"Actor: James Gandolfini"

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vol. 3) | DVD | (21/05/2001) from £22.77   |  Saving you £-8.52 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vol. 5) | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vol. 6) | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £10.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (18.20%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Features the episodes 'House Arrest' 'Knight in White Satin' and 'Armour Funhouse'. Tony Soprano impacts many people. Dr. Melfi steels herself with vodka before sessions with the trouble capo di tutti. The eyes of Richie Aprile become hate-filled Manson lamps as he schemes to cap the capo. Uncle Corrado (Dominic Chianese) is still allowed to pull strings that aren't there. Pussy is playing junior G-Man to nail his boss to an indictment. But the person Tony impacts the most is Tony. He's a tormented work in progress - a torment that would lessen if Richie took a permanent nap. Janice took a bus back to Seattle and Pussy took a boat ride from which he didn't return. So guess what happens?

• Gun - Vol. 1 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £5.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (33.39%)   |  RRP £7.99

  This anthology series follows the path of a handgun and the impact it has on the lives of those that it encounters. A rotating all-star cast is helmed by renowned directors Robert Altman Ted Demme and James Foley. Volume 1 features the following episodes: Columbus Day: When forced to work nights security guard Walter DiFideli buys a gun to protect his family. However unbeknownst to Walter the weapon once belonged to an assassin who will resort to any measure of force to re

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vols. 4-6) | DVD | (17/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £32.99

  The FBI take an unhealthy interest in the family's life causing more strain on life. If that's not enough the world of movie making seems to be poking its nose in. Skeletons come out the closet causing huge revelations... Golden Globe winners January 2000 for Best Actor (James Gandolfini) Best Actress (Edie Falco) and Best Supporting Actress (Nancy Marchand).

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vol. 4) | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 4) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £4.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (180.36%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: this ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Stories Of Lost Souls | DVD | (27/08/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Raw fear rules in Rest Stop the first film from Raw Feed the newest brand name in horror sci-fi and thrillers. Jess is at the wheel. Nicole rides shotgun. And at the end of the road stretching before them is glittering glamorous Hollywood. They're on a road trip all right...straight to hell. When the runaway lovers pause at an abandoned rest stop Jess disappears. And someone else appears - someone with his own demented sense of fun. With drills. Staple guns. Box cutters. All the tearing grinding ripping tools you need to hew wood. Or metal. Or people. Especially young pretty people just like Nicole. Director John Shiban writer and executive producer of The X-Files and Supernatural keeps the terrors and twists coming each out-shocking the last. Stop. Stay awhile. But don't expect to rest.

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 5) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Killing Them Softly | Blu Ray | (20/05/2014) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-15.49 (-134.80%)   |  RRP £11.49

  Based on Killing Them Softly's somewhat misleading promotional campaign, expectant audiences may have thought they were in for an action-driven crime thriller. There's plenty of grit, street life, gangland lingo, and nuts-and-bolts criminal insiderism, but the overall tone is more akin to a David Mamet play than a rollicking Hollywood shoot-'em-up. The movie is an adaptation of the fine George V. Higgins novel Cogan's Trade, and it nicely transposes the tone and delivery of Higgins's spare prose into a visual style that keeps a long, lingering gaze on its unlovable bad guys. It also holds an attentive ear to the rhythm and pattern of their speech, turning the extended stretches of dialogue into unique tableaux of stylish exchanges between hit men, lowlife punks, and middle management gangsters. These scenes of hushed talk are infused with deeper meaning, not to mention lots of wit, and they make up the bulk of the film, whether in cars, bars, or hotel rooms or on street corners. Brad Pitt is a sleek and enigmatic presence as Jackie Cogan, a professional killer who's as exasperated by the stupidity around him as he is obsessed with the details of doing his job right. After an odd couple of hapless losers (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn, who are a hoot) hit a mob-run card game, Jackie is called in to clean up the mess. Richard Jenkins is in terrific form as the befuddled mob accountant who reluctantly gives him the assignment. Thinking he'll need help with the job, Jackie enlists his long-time associate Mickey. But as inhabited by James Gandolfini, Mickey turns out to be a slovenly mess who Jackie clearly sees is past his prime. There are two long, highly oblique scenes between Pitt and Gandolfini that crackle with greatness. Also in the soup of clouded meaning and distinctive formal structure is Ray Liotta as Markie, the boob who runs the card game. A rain-soaked scene that has Markie at the four-fisted end of a brutal beat-down is one of the most vicious and visually poetic fights ever seen. The master of all the talking, fleeting sequences of grisly violence and philosophizing about financial downfall and change (the movie is set on the cusp of 2008's economic crisis and presidential campaign) is director Andrew Dominik. Much as he did in 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (also starring Brad Pitt), Dominik is much more interested in the nuanced detail of manner and attitude than the physical action that results. That's not to say that Killing Them Softly doesn't excel at the remarkable execution of classic crime-drama set pieces. But the movie and its characters take a lot of time to hang back and observe and listen to get at the real meaning of how things happen and why. It's a process that's fascinating to watch, no matter how trivial the detail or how shocking the result. --Ted Fry

• Gun: Fatal Betrayal | DVD | (12/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This anthology series follows the path of a handgun and the impact it has on the lives of those that it encounters. A rotating all-star cast is helmed by renowned directors Robert Altman Ted Demme and James Foley. Columbus Day: When forced to work nights security guard Walter DiFideli buys a gun to protect his family. However unbeknownst to Walter the weapon once belonged to an assassin who will resort to any measure of force to recover the evidence that could incriminate him... All The President's Women: Bill Johnson is on the verge of realising a dream; the post of president of his Texas country club. Yet in addition to his wife Bill juggles a variety of mistresses each unaware of the others and all seems well until his current squeeze receives an unloaded gun in her mailbox. Further unnerved as his wife and another mistress receive the gun's clip and bullets respectively Bill must piece together the mystery that threatens to wreck his inauguration party... The Hole: A gun lies buried at the bottom of a small town's swimming pool. To a group of young kids it looks like buried treasure and to Sandra a young woman who dreams of leaving her abusive stepfather it looks like her ticket out of town. Yet to James a loner with a dark past the gun is an object that he simply must recover as he placed it there years earlier and holds the key to a previous mystery... The Shot: Harvey packs up his family and moves them from Hollywood to a potentially more stable life in Virginia. His dreams of making it as an actor are seemingly over until he unwittingly foils a convenience store robbery and is cast to play himself in a movie of the incident. However the would-be thieves have powerful friends who wish to permanently curtail Harvey's movie career and he finds that his 'shot' at fame is intrinsically linked to that particular weapon... Father John - An Article Of Faith: Newspaper columnist Jack returns to Los Angeles for the funeral of his uncle Father John Farragut. Surprised to find a great deal of money and a gun in his uncle's possessions in the church Jack is forced to investigate the secrets in the cleric's life and unknowingly puts the life of a young woman in great peril... Ricochet: A homeless man discovers a gun at a murder scene and rather than take his chances with the police decides to keep it. As the cops close in the gun changes hands several times and provides the investigators with an unexpected discovery...

• The Sopranos: Seasons 1-2 | DVD | (06/03/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A