"Director: Richard Brooks"

• Elizabeth Taylor - Movie Star - The Classic Collection | DVD | (07/07/2008) from £16.85   |  Saving you £-3.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ms Taylor has been a movie star for generations and continues to grab headlines whenever she makes public appearances usually in support of the many charities she endorses. These are three fascinating performances from the queen of the silver screen which show her acting range at its best. Featured in this collection are: The Last Time I Saw Paris (Dir. Richard Brooks) (1954): A romance starring Elizabeth Taylor Van Johnson Walter Pidgeon Donna Reed and Eva Gabor. A GI goes to Paris shortly after World War II to write a book. There he meets a beautiful wealthy woman and falls in love. All goes well until he cannot sell his book and turns to the bottle. This causes the couple to fight continuously Divorce His Divorce Hers (Dir. Waris Hussein) (1973): In which Ms Taylor stars with the love of her life Richard Burton. This is a two-sided tale of a marriage that has gone awry after nearly twenty years. The movie is told in two parts - first his side of the divorce then hers. Father's Little Dividend (Dir. Vicente Minnelli) (1951): Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett star as Stanley and Ellie Banks the parents of newlywed Kay Dunstan (Elizabeth Taylor) in this sequel to Farther of the Bride. Although Stanley's hoping for some peace and quiet now that Kay's been married off he soon learns he's in for more chaos as an expectant grandfather.

• Capote/In Cold Blood | Blu Ray | (08/02/2010) from £24.28   |  Saving you £0.71 (2.92%)   |  RRP £24.99

  CapoteBolstered by an Oscar-caliber performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role, Capote ranked highly among the best films of 2005. Written by actor/screenwriter Dan Futterman and based on selected chapters from the biography by Gerald Clarke, this mercilessly perceptive drama shows how Truman Capote brought about his own self-destruction in the course of writing In Cold Blood, the "nonfiction novel" that was immediately acclaimed as a literary milestone. After learning of brutal killings in rural Holcomb, Kansas, in November 1959, Capote gained the confidence of captured killers Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) in an effort to tell their story, but he ultimately sacrificed his soul in the process of writing his greatest book. Hoffman transcends mere mimicry to create an utterly authentic, psychologically tormented portrait of an insincere artist who was not above lying and manipulation to get what he needed. Bennett Miller's intimate direction focuses on the consequences of Capote's literary ambition, tempered by an equally fine performance by Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, Capote's friend and the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who served as Capote's quiet voice of conscience. Spanning the seven-year period between the Kansas murders and the publication of In Cold Blood in 1966, Capote reveals the many faces of a writer who grew too close to his subjects, losing his moral compass as they were fitted with a hangman's noose. --Jeff ShannonIn Cold BloodTruman Capote's extraordinary nonfiction book about the course of two killers in this world--their lives, their senseless slaughter of an entire family, their executions--was faithfully adapted for the screen in this 1967 film by Richard Brooks (Deadline USA, The Blackboard Jungle). Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are remarkable as the murderers, but what has kept this film special over the decades is Brooks's blunt, clearheaded, and nonsensational approach to the story. (The term "semidocumentary" has been applied to Brooks's style on this film, and it's an entirely fair description.) The experience of watching In Cold Blood is naturally unsettling, but the director--as with Capote--leaves final judgments about justice to the beholder. --Tom Keogh

• The Last Time I Saw Paris | DVD | (12/02/2008) from £6.72   |  Saving you £-3.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

• The Last Time I Saw Paris | DVD | (17/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  This tragic love story is brought to life with vitality and verve in this no expense spared lavish production. Van Johnson stars as a G.I. with literary ambitions who relocates to Paris after World War 2 and meets a wealthy American girl. They fall in love and settle down as he attempts to write his first novel. His work is not well received and he hits the bottle. The story follows Johnson to America and then back to Paris as the tragic tale of these two star-crossed lovers unfolds.

• Romance | DVD | (29/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Made For Each Other:This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws... Penny Serenade:A tearjerker! A newly married couple face their future together with optimism only for things to go badly wrong. The story of adoption death and disappointment. This film made even the urbane Cary Grant tearful! The Amazing Adventure:In an effort to subdue a bout of depression a millionaire playboy (Cary Grant) makes a 50 000 British pound bet with a psychiatrist that he could become a famous business tycoon without using his family's inheritance. Based on the novel The Amazing Quest by Ernest Bliss. Meet John Doe:In protest at the corruption and hypocrisy he sees all around him an unemployed man calling himself John Doe has written to the New Bulletin newspaper pledging to throw himself from the top of City Hall on Christmas Eve. Written by a discharged journalist as a publicity stunt and as a parting shot at the paper's new editor the premise of the letter unexpectedly fires the imagination of the bulletin's readers and the wider American public. Its real author Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) is rehired and now needs to find someone to play the part of the fictional John Doe... Meet John Doe is often held to be part of a thematic trilogy that includes Mister Deeds Goes To Town and Mister Smith Goes To Washington. It explores a recurring notion in Capra's work that of the universal everyman exploited by a corrupt and powerful establishment. The film's reflections on corporate control of both the media and of ordinary people's lives is still as resonant as ever. The Last Time I Saw Paris:This tragic love story is brought to life with vitality and verve in this no expense spared lavish production. Van Johnson stars as a G.I. with literary ambitions who relocates to Paris after World War 2 and meets a wealthy American girl. They fall in love and settle down as he attempts to write his first novel. His work is not well received and he hits the bottle. The story follows Johnson to America and then back to Paris as the tragic tale of these two star-crossed lovers unfolds. Elizabeth Taylor was never more beautiful and both she and Van Johnson turn in superb performances.