"Actor: Joe Cashman"

• The Pogues - Live At The Town And Country Club London | DVD | (05/11/2004) from £11.38   |  Saving you £8.60 (102.50%)   |  RRP £16.99

  The Pogues in the late 80's were one of the bands to be reckoned with Shane McGowen had a reputation and you could guarantee any show would be 'full on'. Never before released on DVD recorded on St. Patrick's Day 1988 this captures The Pogues at their absolute best raw energetic and complete mayhem; as a Pogues gig should be. Kirsty McColl guests on vocals for the infamous ""Fairytale Of New York"" and ""Lullaby Of London"" Joe Strummer and Lynval Golding are amongst a host of other people on stage for this hour of top entertainment. The DVD also includes interviews and backstage fun from the concert as well as a home video of ""Streams Of Whiskey"". Tracklisting: Metropolis / Broad Majestic Shannon / If I Should Fall From Grace With God / Rainy Night In Soho / Thousand Are Sailing / Fairytale Of New York / Lullaby Of London / Dirty Old Town / London's Calling with Joe Strummer / Turkish Song Of The Damned / Fiesta / Irish Rover / Worms / Rudi - A Message To You / Wild Rover

• Straight To Hell | DVD | (15/02/2005) from £9.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  By all rights, Alex Cox's absurdist spaghetti western Straight to Hell, should be up there in the canon of must-see cult movies. It was written in three days and filmed gonzo-style in six weeks in the Andalusian desert landscape of Almeria, Spain, on an abandoned film set originally built for Savage Cowboys, a 1969 Charles Bronson western. The cast includes the good, the bad and the ugly of rock and roll--namely Joe Strummer, Courtney Love (in her first starring role) and Shane McGowan--and cameos from Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and Jim Jarmusch. It also features a pre-Reservoir Dogs plot concerning three sharp-suited but incompetent hitmen on the lam in the desert with the proceeds of a bank heist and a pregnant girlfriend in tow (Love). There they stumble upon a remote, ramshackle town, home to a gang of coffee-guzzling gunslingers called the McMahons (the Pogues) who initially accept the bumbling assassins as one of their own. But the appearance of shadowy industrialist IG Farben (Hopper) throws the precarious peace into a trigger-happy turmoil. Despite the promise, the film was almost universally panned on its release, the main criticism being that although the cast and crew seemed to having a blast, not much thought was put into translating the joke to the audience. It's certainly anarchic and frivolous, but also silly and pointless. Sy Richardson as the Jheri-curled Norwood who steals the show, remaining stoic and super-cool as the chaos rages around him. On the DVD: "Back to Hell", a 20-minute feel-good featurette, reunites the majority of the cast members (minus Courtney Love) 14 years on to reminisce on their experience making the film. At the end, Alex Cox cannily manages to elicit guarantees from the actors to appear in a mooted sequel. The original dialogue plays at low volume underneath the commentary track, making it hard to hear what the filmmakers are saying at various points. A promo video for the Pogues rendition of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is tacked on at the end, but looks as if it was sourced from a worn videotape. --Chris Campion