"Actor: Leo Alexander"

• Bernstein - the Making of Westside Story (Te Kanawa) | DVD | (11/07/2005) from £14.29   |  Saving you £2.70 (18.89%)   |  RRP £16.99

  27 years after its Broadway premiere Leonard Bernstein went into a New York studio for Deutsche Grammophon to conduct his most famous work for the first time. In selecting his cast he decided to go for sound with the sumptuous operatic voices of Kiri Te Kanawa Jose Carreras and Tatiana Troyanos. This spellbinding film winner of the Prix Italia and the British Academy's Flaherty Award documents the stresses and strains exhilaration and eventual triumph in the making of a landmark recording.

• Under Siege | DVD | (27/09/1999) from £3.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (250.63%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Steven Seagal can consider himself lucky if he ever makes a better movie than this one, which was appropriately dubbed "Die Hard on a battleship" when released in 1992. Seagal handles the heroic duties with his usual wooden efficiency, but the movie's greatest assets are a punchy script and the scene-stealing performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. The two play leaders of a terrorist group who take over the venerable battleship USS Missouri during its final commissioned voyage. They're crazed psychotics who seize control of the ship's nuclear arsenal, but they don't know that Seagal--as the ship's cook, no less--is a former Navy hero, lurking in the shadows and waiting to spoil their nefarious scheme. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) helms the action with skilful style, and as the cheesecake stripper who proves handy with a hand grenade, Playboy Playmate-turned-actress Erika Eleniak gives Seagal another reason to strut his macho stuff. Under Siege is hormonal hokum for gun-happy viewers, but as action movies go, this one's a definite guilty pleasure. --Jeff Shannon

• Treme - The Complete Season 1-4 | DVD | (24/08/2015) from £37.15   |  Saving you £32.84 (88.40%)   |  RRP £69.99

  Season 1 Amid the ruins of an American city ordinary people – musicians chefs residents – find themselves clinging to a unique culture and wondering if their city still has a future.  From the creators of The Wire comes a new acclaimed series about adversity and the human spirit set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the greatest man-made disaster in American history.  Welcome to Treme. Season 2 From the creators of The Wire comes  the second season of the acclaimed series about adversity and the human spirit set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the greatest man-made disaster in American history. Over a year has passed since Katrina but residents are finding it harder than ever to rebuild their lives much less hold on to their special cultural identity.  Some have left to become expatriates in places like New York.  Others have been forced to sell their homes to outside developers.  Crime and drug use are up and corruption and graft has dried up money intended for recovery.  So why bother to stay?  Because it’s New Orleans and New Orleans must go on. Season 3 New Orleans 25 months later. Crime and corruption are up culture is being trampled and the people who matter – the workers families and dreamers who still live here – have had enough. HBO’s drama series Treme revisits the musicians chefs Mardi Gras Indians and other familiar New Orleans characters who continue to rebuild their lives their homes and their culture in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane that caused the near-death of an American city. The series’ focus is still on ordinary people but they no longer accept their lack of influence on the institutions that have controlled the city. Season 4 New Orleans 38 months after. Barack Obama has just been elected to the White House giving entrenched residents of this still-battered city reason for optimism. Yet for every Batiste Lambreaux McAlary and Desautel who hopes to improve his or her lot – or just return to a sense of pre-Katrina normalcy – others are intent on capitalizing on the city’s vulnerability and suffocating its culture. HBO’s drama series Treme revisits the musicians chefs Mardi Gras Indians and other familiar New Orleanians who continue to rebuild their lives their homes and their culture in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane that caused the near-death of an American city. In the series’ final five episodes which take place from November 2008 through Mardi Gras 2009 the promise of economic and cultural recovery – heightened by a historic presidential election – is tempered by sobering economics continued police corruption and the ongoing specter of violence and crime. Still the connection Treme’s protagonists have with their city keeps them committed to its future – and to building their own legacy in this most iconic of American cities.

• Land Of Mine | DVD | (09/10/2017) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Danish historical drama written and directed by Martin Zandvliet. After Germany's surrender in May 1945 signals the end of World War II, a group of young German prisoners are handed over to Danish sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Roland Moller) to clear the Danish coastline of thousands of live landmines. Promising them that they will be free to return home once the job is done, Rasmussen quickly sends the boys out onto the beaches to begin their dangerous assignment. However, as the group's inexperience starts to show, Carl soon finds himself forming a strong bond with his young charges as they attempt to carry on with their daunting task.

• Arsenic and Old Lace (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (11/10/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Basketball Diaries | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £18.13   |  Saving you £-5.14 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realise that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus interviews. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Day of the Dead: Collector's Edition | Blu Ray | (17/09/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin - The Complete Third Series | DVD | (19/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Boasting a virtuoso comic performance from Leonard Rossiter The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79) remains one of the greatest of all television sitcoms. Writer David Nobbs combined the surrealist absurdity of Monty Python with an on-going story line that unfolded through each of the three seasons with a clear beginning, middle and end; a ground-breaking development in 70s TV comedy. The first and best season charts middle-aged, middle-management executive Reginald Perrin as he breaks-down under the stress of middle-class life until he informs the world that half the parking meters in London have Dutch Parking Meter Disease. He fakes suicide and returns to court his wife Elizabeth (Pauline Yates) in disguise, a plot development that formed the entire basis of Mrs Doubtfire (1993). Series Two is broader, the rapid-fire dialogue still razor sharp and loaded with caustic wit and ingenious silliness, as a now sane Reggie takes on the madness of the business world by opening a chain of shops selling rubbish. The third season, set in a health farm, is routine, the edge blunted by routine sitcom conventions. At its best The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is hilarious and moving, its depiction of English middle-class life spot on, its satire prophetic. Reggie's visual fantasies hark back to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Billy Liar (1963), and look forward to Ally McBeal (1997-2002) and are the icing on the cake of a fine, original and highly imaginative show. On the DVD: Reginald Perrin's discs contain one complete seven episode season. There are no extras. The sound is good mono and the 4:3 picture is generally fine, though some of the exterior shot-on-film scenes have deteriorated and there are occasional signs of minor damage to the original video masters. Even so, for a 1970s sitcom shot on video the picture is excellent and far superior to the original broadcasts. --Gary S Dalkin

• Leonard Bernstein conducts West Side Story -- The Making of the Recording | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Filmed in 1984 for the BBC, the feature-length documentary Leonard Bernstein conducts West Side Story follows the composer through one week as he records the first-ever complete album of his musical theatre masterpiece. (The previous Broadway cast and original soundtrack albums had both been cut down to single LP length.) Virtually the entire documentary takes place in a New York recording studio with a pick-up orchestra, session singers and headliners Kiri Te Kanawa (Maria), José Carreras (Tony), Tatiana Troyanos (Anita) and Kurt Ollmann (Riff). The 89-minute programme alternates rehearsal footage with complete final takes of the main numbers--including "Tonight", "America", and "Maria"--with a limited amount of comment from the principal players. Te Kanawa explains how much the music means to her, Troyanos notes how she grew-up in the very streets depicted on stage and Carreras provides a rare moment of tension when a session ends unsatisfactorily. Bernstein himself is by turns commanding, charming, enthusiastic or weary. For anyone wanting an extensive insight into what happens as a major album is recorded this is fascinating, though others who just want to enjoy the wonderful music will be better served by the resultant two-CD set. On the DVD: Though filmed for British television, Deutsche Grammophon have chosen to release a single region-free (Region 0) DVD for the entire world. Unfortunately this means the disc is in NTSC format rather than PAL, and requires an NTSC-compatible television for playback. It also means that while the sound has been effectively remastered for PCM stereo the picture shows all the signs of a bad NTSC copy--weak, washed-out colours and poor definition with a serious lack of detail. Most videos are far better. The DVD has subtitles in German, French, Spanish and Chinese. There are no extras, though the booklet adapts an interesting article by producer Humphrey Burton which originally appeared in Gramophone magazine in 1985.--Gary S Dalkin

• Madhouse | DVD | (25/04/2005) from £4.98   |  Saving you £1.01 (20.28%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Available on DVD for the first time! Let the insanity begin. A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works. He finds his own sanity begins to unravel as the line between truth and fiction becomes harder to distinguish.

• Cary Grant | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive

• The Royal Hunt Of The Sun | DVD | (01/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An epic tale of the Spanish conquest of Peru. This film will keep you glued to the screen in anticipation of the fateful ending. The world will remember me ” promises Spanish General Francesco Pizarro to the King of Spain. He tells of a land of endless gold enough to make Spain the most powerful of nations. But Pizarro is a dreamer a man of failures. The King allows him to search but at his own expense. Thus armed with a band of ruthless gold-seeking soldiers of fortune Pizarro journeys over vast mountains and harsh desert to reach Monchepechu. When faced with the life or death of the Inca God-King Atahualpa Pizarro struggles with his duty as a soldier and his loyalties to God his men and himself all of which are called into question by his fascination with the devotion and worship of the mystical man-god. Pizarro must choose between life or death and his god or another. This true epic adventure of undying faith brave yet greedy men loyalty to god king and country and one's own sense of morality hurtles towards an ending that answers humankind's hardest question Whose God is the real God?

• Dragon Lives Again, the | DVD | (24/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  After his mysterious death, Bruce Lee (Bruce Liang) arrives in Purgatory only to find the place has been over taken by a group of the most famous outlaws of all time: a Godfather, the Man with No Name, the Exorcist, the Blind Swordsman, 007 and Emmanuelle. They are plotting to overthrow the King of the Underworld, so Bruce steps in to rid the place of their unwelcome antics. Aiding him in his fight is the One Armed Swordsman and Kai Chung Kane - Kung-Fu! Non stop action from start to finish plus the rotary kicks of Bruce Liang make this race a must for all Kung-Fu and Bruce Lee fans!