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Review Vision Video Ltd. / Lee Evans - Live From The West End
Actors & Directors
  • Lee Evans
  • Julia Knowles
Release date: 1995-10-30
Run time: 67 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £0.75

Review Lee Evans - Live From The West End / Vision Video Ltd.:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Calendar Girl [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • John Whitesell
  • Gabriel Olds
  • Jason Priestley
  • Jerry O'Connell
  • Steve Railsback
  • Joe Pantoliano
Release date: 1997-03-03
Run time: 87 min.
Price: £4.99

Review Calendar Girl [1993] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Mrs Merton - The Best Of The Mrs Merton Show - Series One [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Caroline Aherne
Release date: 1996-10-07
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.75

Review Mrs Merton - The Best Of The Mrs Merton Show - Series One [1995] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Video Collection International / The Detectives - Series 3 Part 2 - Undercover Operations : Twitchers / Flash / On Thin Ice
Actors & Directors
  • Jasper Carrott
  • Francis Matthews
  • Bill Oddie
  • Robert Powell
  • George Sewell
  • Ed Bye
Release date: 1998-02-16
Run time: 85 min.
Price: £12.99

Review The Detectives - Series 3 Part 2 - Undercover Operations : Twitchers / Flash / On Thin Ice / Video Collection International:


Review MGM Entertainment / Legally Blonde [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Luketic
  • Reese Witherspoon|Luke Wilson|Selma Blair|Matthew Davis
Release date: 2002-05-27
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.09

Review Legally Blonde [2001] / MGM Entertainment:

An extraordinary comic performance from Reese Witherspoon makes Legally Blonde a winner. Witherspoon's Elle is a ditzy blonde forced by circumstances to metamorphose into a strong-minded and academic lawyer, without losing her strong sense of self in the process. After majoring in fashion sales, she applies to Harvard Law School to pursue the boy who jilted her, and discovers that she is smart as well as beautiful. Much of this is standard fish-out-of-water fare, with drab "intellectuals" snubbing the colourful and well-meaning Elle. Yet feminists will be disconcerted to discover that, apparently, a life of manicures and accessorising will teach you as much about female solidarity as decades of consciousness-raising! Recruited to the defence team of a fitness guru, she takes the defendant's innocence for granted rather than feeling superior to her. Gradually, she and her ex's new fiancée build a fragile friendship that matters to both of them; Selma Blair is excellent as the snobbish vulnerable Vivienne. It might be a predictable self-help fairytale, but it's also well-observed, cute and funny. On the DVD: the DVD is presented in 1. 78:1 ratio with 5. 1 Dolby digital sound as standard. [+]
The disc also comes with a wealth of features, including a documentary on the film's obsession with hairstyles-outlining the struggle to keep its heroine bleach blonde from day to day-and a bubbly commentary from Witherspoon and director Robert Luketic. There are also promos, a theatrical trailer and an optional trivia track. -Roz Kaveney.

Review Warner Home Video / Marx Brothers - A Day At The Races [1937]
Actors & Directors
  • Allan Jones
  • Harpo Marx
  • Maureen O'Sullivan
  • Sam Wood
  • Groucho Marx
  • Chico Marx
Release date: 2000-06-05
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £7.30

Review Marx Brothers - A Day At The Races [1937] / Warner Home Video:

A Day at the Races is the Marx Brothers at their commercial and popular peak, working with a top Hollywood director (Sam Wood of The Pride of the Yankees), supported with a healthy screen budget paying for such extras as a blue-tinted ballet sequence, love songs from crooner Allan Jones and decorative sets. But the brothers are also at the top of their game in terms of their own comic material and timing. The story finds Groucho, Chico and Harpo helping out at a sanatorium, where their longtime foil in the movies, Margaret Dumont, is the leading patient. The film has some of the trio's funniest and most memorable bits and a dazzling horserace at the climax. Not quite as good as its predecessor, A Night at the Opera, this is still a highlight in the Marxian filmography. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review Vision Video Ltd. / The Vicar Of Dibley - The Complete First Series [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Emma Chambers
  • Gary Waldhorn
  • Roger Lloyd-Pack
  • James Fleet
  • Dewi Humphreys
  • Dawn French
Release date: 2001-11-26
Run time: 220 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.95

Review The Vicar Of Dibley - The Complete First Series [1994] / Vision Video Ltd.:

The most British of British sitcoms, The Vicar of Dibley's well-earned success has nothing to do with the whoops-mind-my-bosoms potential in casting Dawn French in the role of a female vicar foisted upon a sleepy and ultra-conservative English village. Rather this series, set in a rural, largely middle-class environment, is essentially the flip side of, say, Inspector Morse. It's resolutely un-dumbed down, with scalpel-sharp dialogue and a standard of humour that owes more to Tom Stoppard than to mainstream primetime comedy. This release includes the entire first series, in which the vicar has to deal with the inevitable bemusement caused by her arrival and her well-intentioned involvement in the affairs of the community, together with the superbly funny episode in which she realises she's accepted several invitations to Christmas lunch and can't bring herself to disappoint any of the hosts (never before has a sprout-eating contest provoked so much mirth). Above all, though, watch out for the episode which features Kylie Minogue giving the kind of hands-on performance usually associated with classic Morecambe and Wise or Ab Fab-when stars of this stature are happy to send themselves up in a television comedy, you know it's a good sign. On the DVD: The DVD features a slightly bogus "extra" that strings together French's legendary jokes, which, thankfully, also appear in their original locations at the end of each episode. -Roger Thomas.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Shooting Stars - Unpicked And Plucked [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Mark Lamarr
  • Ulrika Jonsson
  • Bob Mortimer
  • Vic Reeves
Release date: 1997-11-17
Run time: 64 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £9.95

Review Shooting Stars - Unpicked And Plucked [1996] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Noel Edmonds - Gotcha!
Actors & Directors
  • Martine McCutcheon
  • Richard Branson
  • Jeremy Clarkson
  • Melinda Messenger
  • Noel Edmonds
Release date: 1997-11-03
Run time: 60 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Noel Edmonds - Gotcha! / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Artificial Eye / Welcome To The Dollhouse [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Christina Brucato
  • Todd Solondz
  • Heather Matarazzo
  • Siri Howard
  • Victoria Davis
  • Christina Vidal
Release date: 1997-07-28
Run time: 88 min.
Price: £15.99

Review Welcome To The Dollhouse [1995] / Artificial Eye:


Actors & Directors
  • Jill Eikenberry
  • Dudley Moore
  • Liza Minnelli
  • Geraldine Fitzgerald
  • John Gielgud
  • Steve Gordon
Release date: 1995-08-29
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.49

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 Vision Video Ltd. / Jack Dee - Live In London [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Dee
  • Tom Poole
Release date: 1997-11-10
Run time: 60 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £1.75

Review Jack Dee - Live In London [1999] / Vision Video Ltd.:

Filmed at London's Gielgud Theatre at the culmination of his 1998 tour, Jack Dee Live and Uncut offers the UK's favourite "whinger" in his element-on a stage performing stand-up comedy. Dee has presence in his orange shirt and tailored blue suit, but although he's derogatory about himself-he's a stay-at-home man, he's short, he's fat-he's also unapologetic. Dee isn't afraid to throw harsh words at his audience or swear like the proverbial navvy along with an onslaught of observational humour. He doesn't go in for surrealism, one-liners or complex structural payoffs. He prefers to tackle one subject at a time, explore it, then move on. His themes are universal rather than original but he usually brings a fresh perspective. Take builders… he puts himself at the centre of their Neanderthal attentions rather than women. With relationships, he brings his own experience into the equation and he's particularly hilarious about the division of wardrobe space and the structure of marital arguments in his own home. There isn't much here you could say was overtly political but he does have a dig at ridiculous censorship laws by imagining himself in a world that takes the likes of David Cronenberg's Crash literally. -Emma Perry.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Ghostbusters [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Sigourney Weaver
  • Ivan Reitman
  • Harold Ramis
  • Dan Aykroyd
  • Bill Murray
  • Rick Moranis
Release date: 2000-05-22
Run time: 152 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.98

Review Ghostbusters [1984] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, but Bill Murray gets all the best lines and moments in this 1984 comedy directed by Ivan Reitman (Meatballs). The three comics, plus Ernie Hudson, play the New York City-based team that provides supernatural pest control, and Sigourney Weaver is the love interest possessed by an ancient demon. Reitman and company are full of original ideas about hobgoblins-who knew they could "slime" people with green plasma goo?-but hovering above the plot is Murray's patented ironic view of all the action. Still a lot of fun, and an obvious model for sci-fi comedies such as Men in Black. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Last Of The Summer Wine - The Complete Last Of The Summer Wine - Series One [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Jean Alexander
  • Danny O'Dea
  • Stephen Lewis
  • Riky Ash
  • Alan J.W. Bell
Run time: 174 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £11.75

Review Last Of The Summer Wine - The Complete Last Of The Summer Wine - Series One [1973] / 2 Entertain Video:

"It's destiny, fate that brings us together. Redundancy. They just don't care that your mother used to eat insurance men and that yours was struggling to bring you up nicely as a little poof". So says Clegg (Peter Sallis) addressing his companions, Compo (Bill Owen) and Blamire (Michael Bates), three fellows getting on in years reunited by unemployment after knowing each other all their lives in a small Yorkshire town. There's no real story to Last of the Summer Wine, simply the well-observed banter of the central trio and a gallery of eccentric supporting characters. Compo, the irreverent and scruffy "village idiot" and Clegg, the amiable working man are well-loved figures, but the middle-class Conservative Blamire, a nicely rounded portrayal by Bates, may surprise fans expecting to see Foggy (Brian Wilde), who didn't join the series until 1976. This double-video presents the six episodes of the first series, from 1973, of the longest-running comedy in British television history. It's a shame the pilot episode which introduced the characters has not been included, and that the credits have been edited out, but this is a reminder of how good Last of the Summer Wine once was, when it was new, fresh and laugh-out-loud funny. -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review Vision Video Ltd. / Jack Dee - Live At The Apollo
Actors & Directors
  • Tom Poole
  • Jack Dee
Release date: 2002-11-18
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £0.34

Review Jack Dee - Live At The Apollo / Vision Video Ltd.:


Review TIGER ASPECT / SMASHIE AND NICEY: The End Of An Era
Actors & Directors
  • PAUL WHITEHOUSE
  • HARRY ENFIELD
Run time: 50 min.

Review SMASHIE AND NICEY: The End Of An Era / TIGER ASPECT:

On the 22nd of November 1993 an event was to happen that was of such Earth-shattering proportions that it was to quite literally shatter the Earth to its very proportions. On that day Smashie and Nicey parted company for the last time with FAB FM. This special video presents an overview of their dazzling careers as founding fathers of the poptastic British scene!.

Review 2 Entertain Video / The League Of Gentlemen - The Entire First Series [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Corrie Greenop
Release date: 2000-10-09
Run time: 180 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £0.80

Review The League Of Gentlemen - The Entire First Series [1999] / 2 Entertain Video:

Critically acclaimed and rapidly breeding a cult following, the bizarre BBC television series The League of Gentlemen is to sitcoms like The Good Life or even Friends what David Lynch's films are to Frank Capra movies. Instead of the usual one-family-in-suburbia or group-of-pals set up, Gentlemen centres on the whole town of Royston Vasey. A Northern village of, to say the least, eccentric characters, the weird people of Royston Vasey look like they've been intermarrying for too long and are suffering from a particularly demented variety of xenophobia that drives them to extremes of tetchiness and psychosis. There's the local shopkeepers Edward and Tubbs, who go to murderous lengths to ensure their shop remains for local people only; the Denton family, toad-breeders obsessed with maintaining their household rituals at all costs; inept veterinary surgeon Dr Chinnery, who's never yet saved a patient; Barbara, the local transsexual taxi driver (one of the show's more well adjusted characters); Pauline the demonic Restart Officer at the local Job Centre; and Lance, the sadistic owner of Lance's Joke Shop which sells poisonous sweets and the ever-popular finger in a matchbox (with a real finger), among many others. Slow to start at first, the show really gets into its stride by the sixth episode when events start to tie up and take a turn so fiendishly complicated, there's no point in even trying to explain it all. Most of the characters are performed by three of the four core members of the group-Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (co-writer Jeremy Dyson doesn't actually perform on stage), sporting a disturbing variety of prosthetic demi-masks and latex make-up-who started the concept off with a stage show and then transferred it to radio before taking it on TV, which may explain why The League of Gentlemen seems blithely oblivious of normal sitcom conventions and has a stately air of surrealism that feels like The Archers as written by playwright Eugene Ionesco. It's brilliant stuff. Leslie Felperin.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Open All Hours [1976]
Actors & Directors
  • David Jason
  • Ronnie Barker
  • Lynda Baron
Release date: 1995-02-28
Run time: 83 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Open All Hours [1976] / 2 Entertain Video:

Written by Roy Clarke, who was also responsible for Last Of The Summer Wine, Open All Hours exhibited a similarly relaxed attitude towards plot. Ronnie Barker plays Arkwright, the miserly grocer who longs to marry busty Nurse Gladys (Lynda Baron) ("Let's strike while the iron's lukewarm". ) David Jason, meanwhile, plays Arkwright's nephew Granville, a romantic who chafes at the confines of shop life and lusts after one "Gloria" (of whom we only ever catch a rear-end view). A series of customers offer little side vignettes, gossipy tittle tattle and tales of their own sexual frustrations. This is a special 90-minute long edition, featuring the pilot. Although it was made in 1983, Open All Hours seems to belong to an earlier era still, in its cosily nostalgic, saucy postcard worldview of everyday Northern folk, a world in which Granville still does his rounds in a cloth cap on a delivery bike. The script creaks with double entendres and how amusing you'll find Arkwright depends on how amusing you find a man with a stammer. Don't expect Steptoe-style pathos or wit, here. Open All Hours is notable, however, in that it constituted Jason's comedy apprenticeship under Barker, standing him in good stead for Only Fools And Horses. -David Stubbs.

Review Warner Home Video / Billy Liar [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Wilfred Pickles
  • John Schlesinger
  • Finlay Currie
  • Julie Christie
  • Mona Washbourne
  • Tom Courtenay
Release date: 1994-08-01
Run time: 94 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.70

Review Billy Liar [1963] / Warner Home Video:

Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse and Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical and finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times? The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurber's classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents and works as a lowly clerk in an undertaker's parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich and varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist and so forth. Trouble is, he can't always keep fantasy and reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls he's engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problems…. Schlesinger's direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, and Tom Courtenay, at once defiant and hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole cast's a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billy's saturnine boss. And then there's Julie Christie-the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s-in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. [+]
At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke and the grimness "oop" north, the whole British New Wave went with her. On the DVD: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound and vision are clean enough and the print preserves the original's full 2. 35:1 widescreen ratio. -Philip Kemp.

Review Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd / Spike Milligan-An Evening With
Actors & Directors
  • Spike Milligan
Run time: 48 min.
Price: £12.99

Review Spike Milligan-An Evening With / Carlton Visual Entertainment Ltd:


Models & Brands:
Lee Evans - Live From The West End, Calendar Girl [1993], Mrs Merton - The Best Of The Mrs Merton Show - Series One [1995], The Detectives - Series 3 Part 2 - Undercover Operations : Twitchers / Flash / On Thin Ice, Legally Blonde [2001], Marx Brothers - A Day At The Races [1937], The Vicar Of Dibley - The Complete First Series [1994], Shooting Stars - Unpicked And Plucked [1996], Noel Edmonds - Gotcha!, Welcome To The Dollhouse [1995], Arthur [1981], Jack Dee - Live In London [1999], Ghostbusters [1984], Last Of The Summer Wine - The Complete Last Of The Summer Wine - Series One [1973], Jack Dee - Live At The Apollo, SMASHIE AND NICEY: The End Of An Era, The League Of Gentlemen - The Entire First Series [1999], Open All Hours [1976], Billy Liar [1963], Spike Milligan-An Evening With

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