Chris Morris' Brass Eye is a brilliantly funny spoof on current affairs media that carries on where his previous The Day Today left off. The show ran for one single, contentious series in 1997, to be followed by an even more controversial one-off in 2001. While these episodes might cause offence to those not versed in Morris' satirical methods, and while one occasionally suspects his work is informed by a dark seam of malice and loathing rather than a desire to educate, Brass Eye remains vital satire, magnificently hilarious and, in its own way, fiercely moral viewing. Brass Eye satirises a media far too interested in generating dramatic heat and urgency for its own sake than in shedding light on serious issues. Morris mimics perfectly the house style of programmes such as Newsnight and Crimewatch, with their spurious props and love of gimmickry. Meanwhile his presenter--an uncanny composite of Jeremy Paxman, Michael Buerk and Richard Madeley among others--delivers absurd items about man-fighting weasels in the East End and Lear-esque lines such as "the twisted brain wrong of a one-off man mental" with preposterously solemn authority. Much as the media itself is wont to do, each programme works itself up into a ridiculous fever of moral panic. Most telling is the "drugs" episode, in which, as ever, real-life celebrities, including Jimmy Greaves and Sir Bernard Ingham, are persuaded to lend their name to a campaign against a new drug from Eastern Europe entitled Cake. The satirist's aim here isn't to trivialise concern about drugs but to point up the media's lack of attention to content. A response to the ill-conceived News of the World witch-hunt, in the wake of the Sarah Payne affair, the 2001 "paedophilia" special was the most supremely controversial of the series. It followed the usual formula--duping celebs such as Phil Collins into endorsing a campaign entitled "Nonce Sense", urging parents to send their children to football stadiums for the night for their own safety and mooting the possibility of "roboplegic" paedophiles--and prompted the sort of hysterical and predictable Pavlovian response from the media that Brass Eye lampoons so tellingly. On the DVD: Brass Eye on DVD includes brief outtakes, such as "David Jatt" interviewing celebrities about breeding hippos for domestic purposes, an hilarious exchange with Jeffrey Archer's PA ("He's a very wicked little man") as well as trailers for the paedophilia special.--David Stubbs
A space ship stops at an intergalactic fuel station. While the captain's refueling one of his idiotic companions plays with the controls and accidently starts the ship and crashes into the earth. This causes a sensation: the media celebrates the extraterrestrials the military interrogates them for eternal wisdom. However soon they recognize that the fellows are dumb as bricks - although some generals believe it's just a mask.
As a producer, Roger Corman has always loved to make low-budget rip-offs of hit movies, and Piranha is his typically cheeky take on Jaws--and, as so often with Corman, in many ways it's funnier and more entertaining than the original. Directed with gusto by schlock-horror specialist Joe Dante and sharply scripted by John Sayles, it replaces one huge underwater toothy monster with dozens of little ones and ups the body count by a factor of 10 or so. Two hapless teenagers, hiking in a remote mountain region, stumble on a secret US military research lab. They don't last long, but their intrusion leads to the release into the local river system of a huge shoal of super-intelligent piranha, originally specially bred for use in Vietnam. Downstream from the virulent little munchers lie a kiddies' holiday camp and a tacky new waterfront theme park. Lunch time, fellas! Sayles, with his staunch left-wing credentials, slips in some mordant political satire at the expense of the military-industrial complex, and authority figures of any kind come off pretty badly, but the satire never gets in the way of the gleeful black humour. The two leads, Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are fairly pallid, but there are ripe cameos from such cult horror-movie icons as Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and Barbara Steele. Pino Donaggio's score impudently borrows aspects of John Williams' famous Jaws theme while never quite infringing copyright. The movie was successful enough to spawn a much-inferior sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which marked the inauspicious directing debut of one James Cameron. On the DVD: Piranha on disc comes with just the theatrical trailer as an extra. The transfer is a respectable job, reproducing the original's full-screen ratio. --Philip Kemp
Be My Valentine Charlie Brown: This classic and much-loved Peanuts story centers on the romantic yearnings of that eternally hapless hero Charlie Brown. As Valentine's Day approaches Lucy tries to get Schroeder to give her a card Sally chases after Linus and poor Charlie Brown dreams of getting just one valentine. Even Snoopy's mailbox is stuffed with those red heart-shaped cards - doesn't anyone love Charlie Brown? Snoopy's Getting Married: Sometimes when Cupid t
Academy Award® winner Jack Palance stars in this terrifying adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire legend with screenplay by sci-fi/horror master Richard Matheson and produced by the legendary Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows). Palance is Count Dracula whose existence is threatened after he attacks Lucy (Fiona Lewis) and her fiancé (Simon Ward); and they call in vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Nigel Davenport).Transferred and restored from the original 35mm camera negative. Features: First ever UK release on DVD of this critically acclaimed Dracula film Remastered and restored to HD Directed by renowned horror film director Dan Curtis “More faithful to the novel than any of the cinematic variations” - dailymotion.com
Daisy Gamble an unusual woman who hears phones before they ring and does wonders with her flowers wants to quit smoking to please her fiance Warren. She goes to a doctor of hypnosis to do it. But once she's under her doctor finds out that she can regress into past lives and different personalities and he finds himself falling in love with one of them!
Now stunningly repackaged 50p from the sale of this DVD will be paid to Royal British Legion Trading Limited which gives its taxable profits to The Royal British Legion (Charity no. 219279) and Poppy Scotland (Scottish Charity No. SC014096). Nominated for two Academy Awards One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is a dramatic and suspenseful World War II action story based on the actual methods by which the Dutch smuggled crashed British airmen back to England. Six such airmen parachute from their crippled plane into a wood and are discovered by children who take them to a farm where the Dutch question them at length before offering them help. They endure many narrow escapes from the Nazis before they reach a sea port. Their attempted journey across the Channel is fraught with many dangers and an unexpected turn of events.
The words of the opening song pretty much describe the menu in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum--"Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight!"--a frantic adaptation of the stage musical by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove. The wild story, based on the Latin comedies of Plautus and set in ancient Rome, follows a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel, snorting and gibbering) as he tries to extricate himself from an increasingly farcical situation; Mostel and a bevy of inspired clowns, including Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton, keep the slapstick and the patter perking. The cast also includes the young Michael Crawford as a love-struck innocent. This project landed in the lap of Richard Lester, then one of the hottest directors in the world after his success with the Beatles' films. Lester telescoped the material through his own joke-a-second sensibility, and also ripped out some of the songs from Stephen Sondheim's Broadway score. The result is very close to the vaudeville spirit suggested by the title--though anyone with a low tolerance for Zero Mostel's overbearing buffoonery may be in trouble. Oddly enough, amid all the frenzy, Lester creates a grungy, earthy Rome that seems closer to the real thing than countless respectable historical films on the subject. Frankie Howerd, who played Pseudolus on the London stage, kept the tradition going with his Up Pompeii TV series. --Robert Horton
Jimmy Dworski is a happy-go-lucky convict who breaks out of prison and finally gets a life - somebody else's! When Dworski finds the daily planner that literally runs the life of ultra-organized executive Spencer Barnes (Charles Grodin) all hell breaks loose! With newfound cash credit cards and the keys to a Malibu mansion the imposter Dworski embarks on an all-expenses-paid trip to ""Easy Street"" while posing as the high-powered Barnes. Meanwhile Spencer's life is turned upside down as he hunts through the jungles of Los Angeles for his beloved book: when these oddball opposites finally meet it's a comedic collision you won't soon forget!
Get ready for the rarely seen slasher classic from the 80s that may also be the most disturbing killer kids movies in grindhouse history: Three babies are simultaneously born in the same hospital at the peak of a full solar eclipse. Ten years later these adorable youngsters suddenly begin a kiddie killing spree of strangling shootings stabbings beatings and beyond. Can the town's grown-ups stop these pint-sized serial killers before their blood-soaked birthday bash? K.C. Martel (E.T. Growing Pains) Joe Penny (Jake And The Fat Man) Michael Dudikoff (American Ninja) screen legends Susan Strasberg and José Ferrer and MTV vixen Julie Brown whose nude bedroom dance remains a landmark of celebrity skin star in this still-controversial shocker from director Ed Hunt (The Brain Diary Of A Sinner) now featuring an all-new HD transfer from the original vault elements.
A legendary Rescue Swimmer must cope with the loss of his crew while training a cocky new recruit.
Vibrant orange sunflowers. Rippling yelow grain. Trees bursting with white bloom. ""The pictures come to me as in a dream "" Vincent Van Gogh said. A dream that too often turned to life-shattering nightmare... Winner of Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Best Actor Awards Kirk Douglas gives a fierce portrayal as the artist torn between the joyous inspiration of his genius and the dark desperation of his tormented mind. The obsessed Van Gogh painted the way other men breathe drivi
Ken Jeong, Jim Jefferies and Rhys Darby star in this US comedy directed by Darren Grant. After losing his nightclub and running into debt with a notorious local gangster, Chris Kim (Jeong) is given a deadline of 72 hours to repay the money he owes or face the consequences. With little hope of finding the cash in time, Chris decides to rig the annual celebrity death pool contest he runs with his friends in order to win the $500,000 prize money. However, in order to get his hands on the cash, Chris must first hunt down and kill his entry in the death pool, David Hasselhoff.
It's time to speak of unspoken things... This offbeat psycho-drama follows a wealthy mentally unbalanced young woman who mistakenly believes an aging prostitute is her dead mother. The hooker Leonora has lost her own daughter and is in mourning. But because she has strong maternal feelings she is more than happy to play mother to the orphaned Cenci. However the two women's strange relationship takes a problematic turn when Cenci's stepfather Albert enters her life onc
Ken Jeong, Jim Jefferies and Rhys Darby star in this US comedy directed by Darren Grant. After losing his nightclub and running into debt with a notorious local gangster, Chris Kim (Jeong) is given a deadline of 72 hours to repay the money he owes or face the consequences. With little hope of finding the cash in time, Chris decides to rig the annual celebrity death pool contest he runs with his friends in order to win the $500,000 prize money. However, in order to get his hands on the cash, Chris must first hunt down and kill his entry in the death pool, David Hasselhoff.
Former child star Janette Scott stars opposite Vernon Gray in a story of runaway romance that transcends the class barrier. Based on R.F. Delderfield's play The Orchard Walls, Now and Forever stars Scott as a well-to-do girl for whom the path of true love runs anything but smooth, and Gray as the young car mechanic who fails to impress his future fiancee's snobbish mother. This heart-warming drama is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements, in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.Janette Grant is a lonely schoolgirl with divorced parents. She lives with her mother in a provincial town, where she falls in love with Mike, the son of a local garage owner. Appalled on discovering the alliance, Mrs Grant decides to send Janette to Canada. When a desperate bid to kill herself thankfully fails, the young girl hatches a plan to elope with Mike to Gretna Green...SPECIAL FEATURESOriginal theatrical trailerImage galleryPromotional material PDFs
Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp: Drama about the life of Clive Candy an English soldier who served in three wars (Boer World War I World War II) and had relationships with three women along the way (each played by Deborah Kerr). Despite Candy's tours-of-duty he harbors no ill will towards the Germans instead he believes they have been the pawns of military leaders. Colonel Blimp an old befuddled British military officer reminisces about his past glories in this witty w
Mel B - AKA Scary Spice is both a national treasure and an international A list celebrity. As one fifth of the biggest selling girl group of all time Melanie has been in the media spotlight now for over 12 years. Last year Mel's profile grew even further when she came runner up on the US show Dancing With the Stars and in June 2008 it was announced that Mel is to be the new face of Ultimo lingerie - which is a testament to her great post kids figure. In fact Melanie was recently voted as having the world's 3rd most fantasy body in a YouGov poll. With a track record for a turbulent personal life Mel has become a tabloid favourite and recent problems have endeared her even more with the UK press who give her very positive coverage. This will be Mel's first ever Fitness DVD and was filmed on location in a glamorous setting overlooking the ocean in Malibu. Totally Fit is a genuine workout from an A list celebrity who is the perfect work out partner. Featuring 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of resistance training combined with a series of chaptered 10 minute workouts for those with limited time.
XX is a new horror anthology featuring four murderous tales of supernatural frights, thrills, profound anxiety, and Gothic decay. Written and directed by four fiercely talented women the film stars female leads and is framed around innovative animator Sofia Carrillo. Vigorously challenging the status quo within the industry, this collection of tightly coiled short films by some of horror's most influential women offers a refreshing jolt to the senses.
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