"Actor: Charles"

• The Art of Henryk Szeryng (Bouillon, Pca) | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Telecast of December 25 1988 (colour)-Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major-J.S. Bach: Fugue from Sonata No. 1-Marroquin: De mi PatriaTelecast of February 1 1960 (black & white)-Pugnani: Largo Espressivo-J.S. Bach: Fugue from Sonata No. 1-Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 17-Marroquin: Mexican Lullaby-Sarasate: Zapateado-Suk: Chanson d'amourHenry Szeryng violin - l'Orchestre Symphonique de Radio-Canada Jorge Mester conductor Charles Reiner piano

• Red Dwarf - Series 1 | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Notoriously, and entirely appropriately, the original outline for Doug Naylor and Rob Grant's comedy SF series Red Dwarf was sketched on the back of a beer mat. When it finally appeared on our television screens in 1988 the show had clearly stayed true to its roots, mixing jokes about excessive curry consumption with affectionate parodies of classic SF. Indeed, one of the show's most endearing and enduring features is its obvious respect for the conventions of SF, even as it gleefully subverts them. The scenario owes something to Douglas Adams's satirical Hitch-Hiker's Guide, something to The Odd Couple and a lot more to the slacker SF of John Carpenter's Dark Star. Behind the crew's constant bickering there lurks an impending sense that life, the universe and everything are all someone's idea of a terrible joke. Later series broadened the show's horizons until at last its premise was so diluted as to be unrecognisable, but in the six episodes of the first series the comedy is witty and intimate, focusing on characters and not special effects. Slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is the last human alive after a radiation leak wipes out the crew of the vast mining vessel Red Dwarf (episode 1, "The End"). He bums around the spaceship with the perpetually uptight and annoyed hologram of his dead bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the show's greatest comedy asset) and a creature evolved from a cat (dapper Danny John Jules). They are guided rather haphazardly by Holly, the worryingly thick ship's computer (lugubrious Norman Lovett). On the DVD: Red Dwarf I arrives in a two-disc set, with all six episodes on the first disc accompanied by an excellent group commentary from Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John Jules and Norman Lovett. (There's also a bonus commentary on "The End" with the two writers and director Ed Bye.) The 4:3 picture is unimpressive, but sound is decent stereo. The second disc has an entertaining 25-minute documentary on the genesis of the series with contributions from the cast, writer Doug Naylor and producer Paul Jackson. Navigate the animated menus to find a gallery of extra features, including isolated music cues, deleted scenes, outtakes ("Smeg Ups"), a fun "Drunk" music montage, model effects shots, Web links, audiobook clips, the original BBC trailer and even the entire first episode in Japanese. --Mark Walker

• Carry On Abroad | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £14.98   |  Saving you £-4.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  One of the last decent Carry On movies, Carry On Abroad is a 1972 venture into the world of package holidays. After this, the series descended into unfunny coarseness as opposed to camply laboured double entendre, culminating in the dreadful Carry On Emanuelle. Here, publican Sid James and dutiful mother's son turned sex maniac Charles Hawtrey are among a brace of Brits heading for the "paradise island" of Elsbels. Kenneth Williams is the out-of-his-depth tour operator, reverting to the sort of effete types he played in the 1950s, Peter Butterworth a pre-Manuel-style manager of a half-built hotel. A series of disasters ensue, with the entire gang landing up in jail following a fracas in a brothel at one point, but everyone finds romantic and sexual fulfilment in a quaint disco finale. This includes a gay character who is "dissuaded" from his homosexuality in a typical example of the thoroughly reactionary subtext that constitutes the really naughty bit of most Carry On films. Nonetheless, this throwback to an imaginary time when the lewdest innuendo of a dirty old man was greeted by young females with a flirty "Ooh, saucy!" is enjoyable on condition that you enter into its seaside-postcard spirit. June Whitfield is fine as a sexually uptight wife, Kenneth Connor a model of red-faced frustration as her wimpish husband. On the DVD: Sadly, no extra features except scene selection. The picture is a 4:3 ratio full-screen presentation. --David Stubbs

• Alien 3 | Blu Ray | (30/01/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  By transplanting the classic haunted house scenario into space, Ridley Scott, together with screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, produced a work of genuinely original cinematic sci-fi with Alien that, despite the passage of years and countless inferior imitations, remains shockingly fresh even after repeated viewing. Scott's legendary obsession with detail ensures that the setting is thoroughly conceived, while the Gothic production design and Jerry Goldsmith's wonderfully unsettling score produce a sense of disquiet from the outset: everything about the spaceship Nostromo--from Tupperware to toolboxes-seems oddly familiar yet disconcertingly ... well, alien.Nothing much to speak of happens for at least the first 30 minutes, and that in a way is the secret of the film's success: the audience has been nervously peering round every corner for so long that by the time the eponymous beast claims its first victim, the release of pent-up anxiety is all the more effective. Although Sigourney Weaver ultimately takes centre-stage, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The remarkably low-tech effects still look good (better in many places than the CGI of the sequels), while the nightmarish quality of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical creature and set design is enhanced by camerawork that tantalises by what it doesn't reveal.On the DVD: The director, audibly pausing to puff on his cigar at regular intervals, provides an insightful commentary which, in tandem with superior sound and picture, sheds light into some previously unexplored dark recesses of this much-analysed, much-discussed movie (why the crew eat muesli, for example, or where the "rain" in the engine room is coming from). Deleted scenes include the famous "cocoon" sequence, the completion of the creature's insect-like life-cycle for which cinema audiences had to wait until 1986 and James Cameron's Aliens. Isolated audio tracks, a picture gallery of production artwork and a "making of" documentary complete a highly attractive DVD package. --Mark Walker

• You Only Live Twice | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £6.00   |  Saving you £7.25 (152.95%)   |  RRP £11.99

  The film boasts the best of the Bond title songs (this one sung on a dreamy track by Nancy Sinatra), but the movie itself is one of the weaker ones of the Sean Connery phase of the 007 franchise. The story concerns an effort by the evil organisation SPECTRE to start a world war, but the not-so-super villain behind the plot is the awfully civilised Donald Pleasence. The thin script is by Roald Dahl (shouldn't we have expected a better Bond nemesis from the creator of mad genius Willy Wonka?), and direction is by British veteran Lewis Gilbert (Alfie). But the movie can't hold a candle to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, or Goldfinger. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.comOn the DVD: This was another troubled production according to the insightful "making of" documentary: director and producers luckily avoided boarding a plane out of Tokyo that crashed and killed everyone on board; the Japanese actresses couldn't speak English and one threatened suicide if she was dropped from the part; and the aerial cameraman filming the helicopter fight had his leg sliced off by a rotor blade. Maurice Binder's evocative main title designs are the subject of the second documentary, "Silhouettes", in which his colleagues voiceboth their admiration of his art and frustration at his chaotic working practices. The commentary is another edited selection of interviews with principal cast and crew. An animated storyboard sequence, trailers, radio spots and a handsome booklet add up to another winning entry in this series. --Mark Walker

• Nick Of Time | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £5.38   |  Saving you £7.61 (141.45%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ninety Minutes. Six Bullets. No Choice. The clock is ticking for Johnny Depp in Nick Of Time a twist-filled race-against-time thriller directed by John Badham. And indeed it is a race filmed in ""real time"" so that onscreen events unfold minute by nail-biting minute as they would in real life. No sooner does accountant arrive at L.A.'s Union Station with his six-year-old daughter than he's plunged into a nightmare. Two shadowy strangers separate Watson from his little girl sl

• Badlands | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (100.14%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

• Murder Rooms - The Dark Beginnings Of Sherlock Holmes | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  So you're interested in the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes? Well then its elementary my dear Watson that you start here with 'The Dark Beginnings'... This BBC drama provides a fascinating insight into the fictional beginnings of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson the tale based on the real-life relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Doctor Joseph Bell his tutor at Edinburgh University.

• K2 | DVD | (05/01/2004) from £11.39   |  Saving you £-1.40 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  K2 is a thrilling action adventure about two men Taylor Brooks (Michael Biehn) and Harold Jamieson (Matt Craven) attempting to conquer the most feared mountain in the world. Their quest takes them from America to the sheer peaks of Alaska where they encounter and join a group preparing for the mammoth expedition. Then on to the mighty Karakoram mountain range in Northern Pakistan where K2 ""The Savage Mountain"" awaits. One by one the mountaineers are faced with setbacks and disast

• Thunderbirds Are Go - The Movie | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £7.26   |  Saving you £8.73 (120.25%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Thunderbirds Are Go followed the remarkable success of the Thunderbirds television series, bringing the three-dimensional puppet animation adventures of International Rescue to the big screen. Set in the 21st century, there is no attempt to explain the background story: as in the TV show International Rescue is a private family organisation who use hi-tech craft to rescue anyone in peril. Here it is the first manned flight to Mars which is in danger, as International Rescue foils a sabotage attempt at the launch, then race to avert disaster when the spaceship returns to earth. What could have made a 50-minute TV episode is expanded to feature length with Martian "rock monsters" and a surreal dream-sequence involving Alan Tracy, Lady Penelope and "Cliff Richard Jnr" & the Shadows, with a new song performed by the real Cliff and the Shadows. In the cinemas this was competing against another British children's TV SF spin-off, the equally colourful Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD, and would be followed by Thunderbird 6 (1968). Yet apart from more complex model work, a bigger orchestra and even bigger explosions, on TV this plays like a widescreen double-length episode. On the DVD: The mono sound is powerful, with Barry Gray's stirring music suffering intermittent distortion. Presented in anamorphic widescreen the picture is very good, with strong colours and only minimal grain, though the print does show occasional damage. Unfortunately the original extremely wide 2.74:1 Techniscope image is cropped to more conventional 2.35:1, to the extent that the careful compositions are noticeably damaged, which director David Lane refers to in his joint commentary with producer Sylvia Anderson (who also played Lady Penelope). 35 years after the event their commentary is packed with details of the filming process and full of information about the many problems of and solutions to making an animated feature. Both Anderson fans and budding animators will find this a real education. The original, rather battered, trailer is included, as are galleries of behind the scenes photos, promotional artwork and posters. Altogether it's rather FABulous. --Gary S Dalkin

• Carry On Matron | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £11.50   |  Saving you £1.48 (17.39%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Hattie Jacques finally got to the play the title role in 1972 when Carry On Matron immortalised the character she had developed during several previous outings, most notably in Carry On Doctor. And she seized it with gusto. This is no one-dimensional performance, but a very human portrait of a woman doing her best to retain her authority in the face of mounting chaos--a raid planned by Sid James to steal the hospital's supply of contraceptive pills. Certainly, she's obsessed with regular bowel movements--this wouldn't be a Carry On film otherwise--but she remains a majestic figure of dignity with a touch of human warmth. Occasionally, too, a real hint of irony peeks through the slapstick and the innuendo. Surely scriptwriter Talbot Rothwell had his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek when he gave Barbara Windsor--then married to Ronnie Knight--a the line, "I don't fancy being a gangster's moll!" Terry Scott makes a guest appearance and Sid James is at his most conniving and lecherous. Theatre impresario Bill Kenwright has a cameo role and there's an early appearance from Wendy Richard as a prototype Pauline Fowler. But it's the female stalwarts who shine. Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques truly were comic actresses of the highest order. On the DVD: Presented like most of the other Carry On DVD releases in 4:3 picture format and mono soundtrack, this release has all the comfy quality of a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the television. But where are the extras? It's one thing to launch a highly popular series of films as classic entertainment, but they deserve more than the budget treatment. As always, a cast list, some sort of documentary extra and biographies of at least the key players would really do them justice. --Piers Ford

• The Thing | DVD | (26/10/2004) from £15.23   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• A Canterbury Tale | DVD | (19/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  This compelling drama by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death The Red Shoes) is now acknowledged as one of their finest films. Their re-working of Chaucer's epic fourteenth century tale largely set in wartime Kent centres on American army Sergeant John Smith British Soldier Dennis Price and Landgirl Shiela Sim who before making a modern-day pilgrimage to Canterbury solve the bizarre mystery of a man who pours glue over the hair of village girls at ni

• Spartacus 4K 60th Anniversary | Blu Ray | (17/08/2020) from £23.05   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Relive the story of Spartacus, a genre-defining epic in 4K Ultra HD with HDR. Newly-remastered, this 60th Anniversary edition includes an extended version of the film and 4K Ultra HD bonus features. Spartacus from director Stanley Kubrick, is the legendary tale of a bold gladiator (Kirk Douglas) who led a triumphant Roman slave revolt. Restored from large format 35mm original film elements, this action-packed spectacle won four Academy Awards® including 'Best Cinematography' and 'Best Art Direction'. Featuring a cast of screen legends such as Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons, John Gavin and Tony Curtis, this uncut and fully restored masterpiece is an inspirational true account of man's eternal struggle for freedom. Bonus Features: Extended Version with 12 additional minutes I am Spartacus: A Conversation with Kirk Douglas Restoring Spartacus Deleted Scenes Archival Interviews Behind The Scenes Footage Vintage Newsreels And More! (4k Disc Includes All Bonus Features In 4k Resolution!)

• Love Me Tonight (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (15/01/2024) from £19.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Reuniting the leads of Josef von Sternbergs smash hit Morocco, and co-produced by the great Ernst Lubitsch, Desire was acclaimed by Graham Greene as the best of Dietrichs American films. Product Features INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES 2019 restoration from a 4K scan Original mono audio Audio commentary with writers and critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme (2023) Geoff Andrew on Love Me Tonight (2023): in-depth discussion of Rouben Mamoulians classic musical by the writer and critic Hollywood on Parade excerpts (1932): Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald perform musical numbers from the film for the newsreel series Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Limited edition exclusive with a new essay by Phil Concannon, archival interviews and articles, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits UK premiere on Blu-ray Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK All extras subject to change

• Creature from the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy Collection | DVD | (10/06/2019) from £27.09   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The original Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of the silver screen's most unforgettable characters and, along with the other Universal Classic Monsters, defined the Hollywood horror genre. The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy Collection includes all 3 films from the original legacy including the gripping classic and the sequels that followed. These landmark motion pictures perfectly blended Universal's classic monster heritage with the science-fiction explosion of the 1950s and continue to inspire remakes and adaptations that strengthen the legend of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to this day. Bonus Features: Back to the Black Lagoon Documentary 3 Feature Commentaries Production Photographs Theatrical Trailers

• Red Dwarf - Back To Earth | Blu Ray | (31/08/2009) from £11.30   |  Saving you £8.69 (76.90%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Back to Earth takes place after 'series ten'. Kochanski is dead and the crew are hurled through a portal and discover they are just characters from a TV series. Knowing they will die in the final episode the Dwarfers in best Blade Runner traditions decide to track down their creators to discover how long they have left to live. First the crew attempt to track down the actors who play them in the series and their metaphysical odyssey begins... Features both a Director's Cut version of Back to Earth and the original televised version.

• Love Affair (1939) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (21/02/2022) from £21.89   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Golden-age Hollywood's humanist master Leo Mccarey (Make Way for Tomorrow) brings his graceful touch and relaxed naturalism to this sublime romance, one of cinema's most intoxicating tear-wringers. Irene Dunne(The Awful Truth) and Charles Boyer (Gaslight) are chic strangers who meet and fall in love aboard an ocean liner bound for New York. Though they are both involved with other people, they make a pact to reconnect six months later at the top of the Empire State Buildinguntil the hand of fate throws their star-crossed affair tragically off course. Swooning passion and gentle comedy coexist in perfect harmony in the exquisitely tender Love Affair (nominated for six Oscars), a story so timeless that it has been remade by multiple filmmakers over the yearsincluding McCarey himself, who updated it as the equally beloved An Affair to Remember Special Features New 4K digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art and Lobster Films, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New interview with film critic Farran Smith Nehme about the movie's complicated production history New interview with Serge Bromberg, founder of Lobster Films, about the restoration Two radio adaptations, featuring Irene Dunne, William Powell, and Charles Boyer Two shorts directed by Leo McCarey, both starring silent comedian Charley Chase: Looking for Sally (1925) and Mighty Like a Moose (1926) English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: An essay by author Megan McGurk

• Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £9.02   |  Saving you £8.97 (99.45%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Cockney boys Tom, Soap, Eddie and Bacon are in a bind; they owe seedy criminal and porn king "Hatchet" Harry a sizeable amount of cash after Eddie loses half a million in a rigged game of poker. Hot on their tails is a thug named Big Chris who intends to send them all to the hospital if they don't come up with the cash in the allotted time. Add into the mix an incompetent set of ganja cultivators, two dimwitted robbers, a "madman" with an afro, and a ruthless band of drug dealers and you have an astonishing movie called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Before the boys can blink, they are caught up in a labyrinth of double-crosses that lead to a multitude of dead bodies, copious amounts of drugs, and two antique rifles. Written and directed by talented newcomer Guy Ritchie, this is one of those movies that was destined to become an instant cult classic à la Reservoir Dogs. Although some comparisons were drawn between Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, it would be unfair to discount the brilliant wit of the story and the innovative camerawork that the director brings to his debut feature. Not since The Krays has there been such an accurate depiction of the East End and its more colourful characters. Indicative of the social stratosphere in London, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a hilarious and at times touching account of friendships and loyalty. The director and his mates (who make up most of the cast) clearly are enjoying themselves here. This comes across in some shining performances, in particular from ex-footballer Vinnie Jones (Big Chris) and an over-the-top Vas Blackwood (as Rory Breaker), who very nearly steals the show. Full of quirky vernacular and clever tension-packed action sequences, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a triumph--a perfect blend of intelligence, humour and suspense. --Jeremy Storey

• Star Trek 5 : The Final Frontier | DVD | (07/05/2001) from £7.94   |  Saving you £10.05 (126.57%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Almost universally derided on its first release as the worst of the Star Trek movies to date, The Final Frontier may just have been the victim of bad press. Following in the wake of the massively successful fourth instalment The Voyage Home didn't help matters (notoriously, even-numbered entries are better), nor did having novice director and shameless egomaniac William Shatner at the helm. But if the story, conceived and co-written by Shatner, teeters dangerously on the verge of being corny at times, it redeems itself with enough thought-provoking scenes in the best tradition of the series, and a surprisingly original finale. Granted there are a few too many yawning plot holes along the way, and the general tone is over-earnest (despite some painfully slapstick comedy moments), but the interaction of the central trio (Kirk, Spock and McCoy) is often funny and genuinely insightful; while Laurence Luckinbill is a charismatic adversary as the renegade Vulcan Sybok. True, the rest of the cast scarcely get a look in, and the special effects betray serious budgetary restrictions, but with a standout score from Jerry Goldsmith and a meaty philosophical premise to play around with, Star Trek V looks a lot more substantial in retrospect. Certainly it's no worse than either Generations or Insurrection, the next "odd-numbered" entries in the series. On the DVD: This is a non-anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) print, with only two trailers as extra features. Quite frankly, Star Trek fans are being short-changed. --Mark Walker