There are lots of things to prepare for in our latest outing to Holmfirth, on the edge of the Pennines. There's a charity sponsored kiss for one thing, and a good old fashioned thumpydub contest for another. There's a nostalgic trip to France, and the arrival of the mysterious Phantom Number 14 bus too. But even Lester Coalville's machine that detects earthquakes couldn't help prepare for the devastating shock to come; when Compo catches an unexpected glimpse of Nora in an alluring costume, complete with fishnet stockings...
Collection of four classic children's films. 'Annie' (1982) is the story of the eponymous optimistic orphan (Aileen Quinn) who lives a miserable life in an children's home run by the awful Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett). One day, she sees her chance to escape and sets off on a journey which will take her to the door of childless millionaire Daddy Warbucks (Albert Finney). In 'Oliver' (1968) young Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) escapes from the workhouse, where he has been brutally treated all of his life, and joins the gang of street urchins led by the rascal Fagin (Ron Moody). Oliver is trained as a pick-pocket, but ends up being caught for a crime he did not commit. However, this seemingly unfortunate accident brings him closer to his real family. 'Matilda' (1996) stars Mara Wilson as the exceptionally gifted and intelligent child who is ignored by her stupid parents Harry (Danny DeVito) and Zinnia (Rhea Perlman). A keen reader, her dearest wish is to be sent to school, but the establishment Harry selects is Crunchemhall, run by the tyrannical Miss Trunchball (Pam Ferris). Her cruelty to her pupils causes Matilda to vow revenge, and her newly discovered telekinetic powers give her the chance to do so. 'Madeline' (1998) stars Hatty Jones as the most mischievous of the twelve friends who live at a Parisian school run by Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand). Her sunny existence is threatened by starchy old Lord Covington (Nigel Hawthorne) who is on a campaign to have the school closed down. It is up to Madeline and her friends, who include the equally precocious Pepito (Kristian de la Osa) and a dog who saved her from drowning, to stop him.
Experience the real '60s counterculture in this compelling mixture of drugs, sex and armchair politics. Academy Award®-winner Jack Nicholson (Best Actor, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975; Best Supporting Actor, Terms of Endearment, 1983; Best Actor, As Good As It Gets, 1997) stars with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (who also directs) in this unconventional classic which Time Magazine hails as one of the ten most important pictures of the decade. Nominated for an Academy Award® (1969) for Best Original Screenplay (written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern), EASY RIDER continues to touch a chord with fans everywhere.
Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitised history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut- and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core, Amistad is a traditional courtroom drama, centred by a tired, clichéd narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy, E.T. and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com
All 28 episodes of the crimefighting drama series about an elite branch of Interpol agents who take on the cases no-one else can solve. A trio of ace investigators led by suavely assured novelist Jason King (Peter Wyngarde), hard-nosed professional Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) and coolly efficient computer expert Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nichols) try to outdo each other as they seek to solve the cases baffling police forces throughout Europe. Episodes comprise: 'Six Days', 'The Trojan Tanker', 'A Cellar Full of Silence', 'The Pied Piper of Hambletown', 'One of Our Aircraft Is Empty', 'The Man in the Elegant Room', 'Handicap Dead', 'Black Out', 'Who Plays the Dummy', 'The Treasure of the Costa Del Sol', 'The Man Who Got a New Face', 'Les Fleurs Du Mal', 'The Shift That Never Was', 'The Man from 'X', 'Dead Men Die Twice', 'The Perfect Operation', 'The Duplicated Man', 'The Mysterious Man in the Flying Machine', 'Death On Reflection', 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'A Small War of Nerves', 'The Bones of Byrom Blain', 'Spencer Bodily Is Sixty Years Old', 'The Ghost of Mary Burnham', 'A Fish Out of Water', 'The Soup of the Day', 'A Ticket to Nowhere' and 'The Double Death of Charlie Crippen'.
Clayhanger: The Complete Series (8 Discs)
Episodes Comprise: Series 15: 1. How to Clear Your Pipes 2. Where There's Smoke There's Barbecue 3. The Black Widow 4. Have You Got a Light Mate? 5. Concerto for Solo Bicycle 6. Stop That Bath 7. Springing Smiler 8. There Are Gypsies at the Bottom of Our Garden 9. Aladdin Gets on Your Wick 10. Welcome to Earth Season 16: 1. The Man Who Nearly Knew Pavarotti 2. The Glory Hole 3. Adopted by a Stray 4. The Defeat of the Stoneworm 5. Once in a Moonlit Junkyard 6. The Space Ace 7. The Most Powerful Eyeballs in West Yorkshire 8. The Dewhursts of Ogleby Hall 9. The Sweet Smell of Excess
Peter Davidson's recently regenerated Fifth Doctor finds that they are Four to Doomsday when the Tardis materialises inside a vast starship with a multiracial crew from Earth's distant past. Downloaded into computer chips are the memories of the three billion survivors of the Urbankan race and the Earth is to be their new home. Can the Doctor save humanity from total destruction?
It wasn't until the beginning of Stargate SG-1's fourth season that fans knew to take the Replicator threat seriously. The spidery nasties had only seemed like one of many new enemies introduced in previous years. But when the one seemingly omnipotent backbone of the galaxy was asking Earth for help, clearly we were in real trouble! In fact, the team's list of enemies expanded and got far more complicated this year. Proving without a shadow of a doubt that this is science fiction, the Russians reveal they have their own Stargate program and ask the Americans for help. This twist allows for exploration of all the political machinations occurring behind the scenes of the SG-C, all of which appear to stem from the embittered Senator Kinsey (Ronny Cox). There were quite a few Earth-based stories in the year, but not all the new enemies were originally local. Willie Garson comically guest-starred as Martin, a geekily suspicious guy with too much knowledge of the Stargate. More sinister was an old flame of Daniel's turning into something far more painful than an old wound (thanks to an ancient Egyptian curse). Thankfully, the writers hadn't forgotten the importance of one-off storylines too. In "Upgrades" the team learns a lesson in abuse of power. In "The Other Side" (featuring DS9's Rene Auberjonois) they learn about blind trust. In "Scorched Earth" a dangerous claim for a planet's ownership means they learn to value Daniel's contribution to the group dynamic. If only this last lesson were learned better, season 5 might not have ended up as muddled as it did. --Paul Tonks
In nineteenth century middle-Europe orphaned teenage twins Maria and Frieda go to live with their uncle Gustav Weil who heads the Brotherhood a vigilante group trying to stamp out vampirism. But their methods are random and misplaced and the only result is a terrorised populace. The real threat lies with Count Karnstein and although the twins seem outwardly to be identical Frieda finds herself much more drawn than her sister to the Count's castle dominating the skyline.
M Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Agey, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, one that forsakes excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Bruce Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Haley Joel Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazing emotional wallop when it comes; it will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days. --Mark Englehart
A minor classic from Disney, this 1973 all-animal, all-animated musical version of the familiar story of Robin Hood is more charming than one might expect. Perhaps it's the warm, chummy take on key relationships within the legend--the way Robin Hood (Brian Bedford) gets twitterpated whenever the subject of Maid Marian (Monica Evans) comes up or the way best pal Little John (Phil Harris voicing a variation on his own Baloo from The Jungle Book) admonishes the Sherwood Forest hero, "Aw, Rob, why dontcha just marry the girl?" (Then, of course, there's the canny "casting" of the romantic leads as foxes: Robin the sly one and Marian the, well, foxy one.) The rest of the vocal cast is lively and eclectic: Peter Ustinov, Andy Devine, Terry Thomas, George Lindsey. Roger Miller provides the songs and voice for the minstrel character Allan-A-Dale. The film is ably directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, whose decades of work in Disney's animation division helped create the studio's rich legacy. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
This boxset contains five dramatisations of Minette Walters stories featuring: The Ice House; The Scolds Bridle; The Echo; The Dark Room and The Sculptress. The Ice House (Dir. Tim Fywell 1997): Since the disappearance of her husband David ten years earlier Phoebe Maybury had been under suspicion and Inspector Jack Walsh had mounted an intensive investigation but in the absence of a corpse the case had remained unsolved. The discovery of a body in the ice house ten yea
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
The mystical tale of a World War One veteran (Matt Damon) and championship golfer who returns to his sport with the aid of his caddy (Will Smith) who teaches him how to master any challenge in life.
Time to Reap the Harvest! Best-selling author Stephen King sowed the seeds for a bumper crop of horror films with his classic collection Night Shift. But few would sprout into the kind of franchise that Children of the Corn would grow to be. In the cult classic original a young couple (Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton) find themselves stranded in the small town of Gatlin, Nebraska where they meet a religious cult of children led by the mysterious Isaac and the unhinged Malachi and learn the blood-curdling secrets of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Meanwhile in Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, the well meaning locals of nearby Hemingford adopt the children who survived the original terror, but all is not as it seems. A new harvest is about to begin. Finally, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest brings terror to the big city, as two orphaned boys from Gatlin are taken into foster care in Chicago, where He Who Walks Behind the Rows begins to walk again! Featuring the original film in Ultra High Definition and alternate cuts of both its follow-ups for the first time on Blu-ray, plus a wealth of new and archival extras, the Children of the Corn Trilogy box set is a terrifying treat! Special Features: High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations of all three films 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of Children of the Corn Alternate cuts of Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice and Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 audio options for all three films Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing 60-page perfect bound book featuring new writing by John Sullivan, Lee Gambin, Stacie Ponder, Craig Martin and Guy Adams Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin Disc 1 - Children of the Corn (Blu-ray / 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray) Brand new 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films Audio commentary with horror journalist Justin Beahm and Children of the Corn historian John Sullivan Audio commentary with director Fritz Kiersch, producer Terrence Kirby and actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains Harvesting Horror: The Making of Children of the Corn retrospective piece featuring interviews with director Fritz Kiersch and actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains It Was the Eighties! an interview with actress Linda Hamilton Return to Gatlin brand new featurette revisiting the film's original Iowa shooting locations Stephen King on a Shoestring an interview with producer Donald Borchers Welcome to Gatlin: The Sights and Sounds of Children of the Corn an interview with production designer Craig Stearns and composer Jonathan Elias Cut from the Cornfield an interview with the actor who played The Blue Man in the fabled excised sequence Theatrical Trailer Disciples of the Crow, a 1983 short film adaptation of Stephen King's short story Disc 2 - Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (Blu-ray) Two versions of the film: the International Cut, and the US Theatrical Cut with additional CGI and an alternate audio mix (via seamless branching) Brand new audio commentary by critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain Brand new audio commentary by critic Lee Gambin, in conversation with director David Price A New Harvest, a brand new interview with director David Price Sowing the Seeds of Terror, a brand new interview with co-screenwriter A.L. Katz Framing Fear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Levie Isaacks Workprint version of the film Stills gallery Theatrical Trailer Disc 3 - Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (Blu-ray) Two versions of the film, the R-rated US Cut and the Unrated International Cut with extended ending (via seamless branching) Brand new audio commentary by critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain Corn in the City, a brand new interview with screenwriter Dode Leveson Corn in the USA, a brand new visual essay by author and critic Guy Adams Early treatments, versions of the story from the development process Stills Galleries Theatrical Trailer **Extras subject to change**
A star-studded cast heads this Agatha Christie story of one man's efforts to fathom the mysterious death at a resort hotel in the Mediterranean. Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. Also stars Jane Birkin, Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith. EXTRAS: Making Of Interview with costume designer Anthony Powell Interview with writer Barry Sandler Interview with producer Richard Goodwin Behind the scenes stills gallery Costume designs stills gallery
AND A CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM... From the mind of celebrated horror author Stephen King, the man behind such classic terror tales as The Shining, Carrie, and It, comes one of his most chilling offerings yet. Linda Hamilton (The Terminator) and Peter Horton (Thirtysomething) star as a young couple who find themselves lost on the backroads of Nebraska, eventually winding up in the seemingly deserted town of Gatlin. But the town is far from empty. As the couple soon discover, it is inhabited by a twisted cult of murderous children, thirsty for another blood sacrifice... Arrow Video is proud to present a 4K restoration of the film that launched one of the most enduring horror franchises of all time. Children of the Corn... they're an adult nightmare! 4k Ultra Hd Blu-ray Special Edition Contents 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) Original uncompressed stereo and 5.1 audio options Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Audio commentary with horror journalist Justin Beahm and Children of the Corn historian John Sullivan Audio commentary with director Fritz Kiersch, producer Terrence Kirby, and actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains Harvesting Horror: The Making of Children of the Corn, a retrospective piece featuring interviews with director Fritz Kiersch and actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains It Was the Eighties!, an interview with actress Linda Hamilton Return to Gatlin, featurette revisiting the film's original Iowa shooting locations Stephen King on a Shoestring, an interview with producer Donald Borchers Welcome to Gatlin: The Sights and Sounds of Children of the Corn, an interview with production designer Craig Stearns and composer Jonathan Elias Cut from the Cornfield, an interview with the actor who played The Blue Man in the fabled excised sequence Disciples of the Crow, a 1983 short film adaptation of Stephen King's story Theatrical Trailer
The Remains of the Day is one of Merchant-Ivory's most thought-provoking films. Anthony Hopkins is a model of restraint and propriety as Stevens, the butler who "knows his place"; Emma Thompson is the animated and sympathetic Miss Kenton, the housekeeper whose attraction to Stevens is doomed to disappointment. As Nazi appeaser Lord Darlington, James Fox clings to the notion of a gentleman's agreement in the ruthless political climate before World War Two. Hugh Grant is his journalist nephew all too aware of reality, while Christopher Reeves gives a spirited portrayal of an American senator, whose purchase of Darlington Hall 20 years on sends Stevens on a journey to right the mistake he made out of loyalty. As a period drama with an ever-relevant message, this 1993 film is absorbing viewing all the way. On the DVD: the letterbox widescreen format reproduces the 2.35:1 aspect ratio with absolute clarity. Subtitles are in French and German, with audio subtitles also in English, Italian and Spanish, and with 28 separate chapter selections. The "making-of" featurette and retrospective documentary complement each other with their "during and after" perspectives, while "Blind Loyalty, Hollow Honour" is an interesting short on the question of appeasement and war. The running commentary from Thompson, Merchant and Ivory is more of a once-only diversion. --Richard Whitehouse
Classic BBC comedy starring Dawn French (French & Saunders) and written by Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral). Geraldine Granger is not your run-of-the-mill village vicar. She is a bubbly, young reverend overseeing an eccentric congregation in a rural community. She and her off-the-wall parishioners bring us unconventional laughs in Richard Curtis' award-winning divine comedy. Includes Series 1-3, plus the Easter Special (1996) and Christmas Specials (1996 & 1997).
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