The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Mike Barker
from BBC Warner
The BBC adaptation of Anne Bronte's moral tale The Tenant of Wildfell Hall will be a delight to those who revel in classics brought to the screen. Tara Fitzgerald stars as Helen Graham, a secretive woman who seeks independence for herself and her son from her cruel husband, Arthur Huntingdon. Huntingdon, a rake taken with women and drink, is played to perfection by Rupert Graves, believable as both the young lover who seduces Helen and as the depraved and brutish man he becomes. Toby Stephens is Gilbert Markham, the suspicious yet adoring yeoman farmer smitten with the supposed widow. The scenery and costumes of this period piece are lush, although the use of flashback as a narrative device is at times jarring. This tale is darker than the Jane Austen adaptations that BBC audiences are used to, yet the two-part film has an ending satisfying enough for even the most cynical of romantics. --Jenny Brown
Rupert Graves Toby Stephens and Tara Fitzgerald star in this Peabody Award and BAFTA winning BBC Adaptation of the Anne Bront? novel. Powerful haunting and disturbing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is as powerful a story as those of Bront??s more famous sisters. In a remote village on the Yorkshire moors a beautiful widow and her son move into the near-derelict Wildfell Hall. Befriended by a handsome young farmer she remains mysteriously silent about her past and why she is afraid ? until she becomes the focus of malicious village gossip.Running Time: 159 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/BBC UPC: 883929010646 Manufacturer No: 1000036990
Out of the Ashes
by Joseph Sargent
from Showtime Ent.
In Out of the Ashes, one woman is forced to choose between two horrifying acts of evil, and ultimately finds the courage to make the right choice. Based on actual events that occurred during World War II that chronicles the life of Dr. Gisella Perl, a woman who lost her entire family and was forced to start life over in America.
Poirot - The New Mysteries Collection (Death on the Nile / Sad Cypress / The Hollow / Five Little Pigs)
by Dave Moore
from A&E Home Video
Portly, mincing, gracious, and unrelenting, Hercule Poirot rivals Sherlock Holmes as the greatest sleuth of the English murder mystery genre--a form as strict as a sonnet that's part logic puzzle, part magician's misdirection, of which Agatha Christie remains the undisputed queen. The New Mysteries Collection pulls together TV-movie adaptations of four Poirot novels, each a compendium of eccentric characters, intricate plotting, sleek storytelling, and sprinklings of wit (such as a dotty matriarch's declaration, "Murder is a very awkward thing--it upsets the servants so").
Death on the Nile sets an entire boatful of suspicious character afloat in Egypt, where Poirot's vacation is disrupted by a splash in the night, falling rock, missing pearls, three murders, and a boozing gargoyle named Salome Otterbourne. The plot is one of Christie's more preposterous, yet also one of her most popular. Sad Cypress opens with a murderess on trial, then flashes back to young lovers, a wealthy but stricken dowager, a spiteful anonymous letter, and a pretty young blonde. A wonderfully creepy dream haunts Poirot as he struggles to redeem the wrongly convicted killer. In The Hollow, Poirot's vacation in the English countryside gets disrupted by a philandering doctor apparently shot by his adoring wife, his blood trickling into a swimming pool clotted with leaves. But the best of the lot is Five Little Pigs, a story told almost entirely in flashback, as a young woman hires Poirot to clear her mother, who was convicted of murdering her father. Not only are the clues deftly planted and the solution cunningly worked out, it's one of the rare mysteries that inspires a genuine sorrow for its characters.
Scattered throughout are a wealth of recognizable faces, though not many recognizable names--among the better known are James Fox (The Remains of the Day), Edward Fox (The Day of the Jackal), Paul McGann (Withnail and I), Sarah Miles (White Mischief), Lysette Anthony (Husbands and Wives), and David Soul (Starsky & Hutch!). But it's David Suchet as Poirot who keeps everything in motion, his beady eyes glittering under heavy lids, constantly tending to one of the most ridiculous mustaches in literature. Poirot has been played by such stars as Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney, but Suchet has made the fastidious Belgian detective his own. He's simply magnifique. --Bret Fetzer
This set will contain the following four Poirot movies (A&E September 2004 premieres): Death on the Nile, Sad Cypress, The Hollow, Five Little Pigs
Rebecca
by Jim O'Brien
from WGBH BOSTON
Daphne du Maurier's classic tale of romance, suspense and jealousy, Rebecca, is brought to you in this lavish adaptation. Set in elegant Monte Carlo and dramatic Cornwall in the 1930s. this drama stars Charles Dance (Gosford Park, The Jewel in the Crown)as the sophisticated Maxim de Winter and Emilia Fox (Pride and Prejudice) as the young woman who becomes the second Mrs. de Winter.
When Maxim de Winter proposes to such a young woman nobody is more surprised than the circle of society friends who learn the intriguing news, especially as his new wife is the opposite of Maxim's first wife, the beautiful Rebecca, who mysteriously died in a tragic drowning accident.
After Maxim takes his new wife back to his home, the ancient and magnificent Manderley, it soon becomes evident that the shadow of Rebecca is all-pervasive, nurtured all the more by the sinister gothic housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Diana Rigg, The Avengers, Mother Love, A Hazard of Hearts).
The new Mrs. de Winter beings to uncover the darkness of the past that taints the present and threatens to haunt her future...
Special DVD features include: Q&A with Diana Rigg; select cast filmographies; Masterpiece Theatre poster gallery; access to Masterpiece Theatre web site; scene selection; English audiotrack; and closed captions.
On one DVD9 disc. Region coding: All regions. Audio: Dolby stereo. Screen format: Full screen