Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , starring MGM soprano Jane Powell and handsome baritone Howard Keel, has retained a remarkably loyal following among fans of the musical film ever since its release in 1954. Although it was filmed in state-of-the-art CinemaScope, Stanley Donen was obliged to direct much of the film on Metro's sound stages, where the artificial sets and painted backdrops don't inevitably live up to the scenes shot on location in Oregon. Viewers coming fresh to the picture may find this visual discrepancy jarring and some too may find Miss Powell's singing a shade plummy. The screenplay, by husband and wife team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich with Dorothy Kingsley, tells the story of seven brothers living in the Oregon hills and their adventures to find themselves wives. The casting of each brother with his rugged, masculine looks and ability to dance with grace and athleticism, presided over by an authoritative Howard Keel, gives the film a dynamic impetus second to none in an MGM musical. The lengthy barn-raising episode under choreographer Michael Kidd's intrepid direction, where the music and the incredibly agile and energetic male and female dance ensemble unite as one, produces a square dance without parallel. The music and lyrics by Gene De Paul and Johnny Mercer--including the mating chorus,"Spring, Spring, Spring", the rollicking"Bless You're Beautiful Hide", the rousing"Sobbin' Women" and the visually enchanting"June Bride"--are both tuneful and mindful of the plot's exposition. Adolph Deutsch and Saul Chaplin won the Academy Award in 1954 for their arrangements and conducting.

On the DVD : The digital remastering has created a clearer picture of what had been a faintly muddy Ansco colour system on the original print while the polish and attack with which the MGM Studio Orchestra play the music on this full-bodied stereophonic soundtrack remains a thing of wonder. Howard Keel, standing tall and erect in his 80s, hosts the"making of" documentary. Director Donen, choreographer Kidd, Jane Powell and several of the dancers recall how the film was considered a"sleeper" during production and wasn't expected to do as well as Brigadoon , in production at the same time. The documentary also highlights the care taken over the casting of the brothers, two of whom including Keel were not dancers and their often brave and brilliant feats of acrobatic dancing executed on precarious planks and other props. When Howard Keel takes his farewell walk down the main street lot at MGM, breaking into a few brief dance steps, it's impossible not to feel a moment of regret that the curtain had to come down on MGM's most treasured possession. -- Adrian Edwards

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Black & White, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: It was a time that changed the world. And one man put it to music. The true story of an unassuming band leader and trombonist, Glenn Miller (played by James Stewart), who got his first break playing his own arrangement of 'Everybody Loves My Baby' at an audition. He never looked back. He married his childhood sweetheart and everything he played became an instant hit...songs like 'Moonlight Serenade', 'String of Pearls' and 'Tuxedo Junction'. Hollywood beckoned, and success piled upon success. But then came World War II. A war from which Glenn Miller never returned. He was on his way to Paris to entertain the American Forces when his plane disappeared. But the show had to go on...and Glenn Miller became a legend. The film features all of Glenn Miller's hits and there are many guest performances who make this film an all time classic. Winner of an Oscar for Best Sound in 1955. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Oscar Academy Awards, ...The Glenn Miller Story

There is not a single joke, sight-gag or one-liner in Monty Python's Life of Brian that will not forever burn itself into the viewer's memory as being just as funny as it is possible to be, but--extraordinarily--almost every indestructibly hilarious scene also serves a dual purpose, making this one of the most consistently sustained film satires ever made. Like all great satire, the Pythons not only attack and vilify their targets (the bigotry and hypocrisy of organised religion and politics) supremely well, they also propose an alternative: be an individual, think for yourself, don't be led by others."You've all got to work it out for yourselves", cries Brian in a key moment."Yes, we've all got to work it our for ourselves", the crowd reply en masse. Two thousand years later, in a world still blighted by religious zealots, Brian's is still a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Aside from being a neat spoof on the Hollywood epic, it's also almost incidentally one of the most realistic on-screen depictions of the ancient world--instead of treating their characters as posturing historical stereotypes, the Pythons realised what no sword 'n' sandal epic ever has: that people are all the same, no matter what period of history they live in. People always have and always will bicker, lie, cheat, swear, conceal cowardice with bravado (like Reg, leader of the People's Front of Judea), abuse power (like Pontius Pilate), blindly follow the latest fads and giggle at silly things ("Biggus Dickus"). In the end, Life of Brian teaches us that the only way for a despairing individual to cope in a world of idiocy and hypocrisy is to always look on the bright side of life.

On the DVD: Life of Brian returns to Region 2 DVD in a decent widescreen anamorphic print with Dolby 5.1 sound--neither are exactly revelatory, but at least it's an improvement on the previous release, which was, shockingly, pan & scan. The 50-minute BBC documentary,"The Pythons", was filmed mainly on location in 1979 and isn't especially remarkable or insightful (a new retrospective would have been appreciated). There are trailers for this movie, as well as Holy Grail plus three other non-Python movies. There's no commentary track, sadly. -- Mark Walker

This Dvd Is Brand New & Sealed - Another Dvd Is Now Becoming Very Collectable & Sought After. This Dvd Is In Stock And Will Be Posted From The UK - Region 2

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Black & White, Commentary, Interactive Menu, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Little Kathy discovers a man wanted for murder hiding in her family's barn. When she askes him who he was, he says Jesus Christ just before he goes unconscious. Kathy and her siblings are convinced that he is Jesus and try to hide him from grown-ups. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, ...Whistle Down the Wind

Many of the stories of the making of Jaws have been told over the years, but rarely have they been pulled together as exquisitely as they are in this terrific Blu-ray release. The centrepiece is a wonderful two-hour, exhaustive look at the process of bringing Jaws together, with contributions from all the film's major players. On top of that, there's another substantive documentary that looks back at the impact of the film, and while it covers parts of the same ground, it's still very much worth watching. More archive releases should be treated to such in-depth, fascinating analysis.

There are further supplements on top, with a wealth of storyboards and production photography being of particular interest. That said, the outtakes and deleted scenes are hardly shabby, either, and there's a real treat from the archives, too, with a short making-of made at the time of the film's shoot. It's a wonderfully comprehensive package that you get here, offering breadth and depth to the extra features.

All that is, of course, before you get to the film proper. Jaws needs little introduction, but Steven Spielberg's classic has never looked better than it does here. Diligently cleaned up for its 1080p transfer, the film looks and sounds tremendous. And while the shark may look a little faker as a consequence of that, it's nonetheless a premium class Blu-ray of a premium class film. -- Jon Foster

Sidney Lumet's directorial debut Twelve Angry Men remains a tense, atmospheric (though slightly manipulative and stagey) courtroom thriller, in which the viewer never sees a trial and the only action is verbal. As he does in his later corruption commentaries such as Serpico or Q & A , Lumet focuses on the lonely one-man battles of a protagonist whose ethics alienate him from the rest of jaded society. As the film opens, the seemingly open-and-shut trial of a young Puerto Rican accused of murdering his father with a knife has just concluded and the 12-man jury retires to their microscopic, sweltering quarters to decide the verdict. When the votes are counted, 11 men rule guilty, while one--played by Henry Fonda, again typecast as another liberal, truth-seeking hero--doubts the obvious. Stressing the idea of"reasonable doubt", Fonda slowly chips away at the jury, who represent a microcosm of white, male society--exposing the prejudices and preconceptions that directly influence the other jurors' snap judgments. The tight script by Reginald Rose (based on his own teleplay) presents each juror vividly using detailed soliloquies, all which are expertly performed by the film's flawless cast. Still, it's Lumet's claustrophobic direction--all sweaty close-ups and cramped compositions within a one-room setting--that really transforms this contrived story into an explosive and compelling nail-biter. -- Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

A Disney"classic" that actually is a classic, <em>Dumbo </em>should be part of your movie collection whether or not you have children. The storytelling was never as lean as in <em>Dumbo</em>, the songs rarely as haunting (or just plain weird), the characters rarely so well defined. The film pits the"cold, cruel, heartless" world that can't accept abnormality against a plucky, and mute, hero. Jumbo Jr. (Dumbo is a mean-spirited nickname) is ostracised from the circus pack shortly after his delivery by the stork because of his big ears. His mother sticks up for him and is shackled. He's jeered by children (an insightful scene has one boy poking fun at Dumbo's ears, even though the youngster's ears are also ungainly), used by the circus folk, and demoted to appearing with the clowns. Only the decent Timothy Q. Mouse looks out for the little guy. Concerns about the un-PC"Jim Crow" crows, who mock Dumbo with the wonderful"When I See an Elephant Fly", should be moderated by remembering that the crows are the only social group in the film who act kindly to the little outcast. If you don't mist up during the"Baby Mine" scene, you may be legally pronounced dead. --<em>Keith Simanton</em>

There’s been some suspicion about the way some studios have shovelled back catalogue movies onto the Blu-ray format without taking the time to genuinely enhanced the picture and sound quality of the productions to make such a format upgrade worthwhile. You can aim no such qualms at Paramount Pictures with its sublime Godfather Trilogy box set, which takes arguably cinema’s most acclaimed trilogy of films (well, the first two anyway), and gives them a useful lick of paint. <br/><br/> The highlight of the set, as you’d expect, remains Francis Ford Coppola’s astounding trilogy itself, a studious, gripping, cross-generational tale of the Corleone family. The first two films richly deserved their many Oscar wins, and while the third is considerably weaker, it’s still not short of many impressive moments. The Godfather Trilogy is certainly one of cinema’s most impressive achievements to date. <br/><br/> The Blu-ray set reflects the muted palette that director Francis Ford Coppola opted for in making the films, and inevitably contrasted with a modern day big-budget blockbuster, the visual transfer isn’t going to be listed as a 1080p poster child. Yet, in perspective, this is still an excellent transfer, offering a sizable upgrade over the DVDs and making the film look and sound better than ever before. Genuine care has clearly been taken here to balance Coppola’s original intentions with high definition media, and with a solid pack of extra features to back the films up, this is an excellent box set, and set to be a very treasured one. -- Jon Foster

It always comes up when people are comparing their most traumatic movie experiences:"the death of Bambi's mother," a recollection that can bring a shudder to even the most jaded filmgoer. That primal separation (which is no less stunning for happening off-screen) is the centerpiece of <em>Bambi</em>, Walt Disney's 1942 animated classic, but it is by no means the only bold stroke in the film. In its swift but somehow leisurely 69 minutes, <em>Bambi</em> covers a year in the life of a young deer. But in a bigger way, it measures the life cycle itself, from birth to adulthood, from childhood's freedom to grown-up responsibility. All of this is rendered in cheeky, fleet-footed style--the movie doesn't lecture, or make you feel you're being fed something that's good for you. The animation is miraculous, a lush forest in which nature is a constantly unfolding miracle (even in a spectacular fire, or those dark moments when"man was in the forest"). There are probably easier animals to draw than a young deer, and the Disney animators set themselves a challenge with Bambi's wobbly glide across an ice-covered lake, his spindly legs akimbo; but the sequence is effortless and charming. If Bambi himself is just a bit dull--such is the fate of an Everydeer--his rabbit sidekick Thumper and a skunk named Flower more than make up for it. Many of the early Disney features have their share of lyrical moments and universal truths, but <em>Bambi</em> is so simple, so pure, it's almost transparent. You might borrow a phrase from Thumper and say it's downright twitterpated. <em>--Robert Horton</em>

One of the last of the classic-era widescreen epics, Zulu was also one of the last war movies to celebrate the virtues of the famous British stiff upper lip. At Rorke's Drift in 1879 a handful of British soldiers, hopelessly outnumbered by 4,000 Zulu warriors, fought one of the most celebrated defensive actions in military history. Zulu tells the story on an epic scale, bringing to life the heroism, courage, loyalty and sacrifice of those desperate hours. This is truly cast-of-thousands filmmaking, with vast action wonderfully captured in widescreen Technirama. John Barry, who also scored Goldfinger in the same year, provides a telling musical accompaniment.

The superb cast includes Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins, but Zulu 's final claim to fame is that it made an instant international superstar of a young actor whose name is Michael Caine. A belated sequel arrived in 1979 in Zulu Dawn , which despite even more spectacular action and a great cast died at the box-office. It is nevertheless well worth seeing.

On the DVD: Zulu on disc has excellent prologic stereo considering the age of the film, while the anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 transfer is crystal-clear, boasting rich colours, strong contrast and detail and only occasional minor print flaws. The original American trailer, also presented anamorphically enhanced at 2.35:1, is a worthwhile addition. There is a very good new 45-minute"making of" (1.77:1 anamorphic, in stereo), curiously split into two parts. The heart of the programme consists of interviews with survivors from the film, focusing on Stanley Baker's widow. The only let down is lack of input from Michael Caine and composer John Barry. The commentary by film historian Sheldon Hall, author of a forthcoming book on the movie, and Second Unit Director Robert Porter is serious and packed with information. -- Gary S Dalkin

DVD

Collectible box set featuring all 22 James Bond films on Blu-ray disc in one complete offering for the first time.

Collection includes all 22 James Bond feature films from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace and more than 130 hours of bonus features including never-before-seen content from the Bond archives, and more.

One disc of brand new bonus content approximately one hour in length.

9 titles available on Blu-ray for the first time ever: Goldeneye, Octopussy, The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies, Diamonds are Forever, A View to a Kill and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

It’s been a long time coming, but at last the digitally remastered version of the original 1982 horror movie has arrived. Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , teamed up with family-oriented producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist , about a haunted suburban home in a development very much like the Arizona one in which Spielberg was raised. (Because it came out the same summer as Spielberg's E.T. , it was tempting to see both movies as representing Spielberg's ambivalent feelings about childhood in suburbia. One was a fantasy, the other a nightmare.) Spielberg also co-wrote the screenplay, which taps into primal, childlike fears of monsters under the bed, monsters in the closet, sinister clown faces, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. At first, some of the odd happenings in the house are kind of funny and amusing, but they grow gradually creepier until the film climaxes in a terrifying special-effects extravaganza when five-year-old Carole Anne (Heather O'Rourke) is kidnapped by the spooks and held hostage in another dimension. Though not nearly as frightening as Hooper's magnum opus, or the original A Nightmare on Elm Street , which came along two years later, Poltergeist is one of the smartest and most entertaining horror pictures of its time. --Jim Emerson

The controversy that surrounded Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange while the film was out of circulation suggested that it was like Romper Stomper : a glamorisation of the violent, virile lifestyle of its teenage protagonist, with a hypocritical gloss of condemnation to mask delight in rape and ultra-violence. Actually, it is as fable-like and abstract as The Pilgrim's Progress , with characters deliberately played as goonish sitcom creations. The anarchic rampage of Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a bowler-hatted juvenile delinquent of the future, is all over at the end of the first act. Apprehended by equally brutal authorities, he changes from defiant thug to cringing bootlicker, volunteering for a behaviourist experiment that removes his capacity to do evil.

It's all stylised: from Burgess' invented pidgin Russian (snarled unforgettably by McDowell) to 2001 -style slow tracks through sculpturally perfect sets (as with many Kubrick movies, the story could be told through decor alone) and exaggerated, grotesque performances on a par with those of Dr Strangelove (especially from Patrick Magee and Aubrey Morris). Made in 1971, based on a novel from 1962, A Clockwork Orange resonates across the years. Its future is now quaint, with Magee pecking out"subversive literature" on a giant IBM typewriter and"lovely, lovely Ludwig Van" on mini-cassette tapes. However, the world of"Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North" is very much with us: a housing estate where classical murals are obscenely vandalised, passers-by are rare and yobs loll about with nothing better to do than hurt people.

On the DVD: The extras are skimpy, with just an impressionist trailer in the style of the film used to brainwash Alex and a list of awards for which Clockwork Orange was nominated and awarded. The box promises soundtracks in English, French and Italian and subtitles in ten languages, but the disc just has two English soundtracks (mono and Dolby Surround 5.1) and two sets of English subtitles. The terrific-looking"digitally restored and remastered" print is letterboxed at 1.66:1 and on a widescreen TV plays best at 14:9. The film looks as good as it ever has, with rich stable colours (especially and appropriately the orangey-red of the credits and the blood) and a clarity that highlights previously unnoticed details such as Alex's gouged eyeball cufflinks and enables you to read the newspaper articles which flash by. The 5.1 soundtrack option is amazingly rich, benefiting the nuances of performance as much as the classical/electronic music score and the subtly unsettling sound effects. -- Kim Newman

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Director Franc Roddam has brought us an array of young British acting talents who bring back London's nineteen-sixties Mods and Rockers. Set against the soundtrack of The Who's 1973 mighty concept album 'Quadrophenia', Phil Daniels plays working-class Jimmy, the drug-induced Mod, who hates his job and is misunderstood by his parents. But by night, he comes alive, with the all-nighters, his pills and his scooter-riding friends. Always on a high, life can't get any better. Then there's the Brighton scooter run, where both Mods and Rockers converge, ending in the battle of the cults on Brighton Beach. What goes up must come down, and with Jimmy's come-down, his life is turned around, and so begins his downward spiral into paranoia and isolation, and the four-faceted mindset: Quadrophenia. With its extremely realistic language, violent overtones and classic sixties soundtrack, this illness is bound to be contagious. Come along for the ride. ...Quadrophenia

One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman's Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey's book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow; Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes; Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighbourly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character--the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one's soul. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), German ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Italian ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Spanish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), German ( Subtitles ), Italian ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Portuguese ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (2.35:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: During World War II, the story concerns a Scandinavian underground leader, Erik Bergman (George Chakiris), who reports to British authorities the location of a German V2 fuel plant. As is the case in most World War II action films, the plant is in an impregnable location -- beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a highly defended fjord. The only way the British can hope to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it. In order to do that, light Mosquito aircraft must be utilized. This is the job assigned to Wing Commander Roy Grant's (Cliff Robertson) 633 Squadron. In order to assist Grant in his air attack, Bergman attempts a simultaneous ground attack, but the ground attack fails, and Bergman is captured by the Germans. When he is tortured in their efforts to uncover the RAF plans, Bergman may not be able to withhold the top-secret information. Howard Koch and James Clavell adapted their screenplay from Frederick E. Smith's novel, reportedly based on a true story. Though Koch and Clavell are each known for their excellent writing, Squadron 633 is notable mostly for its adept cinematography from the co-operative effort of John Wilcox and Edward Scaife. ...633 Squadron ( Six Three Three Squadron ) ( Squadron 633 )

Walt Disney Classic No. 22 FIRST EDITION RELEASE UK Region 2 with Disney Hologram