When Inspector Morse first appeared on television in 1987, nobody could have predicted that it would run into the next century, maintaining throughout a quality of scripts and story lines that raised the genre of the detective series to a new level. Much of its success can be attributed to John Thaw's total immersion in the role. Morse is a prickly character and not obviously easy to like. As a detective in Oxford with unfulfilled academic propensities, he is permanently excluded from a world of which he would dearly love to be a part. He is at odds with that world--and with his colleagues in the police force--most of the time. Passionate about opera and "proper beer", he is a cultural snob for whom vulgarity causes almost physical pain. As a result, he lives from one disillusionment to another. And he is scarred--more deeply than he would ever admit--by past relationships. But he also has a naïve streak and, deep-down sensitivity, which makes him a fascinating challenge for women. At the heart of Morse's professional life is his awkward partnership with Detective Sergeant Lewis, the resolutely ordinary, worldly sidekick who manages to keep his boss in an almost permanent state of exasperation while retaining his grudging respect. It's a testament to Kevin Whateley's consistently excellent performance that from such unpromising material, Lewis becomes as indispensable to the series as Barrington Pheloung's hypnotic, classic theme music. Morse's investigations do occasionally take him abroad to more exotic locations, but throughout 14 successful years of often gruesome murders, the city of Oxford itself became a central character in these brooding two-hour dramas: creator Colin Dexter stating he finally had to kill Morse off because he was giving Oxford a bad reputation as a dangerous place! --Piers Ford
Danielle Steel is one of the best-selling authors of all-time and now you can enjoy this box set featuring three movie adaptations of some of her best known novels. Daddy (Dir. Michael Miller 1991): Patrick Duffy and Linda Carter star in this highly emotional story of love loss and rediscovered happiness. Oliver is a top advertising executive who seems to have it all - a beautiful wife three great children and a lovely home. But one fateful day his wife announces she i
Director Steven Spielberg takes us back to the scene of Jurassic Park in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the blockbuster sequel with even more dinosaurs, action and Academy Award-nominated visual effects. Four years since the disaster at Jurassic Park, two groups are in a race against time that will determine the fate of the remote island's prehistoric inhabitants. Featuring an all-star cast including Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn and Pete Postlethwaite, this action-packed thrill ride will leave you on the edge of your seat...again! Special Features: The Making Of Deleted Scenes Marketing: Posters & Toys Industrial Light & Magic The World of Jurassic Park Dinosaur Encyclopedia Illustrations & conceptual drawings Models Storyboards Production Photos Production Notes Talent Profiles
When Audrey fforbes-Hamilton has to endure the humiliation of being forced by bankruptcy into selling Grantleigh Manor her feathers are ruffled further when the new owner Richard de Vere turns out to have made his million by selling groceries! More details to be confirmed.
Winner of the Palme d'Ore at Cannes, this new film from Dogma 95 director Lars Von Trier is a bizarre musical starring off-the-wall pop star Bjork.
Circus is a modern crime thriller of cross, double cross and triple cross.
Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning, all set to Ron Goodwin's tongue-in-cheek music score. --Mark Walker In Press for Time Norman Wisdom offered his version of the crusading reporter movie, though by 1966 time was running out for Norman's style of big-screen comedy. Perhaps a sign of his growing frustration with the formulaic nature of his pictures was that he stretched himself to play not just his usual underdog hero, but also his own mother and his grandfather, the Prime Minister. Wisdom also cowrote the movie in which, as a reporter in a small seaside town, he causes chaos for the council, organises a beauty parade and dresses as a suffragette. Though now nearing the end of his years as a movie star, Wisdom shows himself to still be as polished as ever at his own brand of good-natured slapstick. --Gary S Dalkin
Hot on the heels of her acclaimed success in The Good Life, Penelope Keith undertook a role that would futhher confirm her place as one of Britain’s leading comic actors: the role of Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born. Series Three first broadcast in 1981, along with such challenging issues as the closing of the train station, other people’s honey and large modern art sculpture, takes the relationship between businessman Richard De Vere and Audrey to new and unexpected levels. The once-successful businessman suddenly finds that he has everything to lose, and the only thing that might save him is the selling of Grantleigh Manor. Quite how this new challenge resolves itself kept viewers of the series, when originally broadcast, gripped until the now famous closing episode of this, the final series. Special Features: Cast Filmographies Subtitles
Filmed in VIDECOLOR--[explosions, drum roll, music builds to a climax]--and SUPERMARIONATION"! The opening sequence of Thunderbirds is itself a masterclass in Gerry Anderson's marionette hyperbole: who else would dare to make a virtue out of the fact that (a)the show is in colour and (b) it's got puppets in it? But everything about this series really is epic: Thunderbirds is action on the grandest scale, pre-dating such high-concept Hollywood vehicles as Armaggedon by 30 years and more (the acting is better, too), and fetishising gadgets in a way that even the most excessive Bond movies could never hope to rival. Unsurprisingly, it transpires that the visual effects are by Derek Meddings, whose later contributions to Bond movies like The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker echo his pioneering model work here. As to the characters, the clean-cut Tracey boys take second place in the audience's affections to their cool machines--the real stars of the show--while comic relief is to be found in the charming company of Lady Penelope and her pink Rolls (number plate FAB1), driven by lugubrious chauffeur Parker, whose "Yes, milady" catchphrase resonated around school playgrounds for decades. (Spare a thought for poor old John Tracey, stuck up in space on Thunderbird 5 with only the radio for company.) The puppet stunt-work is breathtakingly audacious, and every week's death-defying escapade is nail-bitingly choreographed in the very best tradition of disaster movies. First shown in 1964 and now digitally remastered, Thunderbirds is children's TV that still looks and sounds like big-budget Hollywood. On this DVD: The four episodes are: "Alias Mr. Hackenbacker", "Lord Parker's 'Oliday", "Ricochet" and "Give or Take a Million". Amazon.com
Classic horror starring Peter Cushing. Penniless, Baron Frankenstein (Cushing), accompanied by his eager assistant Hans (Sandor Eles), arrives at his family castle near the town of Karlstaad, vowing to continue his experiments in the creation of life. Fortuitously finding the creature he was previously working on, he brings it back to a semblance of life but requires the services of a mesmerist, Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe), to successfully animate it. The greedy and vengeful Zoltan secretly sends the monster into town to steal gold and 'punish' the burgomaster and the chief of police, which acts lead to a violent confrontation between the baron and the townspeople. Special Features The Making of Evil of Frankenstein Narrated by Edward De Souza and featuring interviews with Wayne Kinsey, Caron Gardner, Hugh Harlow, Pauline Harlow, Peter Cushing, Don Mingaye. The Evil of Frankenstein Stills Gallery. The Evil of Frankenstein Theatrical Trailer. A Moment with Caron Gardner
Documentary on the early cinematographer Edwin S. Porter and his influences upon cinema.
Though this graphic 1996 version of HG Wells' The Island of Dr Moreau was roasted by critics, it's an utterly fascinating failure, largely due to the performances of David Thewlis, Val Kilmer and especially Marlon Brando in the title role as a mad (and in this case outrageously bizarre) scientist whose experiments in crossbreeding humans with animals have gone terribly awry. Thewlis plays the wayward scholar who is rescued at sea by Kilmer and brought to Moreau's island to discover the doctor's unnatural "children". Fairuza Balk plays Moreau's half-cat daughter, but it's Brando and Kilmer (in one scene doing a killer Brando impersonation) who steal the show, along with the astounding make-up effects created by Stan Winston. A guilty pleasure by any measure, this movie has definite cult-favourite potential. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Children Of The Corn Traveling through Nebraska Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicky (Linda Hamilton) stop in a small town to report the death of a child on the highway. There they discover something strange about the community: all the grownups are gone and the children seem to belong to a strange cult. What's worse it's a cult that sacrifices adults to the dreadful 'he who walks behind the rows'... Children Of The Corn 2 A young couple uncovered the horrors that lay hidd
Julie Walters gives a sterling performance in this riotous comedy which takes a look behind the scenes at the sex-life of the British inspired by the life the notorious Madam Cynthia Payne...
They're close mates but not that close! To take advantage of newly leglislated tax laws two 'very straight' old timers (Hogan and Caton) have to learn how to pass as a loving gay couple after falsely claiming same-sex status!
Greek Pete
When Inspector Morse first appeared on television in 1987, nobody could have predicted that it would run into the next century, maintaining throughout a quality of scripts and storylines that raised the genre of the detective series to a new level. Much of its success can be attributed to John Thaw's total immersion in the role. Morse is a prickly character and not obviously easy to like. As a detective in Oxford with unfulfilled academic propensities, he is permanently excluded from a world of which he would dearly love to be a part. He is at odds with that world--and with his colleagues in the police force--most of the time. Passionate about opera and "proper beer", he is a cultural snob for whom vulgarity causes almost physical pain. As a result, he lives from one disillusionment to another. And he is scarred--more deeply than he would ever admit--by past relationships. But he also has a naïve streak and, deep down, sensitivity, which makes him a fascinating challenge for women. At the heart of Morse's professional life is his awkward partnership with Detective Sergeant Lewis, the resolutely ordinary, worldly sidekick who manages to keep his boss in an almost permanent state of exasperation while retaining his grudging respect. It's a testament to Kevin Whately's consistently excellent performance that from such unpromising material, Lewis becomes as indispensable to the series as Barrington Pheloung's hypnotic, classic theme music. Morse's investigations do occasionally take him abroad to more exotic locations, but throughout 14 successful years of often gruesome murders, the city of Oxford itself became a central character in these brooding two-hour dramas: creator Colin Dexter said he finally had to kill Morse off because he was giving Oxford a bad reputation as a dangerous place! --Piers Ford
A 747 Jetliner takes off from an international airport and within minutes it is inexplicably threatening the lives of thousands as it plummets to the ground. The pilot Keller (Robert Powell) manages to avoid total catastrophe by bringing the aircraft down in a field but even so the resulting fire from a ruptured fuel tank ensures that from the plane at least there are no survivors. Except one: the pilot himself. Totured with guilt and unable to explain the reason for the disaster Keller sets upon a course of discovery desperately seeking to overcome the temporary loss of memory that he has sustained. Hobbs (Jennt Agutter) a young woman who tries to help Keller to unravel the mysteries of both his flight and the local events. But tragedy compounds upon tragedy as it seems that the dead passengers will not release their grip on Keller nor on anyone who stands in the path of his investigations. In a final confrontation with both his dead passengers and the responsiblity for the crash the truth is revealed. The collective personality of the dead can rest in peace. And so can Keller....
George (Wilder) has been in a mental hospital for 3 years and is now finally ready to return to the real world. Eddie Dash (Pryor) a dedicated con-man is supposed to keep him out of trouble but when people begin to mistake George for a missing millionaire Eddie wants to take advantage of the situation...
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy