high school. Life is still bittersweet as the town prepares to host the county's centennial celebration. Duane struck it rich with oil but is saddled with $12 million in debt and a shopaholic wife Karla. To make matters worse his dysfunctional children are out

• Dancing At Lughnasa | DVD | (28/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This affecting, bittersweet tale--adapted from Brian Friel's semi-autobiographical Tony Award-winning play--examines the emotional lives of the five unmarried Mundy sisters in 1936 rural Ireland. In their mutual care is eight-year-old Michael (sweetly understated Darrell Johnston), the illegitimate son of youngest sister Christina (Braveheart's Catherine McCormack). A voice-over from the adult Michael recalls that significant summer, in the month of August, during the feast of Lughnasa. The bolder townsfolk dance around a fire to Lugh, an ancient god of light. Yes, this is fiercely Roman Catholic Ireland and Lugh a pagan god, but that irony is at the core of the film: the hypocrisy of tradition. The dramatic change in the richly metaphoric movie comes with the arrival of two men: eldest sibling--and only Mundy brother--Jack (Michael Gambon), a priest returning from many years in Africa, now addled, and Christine's long-absent lover and Michael's father, the charmingly flighty Gerry (Rhys Ifans). Beautiful music and excellent performances highlight the film, which also features gorgeous cinematography of the Irish countryside. Meryl Streep is stern eldest sister Kate; Kathy Burke is lively Maggie; Brid Brennan (who appeared in the stage play) is thoughtful caretaker Agnes; and Sophie Thompson is simple sweet Rose. It's a quiet film, but one filled with ironic and haunting meaning. Directed by Pat O'Connor (Circle of Friends). --N.F. Mendoza, Amazon.com

• Felicia's Journey | DVD | (19/06/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A lonely middle-aged catering manager (Bob Hoskins) spends all of his time studying tapes of an eccentric TV chef (Arsine Khanjian).

• The Last Picture Show | Blu Ray | (18/03/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Released in 1971 to critical acclaim and public controversy, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW garnered eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and was hailed as the most important work by a young American director since Citizen Kane.A surprisingly frank, bittersweet drama of social and sexual mores in small-town Texas, the film features a talent-laden cast led by Jeff Bridges (The Mirror Has Two Faces), Cybill Shepherd (Taxi Driver) and Timothy Bottoms (The Man in the Iron Mask). Cloris Leachman (TVs The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Ben Johnson (Rio Grande) each won Oscars for their work in supporting roles.

• The Rendering | DVD | (05/07/2005) from £9.90   |  Saving you £-5.91 (-148.10%)   |  RRP £3.99

  An aspiring artist uses her talents to help police as a sketch artist. While sketching one victim's description of an attacker Sarah realises the sketch resembles her husband Michael.

• Cracker - Brotherly Love | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £10.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (44.49%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The police believe they have solved the brutal murder of a prostitute when they arrest father of four David Harvey on strong circumstantial evidence. However an identical murder while David is in custody means the team have to decide if they have the wrong man or whether they are dealing with a copycat killer. Meanwhile the death of Fitz's mother drives him into the arms of his wife while Jimmy Beck recently returned from sick leave finally breaks under the strain of work and his own guilt. When he takes the law to the limits he finds Penhaligon staring at him across an unbridgeable gap. Something has to give ...

• Cracker - Brotherly Love | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £6.54   |  Saving you £3.45 (34.50%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The police believe they have solved the brutal murder of a prostitute when they arrest father of four David Harvey on strong circumstantial evidence. However an identical murder while David is in custody means the team have to decide if they have the wrong man or whether they are dealing with a copycat killer. Meanwhile the death of Fitz's mother drives him into the arms of his wife while Jimmy Beck recently returned from sick leave finally breaks under the strain of work and his own guilt. When he takes the law to the limits he finds Penhaligon staring at him across an unbridgeable gap. Something has to give ...