"Actor: Peg Shirley"

• The Terry Thomas Movie Collection | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.89

  The three films in this Terry Thomas Collection--The Naked Truth, Too Many Crooks and Make Mine Mink--are each an unalloyed delight from beginning to end. Though produced on slim budgets they possess witty scripts by Michael Pertwee, deft direction in two instances by Mario Zampi, inventive music scores and marvellous casts featuring two generations of British actors, from Athene Seyler to a young Kenneth Williams. Individually and as an ensemble these players are a pleasure to watch. But of course Terry Thomas, the catalyst of the collection, runs the gamut with a plethora of facial expressions, body language and verbal repartee that contribute so much to the unbuttoned joy of each film. In the earliest of them, The Naked Truth (1957), TT plays a dodgy peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton by a gutter press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. Too Many Crooks (1959) has TT being blackmailed once again, this time for the hoards he's stashed away as a renowned tax dodger. Look out for the very funny court scene, where TT makes three appearances on separate charges, before a bemused magistrate, John Le Mesurier. Make Mine Mink (1960), the odd one out in this collection, was adapted from a West End stage farce, Breath of Spring. TT leads a gang of middle-aged biddies who decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life", by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. The splendid cast includes Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams. On the DVD: The Terry Thomas Collection comes in an attractive box containing the three discs. All are 4:3 ratio and with mono sound. The only extras are a trailer for each film which, in the instance of Make Mine Mink, is introduced by Terry Thomas himself, who presents us to his gang of fur thieves as the voice on the soundtrack announces him as "fur, fur funnier than you've seen him before". --Adrian Edwards

• 24 Hour Party People (Special Edition) | Blu Ray | (03/06/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  New to Blu-Ray: the British cult pop history movie released for the first time on BD, complete with a massive 4.5 hours of bonus material! A witty and compelling portrait of the 80's music scene, 24HRPP is viewed through the eyes of Tony Wilson: founder of the now world-famous Factory Records & the Hacienda nightclub. Starring Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge, Philomena) and featuring Peter Kay, Rob Brydon, Simon Pegg, John Simm, John Thomson, Ralf Little & Shirley Henderson.

• The Thomas Crown Affair | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.49   |  Saving you £9.50 (146.38%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is also a high-stakes thief; his latest caper is an elaborate heist at a Boston bank. Why does he do it? For the same reason he flies gliders, bets on golf strokes and races dune buggies: he needs the thrill to feel alive. Insurance investigator Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway) gets her own thrills by busting crooks, and she's got Crown in her cross hairs. Naturally, these two will get it on, because they have a lot in common: they're not people, they're walking clothes racks. (McQueen looks like he'd rather be in jeans than Crown's natty three-piece suits.) The Thomas Crown Affair is a catalogue of 60s conventions, from its clipped editing style to its photographic trickery (the inventive Haskell Wexler behind the camera) to its mod design. You can almost sense director Norman Jewison deciding to "tell his story visually," like those newfangled European films; this would explain the long passages of Michel Legrand's lounge jazz ladled over endless montages of the pretty Dunaway and McQueen at play. (The opening-credits song, "Windmills of Your Mind," won an Oscar.) It's like a "What Kind of Man Reads Playboy?" ad come to life, and much more interesting as a cultural snapshot than a piece of storytelling. --Robert Horton

• The Deer Hunter: Special Edition (2 discs) | DVD | (04/08/2003) from £5.79   |  Saving you £11.20 (193.44%)   |  RRP £16.99

  The Deer Hunter is an expansive portrait of friendship in a Pennsylvania steel town, and of the effects of the Vietnam War. Led by the trio of Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken (who won a supporting actor Oscar), the first hour is dominated by an engrossing Russian Orthodox wedding and reception. When the drama moves overseas it switches from anthropologically realistic documentation of a community's rituals to highly controversial and still shocking Russian Roulette scenes, symbolising the random horror of war. Unforgettable as they are, the Vietnam sequences occupy less than a third of the three-hour running time; defying movie convention The Deer Hunter is fundamentally a before-and-after ensemble character study anchored by De Niro's great performance. Although it was the first serious Hollywood feature to address the Vietnam War, the plausibility of some of the later plot developments raises awkward questions. But the film remains powerfully effective, its deliberate pace, naturalistic overlapping dialogue and unflinching seriousness marking it very much a product of the 1970s. With nine Oscar nominations and five wins, including Best Picture and Director, it's a cinematic landmark that stands the test time, almost incidentally setting Meryl Streep on the road to superstardom in her first leading role. On the DVD: The Deer Hunter: Special Edition has the film on the first disc with a serious yet amiable Region 2 exclusive discussion track between director Michael Cimino and critic SX Finnie. The picture is anamorphically enhanced at 2.35:1, and perfectly reproduces Vilmos Zsigmond's deliberately desaturated, necessarily grainy cinematography. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack clearly reveals the mono original, being largely focused on the centre speaker and while it does a good job, some of the choral music does sound harsh. Dialogue is sometimes indecipherable, but that's due to the naturalistic nature of the original sound recording and mixing. Disc 2 offers excellent new interviews with Jon Savage (15 mins), Vilmos Zsigmond (15 mins) and Michael Cimino (23 mins). Also included is the original trailer (anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1), a routine photo gallery and a DVD version of the original press brochure. There's no trace of the 40 minutes of deleted material referred to by Cimino, but this presentation is still an object lesson in how quality of extras triumphs over quantity. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Deer Hunter 4K | Blu Ray | (04/03/2019) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Michael Cimino's epic masterpiece The Deer Hunter has been stunningly restored with a brand new 4k restoration. Winner of no less than five Academy Awards® in 1978 including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter is widely acknowledged as one of cinema's great masterpieces and contains some of the most memorable scenes in film history. With the film painting a sobering portrait of a small Pennsylvania steel town rocked by loss when three of its sons go off to fight in Vietnam, Cimino's ambitious and daring vision is showcased in this bold and brilliant war classic that, 40 years on, is even more striking than ever before. When Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage) and Nick (Christopher Walken) are captured by the Vietcong, they are forced to play Russian Roulette by their brutal captors, who make bets on their survival. The experience of capture leaves them with terrible physical and spiritual wounds, and when Michael returns to Saigon to fulfil an old promise to one of his friends, he makes an unexpected, horrific discovery. Also featuring astonishing performances from Meryl Streep as the woman both Michael and Nick fall in love with, and John Cazale (The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon) as their unhinged and insecure friend Stan. For the restoration of The Deer Hunter, STUDIOCANAL went back to the original 35mm negative, which was scanned at 4K resolution in 16bit. The restoration was completed at Silver Salt in London, who created a restored 4K DCP and UHD version for the home entertainment release. Bonus material includes: New Interview with David Thomson - film critic A brand new and exclusive interview with author and film critic David Thomson 1979 ITV South Ban Show interview with Michael Cimino A rarely seen ITV South Bank Show Interview from 1979 with director Michael Cimino provides an in-depth analysis of his inspirations and motivations for the making of the film Realising The Deer Hunter - Interview with director Michael Cimino Shooting The Deer Hunter - Interview with director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond Playing The Deer Hunter - Interview with star John Savage Audio Commentary with Michael Cimino Audio Commentary with Vilmos Zsigmond and journalist Bob Fisher Deleted and Extended scenes Deleted and extended scenes from the original production including extra footage of the infamous Russian Roulette sequence.

• The Deer Hunter | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £5.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (133.56%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama.--Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• The Deer Hunter | DVD | (04/03/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.

• The Naked Truth | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £6.73   |  Saving you £3.26 (48.44%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In 1957's The Naked Truth Terry Thomas plays a dodgy peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton by a gutter press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). One fascinating element in this picture is the portrayal of those relationships that could be only suggested in a period of tighter censorship, such as Peter Sellers' TV personality and Kenneth Griffith as his dresser, whose gay relationship is only faintly etched in here. More overt is the characterisation of a masculine looking authoress, known only by her initials, but sporting Agatha Christie's hairdo. The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee, as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. On the DVD: The Naked Truth comes to DVD in 4:3 ratio and with a mono soundtrack. The only extra feature is a trailer. More TT tomfoolery can be found in the three-disc Terry Thomas Collection. --Adrian Edwards

• Sailor Beware! | DVD | (24/08/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Peggy Mount stars as the world's most terrifying mother in law in this British Comedy favourite based on the hugely successful stage farce!

• Sailor Beware! | DVD | (26/12/2016) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99