Tandy, Mark

The Buccaneers

As four young American women find their way through the labyrinthine social world of 1870s England, their fortunes rise--and sometimes, with brutal abruptness, fall. Based on Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, this lavish BBC production follows Nan and Virginia St. George (Carla Gugino, Spy Kids, and Alison Elliott, The Spitfire Grill), two American sisters who follow their friend Conchita Closson (Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite), a Brazilian bad girl who marries a dissolute British lord, to England in search of aristocratic husbands--partly due to the influence of their canny governess, Laura Testvalley (Cherie Lunghi, Excalibur). The Buccaneers has a good dose of the delicious satirical wit to be found in many BBC dramas, but tempered by the presence of the naive American girls, who find themselves trapped by the very things they thought they wanted. Though mocked by some critics for its heaving bosoms and towering hairdos, the five-part series stealthily paints a sometimes devastating portrait of women's lives. When Idina Hatton (Jenny Agutter, Logan's Run), the older lover of the aimless Lord Seadown (Mark Tandy, Shackleton), learns that Seadown is going to marry the young and lovely Virginia, it's a heartbreaking moment, yet one that isn't overdone. The Buccaneers is full of such gracefulness--Wharton observes the fickle turns of life in society with a judicious eye, empathizing with the pain but never losing sight of the hard realities of money and marriage. In a strong cast, Gugino particularly shines; with her round, rosy cheeks and expressive eyes, she makes a smart yet vulnerable heroine. --Bret Fetzer

Deemed nouveau riche and shunned by elitist New York society, sisters Nan and Virginia St. George, along with their friends Lizzy Elmsworth and Conchita Closson (Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino), try their luck in London. The girls' New World spontaneity and impertinence constitute nothing less than a social invasion of Old World society and they soon find themselves courted by a coterie of fascinated admirers. But as the old and new worlds come to clash, something has to give.

Howards End - The Merchant Ivory Collection

Howards End is E.M. Forster's beautifully subtle story of the crisscrossing paths of the privileged and those they disdain--and of a remarkable pair of women who can see beyond class distinctions. Dramatic and tragic, but also surprisingly funny, this James Ivory film focuses on a pair of unmarried sisters (Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar, and Helena Bonham Carter) who befriend a poor young clerk (Sam West) and, without meaning to, ruin his life. Meanwhile, Thompson also makes the acquaintance of a dying neighbor (Vanessa Redgrave), who leaves her a family home in her will--which her husband (Anthony Hopkins) destroys. But, ironically, he meets and falls in love with Thompson, even as their paths once more intersect with the increasingly miserable young clerk. Nuanced acting, gorgeous but muted cinematography, and a beautifully economical script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which also won an Oscar. --Marshall Fine

Margaret and Helen Schlegel (Oscar® winner Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter) are sisters from a well-educated European family: intelligent, free-spirited, cultured, and highly emancipated by the standards of the time. A series of events brings them into a relationship with the Wilcox family: healthy, conservative, conventional, and very English, headed by the prosperous Henry (Anthony Hopkins) and his priggish son, Charles (James Wilby). Both families also come into contact with Leonard Bast (Samuel West) and his wife, a couple near the lowest tier of the rigid class system. Leonard's desire for cultural and intellectual status attracts the attention of Helen, who must come to terms with her unexpected feelings toward him. At the same time, Margaret must reconcile her independent spirit with her desire for companionship and a comfortable place in Edwardian society; her moral strength is eventually able to resolve the tangle of opposites. First published in 1910, E.M. Forster's Howards End remains one of the most important English novels of the twentieth century, and Merchant Ivory Productions' tour-de-force adaptation was one of the most critically acclaimed films of the 1990s.

Shackleton - The Greatest Survival Story of All Time (3-Disc Collector's Edition)

Shackleton is not a biopic of the great Anglo-Irish explorer but a dramatization of the failed trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916. As written and directed by Charles Sturridge (Longitude), the production, filmed on real ice floes in Greenland, stays remarkably close to the facts, capturing the look of the surviving expedition photos by Frank Hurley (collected in the book South with Endurance) with great fidelity. Kenneth Branagh makes no attempt at an authentic accent but otherwise gives a powerful impression of a most commanding personality. When the expedition ship Endurance became locked in the Antarctic ice, Shackleton vowed to bring every man home alive, and against virtually impossible odds, including a 700-mile journey in an open boat through some of the worst seas in the world, he did just that. This superlative miniseries realizes the story with production values and cinematography that would not disgrace a big-budget feature (South, Hurley's 1919 silent movie featuring some motion-picture footage from the expedition, is also available on video). Intense physical drama, strong performances, and Adrian Johnston's fine score combine here to deeply moving effect, marred only a little by a rushed conclusion. With Roland Huntford, author of the definitive Shackleton biography, as production advisor, this easily stands as the benchmark for all future comparable films. --Gary S. Dalkin

Maurice - The Merchant Ivory Collection

The second of the three Merchant/Ivory films adapting E.M. Forster novels (between A Room with a View and Howard's End), Maurice deals with a theme few period pieces dare mention--a young man's struggle with his homosexuality. It's not just a gay coming-of-age story, however. The hero wrestles with British class society as much as his personal and sexual identity.

The film opens on a stormy, windswept beach, as an older man awkwardly instructs young, fatherless Maurice Hall (James Wilby) in the "sacred mysteries" of sex. The same turbulent, wordless struggle with passion lasts throughout this slowly evolving, beautifully filmed story. Novelist E.M. Forster's brainy, British melodrama hinges on choice and compulsion, as the pensive hero falls for two completely different men. First comes frail, suppressed Clive (Hugh Grant), who wants nothing more than classical Platonic harmony... and a straight lifestyle. (Grant's performance is so convincing, one wonders how he ever became a heterosexual sex symbol.) After Clive's wedding, Maurice turns to hypnosis to cure his unspeakable longings. Unfortunately, his "cure" is interrupted by Clive's lustful, brooding, barely literate gamekeeper Scudder (Rupert Graves), a worker more at home gutting rabbits than discussing the classics. Maurice's love for a "social inferior" forces him to confront his illicit desire and his ingrained class snobbery. --Grant Balfour

Set against the stifling conformity of pre-World War I English society, E.M. Forster's Maurice is a story of coming to terms with one's sexuality and identity in the face of disapproval and misunderstanding. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) find themselves in love at Cambridge. In a time when homosexuality was punishable by imprisonment, the two must keep their feelings for one another a complete secret, even though Clive refuses to allow their relationship to move beyond the boundaries of "platonic" love. After a friend is arrested and disgraced for "the unspeakable crime of the Greeks," Clive abandons his forbidden love, marries, and enters into the political arena. Maurice, however, struggles with questions of his identity and self-confidence, even seeking the help of a hypnotist to rid himself of his undeniable urges. But while staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice is seduced by the affectionate and yearning servant Alec Scudder, (Rupert Graves), an event that brings about profound changes in Maurice's life and outlook. Sparking direction by James Ivory, a distinguished performance from the ensemble cast, and a charged score by Richard Robbins all combine to create a film of undeniable power, one that is both romantic and moving, and a story of love and self-discovery for all audiences.

Longitude

Gracefully adapted from Dava Sobel's extraordinary bestseller, the four-part TV production of Longitude combines drama, history, and science into a stimulating, painstakingly authentic account of personal triumph and joyous discovery. Equally impressive is the way writer-director Charles Sturridge has crafted parallel stories that complement each other with enriching perspective. The first story involves the successful 40-year effort of 18th-century clockmaker John Harrison (Michael Gambon) to solve the elusive problem of measuring longitude at sea. In 1714 the British Parliament had offered a generous reward to anyone who solved the problem, and Harrison devoted his life to that solution. The second story, some 200 years later, involves the effort of shell-shocked British Navy veteran Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) to restore the glorious clocks that Harrison had built. Like Harrison, Gould is the most admirable type of obsessive, but, also like Harrison, he risks his marriage to accomplish his difficult task.

Thousands of sailors perished at sea before Harrison's triumph changed history, but Longitude demonstrates that Harrison's glory was slow to arrive--and his prize money even slower. A fascinating study of 18th-century British politics and clashing egos in the arena of science, the film is both epic and intimate in consequence, and Sturridge's magnificent script inspires Gambon and Irons to do some of the best work of their outstanding careers. The ever-reliable Ian Hart appears in Part 3 as Harrison's now-adult son and apprentice, and Longitude approaches its dramatic climax with the exhilarating tension of a first-rate thriller. Rallying after sickness to prove the integrity of their marvelous seafaring chronometers, the Harrisons still had to fight for official recognition, and Gould's restoration of the Harrison clockworks provides a fitting coda to this exceptional story about the thrill of discovery and the tenacity of remarkable men. --Jeff Shannon

Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons stars in this sweeping adaption of Dava Sobel's best-selling book of high seas adventure and political intrigue. Determined to stop shipping losses on the oceans of the 18th century, Britain's Parliament offers a fabulous cash award to anyone who can devise a way to determine longitute at sea. Convinced he can solve the problem that has defeated England's best minds, rural clock maker John Harrison (Michael Gambon) begins an obsessive, 40-year struggle to claim the Longitude prize with his ingenious marine clock. 200 years later, naval officer Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) stumbles across Harrison's forgotten chronometers and devotes himself to restoring these long-neglected mechanical masterpieces.

Tristram Shandy - A Cock and Bull Story

Michael Winterbottom's TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY is a rollicking inventive adaptation of the notoriously unfilmable British comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman written by Laurence Sterne. Crammed with literary jokes and dark humor and aided by stellar performances by Jeremy Northam Rob Brydon and Naomie Harris Shandy's warped tales reveal far more about himself than any conventional autobiography.Running Time: 94 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359328329 Manufacturer No: 93283

Michael Winterbottom is no stranger to literary adaptation. Both Jude and The Claim were drawn from works by Thomas Hardy. Nor is the versatile filmmaker a stranger to the post-modern romp, like 24 Hour Party People. In that paean to Manchester's music scene, Steve Coogan was Factory honcho Tony Wilson. In Winterbottom's take on Laurence Sterne's digressive The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the prolific helmer combines literature with lunacy and brings Coogan back as the titular character--and then some. Coogan doesn't just portray the 18th century squire, but his father Walter and insecure actor "Steve Coogan." It's a film about the making of a film, effortlessly shifting between Tristram's tumultuous birth and his frustrated adulthood--bogged down in the writing of his life story--and between fiction and (what appears to be) fact. There are no end to the worries on and off the set: Coogan worries his heels aren't high enough, Rob Brydon worries his teeth are too yellow, and Coogan's girlfriend (Kelly Macdonald) worries she isn't seeing enough of him. It may sound like Spike Jonze's Adaptation, but in spirit, it more closely resembles Tony Richardson's Tom Jones. Coogan and his co-stars, particularly Naomie Harris as the ultimate film nut, Gillian Anderson as the American brought in to boost the project's profile, and Brydon as Tristram's Uncle Toby are as game for the challenge as their fearless leader. Consequently, Tristram Shandy isn't just one of Winterbottom's best films--it's one of the year's best. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Gordon Lightfoot - Live in Reno

Live in Reno is a solid overview of an admirable career, even if this Gordon Lightfoot is not what he once was. The singer-songwriter, 61 when the 90-minute show was recorded in April 2000, looks gaunt, and his distinctive voice is on the frail side. Still, he has accumulated a remarkable catalog of material over the course of some four decades, and nearly all of the biggies are among the 22 songs performed here by Lightfoot and his four-piece band, from the early classics popularized by other artists ("For Lovin' Me," "Early Morning Rain") to his own best-known hits ("If You Could Read My Mind," "Sundown," "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"). There are no theatrics or flashy production values, just a group of middle-aged men playing their music--and playing it well. So even if it's not especially exciting, fans will be satisfied. --Sam Graham

Portrait of a Marriage

Portrait of a Marriage opens with deceptive calm-- a husband and wife working in a garden look up at planes flying overhead. But the planes are off to bomb Germany and moments later a phone call thrusts the wife--poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West (Janet McTeer, Tumbleweeds)--into a bittersweet reverie from the previous war. Five years into her marriage with Harold Nicolson (David Haig, Two Weeks Notice), Harold confesses his affairs with men--but swears his only true passion is Vita. She accepts this, but when her childhood friend Violet Keppel (Cathryn Harrison, Clarissa) arrives, the two women begin an affair. Soon Vita and Violet find themselves deeply enmeshed, traveling through the gay demimonde of Paris with Vita in men's clothes. The affair becomes all-consuming and starts tearing at Vita and Harold's marriage and the lives of their two children. Portrait of a Marriage practically bursts with revealing psychological details and startlingly steamy sex scenes--as Vita and Violet's relationship grows more carnal, so does the miniseries. But there's nothing casual or exploitive about it; the sex deepens the hold the women have on each other's hearts and leads to emotional pyrotechnics. The tension constantly thickens, made all the more complex because Vita and Harold genuinely love each other, regardless of their sexual longings. The vivid and meticulous recreation of the period frames the superb performances by McTeer, Harrison, and Haig. This four-episode miniseries from 1990, based on the biography by Vita and Harold's son Nigel, is yet another example of the BBC's mastery of literary adaptations. --Bret Fetzer

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.

Voyage to the Planets and Beyond

Think of this BBC two-part TV special as Walking with Planets. One of the makers of the excellent Walking with... dinosaur programs looks forward--into the future--and upward--into space--for another presentation of story-driven science. This fake documentary follows an international crew of five on an extraordinary six-year spaceflight. We hear from Mission Control and view footage of the astronauts in training along with the flight photography and "TV broadcasts" (perfect for quickly explaining facts via Q&As). The flight is beyond ambitious: landing on Venus, Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, the rings of Saturn, an asteroid, and the far-off reaches of Pluto. Certainly, no real space agency would sign off on such a mission, but the dramatics work thanks to the deft handling by writer-director Joe Ahearne (Ultraviolet). Here's a fun way to learn about the crushing pressure of Venus or the risk/reward of slingshot-ing around the sun. With quick pacing (we are on Venus six minutes into the two-hour movie), smart choices (some of the astronauts' hardships are brutal), plus excellent special effects (the mile-long spacecraft Pegasus is a dandy), you have a program with which families can learn together and kids will want to watch more than once.

The DVD contains some great making-of features, plus a complete episode on the real-life space probes that have visited--and are still visiting--the planets. They are just as watchable as the main program. --Doug Thomas

Imagine trying to capture an icy block from Saturn's rings or drill on the disintegrating surface of a comet. This program reveals for the first time the danger and spectacle of what it would be like for astronauts to land on and explore the other planets in the solar system. Their mission lasts for six years, extending the boundaries of what has been achieved in space travel to date. Combining the latest scientific thinking and the real-life experiences of astronauts with drama and spectacular CGI, Voyage to the Planets and Beyond propels us into the not-too-distant future.

DVD Features:Featurette:50-minute Robot Pioneers feature examining the history of space exploration25 minutes of behind-the-scenes featurettes Other:Fact filesPhoto gallery:

Defense of the Realm

Taut extremely entertaining (Leonard Maltin) and laden with suspense with fast-moving chiller stats Gabriel Byrne as a Cold War reporter who discovers what free speech comes at a deadly price. Co-starring Careta Scacchi and Denholm Elliott Defense of the realm is electrifying terrifying and will leave you limp from controlled tension (Los Angeles Times)!When a tawdry sex scandal links a high-ranking British politician to Russian KGB agent ambitious newsman nick Mullen (Byrne) swiftly gets the story on page one. But when his scoop-of- the decade begins to unravel the cover up of the century involving military secrets nuclear weapons and government murders Mullen and the politician s beautiful secretary (Scacchi) fing themselves ensnared in a web every move could be their last .System Requirements: Running Time 96 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: PG UPC: 027616886583 Manufacturer No: 1004617

In the politically charged atmosphere of Margaret Thatcher's Britain, newspaper reporters are hungry for the big story that will make them stars and their newspapers famous. Nick Mullen (Gabriel Byrne in his first starring role) is one such reporter for the London Daily Dispatch. A top member of Parliament (Ian Bannen) is the focus of the latest political scandal: he has been photographed with a prostitute who is known to have Russian contacts. Nick barrels into the scandal full-bore, despite warnings from his mentor (a deft Denholm Elliott). Nick receives a tip that makes his story a front-page item and he quickly becomes a celebrity himself. But as he soon discovers, there is much more to the story than he imagined. Director David Drury (Prime Suspect 3) keeps this highly complex, John le Carré-esque story moving swiftly. The clues are hard to find at times, but it is not because the story is told unclearly; rather, the filmmakers have decided that audiences can think for themselves and piece together the information along with Nick. An overlooked and truly entertaining thinking person's film. --Doug Thomas