The problems of a mother who helps her son in his struggles against muscular dystrophy. From the true story of Peter and Mary-Lou Weisman.

ALL NEW ADVENTURE OF RUPERT

Storyteller Ringo Starr Features the following stories: Troublesome Trucks / James & the Express / Thomas & the guard / Thomas goes fishing / Thomas,Terence & the snow / Thomas & Bertie / Tenders & turnatables / Trouble in the shed / Percy runs away

Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is a bold, colourful, ambitious failure. Severely truncated, this two-hour version tackles only about half the story, climaxing with the battle of Helm's Deep and leaving poor Frodo and Sam still stuck on the borders of Mordor with Gollum. Allegedly, the director ran out of money and was unable to complete the project. As far as the film does go, however, it is a generally successful attempt at rendering Tolkien's landscapes of the imagination. Bakshi's animation uses a blend of conventional drawing and rotoscoped (traced) animated movements from live-action footage. The latter is at least in part a money-saving device, but it does succeed in lending some depth and a sense of otherworldly menace to the Black Riders and hordes of Orcs: Frodo's encounter at the ford of Rivendell, for example, is one of the film's best scenes thanks to this mixture of animation techniques. Backdrops are detailed and well conceived, and all the main characters are strongly drawn. Among a good cast, John Hurt (Aragorn) and C3PO himself, Anthony Daniels (Legolas), provide sterling voice characterisation, while Peter Woodthorpe gives what is surely the definitive Gollum (he revived his portrayal a couple of years later for BBC Radio's exhaustive 13-hour dramatisation). The film's other outstanding virtue is avant-garde composer Leonard Rosenman's magnificent score in which chaotic musical fragments gradually coalesce to produce the triumphant march theme that closes the picture. None of which makes up for the incompleteness of the movie, nor the severe abridging of the story actually filmed. [+]

Married couple Judge Reinhold and Julia Sweeney host the unkempt Saint Bernard in this fourth go-round of the canine comedy franchise. The pair and their two children are dog-sitting in their pleasant suburban home-made predictably less pleasant by their toilet-water-slurping, steak-stealing guest. Meanwhile, across town, a rich couple and their lonely daughter have their own problems when their identical-looking Saint Bernard, Michelangelo, is kidnapped by their double-crossing butler. Of course, the switch is inevitable in this Prince and the Pauper with dogs, landing the meat-crazed Beethoven in the vegetarian dog's silk-sheeted bed and vice versa. Many drool jokes later, the dogs return to their rightful homes, the rich couple learns to cavort, and Reinhold and Sweeney learn to love Beethoven's uncouthness. You expected a different ending? This 90-minute sequel provides inoffensive and mildly amusing entertainment for ages 4 to about 12. -Kimberly Heinrichs.

Features four episodes. Pat's rainy day / Pat's tractor express / pat's birthday / pat takes a message. Running time 60 minutes.

On remote Isla Nuba entrepreneur John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has built the ultimate theme-park, populated by genetically engineered dinosaurs painstakingly reconstructed from DNA extracted from prehistoric amber. and, of course, frogs! Adapted from Michael Crichton's novel, Steven Spielberg's classic blockbuster became a cultural and commercial phenomenon thanks in part to the enduring appeal of all things prehistoric. But the film's extraordinarily realistic digital dinosaurs also showcased the spectacular computer-generated effects which have since become ubiquitous in Hollywood filmmaking. Indeed, in the years since 1993 it is debatable whether any film has revolutionised special effects to such an extent, and this DVD release offers the perfect opportunity to relive its visual and aural splendour (the film was also the first to be released with a DTS soundtrack). Given the rather insipid team of experts (including Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) sent to approve Hammond's site, there is no doubt that the dinosaurs are the real stars of Spielberg's film. From the benign majesty of the towering brachiosaurus to the reptilian menace of the velociraptors, the inhabitants of Jurassic Park were a radical departure from their stop-motion predecessors, and remain compellingly real in their animalistic pursuit of survival at all costs. Most memorable of all is the T-rex, displaying a spine-chilling combination of physical ferocity and child-like bewilderment in the face of its reincarnation in the modern world. It was no surprise that in The Lost World sequel the T-rex once again took centre stage, but this first appearance still retains a unique power and a seminal place in film history. [+]

Pokémon 2000, the second film to spin off the powerhouse child-friendly franchise of the turn-of-the-millennium, consists of the colourful if babyish human-presence free, short Pikachu's Rescue Adventure and the more elaborate feature The Power of One. The main attraction is up to snuff animation-wise, with imaginative settings (an island lair, a huge dirigible) that crossbreed cyberpunk futurism and Jules Verne style retro-fantasy. It even has the germ of an interesting, almost subversive idea, in that the story's wealthy villain is a green-haired fanatic who is as obsessive about collecting Pokémon as the film's target audience-he's after three fabled birds, Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno, but is really interested in the cute Loch Ness Monster-type being Lugia-but his philosophy is so skewed that he is more interested in owning and numbering the fabulous creatures than training or befriending them. A clever pun in a prophecy decrees that in a predestined crisis, "the world will turn to ash"-this turns out not to be a gloomy foretelling of holocaust but the revelation that human hero Ash is a messianic "Chosen One" who can restore the balance of nature when the collector's antics have unleashed worldwide climatic change. Adults might find the whole thing an endurance test for its shrill voicings, with Americanised kids and Japanese baby-talking Pokémon, not to mention the meld of incredibly simplistic storyline with amazingly intricate backstory. A trace of self-awareness comes in a brief snippet from a Weird Al Yankovic's song ("Polka mon") under the crowded end credits. -Kim Newman Video description DVD special features: The nice-looking DVD (letterboxed to 1. 85:1) comes with a "special edition" Pikachu card; trailers for this film and Pokémon 3; video clips of Pokémon-themed songs performed by Dream Street, Alysha Antonio and Youngstown; a snippet-like "making of the soundtrack" featurette, DVD-ROM features that won't play on a Mac (mostly Web-site links and ads for new poképroducts-"for the first time you will be able to discover if your Pokémon are male or female"!); soundtracks in English, French, Dutch, German and Italian with subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Arabic.