Peter Sellers stars as gang-leader Pearly Gates who has a double life as Monsieur Jules the manager of a fashion house. The criminal world of London is being reduced to chaos by an Australian 'IPO mob' who acting on information provided by Gates' girlfriend Valerie (Nanette Newman) impersonate police officers and take the spoils of the true criminals after the crime has been safely committed. The crimes are relatively victimless involving jewellery thefts from the rich or robbe
High Hopes by award-winning Writer and Director, Mike Leigh (Mr Turner, Secrets Lies) depicts a slice of the lives of Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril (Philip Davis), a working-class couple in London. Cyril finds it hard to cope with his family; especially when his elderly Mum (Edna Dore) locks herself out and must ask her yuppie neighbours for help, and his social-climbing sister Valerie and her crass husband decide to throw a surprise party for their mum's 70th Birthday which has disaster written all over it. On top of all of this, Shirley wants a baby but how does this fit in with Cyril's Marxist ideals of a perfect world?
The generic title of Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence suggests a bland, by-the-numbers romantic comedy. Its dialogue certainly doesn't help--there's a lot of piffle about destiny and "having only one chance", etc.--but there are some surprising differences. The plot centres around Martha (Monica Potter), an American trying to start a new life in London. She meets three men (Tom Hollander, Rufus Sewell and Joseph Fiennes, who played the title role in Shakespeare in Love). These three are best friends and all three fall in love with her but the one she falls in love with feels like he's betraying the others to be with her. Despite the resulting confusion, she pursues him to the end--which makes it unlike most current romantic comedies where the woman is a hapless love object to be captured by the right guy. But more entertainingly, Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence pays particular attention to the ways men delude themselves because the two friends Martha doesn't care for are both convinced she's hankering for them, which allows for some fairly subtle skewering of the male ego. It's a flimsy movie but no more so than Notting Hill and Joseph Fiennes, in particular, has a relaxed, winning charm that marks him as a rising star. --Bret Fetzer
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
Labour Pains
East Is EastFor the seven kids of George Khan life is one long compromise. Tomboy Meenah prefers playing footie to wearing a sari hippie Saleem pretends to be studying engineering when he's really at art school heart throb Tariq has got a reputation as a local Casanova and Sajid hasn't even been circumcised yet! Brassed OffIt's 1992 and the miners of Grimley Colliery are facing uncertainty. Not only is their pit under threat but the Grimley Colliery Band is on the verge of breaking up - that is until Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) arrives. As the only female member of the band she somehow manages to rekindle their enthusiam for the forthcoming National Championships as well as rekindling a childhood romance with Andy (Ewan McGregor). Purely BelterAt the centre of this heart warming comedy are two young boys who won't give up on the pursuit of their dreams. Gerry and Sewell are broke. Owning season tickets to their beloved football club is their biggest dream of all. The tickets cost ''1000: they''re ''1000 short...
Though it's a reboot of a classic slapstick series, The Three Stooges fits right into Peter and Bobby Farrelly's filmography. Throughout their comedies, especially Dumb and Dumber, they've always championed the clueless and clumsy, and that describes this trio perfectly: Moe, Larry, and Curly (Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso, taking over from Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, and Jim Carrey). In the prologue or first "episode" (two more will follow), an unseen character drops three babies off at a Catholic orphanage. At first, the nuns (Jane Lynch, Jennifer Hudson, and Larry David--yes, Larry David) take delight in the spirited infants with the strange hairstyles, but 10 years later, their antics have worn thin. A well-heeled couple (Stephen Collins and Carly Craig) considers adoption, but things don't work out, so 25 more years pass, during which they become the orphanage's bumbling handymen, which necessitates further head-bonks, nyuk-nyuk-nyuks, and woo-woo-woos. When the threat of closure comes to the only home they've ever known, the boys set out to save the day. This leads them to a wealthy woman (Sofía Vergara), her lover (Craig Bierko), and her father-in-law (Collins), encounters that bring them to the attention of MTV's Jersey Shore, which provides a solution to their dilemma. The Farrellys may have their hearts in the right place, but The Three Stooges ranks as their weakest effort to date. The cast does what they can, but the script is terminally unfunny, and the frenetic direction only drives the point home. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Terry-Thomas one of Britain's finest cinematic cads gets his very own box set. Good show! Featuring: 1. School For Scoundrels (1960) 2. His & Hers (1961) 3. Private's Progress (1956) 4. Make Mine Mink (1960) 5. Too Many Crooks (1959) 6. The Naked Truth (1957)
Britain, Britain, Britain, land of technological achievement. We've had running water for over ten years, an underground tunnel that links us to Peru, and we invented the cat," narrates Tom Baker gleefully at the beginning of Little Britain, introducing the first hit show for fledgling digital channel BBC3 and the best new comedy since The League of Gentlemen. In fact, creators and stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams acknowledge a large debt to the League, not only in the gallery of grotesques all performed by the duo, but also in the way in which the familiar sketch-show format is expanded by clever use of locale: not Royston Vasey here, but "Britain" itself in all its perverse splendour: from Darkly Noon, where chavette Vicky Pollard seems all too frighteningly real ("Yeah, but no, but yeah. Shut up!"), to the Welsh village with only one gay, to the council estate where buck-toothed Lou looks after apparently wheelchair-bound Andy ("Yeah, I know"), to Kelsey Grammar School where pupils are baffled and confused by their fusty teacher, and many more besides. It's unashamedly puerile stuff and, as with The Fast Show before it, many sketches rely on a single incident or catchphrase repeated over and over in only slightly different contexts. But it works brilliantly, thanks to the characterisations of Lucas and Walliams, their sharp eye for the eccentricities of modern life, and of course that surreal voiceover from Tom Baker. On the DVD: This is a handsome two-disc set chock full of tasty extras. Lucas and Walliams provide a surprisingly serious commentary, joined in turn by producer Myfanwy Moore and director Steve Bendelack (a League of Gentlemen alumnus). There's the original pilot episode, plus plenty of deleted scenes, live sketches, several behind-the-scenes segments, an interview with Jonathan Ross, and a half-hour Best of Rock Profiles, the hilarious spoof series in which Walliams and Lucas impersonated various rock stars. If that's not enough, you can also select from a gallery to watch all the sketches featuring your favourite characters. Another triumph for Auntie Beeb. --Mark Walker
Family Guy revolves around the Griffin family and their madcap adventures. The Griffin household includes two teenagers a cynical dog who is smarter than everyone else and a megalomaniacal mutant baby who makes numerous attempts to eradicate his parents and siblings. Heading up this eclectic household is Peter Griffin. Peter does his best to do what's right for the family but along the way he makes mistakes that are the stuff of legend...
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
Titles Comprise: Pretty Woman: Julia Roberts stars a street-wise down-on-her-luck working girl whose chance encounter with a handsome corporate mogul leads to an improbable love affair... and a modern-day Cinderella fantasy that has captured the hearts of movie-goers all over the world. Featuring a chart-topping soundtrack this is an irresistible and timeless romantic comedy. Runaway Bride: Roberts and Gere confirm their status as an eternal screen team in this delightful laugh-filled romantic comedy. Roberts plays small-town girl Maggie Carpenter whose marches down the aisle become a series of near Mrs. when she bolts before saying I Do. Gere is Ike graham a cynical big city newspaper columnist eager to write a tell-all story about Maggie. But the more Ike finds out about skittish Maggie the more he finds he's falling in love... The Proposal: Sandra Bullock is at her funniest in the fresh laugh-out loud romantic comedy The Proposal. On the verge of being deported and losing the high-powered job she lives for the controlling Margaret announces she's engaged to her unsuspecting put-upon assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds). After proposing a few demands of his own the mismatched couple heads to Alaska where they have four short days to convince his quirky family and a very skeptical immigration agent that their charade is real. Featuring a star-studded supporting cast including Mary Steenburgen Craig T. Nelson and the delightfully inappropriate Betty White this madcap comedy will have you saying yes to The Proposal again and again.
It's 2151 and the British have launched a fleet of space ships to explore the galaxy in the only way the British can... with a stiff upper lip and regular tea breaks. Their mission? To export all things British to all corners of the galaxy - namely overpriced supermarkets housing estates call centres and even tractors - and protect Britain's interest in a changing galaxy. At the forefront of this expeditionary force is the HMS Camden Lock helmed by the irrepressible if a little tetchy Commander Henderson (Nick Frost). Ably assisted by a crew of misfits the Commander steers his ship through the stars giving orders from his big swivelly chair. Henderson is often more concerned with securing his place in British history than just doing his job. His crew? Borderline psychopath First Officer York (Kevin Eldon) sycophantic Diplomatic Officer Teal (Miranda Hart) manic depressive Navigator Vine (Stephen Evans) loose cannon Technical Officer Jeffers (Dan Antopolski) and enhanced human Sandstrom (Petra Massey). Experience the highs the lows the anti-gravity failures the annoying talking mops and of course the wars with alien races... always in national interest of course. Features the complete first series.
Three years after his divorce, acclaimed novelist Bill Borgens (Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear - Little Miss Sunshine) is still obsessed with his ex-wife Erica (Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly - A Beautiful Mind), who left him for another man. Meanwhile, his fiercely independent daughter Samantha (Lily Collins - Mirror Mirror) is publishing her first novel but refusing to deal with real life - in the shape of diehard romantic Lou (Logan Lerman, The Perks of ...
The airwaves crackle with the delectable sound of smooth rock in FM, a riotous comedy about the heady world of late-70s US radio. Michael Brandon (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) stars as Jeff Dugan, the ultra-cool program director at Q-SKY Radio, LA's number one rock station. Dugan encourages a free-wheeling culture at work, employing an array of eccentric DJ personalities: Mother (Eileen Brennan, Private Benjamin), a husky, world-weary ex-hippie; Eric Swan (Martin Mull, Clue), a mad-cap romantic looking for love, and The Prince of Darkness (Cleavon Little, Blazing Saddles), a cool cat who keeps the night-time airwaves alive. But when the station's future is thrown in to jeopardy by corporate bosses looking to cash-in, the Q-SKY troupe are forced to batten down the hatches and turn up the volume will a fully-fledged rock n' roll rebellion save the day? Legendary cinematographer John A. Alonzo (Chinatown, Scarface) directs this slickly-produced rock film, which combines hilarious studio hijinks with epic footage of Linda Ronstadt and Jimmy Buffett in concert. FM also boasts an incredible platinum-selling soundtrack featuring a pantheon of AOR greats including Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Eagles and Tom Petty (who also cameos). Now, High Fidelity meets High Definition as FM debuts on blu-ray with a selection of exciting new extras. Special Edition Contents: High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation transferred from original film elements Uncompressed stereo 2.0 PCM audio soundtrack Mono 1.0 music and effects track Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing No Static at All, a newly filmed interview with Michael Brandon, the star of FM Radio Chaos, a newly filmed interview with Ezra Sacks, the writer of FM The Spirit of Radio, a newly filmed video appreciation of the era of FM radio and the FM soundtrack by the film and music critic Glenn Kenny Extensive gallery of original stills, promotional images and soundtrack sleeves Original trailers Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options First Pressing Only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by writer and critic Paul Corupe
This offbeat Australian comedy is based on the real life events of 1969, when a huge satellite dish in the middle of a sheep paddock in Australia was used to pick up the TV signals from the first moon landing!
Aldo Vanucci (Sellers) also known as 'The Fox' is one of the greatest criminals in the world and master of disguise. After Aldo escaping from his Italian prison he plans to retrieve the ""gold of Cairo"" a large shipment of bullion. Devising the perfect plan after finding the ideal coastal village to unload the shipment Aldo poses as a famous director and persuades the entire population that he has chosen their village as the set for his new movie...
This romantic teen comedy tells of a high school senior who, heartbroken after his girlfriend breaks up with him, starts noticing his best friend's little sister, who's not so little anymore!
Some teachers just don't give an F. For example there's Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz). She's foul-mouthed ruthless and inappropriate. She drinks she gets high and she can't wait to marry her meal ticket and get out of her bogus day job. When she's dumped by her fiance she sets her plan in motion to win over a rich handsome subsititute (Justin Timberlake) - competing for his affections with an overly energetic colleague Amy (Lucy Punch). When Elizabeth also finds herself fighting of the advances of a sarcastic irreverent gym teacher (Jason Segel) the consequences of her wild and outrageous schemes give her students her coworkers and even herself an education like no other.
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