Danger UXB Review

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(More customer reviews)As IMDB says Hawkesworth didn't cop the "budget restraints" plea with "Danger UXB" like so many others would have done; he used what he could get to their fullest. He used the actual techniques used by EOD, RE, in exact detail, using real defused German bombs.
The criticisms leveled at the dialogue have more to do with the ability to understand a varity of British accents than the script. I found no trouble understand all of the laconic, witty or stressed comments that illustrate the general unpreparedness of the British authorities and public for the fact that not all bombs explode nicely on impact. Often the UXB does more harm than the explosion by the sheer threat posed in the location it lands for example the one that landed between the Thames and the Underground Rail.
A superb series with the very young Anthony Andrews showing early star qualities.

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Starring Anthony Andrews, 4 DVD Box Set. A&E Productions.

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The Trojan Women (1971) Review

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(More customer reviews)Ancient Greek plays with all their dramatic devices and often an emphasis on static speeches by the actors and the chorus often do not translate well to the screen. Euripides' "The Trojan Women," however, is an exception to the rule. What makes this production work is the fine acting by most of the performers as well as the beautiful language, though in translation, of Euripides.
The plot is simple and straight forward. Queen Hecuba (Katharine Hepburn), her now crazed daughter Cassandra (Genevieve Bujold), her daughter-in-law Andromache (Vanessa Redgrave) and a host of other Trojan women are now at the mercy of the Greek victors. The play builds as one catastrophe after another befalls these women. Cassanda will be the wife of Agammemnon, Andromache will go with the son of Achilles, and Hecuba will become the slave of Odysseus-- or as Hecuba so aptly puts it, "Anguish heaped upon anguish."
The Greek chorus-- or in this instance I suppose we must call them the "Trojan Chorus" works well. Irene Papas plays a different sort of Helen than we see through other writers' eyes. Here she is unbowed, even as she awaits her fate from the hands of her wronged husband Menelaus. In a quite wonderful scene, after Helen has made her pitch to him to spare her life, Hecuba delivers the great lines: "Kill her, Menelaus." Ms. Hepburn has a lot of such passages. I remember from having seen the movie when it was released in 1971 her lines: "Kindness unwanted is unkindness."
The theme is obvious. Wars always hurt the women and children most-- Andromache's son almost steals the movie, by the way-- and while the weaponry and locales may change, war in 2005 is not that much different than it ever was, a sad, sobering thought.

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A Town Like Alice (1981) Review

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(More customer reviews)Joe Harmon (played by Bryan Brown) rocks! And so does this whole movie, based on Nevil Shute's superb novel of the same name. It starts well, picks up speed, and gets better and better. During WWII, Jean (who is her family's only survivor) is force marched back and forth across Malaysia by the Japanese, who don't know what to do with a bunch of English women and children. As their group dwindles from starvation, fatigue, malaria and dystntery, Jean becomes the leader of the little group, and she negotiates a deal with the headman of a small village whose men have been taken off to fight in the war: if the village will shelter them, the surviving English will work in the rice fields.
But it was during the months of wandering that Jean met Joe Harmon, an Austrailian prisoner of war who steals food for her, is crucified and left for dead by the Japanese.
After the war, when Jean is back in England, she comes into her family's money, and she has a dream: to return to Malaya to build a well for the village women. To her amazement, she learns that Harmon actually survived: when the Japanese could not grant him his last wish, they were honor bound to save his life. Jean goes back to find him at the same time he, having just discovered that she wasn't married when he met her (a deception she fostered for her own protection), flies to England to look for her. The two planes cross.
But, as with most good love stories, they meet - and things are awkward and stilted. When he knew her, her hair was loose and tangled, she was barefoot and wearing a sarong, and she had an orphan child balanced on her hip. Now when he sees her, she's an English lady - and he's still just a bloke from the outback.
Oh, I'm telling too much. Suffice to say that Jean's attempt to resume their former easy and relaxed relationship while in Australia's Great Barrier Reef is spectacularly successful, and she's faced with spending the rest of her life in the desolate and lonely outback. Alice Springs, the nearest thing to `civilization,' is too far to go, so Jean determines to spend her small fortune turning her little nowhere town into a place from which the young people will no longer flee in frustration. In short, she creates the world in which she wants to live and raise Joe's and her children.
It's so, so, so, so good, one of those videos you'll have to buy. Trust me on that.

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Henrik Ibsen Collection (Hedda Gabler / Ghosts / Little Eyolf / The Wild Duck / The Master Builder) (1963) Review

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(More customer reviews)Because one of the earlier posters asked, the titles included in the set are "Brand", "A Doll's House", "Hedda Gabler", "The Wild Duck", "Ghosts", "Little Eyolf", "An Enemy of the People", "The Lady from the Sea" and two versions of "The Master Builder." Also included are the following plays in radio versions: "Peer Gynt", "The Pretenders", "Emperor and Galilean", "The Pillars of Society", "Rosmersholm", "John Gabriel Borkman", "When We Dead Awaken" and "A Meeting in Rome" by Michael Meyer (a play about a meeting between Ibsen and August Strindberg).

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The Henrik Ibsen Collection features ten star-studded BBC productions of Ibsen's most famous plays, together in one six-disc box set. Considered the father of modern realistic drama, Henrik Ibsen is one of the most important playwrights of all time. His plays attacked the values of the Victorian society in which he lived and were considered scandalous during his lifetime. Yet many of his themes are thoroughly modern today. The Henrik Ibsen Collection features stellar casts in Ibsen's best-known works, including Ingrid Bergman and Michael Redgrave in Hedda Gabler, Judi Dench and Michael Gambon in Ghosts, Anthony Hopkins and Diana Rigg in Little Eyolf, Denholm Elliot in The Wild Duck, Sir Donald Wolfitt and Leo McKern respectively in two extraordinary productions of The Master Builder, and much more. It's a quintessential part of any theater lover's library.

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Portrait of a Marriage (1992) Review

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(More customer reviews)I watched this in 1992 when it was shown on PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre", introduced each Sunday night by the late, great Alistair Cooke. The very tall Janet McTeer (all 6' of her!) and Cathryn Harrison are superb in their roles. Other stand-outs are David Haig and Diana Fairfax. At the time it was shown on American TV, there were at least 30 minutes cut from what the Brits saw in the BBC version. I am delighted to finally get my hands on the unedited version of this extremely well-done slice of obscure history.

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From the BBC, Janet McTeer stars as Vita Sackville-West in the classic Masterpiece Theatre drama British aristocrat and writer Vita Sackville-West and diplomat Harold Nicolson married in 1913, and their love endured and deepened over the course of their 50 years together. Each, however, was knowingly and repeatedly unfaithful to the other, Vita most famously with fellow writer Virginia Woolf. But only one affair threatened their union: Vita’s tempestuous liaison with her childhood friend Violet Keppel. This BBC drama is the story of that affair based on the extraordinary literary biography by Nigel Nicolson, Vita and Harold’s son. Award-winning actress Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds, Carrington) stars as Vita with David Haig (Two Weeks Notice) as Harold, and Cathryn Harrison (Clarissa) as Violet.

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I, Claudius (1976) Review

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(More customer reviews)Many important scenes have been cut (censored?) from the original Masterpiece Theater version including the contest between Claudius' wife and the prostitute, Caligula's horse Incitatus being made senator, and others. These omissions sacrifice the overall continuity and flow. These omissions are unnecessary and unforgivable given the DVD format. A general disappointment for those who remember the original version. Other than the above this is highly enjoyable.

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Roman history comes alive in this magnificent 13-part series. I, Claudius ranks among the most acclaimed productions in television history. Tracing the lives of the last of the Roman emperors, it's an epic of ruthless ambition, shocking debauchery and murderous intrigue set in one of history's most fascinating eras. Bearing witness to the saga is Claudius, whose stutter and limp have marked him a fool--yet whom prophesies have foretold will one day rule Rome. This collector's edition set includes a unique documentary feature, The Epic That Never Was (1965, 71 min.), a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at Alexander Korda's ill-fated 1937 screen adaptation of I, Claudius. Starring Merle Oberon and Charles Laughton, the chronicle of this uncompleted masterpieces is an unforgettable coda to one of the greatest stories ever told.

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The Libertine (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you go into THE LIBERTINE envisioning Johnny Depp in his previous role as Captain Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, forget it. You won't find a similar persona here.
THE LIBERTINE is a dark film that the studio wisely decided to release only after the Christmas holiday season. In it, Depp plays John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester (b. 1647 - d. 1680), whose life of debauchery was a public scandal even in a society that tolerated the loose morality of King Charles II and his court. Ironically, as the film makes a point of depicting, Charles (John Malkovich) reluctantly, but regularly, banished Rochester from the royal presence for the liberties the latter took in lampooning the former's free-wheeling lifestyle.
THE LIBERTINE is a depressing affair mainly because there's nobody in it to like. Moreover, neither Wilmot nor the viewers' sensitivities are spared the ravages of tertiary syphilis, the disease that ultimately kills the Earl; the film is a great argument for the advent of penicillin. Only Rosamund Pike as Rochester's long-suffering wife may gain audience sympathy. Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), the struggling actress whose career Rochester takes upon himself to further, apparently for uncharacteristically altruistic reasons, matter-of-factly accepts his help but remained unengaging to this viewer. The gloom is enhanced by a cinematography accomplished in somber, washed-out tones, particularly brown and dark green, with lots of shadows and murky candle light. Even the daylight is muted, as if in winter.
Now having said why THE LIBERTINE isn't light and airy, I have to also say that it's a powerful display of Depp's superlative talent. If the film wasn't so bleak, I'd expect a stampede to nominate Johnny for an Oscar. Rochester's two monologues for the camera, at the beginning and the end, the latter as his face recedes into darkness, are but hints of the excellence in between.
At one point in the movie, Rochester says (if I remember correctly): "Life isn't a sequence of 'urgent nows', but a listless trickle of 'why should I?s'." The tragedy for Rochester is that, at least in this screenplay, answers to the latter are piteously few. However, your answer to the question when contemplating seeing the movie should be: "Because Johnny Depp is as good as you'll ever seem him."

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Oscar® nominee* Johnny Depp delivers "a tour de force performance" (Baz Bamigboye, The Daily Mail) in the "seductively entertaining" (Jan Stuart, Newsday) The Libertine.As the celebrated writer and bad boy John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, Depp brings to life a decadent 17th century London.There, Wilmot falls passionately in love with his aspiring actress muse (Oscar® nominee Samantha Morton**), but is cast from the heights of privileged society when he scandalizes King Charles II (Oscar® nominee John Malkovich***) with a shockingly audacious play.At the depths of ruin, the rebel seeks redemption on his own terms."Johnny Depp is brilliant," raves Cosmopolitan, while Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls The Libertine a "one-of-a-kind spellbinder."

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Masterpiece Theatre: Elizabeth I - The Virgin Queen (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a very interesting programme, produced in Britain and originally shown on the PBS series, Masterpiece Theatre.
This miniseries was directed by Coky Giedroyc, a veteran of television productions in Britain, including another royal-themed miniseries, 'William and Mary', in 2003. Giedroyc brings an interesting modern twist to the series - rather than filming things in majestic, sweeping camera pans with classical music as a background, and rather than having the dialogue (and acting) be in a stilted, falsely formal style, Giedroyc incorporates modern music with medieval and Celtic flavouring to it (both of which have experienced a renaissance of sorts in the past decade), and the situations are decidedly modern without being out of place in their own times.
This presents the life of Elizabeth from her young adulthood under Queen Mary, as a supposed participant in intrigues against the Catholic Queen, through to her death after serving decades on the throne of England as the Virgin Queen, the queen who never married. In fact, the miniseries plays a tantalising game with Elizabeth's virginity, showing her desires (as well as those around her) without ever giving up the game of 'was she or wasn't she?' Anne-Marie Duff plays the part of Elizabeth, and does a remarkably able job for such a complex figure. Duff won the Irish Television award and was nominated for the BAFTA award for best actress in a television drama in another series, 'Shameless', last year.
Duff is joined by Tom Hardy, who plays the role of Robert Dudley, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth. Dudley is also an extraordinarily complex role, as he played several sides in the political struggles during Elizabeth's early reign, and was part of a family well experienced in regal intrigue - Robert Dudley's family had tried to manage the reign of Elizabeth's brother Edward, engineer the accession of Lady Jane Grey (placing Guildford Dudley on the throne with her), and is sometimes referred to as 'the uncrowned kings of England'. In fact, perhaps the most stunning single scene in this miniseries is after Elizabeth has elevated Robert Dudley to the earldom of Leicester, and during her illness, he sits upon the throne as the protector of the realm. Hardy is well suited to this role, and plays it with skill.
The sets are appropriate to their time period, neither too ornate nor too medieval; the costumes also have a touch of modernity to them, but are still primarily of the period. The situations presented give good insight into the overall pattern of Elizabeth's reign and some of the principal concerns during that time period, although to compress such a long reign into such a short time frame as a four-hour miniseries by necessity means that the history has had to be selectively chosen. Elizabeth faced problems from without and within, many of which were far more complex and pressing than her marriage issue. In the end, Elizabeth made the right decision for the time, if not for the future.
This is a great production for television, and holds up well against other major productions featuring the Virgin Queen Elizabeth of a few years ago.

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As The Virgin Queen begins, a young Elizabeth is imprisoned in the Tower of London by Queen Mary, charged with conspiracy and treason. Both women are daughters of the ruthless and oft-married Henry VIII, who plunged England into turmoil by breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. Mary wants to reunite with Rome, while Elizabeth is determined to stand by her Protestant faith--a potentially fatal choice. But Elizabeth’s life takes an unexpected turn when Mary dies, leaving no heir to the throne. As the new queen, Elizabeth discovers the harsh realities of ruling a religiously divided nation and must learn to outwit her enemies and charm those who conspire to their own ends.Soon under pressure to secure a politically advantageous marriage, the coquettish Elizabeth rejects a string of eligible royal bachelors from abroad, openly preferring the burning affections of her childhood playmate, the athletic, handsome--and married--Robert Dudley. But is she toying with him as she is with her other suitors?Starring Anne-Marie Duff (The Aristocrats, The Magdalene Sisters) as the shrewd and captivating queen who defended her throne amidst an atmosphere of plotting and intrigue, torture and murder, The Virgin Queen is a riveting drama that explores the fascinating 44-year reign of Elizabeth I.

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