The incredible true story of Ralph 'Papa' Thorson. He's not as fast as he used to be: that's what makes him human. He's a bounty hunter: that's what makes him dangerous. Ralph ""Papa"" Thorson is a modern day bounty hunter who spends his time traveling the country to capture various fugitives who have skipped bail. When he does make it home to California he has to contend with his live-in girlfriend Dotty who is in a state of advanced pregnancy and trying to get Thorson to take a mo
The welcome mat's out on Walton's Mountain. A year has gone by on Walton's Mountain. The Depression has deepened but so have the love and respect that hold the Waltons together. Share good times and hard times with America's favourite family in this 5-disc set featuring all 24 of the episodes from season 2 including 'The Thanksgiving Story' a poignant movie-length tale that won an Emmy Award for Best Writing in Drama (Series). This is the year John-Boy graduates from high
Hands down, Only Angels Have Wings is one of the most buoyantly entertaining movies in the American cinema. It is also a razor-sharp example of the action-oriented films of Howard Hawks, the wide-ranging auteur who would go on to make To Have and Have Not and Red River. This one is set in Barranca, a South American port city swathed in perpetual night fog, where a band of mail pilots struggle daily to get their planes through a treacherous mountain pass. They don't care about the mail so much as they live by the rules of adventure, professionalism and friendly rivalry. Cary Grant is the leader of this daredevil group, a man who won't be pinned down to anything except his own code of stoicism. ("I don't believe in laying in a supply of anything" he says, which may be why he's always asking people for matches to light his cigarettes.) His cool style is tested by the arrival of a wisecracking blonde (Jean Arthur) and an ex-mistress (Rita Hayworth); Rita's now married to a pilot (Richard Barthelmess), disgraced by a single act of cowardice. Hawks always got great mileage from throwing a bunch of colourful characters together in an enclosed space, where death could strike in a moment. The great secret about Hawks is that although his feel for action was crackling, he was really more interested in the way people exchanged sidelong glances or lit each other's cigarettes--there's a lot of both in Only Angels Have Wings. --Robert Horton
Based on a true story this film tells of the tireless efforts of a US naval ship crew to save an abandoned Korean / American baby from the post-Korean War political fallout.
With more walkers than your average Gary Lineker advert Big Brother 3 got off to a rocky start in losing Sunita (she said she wasn't having fun, but she'd probably realised she would be voted out in the first few weeks) and having Sandy offer us his re-enactment of The Great Escape. At this point the series seemed doomed: the remaining housemates hardly looked like the most entertaining of suspects. Then the media stepped in and turned Jade into Jabba the Hut's sister and Tim into "Nice but Dim". There were also a few hints of romance and some fumbling under the sheets, but all amounted to nothing with confessions of love only occurring after the contestants had left the house. You can choose to succumb to voyeurism or attempt to hide from it, but love it or hate it, no-one can escape the media juggernaut that is Channel 4's favourite reality TV show. On the DVD: Big Brother Uncut 3 offers the best and worst of the households antics in Dolby Digital 2.0 and 4:3 picture ratio--but come on, would you really want to listen to Jade in full surround-sound glory? The DVD extras are pretty standard fare for the BB releases, with multiple angle viewings of the "Word Game" and "Aqua Fun", which basically means you get to see the girls naked from any angle. Along with this you get the embarrassing audition tapes, which make you wonder just why this lot were picked in the first place. But then no sane person would want to enter the Big Brother House, would they? To prove this, comic character Avid Merrion offers his own audition tapes with their bizarre mix of Euro Trash and psycho-stalker extraordinaire--more of which can be seen in Channel 4's comedy Bo' Selecta. --Nikki Disney
Visually beautiful, Stanley Kubrick's last completed film Eyes Wide Shut blends the sinister, the sensual and the clinical in a combination that is rather too personal and idiosyncratic to be entirely successful as the final statement about gender and sexuality he intended it to be. Adapted by Frederick Raphael from the Dream Story of Freud's friend Schnitzler, it shows a young successful couple confront the dangers that lurk beyond monogamy; Nicole Kidman's Alice does little more than fantasise, flirt and dream, but even this causes guilt and pain. Doctor Bill (Tom Cruise) does rather more--he visits a whore, crashes an orgy and continues to ask questions when warned off; if no disaster ensues, and it is possible that two people die as a result, it is only luck that averts it. Much of the best of what is here is to be found in occasional moments of stillness--Cruise walking through a morgue--or wild comedy--Cruise's attempt to hire a costume in the middle of the night interrupts major shenanigans at the fancy-dress shop. Cruise and Kidman do what they can with material that never means as much as it aspires to, and the standout performance is Sydney Pollack's, as a worldly wise client. On the DVD: Eyes Wide Shut on DVD is presented in lavish Dolby Sound that makes the most of the obsessive Ligeti piano piece and Shostakovich waltz that dominate the score, and in the 1.33:1 ratio that was Kubrick's considered choice. It has subtitles in English, Arabic, Bulgarian and Rumanian, two TV spots and informative interviews with Kidman and Cruise, as well as with Steven Spielberg, to whom Kubrick had talked at length about his artistic intentions. --Roz Kaveney
Charlize Theron stars in this drama based on the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States.
HAPPY IS THE BRIDE David proposes to Janet in the middle of a cricket match, a prospect less-than-enthusiastically received by Janet's prosperous father and the two lovebirds find romance being replaced by a regiment of interfering relatives! INTO THE BLUE Mr and Mrs Fergusson are relaxing on board a yacht off the coast of France their only crew, the skipper-owner and his adopted daughter. On taking a turn around the deck, however, Mr Fergusson is put-out to discover a stowaway helping himself to the comforts of their dinghy! FATHER'S DOING FINE A widowed mother has to contend with the love affairs of her two unmarried daughters, some worthless shares, a thieving butler, the unpaid rent, the matrimonial difficulties of a third daughter and the imminent motherhood of the eldest! THE MARCH HARE Sir Charles Hare gambles everything on one of his horses at Ascot and loses everything, including the racing stud that was the chief delight of his life! However, his aunt attends the sale and buys a promising foal which she intends to raise in secret for Charles...
Taken from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front is a devastating portrait of a small group of German soldiers during World War I. In this 1979 made-for-TV version the star-studded cast is lead by Richard Thomas (The Waltons) as Paul Baumer, strongly supported by screen veterans Ernest Borgnine, Ian Holm and Patricia Neal. As both narrator and star, Thomas occasionally seems to reincarnate his familiar John-Boy persona, but does at least succeed in creating a character that has more levels than his television alter ego. After watching all of his high school buddies loose their lives, Paul returns home a changed man, conflicted in his feelings about the Army and war, and altered from an idealistic schoolboy into a fearful and humble veteran. Although Lewis Milestone's 1930 films remains the cinema's definitive version, director Delbert Mann (Desire Under the Elms, Marty) has done a workmanlike job bringing the novel to the screen. The scenery and costuming in this period piece are well done, and surely contributed to its winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Made for TV. Also exceptional are the cinematography and special effects that, while realistically gruesome, truly emphasise the horrors of war. --Zachary Lively, Amazon.com
Because of his tragic death on the set of The Crow, we'll never know if Brandon Lee would have turned one successful film into a popular series. But one look at this tepid sequel suggests that not even the charismatic Lee could have rescued The Crow movies from the burden of a lacklustre screenplay. Based on the popular comic books by James O'Barr, this sequel finds Vincent Pérez as a man named Ashe, who is murdered along with his young son by a gang of drug-running thugs under the employ of slimy kingpin Judah Earl (Richard Brooks). Ashe is resurrected with the help of a tattoo artist named Sarah (Mia Kirschner), whereupon he begins a campaign of revenge against his killers. More a rehash than a sequel, the film repeats the grungy, dark look of urban decay from The Crow, but its combination of violence, heavy-handed symbolism and tacky sentiment make this a film strictly for nihilistic teens. Then again, no movie in which veteran punkster Iggy Pop plays a slimeball can be considered a total loss. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.co.uk
They came they saw they changed their minds! A group of disillusioned townsfolk living in the West renounce their settlemen and decide to return to their homes in the East. Hiring a grizzled and eccentric wagonmaster (Candy) they set off on the trail...
Footballers' Wives plays rather like a dramatisation of the worst bits of Heat magazine, fuelling our obsession with worshipping at the celebrity altar. In essence it's Dynasty set in the world of premiership football, though you shouldn't be fooled by the title: this is definitely not a "game of two halves". For the first time in history, men may leave the room at the mention of football to let the women gorge themselves on a surfeit of bad fashion, affairs, drug habits, long-lost children and the gratuitous disposal of excessive wealth. There are more than a few recognisable characters--the foreign manager, the glamour-model wife, the smouldering Italian mid-fielder--whose presence only adds to the (intended) impression that this just might be fact thinly disguised as fiction (though it's unlikely that any real footballer's wife would almost kill the chairman of the club in a fit of rage, as Tanya does in the first episode). Unsurprisingly Footballers' Wives was created by the same team that produced the trash-fest that was Bad Girls and despite never being a contender for best drama it offers a perfect opportunity to become a voyeur in a world with more glitz and leg action than most. On the DVD: Footballers' Wives is presented with an ordinary TV transfer. The special features are nothing to get excited about, just standard interviews and photo galleries. --Nikki Disney
When veteran detective, Danny Frater (played by James Nesbitt), turns up at a hospital mortuary for what he thinks is a routine ID check on a young woman's body, he gets a devastating shock; the corpse turns out to be his estranged daughter, Christina (played by Imogen King). Danny is traumatized by the news that according to the post-mortem report, she's taken her own life. Danny and Christina had a complicated father-daughter relationship in recent years, but he refuses to accept that she would have ended her own life. He sets out on a mission for the truth, retracing her last days and hours, in an agonising crusade to discover what really happened to his only child.
Missile to the Moon: An expedition to the moon arrives to find a sinister female presiding over a race of moon-women. A remake of 'Cat Women of the Moon'. Earth Vs The Flying Saucers: Aliens travel to Earth to seek help for their dying planet. However when they arrive at a U.S Army base the Army mistakenly greet them with gunfire... Planet Outlaws (aka Destination Saturn): The re-edited version of the 1939 Universal serial 'Buck Rogers'. Buck and his comrade Buddy are released from suspended animation after 500 years on ice. The world which they once knew is now under the control of Killer Kane a terrifying mobster. Needless to say the duo quickly get onboard a plan to take down the criminal mastermind and his band of futuristic assasins.
Two restless teens from Southend go on a Saturday night spree of girls boozing and vandalism; however when even this heady concoction loses its appeal they add murder to their itinerary...
The brainchild of Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris Nathan Barley is their latest comedy assault on society; a satirical parody of the Hoxton-finned style obsessed world of the new media. Nathan Barley is 26. He is a webmaster guerrilla filmmaker screenwriter DJ and in his own words a ""self-facilitating media node"". He is convinced he is the epitome of urban cool and therefore secretly terrified he might not be which is why he reads Sugar Ape Magazine - his bible
Newly qualified barrister Roger Thursby joins his flatmate as a trainee at a London law firm. Thrown in at the deep end by the absent-minded senior partner his first few appearances in court border on the disastrous as he encounters a succession of cantankerous judges.
The television series that captured the American spirit of family loyalty returns for a third season on DVD. Episodes comprise: 1. The Conflict (Part 1) 2. The Conflict (Part 2) 3. The First Day 4. The Thoroughbred 5. The Runaway 6. The Romance 7. The Ring 8. The System 9. The Spoilers 10. The Marathon 11. The Book 12. The Job 13. The Departure 14. The Visitor 15. The Birthday 16. The Lie 17. The Matchmakers 18. The Beguiled 19. The Caretakers 20. The Shivaree 21. The Choice 22. The Statue 23. The Song 24. The Woman 25. The Venture
The biggest change for Stargate's sixth season was its move to the Sci-Fi Channel. Financial rescue or genre haven from cancellation? Whatever the behind-the-scenes politics, the departure of Daniel Jackson (actor Michael Shanks) the previous year most certainly contributed to the need to run a tighter ship somewhere. With the addition of his replacement, Jonas Quinn, the new show dynamic (hinted at by the new title theme tune) meant far more convoluted arc-stories and less individual focus. One of very few solo spotlights came from Christopher Judge writing his own show, when "The Changeling" saw Teal'c act out a life as a fireman. One reason for being a fan favourite was its cameo from still-alive-after-all Daniel Jackson. There'd be several more through the year, culminating in a finale that tested how much attention you'd been paying to that all-important back-story. Other kooky cameos included Dean Stockwell in one of the many spotlights on the energy resource n'quadria, Ian Buchanan as one of the devilish Replicators (and hopefully the end of that plotline) and regular spots from John DeLancie, Ronny Cox and Tom McBeath as the Earth-bound series baddies. More pertinently, we also saw Byers from The X-Files (Bruce Harwood) as a scientist involved with the Antarctic Gate. Lest we forget, there are other portals on Earth. Is that an already planned spin-off on the horizon? --Paul Tonks
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