In the summer of 1996 Bobby Robson was diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live. Miraculously, less than a year Robson was managing the legendary FC Barcelona - motto 'More Than A Club'. But Bobby Robson was more than a manager. The miner's son from Newcastle played for his country. When he transformed Ipswich into European winners it was clear his real talent lay in coaching. Fearless, his gift was to be at his best when the worst threatened. Via the Hand of God, Gazza's tears, England's greatest world cup abroad to titles in Europe's top leagues and a Barcelona treble, Robson overcame the most extreme challenges before a career like no other came full circle when he returned to save his beloved Newcastle. Many of today's great managers owe their rise to Robson. A daring coach he could spot genius and help it grow. Starring an A list cast (Mourinho, Guardiola, Ronaldo, Gascoigne, Shearer, Lineker, Sir Alex Ferguson) never before seen archive and emotional testimony from Lady Elsie Robson, this is the definitive portrait of one sport's most inspirational, influential figures whose legacy lives on far beyond the football field. Pioneer, Mentor, Game-changer. Messiah.
The second series of The Fast Show races on from where the first series left off, taking the now-familiar characters and projecting them into new and unusual situations. The "Suits You" men are let loose as waiters in a restaurant, Indecisive Dave finally makes his mind up, Unlucky Alf tries his hand at courting, Bob Fleming splutters his way through a midnight Badger Watch and Channel 9 branches out into light-entertainment with predictably incomprehensible results. The seven episodes also add further depth to many of the catchphrase-reliant characters. Rowley Birkin QC finds a touching reason to wish he hadn't been "very, very drunk", Ted and Ralph's romance stutters on, Brilliant! gets depressed and things turn sour for Which Was Nice. All our favourites are present and correct, but the freshest laughs come from the new characters and less-established sketches, such as an inept croupier blundering through his first day on the job, Brilliant!'s dad ("Rubbish!"), haughty, mistake-prone history presenter Gideon Soames, and the world-weary Carl Hooper's unspectacular show "That's Amazing!". On the DVD: The Fast Show, Series 2 comes to DVD with no extras, aside from some nicely animated menus, episode and scene selection. --Paul Philpott
This film, which again pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger (who starred in 1986's No Mercy), offers up elements of classic noir: a hapless man becomes intimately involved with a beautiful blonde who may or may not be who or what she appears to be. Dedicated psychiatrist Isaac Barr (Gere) reluctantly, and then more obsessively, becomes involved with Heather Evans (Basinger), the sister of his patient, Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman). Evans is unhappily married to a gangster (appropriately played by a muscular and menacing Eric Roberts in a trademark role). Gere and Basinger make a credible, if dangerous couple, and Thurman delivers a subtle, understated performance and demonstrates her range and potential. The thriller is appropriately shot in gorgeous San Francisco, where the literal and figurative curving and hilly roads wind throughout. Credit legendary art director Dean Tavoularis for some amazing sets and scenes, notably the elegantly cavernous restaurant where Evans and her husband have a fateful dinner. This film is, in a way, glossy director Phil Joanou's Hitchcockian tribute--as a climactic lighthouse scene best demonstrates. Final Analysis doesn't offer an intimate look at its characters, but a beautifully stylized one, moody and gloomy. The intricate plot experiments with the device of "pathological intoxication," in which the subject completely loses control after drinking alcohol. And this doesn't mean a conventional ugly drunk; it means a frightening psychotic. Good and evil, hope and despair, beauty and repulsion are often juxtaposed in the film's complex world. --NF Mendoza
In the summer of 1996 Bobby Robson was diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live. Miraculously, less than a year Robson was managing the legendary FC Barcelona - motto 'More Than A Club'. But Bobby Robson was more than a manager. The miner's son from Newcastle played for his country. When he transformed Ipswich into European winners it was clear his real talent lay in coaching. Fearless, his gift was to be at his best when the worst threatened. Via the Hand of God, Gazza's tears, England's greatest world cup abroad to titles in Europe's top leagues and a Barcelona treble, Robson overcame the most extreme challenges before a career like no other came full circle when he returned to save his beloved Newcastle. Many of today's great managers owe their rise to Robson. A daring coach he could spot genius and help it grow. Starring an A list cast (Mourinho, Guardiola, Ronaldo, Gascoigne, Shearer, Lineker, Sir Alex Ferguson) never before seen archive and emotional testimony from Lady Elsie Robson, this is the definitive portrait of one sport's most inspirational, influential figures whose legacy lives on far beyond the football field. Pioneer, Mentor, Game-changer. Messiah.
Arthurian mythology and modern-day decay seem perfect complements to each other in Terry Gilliam's drama/comedy/fantasy The Fisher King. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. His later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be and that the homeless are all errant knights wears awfully thin, but, there are numerous moments of sad grace and violent beauty in this film. The screenplay by Richard LaGravenese launched his successful career and his smart wordplay helped garner Mercedes Ruehl an Oscar as Lucas' girlfriend. --Keith Simanton
The Fast Show, like Viz comic and Private Eye magazine, is one of those comedic institutions whose principal appeal is its utter predictability. The jokes in every episode are exactly the same, every sketch an only slightly different path to one of a few familiar punchlines ("I'll get me coat", "Where's me washboard?", "Scorchio!", "Suits you, Sir," and so on): once the viewer or reader is in with the jokes, they feel part of the club. This sort of reductive comedy is extremely easy to do badly: it is testament to the writing and acting of Paul Whitehouse and his team that not only are most of the set-pieces funny every time they reappear (the overly prurient tailors, the pub know-all, the Trevor Brooking-esque football pundit Ron Manager), but that each individual sketch is funny more than once. This first series of The Fast Show does not include a couple of characters who became well-loved mainstays; neither the licentious car salesman Swiss Tony, for whom everything was "like making love to a beautiful woman", or the incomprehensible raconteur Rowley Birkin QC, had been developed at this stage. However, aficionados will regard this collection as indispensable for the beginning of the saga of awkward young aristocrat Ralph and his unrequited passion for his gardener, Ted: a funny yet oddly affecting rendering of love thwarted by circumstance. On the DVD: The Fast Show--Series 1 on disc includes interviews with the cast, and English subtitles. There is an episode selector and an individual scene selector, though the latter is confusingly laid out. --Andrew Mueller
These eight episodes from the Fast Show's third series brought us sparking new characters like the 13th Duke of Wybourne No Offence Taff Lad and the Hearty Hikers and treats in the shape of Swiss Toni Dave Angel Eco-Warrior and the Posh Cockneys to join old favourites like Suits You Chanel 9 Colin Hunt Ted and Ralph and the ever-increasing parade of catchphrase heroes.
At 70- years of age Sir Bobby Robson is an energetic and passionate about football as ever. In conversation with Gary Linker he reflects on the highs and lows of his career; his playing days at Fulham and his sacking as manager of the London club his success in charge of Ipswich Town PSV and Porto but the toll it took on his family life. He recalls his eight dramatic years in charge of the national side: his vilification by the press. Maradona's infamous 'Hand Of God' goal a
The success of The Fast Show has always relied on the number of sketches devoted to your favourite characters. While this, the last ever series, suffers a little for the loss of Caroline Aherne (presumably busy with The Royle Family?), and from the fact that those sketches based on a single catch-phrase or joke--Jessie's Diets, "Which was nice", and even the cough-prone Bob Fleming--seem to be running out of steam, the show's more rounded creations are all back and still going strong. Swiss Tony has emerged from therapy a new man, Colin Hunt gets the sack from his beloved office job and Ralph struggles on with his unrequited love for handyman Ted. There are new characters: a ragged, Charlton Heston-like astronaut who runs into different situations screaming, "What year is this? Who is the President?!", and a cynical, middle-aged woman who meets every note of human kindness she encounters with a sarcastic "Hah!", are particular standouts. However, as always, the series works best when the regular characters collide with contemporary phenomena, so here we have Indecisive Dave being phoned by a friend who's appearing on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?; the "Suits You!" tailors harassing an incognito Johnny Depp; the cheeky criminal stealing a child's Pokémon cards; John Actor playing hard-nosed interior designer Laurence Lewellyn Monkfish in Changing Monkfish; the send-up of recent gangster Brit flicks A Right Royal Barrel of Cockney Monkeys (populated entirely by pseudo-cockney public schoolboys); and a sketch in which Channel 9's gardening presenter is assisted by a topless woman. Nice Dimmocks! --Paul Philpott
Recorded live at London's Hammersmith Apollo in 1998, The Fast Show Live features all of the original cast of the highly successful sketch series (Caroline Aherne excepted) including Paul Whitehouse, Simon Day, Charlie Higson and Arabella Weir and practically all of their myriad characters and catchphrases. This live show effectively marks a last hurrah for The Fast Show team, with routines like the Coughing Bob Fleming singalong reworked from the series. However, as a feat of inventive stage management and quick costume changing, they do manage to maintain the Fastness of the TV series live. It was the catchphrases which earned the series its immense popularity and they raise large, predictable cheers of recognition when wheeled out at the Apollo, from Unlucky Alf's opening "Oh, bugger!" to the "Suits you, sir!" of the intrusively camp boys in the menswear department. The show's reliance on these might have been annoying if it weren't for the fact that they were built on such esoteric, peripheral and complex sketch and character material. Who but the Fast Show team would have thought of taking the mickey out of bad European TV, even inventing their own mock-Esperanto to do so? Or similarly, lampooned all those old 1930s music hall comedians whose risque jokes are incomprehensible to modern audiences? These, mixed in with modern archetypes like Ron Manager or the endlessly poignant Ted and Ralph made The Fast Show at once comfortingly familiar yet endlessly surprising viewing. They were influential also: Colin Hunt is surely a crude prototype for The Office's David Brent. On the DVD The Fast Show Live has no special features on this edition, disappointingly. --David Stubbs
In October and November 2002 The Fast Show favourites took to the stage.... to rapturous applause. This sell-out tour represented the final outing for a host of favourite characters from the 'suit you' tailors to a musical incarnation of Ted and Ralph to the office joker Colin Hunt.
Glastonbury (Dir. Julien Temple 2006): The mud. The music. The mayhem. A documentary on the 30th anniversary of Britain's best-known music festival the definitive experience that is Glastonbury! With no Glasto' festival in 2006 this may be the best way to sample the finest musical gathering in the UK. In 1970 a young farmer named Michael Eavis opened his 150-acre farm to 1 500 people who paid one pound each to watch a handful of pop and folk stars perform all weekend long and the Glastonbury Festival was born. The following year several rich hippies including Winston Churchill's granddaughter provided funds to enlarge the event and 12 500 people turned up to see David Bowie and Joan Baez. For most of the past 30 years the Worthy Farm in Glastonbury has provided a delirious outdoor concert for thousands of people over the summer-solstice weekend. Julien Temple whose film The Filth and the Fury screened at Sundance in 2000 has spent the past few years collecting footage from every single Glastonbury Festival ranging from professional outtakes from the film Nicolas Roeg made about the 1971 event to amateur home videos collected from the attendees themselves often retrieved from forgotten corners of closets and attics. Interweaving images of impromptu art happenings skeptical locals and stirring performances by music legends not to mention the unbridled energy of each successive generation of youthful music fans Glastonbury skillfully chronicles the evolution of the longest-running music festival in the world. It's All Gone Pete Tong (Dir. Michael Dowse 2005): Based on a true story and Winner of Best Feature Film at Toronto Film Festival and Gen Art Film Festival Paul Kaye (Best Actor U.S. Comedy Arts Festival) stars as Frankie Wilde the legendary British DJ and musical mastermind of the underground club scene whose career is cut down at its pinnacle by unthinkable tragedy - the loss of his hearing. Darkly funny and inspirational with fierce performances by both Kaye and Kate Magowan (24 Hour Party People) as his sex-crazed Mrs. you'll laugh and gasp but cheer him on as he struggles out of the abyss to reclaim his life and reputation. This Is Spinal Tap (Dir. Rob Reiner 1984): Go straight to 11 - with the magic of DVD you can now go to your favourite Tap moments whether it is the diminutive Stonehenge the pod that won't open or the amp that goes all the way to 11. For the first time ever you can choose how to watch the greatest ""rockumentary"" in history. See this cult phenomenon in its splendid entirety or use the menu to follow the band's antics via an interactive tour map of select scenes from a list of classic Tap quotes. And if all that isn't enough there is after all. the music - Hell Hole Sex Farm and the timeless Big Bottom.
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