"Actor: Louis Zorich"

• For Pete's Sake | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £25.00   |  Saving you £-12.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  For Pete's Sake is a bright-eyed romantic comedy about a young couple, the eternally optimistic Henrietta (Barbra Streisand) and her husband Pete (Michael Sarrazin), who works by day as a cab driver while studying at night school. Money is tight, a fact constantly brought home to them by Pete's successful but tedious brother, Fred (William Redfield) and his bitchy wife Helen (Estelle Parsons, quite superb here). When Pete hears of an opportunity to make money on the stock market (on pork bellies, of all things) he's desperate to get his hands on $3,000, believing it will make everything come right. After conventional sources have turned them down, Henrietta secretly turns to a loan shark on the understanding that he'll be paid back in a week. The comedy arises when the shares in pork do a belly flop and her contract is sold on to increasingly dubious characters at increasingly exorbitant rates of interest. Thus, we have her taken on by a high-class madam and getting embroiled in bomb-planting and cattle-rustling. As a vehicle for Streisand-the-actress rather than Streisand-the-singer, it certainly works (though she does perform the vapid title-song), her manic comedic skill chiming well with the demands of her character in this amiable piece of froth. On the DVD: For Pete's Sake is pretty thin on the special features front: theatrical trailers; a director's commentary (reasonably worthwhile); and basic filmographies. The picture has come up surprisingly well given its age, and though it's in mono, there are no complaints about the sound either. --Harriet Smith

• The Muppets Take Manhattan | DVD | (06/11/2000) from £6.49   |  Saving you £6.50 (100.15%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Broadway-bound the Muppets Take Manhattan by storm in this magical musical about breaking into show business! Fresh out drama school Kermit Fozzie Bear and the entire cast of Kermit's musical - Manhattan Melodies - head for the Big Apple with plans to turn their small play into a big hit! All they need now is someone to produce their show! But when no one in town will even meet with them it's up to Kermit to believe hard enough for all of his friends that the show WILL go on!

• Death Of A Salesman | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff's 1985 production of Arthur Miller's most famous play Death of a Salesman appeared squarely and quite hauntingly in the middle of the go-go economy of the Reagan-Bush years. Miller's story, set during the post-war boom period of the late 1940s, concerns an ageing travelling salesman named Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman), who despairs that his life his been lived in vain. Facing dispensability and insignificance in a heated, youthful economy, Willy is not ready to part with his cherished fantasies of an America that loves and admires him for personable triumphs in the marketplace. But the reality is far more pitiable than that, and the measure of Willy's self-delusion and contradictions is found in his two sons, one (Stephen Lang) a ne'er-do-well gliding on inherited hot air and repressed feelings, and the other (John Malkovich) a mousy, retiring sort unable to reconcile--or forgive--the difference between his father's desperate impersonation of success and the truth. Schlöndorff's remarkable cast explores Miller's rich subtext to great effect, though Hoffman--despite giving us a new model of Willy to contrast with Lee J Cobb's definitive portrayal a generation before--is a bit insect-like and shrill in his approach. Malkovich, Lang, and Kate Reid (as Willy's long-suffering wife) are perfect, however, and the production is atmospheric and strong. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Muppets Take Manhattan | DVD | (04/10/2010) from £6.69   |  Saving you £3.30 (49.33%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Broadway-bound the Muppets Take Manhattan by storm in this magical musical about breaking into show business! Fresh out drama school Kermit Fozzie Bear and the entire cast of Kermit's musical - Manhattan Melodies - head for the Big Apple with plans to turn their small play into a big hit! All they need now is someone to produce their show! But when no one in town will even meet with them it's up to Kermit to believe hard enough for all of his friends that the show WILL go on! Cameo guests include Brooke Shields Art Carney Joan Rivers Liza Minnelli and John Landis.

• Muppets Take Manhattan - 2012 Repackage | DVD | (14/05/2012) from £6.73   |  Saving you £3.26 (48.44%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Broadway-bound, the Muppets Take Manhattan by storm in this magical musical about breaking into show business!Fresh out drama school, Kermit, Fozzie Bear and the entire cast of Kermit's musical - Manhattan Melodies - head for the Big Apple with plans to turn their small play into a big hit! All they need now is someone to produce their show! But when no one in town will even meet with them, it's up to Kermit to believe hard enough for all of his friends that the show WILL go on! Cameo guests include Brooke Shields, Art Carney, Joan Rivers, Liza Minnelli and John Landis.

• Sunday In The Country | DVD | (03/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Three vicious thugs on the run in rural America after robbing a local bank seek refuge at the home of a reclusive farmer (Ernest Borgnine) but he is prepared for their arrival and holds them at gunpoint. Unable to let them simply wait for the law he decides to take them into into his cellar and torture them before the police arrive.