Explorer Bruce Parry returns to our screens with his feature documentary directorial debut. Experience this immersive odyssey with Bruce as he travels the world living with indigenous peoples, delving deeper than ever on a journey into the heart of our collective human conscience. Tawai is the word the nomadic hunter gatherers of Borneo use to describe their inner feeling of connection to nature. In this dreamy, philosophical and sociological look at life, Bruce learns from people living lives very different to our own. From the jungles of Malaysia to the tributaries of the Amazon, TAWAI is a quest for reconnection, providing a powerful voice from the heart of the forest itself. Features: Deleted scenes from Colombia. Bruce and his brother Duncan take part in an Ayahuasca healing ceremony in southern Colombia. Deleted scenes from the Congo. Bruce meets the Mbendjele tribe of northern Congo, learning the ways of how they hold balance within their society and how, they believe, human civilisation came to be. Feature Commentary with Bruce Parry.
This production is directed by Trevor Nunn and is based on his highly successful Glyndebourne staging in 1986/87 which was revived at Covent Garden in the autumn of 1992 with most of the original cast including Willard White and Cynthia Haymon. Immediately after that performance the production was moved to the giant stage at Shepperton Studios with much expanded sets and lighting. It was then recorded using the original award-winning EMI soundtrack. The romance and beauty of this tender story its dramatic development and the sheer vitality of the characters come alive in this exciting visual production.
Available for the first time on DVD. New York 1935: Billy Bathgate a naive Bronx-born teenager wangles his way into the gang of his hero crime boss Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman). Although the boy doesn't know it Schultz is approaching the end of his storied career and the Feds are closing in hoping to put him behind bars for income-tax evasion. The youth quickly learns about the endless violence treachery and double-crossing that characterize mob life such as Schultz's cold-
Now you see it. You're amazed. You can't believe it. Your eyes open wider. It's horrible, but you can't look away. There's no chance for you. No escape. You're helpless, helpless. There's just one chance, if you can scream. Throw your arms across your eyes and scream, scream for your life!" And scream Fay Wray does most famously in this monster classic, one of the greatest adventure films of all time, which even in an era of computer-generated wizardry remains a marvel of stop-motion animation. Robert Armstrong stars as famed adventurer Carl Denham, who is leading a "crazy voyage" to a mysterious, uncharted island to photograph "something monstrous ... neither beast nor man". Also aboard is waif Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Bruce Cabot as big lug John Driscoll, the ship's first mate. King Kong's first half-hour is steady going, with engagingly corny dialogue ("Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy") and ominous portent that sets the stage for the horror to come. Once our heroes reach Skull Island, the movie comes to roaring, chest-thumping, T-rex-slamming, snake-throttling, pterodactyl-tearing, native-stomping life. King Kong was ranked by the American Film Institute as among the 50 best films of the century. Kong making his last stand atop the Empire State Building is one of the film's most indelible and iconic images. --Donald Liebenson, Amazon.comOn the DVD: Although a little light on extras, this is happily the Director's Cut, restoring scenes that were censored after the film's original 1933 run, including Kong peeling off Fay Wray's clothes like a banana, and our hirsute hero using unfortunate natives as dental floss. The ratio of 4:3 is correct for a film of this age; the picture and (mono) sound are perfectly acceptable without being revelatory. The 25-minute "making of" documentary from 1992 is a 60th anniversary tribute to the film, which details all of Kong's many ground-breaking contributions to cinema, from Willis O'Brien's use of stop-motion and rear projection effects to Max Steiner's music score. There are contributions from film historians, modern admirers of the film including composer Jerry Goldsmith--who admits that Steiner created a template that Hollywood composers are still following--and a few surviving participants such as sound effects man Murray Spivak. Apparently, director Merian C. Cooper's original idea was to capture live gorillas, transport them to the island of Komodo and film them fighting the giant lizards! Thanks to Willis O'Brien's pioneering effects work good sense prevailed and a cinema classic was born. --Mark Walker
Audiences overlooked Wild Bill at the cinema, but it's one of the better Westerns of the 1990s, featuring yet another terrific performance by Jeff Bridges, America's most underrated movie actor. As James Butler Hickock, he captures the sense of a man at the end of his career, one of the first media superstars who discovers that his legend is more burden than blessing. As he heads toward his final hand of poker in Deadwood, South Dakota, he flashes back to his younger days and the events that built his reputation, even as he copes with encroaching blindness caused by syphilis. Walter Hill blends action and elegy, utilising a screenplay based both on Pete Dexter's novel Deadwood and Thomas Babe's play Fathers and Sons. Wild Bill features strong supporting performances by John Hurt (as a Hickock sidekick) and Ellen Barkin (as the tough, lusty Calamity Jane)--but the centrepiece is the sad, manly performance by Bridges, who more than measures up to the part. --Marshall Fine
Writer-director Sam Raimi's extremely stylized, blood-soaked follow-up to his creepy Evil Dead isn't really a sequel; rather, it's a remake on a better budget. It also isn't really a horror film (though there are plenty of decapitations, zombies, supernatural demons, and gore) as much as it is a hilarious, sophisticated slapstick send-up of the terror genre. Raimi takes every horror convention that exists and exaggerates it with mind-blowing special effects, crossed with mocking Three Stooges humour. The plot alone is a genre cliché right out of any number of horror films. Several teens (including our hero, Ash, played by Bruce Campbell in a manic tour-de-force of physical comedy) visit a broken-down cottage in the woods--miles from civilization--find a copy of the Book of the Dead, and unleash supernatural powers that gut every character in sight. All, that is, except Ash, who takes this very personally and spends much of the of the film getting his head smashed while battling the unseen forces. Raimi uses this bare-bones story as a stage to showcase dazzling special effects and eye-popping visuals, including some of the most spectacular point-of-view Steadicam work ever (done by Peter Deming). Although it went unnoticed in the cinemas, the film has since become an influential cult-video favourite, paving the way for over-the-top comic gross-out films like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive.--Dave McCoy
Mulder continues his search for a cure for Scully's illness even as her genetically altered DNA takes her to the brink of death. Scully's DNA comes into play once again when it proves that she is somehow the mother of a little girl named Emily an incident that could only be related to her abduction years earlier. But in the end it is a young boy named Gibson Praise whose body may actually contain the elusive proof Mulder has been searching for so desperately. Episodes comprise:
Steve Ford (Bruce Willis) is a down but not out L.A based Private Investigator whose professional and personal worlds collide after his loving pet dog Buddy is stolen by a notorious gang. A series of crazy circumstances find him doing the gang's bidding, while being chased by two vengeful Samoan brothers, a loan shark's goons, and a few other shady characters. They say a dog is a man's best friend, and Steve shows how far a man will go to be reunited with him
Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine; Shutter Island; Wendy and Lucy) stars alongside Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) and Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek; I'm Not There; Capote) in a tense subtle drama set during the earliest days of the Oregon Trail. The year is 1845 and a wagon team of three families is setting off across the sparse terrain of the Oregon desert. They become lost and have to put their faith in a Native American not knowing if he will lead them into an ambush or water.
The Evil Dead Trilogy in one DVD set! Evil Dead: The gruesome granddaddy of modern day horror Sam Raimi's original 1981 classic The Evil Dead has been hailed by horror writer Stephen King as the most ferociously original horror movie I have ever seen and in the UK was one of the first horror films to be labelled as a 'video nasty'. Off for a weekend of fun in a remote cabin in the woods five young friends unwittingly release a powerful force of unspeakable evil from the pages of the Necronomicon the Book of the Dead. Possession murder and dismemberment follow in rapid succession as Ash (Bruce Campbell) the one uncorrupted member of the group fights for survival against his former friends who have joined the legion of the evil dead. Evil Dead 2: The first sequel to Sam Raimi's horror masterpiece Evil Dead II sees Ash (Bruce Campbell) continuing his battle with the evil dead initially in the demon form of his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler). Meanwhile relatives and associates of the cabin's original owner are en route to the cabin with newly found pages from the Necronomicon. Evil Dead II manages to successfully marry outrageous comedy with nail-biting terror as Ash is forced to resort to progressively extreme measures in order to maintain his sanity and conquer the demonic forces threatening his life. Evil Dead 3: Army Of Darkness: Immediately following the events of Evil Dead II Army of Darkness finds Ash (Bruce Campbell) transported to Medieval England where the occupants of a local castle are under siege from the supernaturally evil Deadites. Hailed as the deliverer of the Necronomicon and the saviour of the living he must employ his 20th Century wits and skills to overcome his evil self before destroying his possessed medieval girlfriend and the entire Army of Darkness in a battle to save the living from the dead. Disc 4: The fourth disc in the boxed set presents the eponymous first film in The Evil Dead trilogy in its original 4x3 format (1.33:1 Full Screen Unmatted) and includes several extras exclusive to this edition making it a must-have for all Evil Dead fans and collectors.
Knight Rider: Season 1 (2008) (4 Disc)
In Season 4 of The X-Files, Scully is a bit upset by her on-off terminal cancer and Mulder is supposed to shoot himself in the season finale (did anyone believe that?), but in episode after episode the characters still plod dutifully around atrocity sites tossing off wry witticisms in that bland investigative demeanour out of fashion among TV cops since Dragnet. Perhaps the best achievement of this season is "Home", the most unpleasant horror story ever presented on prime-time US TV. It's not a comfortable show--confronted with this ghastly parade of incest, inbreeding, infanticide and mutilation, you'd think M & S would drop the jokes for once--but shows a willingness to expand the envelope. By contrast, ventures into golem, reincarnation, witchcraft and Invisible Man territory throw up run-of-the-mill body counts, spotlighting another recurrent problem. For heroes, M & S rarely do anything positive: they work out what is happening after all the killer's intended victims have been snuffed ("Kaddish"), let the monster get away ("Sanguinarium") and cause tragedies ("The Field Where I Died"). No wonder they're stuck in the FBI basement where they can do the least damage. The series has settled enough to play variations on earlier hits: following the liver vampire, we have a melanin vampire ("Teliko") and a cancer vampire ("Leonard Betts"), and return engagements for the oily contact lens aliens and the weasely ex-Agent Krycek ("Tunguska"/"Terma"). Occasional detours into send-up or post-modernism are indulged, yielding both the season's best episode ("Small Potatoes") and its most disappointing ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). "Small Potatoes", with the mimic mutant who tries out Mulder's life and realises what a loser he is (how many other pin-up series heroes get answerphone messages from their favourite phone-sex lines?), works as a genuine sci-fi mystery--for once featuring a mutant who doesn't have to kill people to live--and as character insight. --Kim Newman
Columbia's biggest hit of 1943, Sahara confirmed the superstar status Humphrey Bogart attained with his Warner Brothers' North African adventure, Casablanca (1942). Surrounded by the Germans on three sides, Bogart's tough-as-they-come Sergeant Joe Gunn takes his tank and a crew of American, British and French soldiers into the Sahara to reach the retreating allied forces. But when they find that the only water for 100 miles is also the target of a German battalion they decide to take a desperate stand. Early scenes present the characters with assorted perils: thirst, sandstorms and a German air attack. The characters are rather stereotypical: the cowardly Italian prisoner, the Frenchman obsessed with food, the German humourless and fanatical, though the British come out well, and there's a sympathetically drawn black British Sudanese soldier (Rex Ingram). The director was Zoltan Korda, the man behind such British classics as The Four Feathers (1939), and though Sahara lacks the scale of that adventure, Korda's experience pays off in mounting the extended and suspenseful siege/action climax. With support from Lloyd Bridges and Dan Duryea, Oscar-nominated photography by Rudolph Mate and a fine score by Miklós Rózsa, Sahara is a taut, gripping desert war thriller which wouldn't be bettered until Ice Cold in Alex (1958). On the DVD: The black and white picture is presented in the original 4:3 ratio and looks very good for its age, though there are numerous brief instances of substantial print damage. Audio is strong, clear mono. Given the age of the movie it is not surprising the only extras are filmographies and a small selection of beautifully reproduced original advertising posters. The film is presented with alternative soundtracks in French, Italian and Spanish, as well as with English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Finnish subtitles. There are trailers for The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). --Gary S Dalkin
I Am Bruce Lee is the amazing story of one of the greatest icons ever to enter the public consciousness, the first film to truly tell Bruce Lee's story in his own words and actions, as well as through the eyes of international stars from the worlds of film, television, music and sports.Original interviews include UFC President Dana White, NBA Superstar Kobe Bryant, boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, Academy Award Nominated actor Mickey Rourke, Black Eyes Peas' Taboo, legendary martial artists' Dan Inosanto, Richard Bustillo, Bob Wall and Gene Lebell and unprecedented conversations with Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon Lee and his wife Linda Lee Cadwell, plus the best of Bruce Lee's ground-breaking martial arts action films and previously unseen archive footage, this is the definitive story of a man whose legacy will endure forever.
Two talented song-and-dance men (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) team up after the war to become one of the hottest acts in show business.
In the year 2257 a planet-sized sphere of supreme evil is approaching the earth at relentless speed threatening to exterminate every living organism unless four ancient stones representing the elements of earth wind fire and water are united with the mysterious fifth element.From Luc Besson the acclaimed director of 'Leon' and 'Nikita' comes a film that turns science fiction inside out.
A bold girl discovers a bizarre, threatening, and mysterious new world beyond her front door after she escapes her father's protective and paranoid control.
Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award 1995, this boldly inventive and expertly orchestrated crime saga is now available as a two disc DVD set that includes such extras as deleted scenes, interviews and a documentary.
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