"Actor: James Mar"

• The Man with the Golden Gun | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £5.76   |  Saving you £5.49 (122.00%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The British spy with a licence to kill takes on his dark underworld double, a classy assassin who kills with golden bullets at £1 million a hit. Roger Moore, in his second outing as James Bond, meets Christopher Lee's Scaramanga, one of the most magnetic villains in the entire series, in this entertaining but rather wan entry in the 007 sweepstakes. Bond's globetrotting search takes him to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally China, where Scaramanga turns his island retreat into a twisted theme park for a deadly game of wits between the gunmen, moderated by Scaramanga's diminutive man Friday Nick Nack (Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize). Britt Ekland does her best as an embarrassingly inept Bond girl, a clumsy, dim agent named Mary Goodnight who looks fetching in a bikini, while Maud Adams is Scaramanga's tough but haunted lover and assistant. Clifton James, the redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die, makes an ill-advised appearance as a racist tourist. He briefly teams up with 007 in what is otherwise the film's highlight, a high-energy chase through the crowded streets of Bangkok that climaxes with a breathtaking mid-air corkscrew jump. Bond and company are let down by a lazy script, but Moore balances the overplayed humour with a steely performance and Lee's charm and enthusiasm makes Scaramanga a cool, deadly, and thoroughly enchanting adversary. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Funny Girl / Funny Lady | DVD | (04/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Like giant monuments to good old-fashioned star quality, Funny Girl (1968) and Funny Lady (1975) hark back to the golden days of American vaudeville, while essentially celebrating one of the great, egotistical show-business talents of all time. Viewed end to end, these two films, which tell the story of Ziegfeld comedienne Fanny Brice, run for almost five hours. That's a lot of biopic. But with the greatest of respect to Brice, undoubtedly a formidable star of her time, the talent really in the spotlight here belongs to Barbra Streisand. Streisand created the role of Fanny Brice in the 1964 Broadway stage musical and her performance for the big screen is a tour de force, fully deserving the Best Actress Oscar which she received. As a biopic, Funny Girl is superior fare, full of sumptuous production numbers. Brice's glory days are explored against the background of her turbulent private life with her flawed playboy husband Nicky Arnstein (a sympathetic performance from Omar Sharif) with considerable attention to the details of her inner turmoil. More rambling and less cohesive, Funny Lady finds Fanny divorced but still in love with Arnstein (Sharif also revisiting his role), drifting into marriage number two with uncouth songwriter and impresario Billy Rose (the excellent James Caan), her successful career again juxtaposed with a less than happy personal life. Combined, both films measure Streisand's rise to greatness. In Funny Girl, the bravura of the performance as a whole masks occasional gaucheness, while if Funny Lady is the less impressive picture overall, it still marks how far she has developed as a screen actress. The rough edges are gone, replaced by a sophisticated poise and the sense of a talent that has come to terms with itself. And of course throughout she is superb in the musical numbers, which include her theme song "People" and the classic belter "Don't Rain on my Parade", as well as Brice's classic torch song, "My Man". On the DVD: this package of tremendous, old-fashioned entertainment takes the viewer back to pre-multiplex days when going to the cinema was an event you might dress up for. Funny Lady's soundtrack includes a pre-picture "Overture" to give you time to unwrap the chocolates. You really need some plush velvet curtains to swing back across the television screen. Then, guaranteeing a twinge of nostalgia, there's an intermission break. Both films are presented in their original widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Dolby Digital 5.0 (Funny Girl) and LCR (Funny Lady) soundtracks do justice to Streisand's lung power. The first disc offers the most interesting extras, including a couple of featurettes about Streisand. Both discs provide standard filmographies and song highlights so Streisand addicts can skip between numbers to their hearts' content.--Piers Ford

• The Quest | DVD | (01/06/2009) from £12.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Jean-Claude Van Damme directs and stars in this exciting fast moving action packed film which centres around Chris Dubois (Van-Damme) and the Ghan-Gheng a legendary 'special invite only' tournament that brings together the greatest fighters of the world in a winner takes all test of skill and courage. When Debois learns of the prestiegous tournament and the prize of a solid gold statue of a dragon he calls on his ""old friend"" Dobbs (Roger Moore) to help him enter the covena

• The Final Countdown | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £6.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  With a tantalising "what-if?" scenario and a respectable cast of Hollywood veterans, The Final Countdown plays like a grand-scale episode of The Twilight Zone. It's really no more than that, and time-travel movies have grown far more sophisticated since this popular 1980 release, but there's still some life remaining in the movie's basic premise: what if a modern-era navy aircraft carrier--in this case the real-life nuclear-powered USS Nimitz--was caught in an anomalous storm and thrust 40 years backwards in time to the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor? Will the ship's commander (Kirk Douglas) interfere with history? Will the visiting systems analyst (Martin Sheen) convince him not to? Will a rescued senator from 1941 (Charles Durning) play an unexpected role in the future of American politics? Veteran TV director Don Taylor doesn't do much with the ideas posed by this potentially intriguing plot; he seems more interested in satisfying aviation buffs with loving footage of F-14 "Jolly Roger" fighter jets, made possible by the navy's generous cooperation. That makes The Final Countdown a better navy film than a fully fledged time-travel fantasy, but there's a nice little twist at the end, and the plot holes are easy to ignore. James Cameron would've done it better, but this popcorn thriller makes an enjoyable double bill with The Philadelphia Experiment. --Jeff Shannon

• Blur - The Best Of | DVD | (13/11/2000) from £5.36   |  Saving you £6.63 (55.30%)   |  RRP £11.99

  The Best music and videos of Blur the archetypal indie/Brit-pop band. Tracklisting: 1. She So High 2. There's No Other Way 3. Bang 4. Popscene 5. For Tomorrow 6. Chemical World 7. Sunday Sunday 8. Girls And Boys 9. To The End 10. Parklife 11. End Of A Century 12. Country House 13. The Universal 14. Stereotypes 15. Charmless Man 16. Beetlebum 17. Song 2 18. On Your Own 19. M.O.R 20. Tender 21. Coffee And TV 22. No Distance Left To Run

• Rear Window - Steelbook | Blu Ray | (14/10/2019) from £54.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Directed by the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is an edge-of-your-seat classic starring two of Hollywood's most popular stars. When a professional photographer (James Stewart) is confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, he becomes obsessed with watching the private dramas of his neighbours play out across the courtyard. When he suspects his neighbour of murdering his nagging wife, he enlists his socialite girlfriend (Grace Kelly) to help investigate the suspicious chain of events, leading to one of the most memorable and gripping endings in all of film history. Honoured in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies for excellence in film, Rear Window has also been hailed as one of Alfred Hitchcock's most stylish thrillers (Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide). Bonus features: REAR WINDOW ETHICS: AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY A CONVERSATION WITH SCREENWRITER JOHN MICHAEL HAYES PURE CINEMA: THROUGH THE EYES OF THE MASTER BREAKING BARRIERS: THE SOUND OF HITCHCOCK HITCHCOCK-TRUFFAUT INTERVIEW EXCERPTS MASTERS OF CINEMA FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH JOHN FAWELL, AUTHOR OF HITCHCOCK'S REAR WINDOW: THE WELL-MADE FILM PRODUCTION PHOTOGRAPHS THEATRICAL TRAILER RE-RELEASE TRAILER NARRATED BY JAMES STEWART

• Long Time Dead | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £6.73   |  Saving you £-0.74 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A young Londoner and his friends use a Ouija board to hold a seance, triggering a chain of mysterious deaths that may be caused by an otherwordly force.

• GOOD PEOPLE - MOVIE | Blu Ray | (29/05/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Hop (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (29/08/2011) from £8.86   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This is product is in the English Language but part of the cover may have Nordic Languages it (Finnish, Norwegian, Danish & Swedish )

• The Cotton Club | DVD | (08/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Cotton Club is routinely eclipsed by the controversies that surrounded its tumultuous production, but the film itself offers abundant pleasures that should not be overlooked. If Apocalypse Now represents the triumph of director Francis Coppola's perilous ambition, then The Cotton Club represents the ungainly glory of uncontrolled genius, as brilliant as it is out of its depth. As an upscale homage to classic gangster films it's frequently astonishing, cramming a thick novel's worth of plot and characters into 129 minutes, gloriously serviced by impeccable production design, elegant cinematography, and stylistic flourishes that show Coppola at the top of his game. What The Cotton Club lacks is cohesion. Written by Coppola and novelist William Kennedy (then enjoying the peak of his critical acclaim), the film struggles to exceed the narrative scope of The Godfather, but its multiple early-'30s plotlines fail to form any strong connective tissue. It's three (or four) movies in one, with cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere, playing his own jazzy solos) drifting from one story to the next--loving a young, ambitious vamp (Diane Lane, with whom Gere shares precious little chemistry), enjoying the success of a hot-shot hoofer (Gregory Hines), and protecting his brazen brother (Coppola's then-newcomer nephew, Nicolas Cage) from the deadly temper of mob boss "Dutch" Schultz (James Remar). Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne also score big in grand supporting roles, but The Cotton Club is perhaps best appreciated for its meticulous recreation of Harlem's Cotton Club heyday, and the brilliant music (Ellington, Calloway, etc.) that brought rhythm to gangland's rat-a-tat-tat. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Tristan + Isolde | Blu Ray | (27/05/2013) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (61.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Luscious cinematography and even more luscious stars make Tristan & Isolde a feast for the eyes. Adapted from the medieval love story, the movie begins with with young Tristan (played as a child by Thomas Sangster, Love Actually) as he sees his parents killed by the tyrannical Irish, who ruled over a fractured Britain after the Roman occupation. Taken in by Marke (Rufus Sewell, Dark City), who rules one of the British tribes, Tristan (James Franco, Spider-Man) grows up to be a young prince and a mighty warrior--and when he's believed slain in battle, he's given a royal funeral, which sends him out sea in a burning boat. But the fire goes out and Tristan washes ashore on Ireland, where Isolde (Sophia Myles, Art School Confidential), the daughter of the Irish king, nurses him back to health. Being a lovely pair of young folk bursting with hormones, they fall madly in love... and set in motion a tragic tale that's lasted for centuries in many variations. Some reviewers have criticised Tristan & Isolde for deviating from the most common classical version, but the movie's storyline--though certainly altered to appeal to modern audiences--is fairly strong. Myles and especially Sewell turn in strong performances; Franco, however, though surprisingly persuasive as a warrior, never burns as a lover. Nonetheless, the loving shots of Franco's muscular physique will make this a must-have for his fans. --Bret Fetzer

• Return Of The Living Dead | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A sudden storm brings a shower of polluted rain and in a downtown cemetery something stirs six feet under the earth. The bad news is the living dead are back. The worse news is that they haven't had a decent meal in years... and as anybody will tell you there's nothing as greedy as a ghoul with a taste for human brains. 'Return Of The Living Dead' is a special effects masterpiece and has its rotting tongue firmly in its ghoulish green cheek.

• Bite The Bullet | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In 1908 Arizona a newspaper organises an endurance horse race. The course is 700 miles long and there are few days to complete it. Nine different adventurous entrants have their own reasons for winning but some could be destined never to see the finish line...

• Wagner: Die Walkure -- Metropolitan/Levine | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  The 1990 Metropolitan Opera performance of Die Walkure ("The Valkyrie") with James Levine conducting is a solid, four-square performance with few frills and no gimmicks, just extraordinarily fine singing and orchestral playing. There is no point in this where you find yourself asking why the director did something: this is the sort of production which could be criticised as unimaginative but defended as serving Wagner's intentions for this instalment of his Ring cycle. Levine and his orchestra give the music an emotional intensity that never overwhelms its grandeur, though perhaps in Wotan's farewell to Brunnhilde, we feel him more as father than as god. James Morris as Wotan has real stature, making us feel that he has finally created the free agents he needs to avoid the curse he has unleashed on the world, but he has broken his heart in the process. Jessye Norman is surprisingly good and erotically self-assured as Sieglinde; the Act 1 love duet with Gary Lake as Siegmund has an ardour that makes the incestuous aspect less a matter of perversity than of the conduct of heroes. Kurt Moll makes Sieglinde's rapist and husband Hunding, a three-dimensional sinister villain; and Christa Ludwig almost manages to sell us Fricka's interminable paean to family values. The most impressive performance here, though, is Hildegard Behrens as Brunnhilde, the steely godling who sacrifices everything because she learns to feel and to know what is right. On the DVD Die Walkure on disc comes with menus and subtitles in German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese and with a picture gallery of the production. Awkwardly it is presented in (American) NTSC format not PAL, with a visual aspect of standard TV 4:3. More impressive is the choice of PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 6.1; the sound is admirably clear and well-balanced. --Roz Kaveney

• Dr Seuss' The Lorax / Despicable Me / Hop (Triple Pack) | DVD | (10/06/2013) from £11.98   |  Saving you £10.00 (100.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  3 Disc Family Fun Box Set including 3 films Hop Dr. Seuss' The Lorax and Despicable Me. Hop Special Features: The World of Hop Featurette The Lorax Special Features: 2D Feature Seuss to Screen Seuss it Up Despicable Me Special Features: Gru's Rocket Builder Game Super Silly Fun Land Games

• Raquel Welch Collection | DVD | (04/09/2006) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-20.70 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.29

  Fathom: From exploding earrings to dances with bulls to leaps from a plane at 10 000 feet there isn't much Fathom can't handle in this wildly entertaining espionage spoof! Voluptuous dental hygienist-turned-skydiver Fathom Harvill (Raquel Welch) is recruited by a top-secret government agency to parachute into Spain in search of an elusive war defector (Tony Franciosa) and a missing H-bomb detonator he is believed to possess. But the super sexy spy may expose more than she bargained for as she unravels the truth behind her employer's motives - with hilarious results! (Dir. Leslie H. Martinson 1967) Fantastic Voyage: A Fantastic and spectacular voyage... Through the human body... Into the brain. Shrunk to microscopic size an elite scientific and medical team enters the bloodstream of an ailing scientist in a desperate effort to save his life. Battling the body's incredible defenses the crew must complete their mission before time runs out. The film was to win Oscars for Best Visual Effects (by Art Cruikschank) and Art Direction. The legacy of the film was to continue as 'Fantastic Voyage' later received an animated spin-off show. (Dir. Richard Fleischer 1966) Bandolero: It's a Wild West clash of personalities in Val Verde Texas for the warring Bishop brothers (Dean Martin and James Stewart) who must now join forces to escape a death sentence. Featuring an all-star cast including Raquel Welch and George Kennedy and exploding with action Bandolero! packs a smoking six-gun wallop from its first tense show-down to its last exciting shootout. (Dir. Andrew V. McLaglen 1968) Lady In Cement: The suave sleuth Tony Rome makes a shocking discovery while diving for treasure: a beautiful blonde woman anchored in a block of cement. When a local hood hires him to find his missing girlfriend his investigation begins with the mysterious ""Lady in Cement."" But everyone he talks to either is killed or trying to kill him... (Dir. Gordon Douglas 1968)

• The Best Of Me | Blu Ray | (09/02/2015) from £13.48   |  Saving you £2.51 (18.62%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Dawson (James Marsden) and Amanda (Michelle Monaghan) couldn’t lead more different lives in a small Southern town and yet soon they are falling head over heels in love. However they are soon separated by their families. Twenty years later they are reunited and soon both are forced into circumstances that test their love to its limit.

• Stanley Kubrick | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  This superb nine-disc Stanley Kubrick Box Set contains all the late director's work from 1962's Lolita to Kubrick's final film, the highly controversial Eyes Wide Shut (1999). There's also the excellent and highly informative two-hour documentary: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, narrated (a little drably) by Tom Cruise. It isn't exactly a warts-and-all portrait of Stan the Man, which is not surprising, really, given that it's directed and produced by Kubrick's brother-in-law Jan Harlan, and that Kubrick's widow Christine was closely involved in the making of it. But it does give a detailed and revealing portrait of a brilliant, demanding and often infuriating man, airing rare footage that goes right back to his earliest years as a brash youngster in the Bronx, already playing to camera with a frightening degree of self-awareness. Six of the eight movies (all but Dr Strangelove and Eyes Wide Shut) have been digitally restored and remastered, and almost all (barring Strangelove again and Lolita) now boast Dolby Digital 5.1 stereo sound remixes. For some bizarre reason, Kubrick insisted on mono sound for the 1999 set, which he approved shortly before his death. Visually the improvement over the often grainy, scratchy prints previously on offer--The Shining (1980) was notoriously messy--is immense. All the features are presented in their original ratios, which in the case of Strangelove means the changing ratios in which it was originally shot, and for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the full glorious 2.21:1 expanse of the Cinerama screen.So what don't you get? Essentially, the early Kubrick--the work of the young, hungry director before he moved to England and started to gather all the controlling strings into his own hand: most notably the tough, taut thriller The Killing (1956) and the icily furious war film Paths of Glory (1957). Too bad Warners couldn't have negotiated the rights for those too. But what we have here is the culminating phase of Kubrick's filmmaking career--the final 27 years of one of the great masters of cinema. On the DVDs: Besides the visual and sonic improvements mentioned above, each of the eight features includes the original theatrical trailer and multiple-language subtitles. The DVD of Dr Strangelove also gives us filmographies of the principal players, plus theatrical posters and a photo gallery, while Eyes Wide Shut includes interviews (taped after Kubrick's death) with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Steven Spielberg, plus a couple of 30-second TV spots. And with The Shining we get a fascinating 34-minute documentary made by Kubrick's then 17-year-old daughter Vivian, plus--just to add a further layer--Vivian's present-day voice-over commentary on her film. --Philip Kemp

• Bless This House | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The classic sitcom about the Abbotts a family with generation gap problems. Starring the unforgettable Sid James as Sidney Abbott the series revolves around his doomed efforts to get with it for his children whilst being constantly thwarted in pursuing his love of birds booze and football. This DVD contains the first five episodes in colour from the first series. Episodes: The Day Of Rest Make Love... Not War Charity Begins At Home If The Dog Collar Fits... Wear It The Morning After The Night Before.

• Midsomer Murders - Talent For Life | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £5.00   |  Saving you £11.99 (239.80%)   |  RRP £16.99

  In Malham Bridge former socialite and feisty pensioner Isobel Hewitt is accused of assault by fellow fly fisher Margaret Seagrove. When Barnaby and Troy investigate the allegations they discover that all is not well on the Midsomer riverbanks. The investigation takes a more serious turn when two bodies are discovered in the river. Are they the victims of an uncalculated attack by poachers or was there a more sinister motive?