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Review Vision Video Ltd. / Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937]
Actors & Directors
  • Oliver Hardy
  • William A. Seiter
  • Dorothy Christy
  • Stan Laurel
  • James Parrott
  • Charley Chase
  • Mae Busch
Release date: 1999-10-18
Run time: 175 min.
Price: £12.99

Review Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937] / Vision Video Ltd.:

In Greek mythology, there is a cursed old King called Sisyphus who is punished in Hades by eternally having to push a heavy stone up a hill (as soon as he gets to the top, it comes rolling down). Sisyphus's closest relations in Hollywood are Stan and Ollie, whose punishment in The Music Box is delivering a piano to a house at the top of a seemingly interminable staircase. This Oscar-winning comedy short should be shown to anybody who doubts Laurel and Hardy's genius. It's one of their greatest films, as painful as it is funny to watch. Way Out West, their sole foray into cowboy country, benefits from their rousing rendition of "The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" (a song which made it into the British charts a few years ago) and some inspired villainy from James Finlayson, the Scottish actor who was frequently cast as Stan and Ollie's nemesis (here, he plays villainous bartender Mickey Finn). The plot is some hokum about Stan and Ollie's attempts to deliver deeds to a gold mine to the daughter of an old pal. What matters is the clowning-most of which is inspired. In Sons of the Desert, the duo play truant from their wives to attend a Masonic lodge convention, but don't get away with the deception. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Review Buena Vista Home Entertainment / The Importance of Being Earnest [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Frances O'Connor (II)
  • Oliver Parker
  • Judi Dench
  • Colin Firth
  • Rupert Everett
  • Reese Witherspoon
Release date: 2003-07-21
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.94

Review The Importance of Being Earnest [2002] / Buena Vista Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Brass Eye [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Cumming
  • Chris Morris
Release date: 2002-05-06
Run time: 167 min.
Price: £14.99

Review Brass Eye [1997] / 2 Entertain Video:

Chris Morris' Brass Eye is a brilliantly funny spoof on current affairs media that carries on where his previous The Day Today left off. The show ran for one single, contentious series in 1997, to be followed by an even more controversial one-off in 2001. While these episodes might cause offence to those not versed in Morris' satirical methods, and while one occasionally suspects his work is informed by a dark seam of malice and loathing rather than a desire to educate, Brass Eye remains vital satire, magnificently hilarious and, in its own way, fiercely moral viewing. Brass Eye satirises a media far too interested in generating dramatic heat and urgency for its own sake than in shedding light on serious issues. Morris mimics perfectly the house style of programmes such as Newsnight and Crimewatch, with their spurious props and love of gimmickry. Meanwhile his presenter-an uncanny composite of Jeremy Paxman, Michael Buerk and Richard Madeley among others-delivers absurd items about man-fighting weasels in the East End and Lear-esque lines such as "the twisted brain wrong of a one-off man mental" with preposterously solemn authority. Much as the media itself is wont to do, each programme works itself up into a ridiculous fever of moral panic. Most telling is the "drugs" episode, in which, as ever, real-life celebrities, including Jimmy Greaves and Sir Bernard Ingham, are persuaded to lend their name to a campaign against a new drug from Eastern Europe entitled Cake. The satirist's aim here isn't to trivialise concern about drugs but to point up the media's lack of attention to content. A response to the ill-conceived News of the World witch-hunt, in the wake of the Sarah Payne affair, the 2001 "paedophilia" special was the most supremely controversial of the series. [+]
It followed the usual formula-duping celebs such as Phil Collins into endorsing a campaign entitled "Nonce Sense", urging parents to send their children to football stadiums for the night for their own safety and mooting the possibility of "roboplegic" paedophiles-and prompted the sort of hysterical and predictable Pavlovian response from the media that Brass Eye lampoons so tellingly. On the DVD: Brass Eye on DVD includes brief outtakes, such as "David Jatt" interviewing celebrities about breeding hippos for domestic purposes, an hilarious exchange with Jeffrey Archer's PA ("He's a very wicked little man") as well as trailers for the paedophilia special. -David Stubbs.

Review 4 Front Video / Letter To Brezhnev [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Alexandra Pigg
  • Margi Clarke
  • Peter Firth
  • Alfred Molina
  • Chris Bernard
  • Tracy Marshak-Nash
Release date: 1994-02-14
Run time: 91 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Letter To Brezhnev [1985] / 4 Front Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Abigail's Party [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • John Salthouse
  • Janine Duvitski
  • Harriet Reynolds
  • Alison Steadman
  • Mike Leigh
  • Tim Stern
Release date: 1988-06-10
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £39.99

Review Abigail's Party [1977] / 2 Entertain Video:

Originally screened as part of BBC's Play for Today series in 1977, Abigail's Party is among Mike Leigh's most celebrated pieces, with his then-wife Alison Steadman appallingly brilliant as what Alan Bennett described as the "brutal hostess" at a ghastly suburban soiree. The Abigail of the title never appears-rather, the dull thud of her lively teenage party forms a distant backdrop (and contrast) to an excruciating evening of chilled red wine, olives and the music of Demis Roussos. Steadman plays the overbearing Beverley, an Amazonian mass of frustrated sensuality in a low-cut party frock. Tim Stern is her small, stressed estate-agent husband. The guests are Janice Duvitski as Angela, a nurse whose quite spectacular gormlessness shields her from the stilted social awkwardness quietly raging around her, John Salthouse as Tony, her taciturn husband and Harriet Reynolds as Sue, the gangly and miserably nervous mother of Abigail. Rather than play for gags, Leigh and his actors mercilessly turn the screw of embarrassment through a series of too-true-to-life exchanges of dialogue, the stuff of all our collective worst memories of encounters with neighbours, aunts and office colleagues. Often misread as a satirical parade of suburban grotesques, Abigail's Party probes deeper than that, touching on nerves of anxiety and repression that throb behind the net curtains of modern England, culminating not in farce but tragedy. Decades on, Abigail's Party is as psychologically true and close to home as ever-hard to bear but utterly brilliant. On the DVD: Abigail's Party is perfectly reproduced here in all its 1970s garishness. The one extra is a short featurette, focussing on Alison Steadman's playing of Beverley, with comments from the original actors in the TV series and Peter York marvelling at her "paint-scraping" voice. [+]
-David Stubbs.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Only Fools And Horses - The Complete Series 5 [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Mandie Fletcher
  • Roger Liddement
  • Patrick McManus
  • Pete Chesterfield
  • Grant Stevens
Release date: 2000-05-02
Run time: 175 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £8.56

Review Only Fools And Horses - The Complete Series 5 [1981] / 2 Entertain Video:

Voted Britain's best ever sitcom in millennium polls, Only Fools and Horses has a muddled history on video. This release should make things clearer, containing for the first time the complete fifth series on a double-video. Dating from 1986, the episodes have previously appeared on the compilations Tea for Three and Watching the Girls Go By. Like so much great comedy, pathos lies behind these cleverly scripted, deceptively straightforward tales, continuing the tradition of lovable rogues in BBC sitcoms from Steptoe and Son and Porridge. David Jason's Del Boy dreams of becoming a millionaire, "this time next year", but we know life isn't like that. In "From Prussia with Love", Del, kid-brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Uncle Albert (Buster Merryfield) replay Three Men and a Baby , while "The Miracle of Peckham" raises the church roof. "The Longest Night" has our trio as prisoners of the world's most useless criminal, while Rodney has an unhappy encounter with a sunbed in "Tea For Three". The gormless one turns unlikely film-maker, resulting in a "Video Nasty", before the series ends with "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", testing family loyalties when Del is offered the chance of a lifetime. Essentially British and very re-watchable, Only Fools and Horses deserves the description classic comedy. -Gary S. [+]
Dalkin.

Review Vision Video Ltd. / Lee Evans - The Ultimate Experience - Live
Actors & Directors
  • Lee Evans
Release date: 1997-11-17
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £7.44

Review Lee Evans - The Ultimate Experience - Live / Vision Video Ltd.:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Rab C. Nesbitt - Live [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • David McKay (II)
  • Colin Gilbert (II)
  • John Kazek
  • Ron Bain
  • Nicola Park
Release date: 1996-02-26
Run time: 117 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £21.99

Review Rab C. Nesbitt - Live [1990] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Bottom - The Complete Bottom - Series 1 [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Bob Spiers
Release date: 1994-04-19
Run time: 176 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £15.99

Review Bottom - The Complete Bottom - Series 1 [1991] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Vision International / Sex And The City Vol.3 [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Cynthia Nixon
  • Kristin Davis
  • Christopher Noth
  • Sarah Jessica Parker
  • Kim Cattrall
Release date: 2000-02-28
Run time: 74 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £0.99

Review Sex And The City Vol.3 [1999] / Warner Vision International:

Now you can achieve multiple viewings of the best Sex on TV. Winner of Golden Globes for Best TV Series and Best Actress, Sex and the City is based on Candace Bushnell's provocative bestseller. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw, a self-described "sexual anthropologist", who writes "Sex and the City", a newspaper column that chronicles the state of sexual affairs of Manhattanites in this "age of un-innocence". Her "posse", including nice girl Charlotte (Kristin Davis), hard-edged Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and sultry party girl Samantha (Kim Cattrall)-not to mention her own tumultuous love life-give Carrie plenty of column fodder. Over the course of the first season's 12 episodes, the most prominent dramatic arc concerns Carrie, who goes from turning the tables on "toxic bachelors" by having "sex like a man" to wanting to join the ranks of "the monogamists" with the elusive Mr Big (Chris Noth). Meanwhile, Miranda, Cynthia, and Samantha have their own dating woes. Seinfeld has nothing on Sex and the City when it comes to shallow, self-absorbed characters or coining catch phrases. Episode Two, for example, introduces the term "modeliser": a guy who is obsessed with and will only date models. Some may accuse this series of male-bashing but women, after years of enduring shows with "men behaving badly", will relish this new equality. Some may blanche at the ladies' graphic language and ribald humour, or dismiss some of the situations as unrealistic (Carrie doesn't bat an eyelid when she discovers that an artist friend surreptitiously videotapes his sexual conquests). [+]
Still others will view Sex and the City as documentary. Regardless of your view, this ground-breaking series will have you longing for more. -Donald Liebenson, Amazon. com.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Herring
  • Peter Baynham
  • Kevin Eldon
  • Stewart Lee (II)
  • Steve Bendelack
Release date: 1995-10-16
Run time: 60 min.
Price: £12.99

Review Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Sean Hughes - Live And Seriously Funny [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • Sean Hughes
  • Chris Bould
Release date: 1994-02-07
Run time: 58 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £29.99

Review Sean Hughes - Live And Seriously Funny [1990] / 2 Entertain Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Liza Minnelli
  • Geraldine Fitzgerald
  • Dudley Moore
  • Steve Gordon
  • Jill Eikenberry
  • John Gielgud
Release date: 1995-08-29
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.50

Review Arthur [1981] / Warner Home Video:

When you get lost between the moon and New York City (ahem), chances are you'll find yourself taking another look at this hit comedy starring Oscar-nominated Dudley Moore as the charmingly witty, perpetually drunken millionaire Arthur Bach. Arthur falls in love with a waitress (Liza Minelli) who doesn't care about his money but unfortunately Arthur's stern father wants him to marry a Waspy prima donna. The young lush turns to his wise and loyal butler (Oscar-winner John Gielgud) for assistance and advice. Arthur was a huge hit when released in 1981, as was its Oscar-winning theme song by Christopher Cross. Few remember that the movie was,sadly, the only one ever made by writer-director Steve Gordon, who died less than a year after the film's release. Consistently funny and heartwarming, Arthur was hailed as a tribute to the great romantic comedies of the 1930s. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Laserlight / The Stupids [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • John Landis|Tom Arnold|Jessica Lundy|Bug Hall
Release date: 1999-05-17
Run time: 89 min.
RRP: £4.99
Price: £24.99

Review The Stupids [1996] / Laserlight:


Review Warner Vision International / Sex And The City Vol.2 [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Kristin Davis
  • Alison Maclean
  • Cynthia Nixon
  • Susan Seidelman
  • Christopher Noth
  • Kim Cattrall
  • Michael Fields
  • Sarah Jessica Parker
Release date: 1999-09-13
Run time: 74 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.45

Review Sex And The City Vol.2 [1999] / Warner Vision International:

Now you can achieve multiple viewings of the best Sex on TV. Winner of Golden Globes for Best TV Series and Best Actress, Sex and the City is based on Candace Bushnell's provocative bestseller. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw, a self-described "sexual anthropologist", who writes "Sex and the City", a newspaper column that chronicles the state of sexual affairs of Manhattanites in this "age of un-innocence". Her "posse", including nice girl Charlotte (Kristin Davis), hard-edged Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and sultry party girl Samantha (Kim Cattrall)-not to mention her own tumultuous love life-give Carrie plenty of column fodder. Over the course of the first season's 12 episodes, the most prominent dramatic arc concerns Carrie, who goes from turning the tables on "toxic bachelors" by having "sex like a man" to wanting to join the ranks of "the monogamists" with the elusive Mr Big (Chris Noth). Meanwhile, Miranda, Cynthia, and Samantha have their own dating woes. Seinfeld has nothing on Sex and the City when it comes to shallow, self-absorbed characters or coining catch phrases. Episode Two, for example, introduces the term "modeliser": a guy who is obsessed with and will only date models. Some may accuse this series of male-bashing but women, after years of enduring shows with "men behaving badly", will relish this new equality. Some may blanche at the ladies' graphic language and ribald humour, or dismiss some of the situations as unrealistic (Carrie doesn't bat an eyelid when she discovers that an artist friend surreptitiously videotapes his sexual conquests). [+]
Still others will view Sex and the City as documentary. Regardless of your view, this ground-breaking series will have you longing for more. -Donald Liebenson, Amazon. com.

Review Uca Catalogue / The Mirror Has Two Faces [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Barbra Streisand
  • Jeff Bridges
  • Mimi Rogers
  • George Segal
  • Barbra Streisand
  • Pierce Brosnan
Release date: 2003-04-07
Run time: 121 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.45

Review The Mirror Has Two Faces [1997] / Uca Catalogue:

Barbra Streisand's self-absorbed remake of a 1958 French film stars Jeff Bridges as a college professor tired of sexual politics. He makes a deal with a dowdy colleague (Streisand) that they provide companionship for one another, with no thought of getting into bed. She agrees but soon becomes frustrated, the agreement only reinforcing her unfulfilled desire to have a complete relationship with a man. Mimi Rogers is on hand as Babs's striking sister, and Lauren Bacall received an Oscar nomination for her role as the heroine's selfish mother. The Mirror Has Two Faces is OK, but it becomes an irritating vanity piece for Streisand (who directed as well as stars). Her character constantly gazes upon her own reflection and is told at least a dozen times, one way or another, just how attractive she is. One wants to shout out, we get it already-you're pretty! -Tom Keogh.

Review 4 Front Video / Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Terry Gilliam
  • Ellen Barkin
  • Tobey Maguire
  • Gary Busey
  • Benicio Del Toro
  • Johnny Depp
Release date: 2001-09-03
Run time: 113 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.38

Review Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas [1998] / 4 Front Video:

The original co-writer and director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Alex Cox, whose earlier film Sid and Nancy suggests that Cox could have been a perfect match in filming Hunter S Thompson's psychotropic masterpiece of "gonzo" journalism. Unfortunately Cox departed due to the usual "creative differences", and this ill-fated adaptation was thrust upon Terry Gilliam, whose formidable gifts as a visionary film-maker were squandered on Thompson's ether-fogged narrative. The result is a one-joke movie without the joke-an endless series of repetitive scenes involving rampant substance abuse and the hallucinogenic fallout of a road trip that's run crazily out of control. Johnny Depp plays Thompson's alter ego, "gonzo" journalist Raoul Duke, and Benicio Del Toro is his sidekick and so-called lawyer Dr Gonzo. During the course of a trip to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, they ingest a veritable chemistry set of drugs, and Gilliam does his best to show us the hallucinatory state of their zonked-out minds. This allows for some dazzling imagery and the rampant humour of stumbling buffoons, and the mumbling performances of Depp and Del Toro wholeheartedly embrace the tripped-out, paranoid lunacy of Thompson's celebrated book. But over two hours of this insanity tends to grate on the nerves-like being the only sober guest at a party full of drunken idiots. So while Gilliam's film may achieve some modest cult status over the years, it's only because Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is best enjoyed by those who are just as stoned as the characters in the movie. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Actors & Directors
  • Doreen Sloane (II)
  • Billy Butler (II)
  • Len Horton
  • Wally Scott
  • Duncan Smith
Release date: 1994-11-14
Run time: 55 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £8.94

Review Hold Your Plums [1994] / Picture Music International:


Actors & Directors
  • Peter Falk
  • Cyndi Lauper
  • Ken Kwapis
  • Jeff Goldblum
  • Julian Sands
Release date: 1990-09-01
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Vibes [1987] / Columbia Tri-Star Home Video:


Review Entertainment in Video / Angus [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Perry Anzilotti
  • Kathy Bates
  • Tony Denman
  • Robert Curtis Brown
  • Kevin Connolly
  • Patrick Read Johnson
Release date: 1997-03-10
Run time: 86 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Angus [1996] / Entertainment in Video:


Models & Brands:
Laurel And Hardy - The Classics - Way Out West / Sons Of The Desert / The Music Box [1937], The Importance of Being Earnest [2002], Brass Eye [1997], Letter To Brezhnev [1985], Abigail's Party [1977], Only Fools And Horses - The Complete Series 5 [1981], Lee Evans - The Ultimate Experience - Live, Rab C. Nesbitt - Live [1990], Bottom - The Complete Bottom - Series 1 [1991], Sex And The City Vol.3 [1999], Lee And Herring Live - Fist Of Fun [1995], Sean Hughes - Live And Seriously Funny [1990], Arthur [1981], The Stupids [1996], Sex And The City Vol.2 [1999], The Mirror Has Two Faces [1997], Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas [1998], Hold Your Plums [1994], Vibes [1987], Angus [1996]

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