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Best Selling Holiday Season DVD's

By Damien Matthews

So, Christmas is over and its time to sober up and delve straight in to a brand new year, but before we do there’s time to look back and see the DVDs that were sitting under your Christmas trees.

Battling for a place at the top on this winters DVD sales list is plenty of action, comedy and controversy, from snakes and pirates to Al Gore and Jesus himself the war for your wallet has been a tense battle fought on the net and in the shops, so without further ado Damien Matthews will run you through what has been coming off the shelves and into your Christmas stocking over the last few weeks.

Rated highly on both Virgin and Amazon’s DVD chart is ex-vice president Al Gore’s political environmentally-conscious documentary An Inconvenient Truth stuffed full with even more documentaries and additional two-pennyworth from Mr. Gore thousands of people have snapped up this disc so they can spend the new year hearing about how we’re all doomed…Soon!

Despite these warnings just as many of you have decided to celebrate Christmas safe in the knowledge that all cannot be as bad as Superman has returned to save the day, not from global warming, but Kevin Spacey. The absence of any special features (do not be surprised to see a double disc edition arriving soon!) has not discouraged shoppers from the shelves, as its pre-Christmas release date made the disc one of the most unwrapped on Christmas day and one of the best selling DVD’s of the year.

Just as the blood pressure of religious leaders worldwide had returned to a safe level after Mel Gibson’s finger pointing, feather ruffling The Passion of the Christ, more Hollywood A-list decided to boil the blood of bishops everywhere as Tom Hanks took on a starring role in The Da Vinci Code. Two months after its release this double disc still sits highly amongst the country’s DVD retail chart.

Like James Bond minus the hair, England’s gun-toting action hero Jason Statham arrived just too late to be delivered by Santa, but his latest adrenaline-filled, explosive Crank has been storming off the shelves ever since. As with Superman, a pretty bare special features section means a re-release could well be on the horizon.

Two of the more surprising Christmas gifts of the winter have been Owen Wilson’s latest comedy You, me and Dupree, which sat top of Asda’s DVD sales list at the turn of the year and karaoke cracker High School Musical whose pre-xmas release and generous special features saw this DVD singing and dancing its way to the top of WH Smiths DVD chart.

The main battle this winter however has been between Samuel L Jackson and Johnny Depp, guns v swords, serpents in the sky v monsters of the sea. Yes, everyone’s favourite b-movie of the year, Snakes on a Plane (Tesco, Virgin and Woolworths bestseller) has been going toe to toe with Captain Jack Sparrow and his swashbuckling chums in Pirates of the Caribbean 2:Dead Man’s Chest (HMV’s number 1 disc at the new year).

Both boasting an impressive bonus section of documentaries, cast interviews, deleted scenes and gag reels these two DVD’s have sold more than any other discs this winter.

So, after a Christmas of action and fun from the skies to the seas (and Randy Dupree) we can now turn our attention to a brand new year which looks set to bring us much more disc shaped Hollywood fun! Happy New Year!  

All movie posters, pictures etc are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of their respective holders.

Monsters, Mad Men and Jack Nicholson

By Damien Matthews

As the sun sets on Halloween night the souls of the dead will revisit their homes and ghouls and ghosts will roam the streets! This may not actually happen, but what could happen is you may be forced into giving small children sweets and money for painting their faces (and no one wants to have to do that), so to avoid any sweet-giving and indeed unwanted supernatural experiences with the living impaired, Damien Matthews is here to guide you through how you can spend your Halloween night safely inside with your mates and a DVD player.

Now the obvious place to start when talking about Halloween horror films is the very film named after the festival itself, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Now it may well take you all week to get through all 7 Halloween instalments and frankly it really wouldn’t be worth it. However, it is worth checking out number 1, released at the prime of seventies slasher movies, the film has little to do with Halloween itself so don’t expect a lesson on the religious history of the pagan festival, but you can expect lots of scary serial killer fun.

Raising the spook–ometer we can stay in the 1970s and a take a trip to the outback for the Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) where naïve young hippies take on a group of cannibalistic power tool-wielding hillbillies (place your bets?). Alternatively, many frights are to be had with the infamous head-spinning, church-bothering demonic classic The Exorcist (1973).

One to never shy away from controversy and horror is American director Stanley Kubrick, creator of other such headline occupying material as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), The Shining (1980) is one of the most famous horror films of all time.  Jack Nicholson puts in a terrifying performance as the axe-wielding caretaker hunting his own family in the spooky Overlook Hotel. Although, the body count is a lot less than many other horror films, Nicholson’s unnerving performance and Kubrick’s isolating direction create a real spooky classic.

Ever rampaging towards the modern day we come to Seven (1995), a modern day murder mystery which offers a shocking ending and something for the ladies with a leading role for Brad Pitt as the young detective in pursuit of a serial killer.

Similarly, murderers and rookie detectives can also be found in pursuit of each other in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). However this time, young heroine Jodie Foster calls on the help of charming cannibal (played by screen legend Sir Anthony Hopkins) Dr. Hannibal Lector to catch the killer.

So, by now you should have an idea of where to look to find some scary movies to occupy your Halloween evening, and if you haven’t, well you can risk going to the pub but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the ghosts.

So in the words of modern teen slasher Scream (1996) “Don’t answer the phone. Don’t open the door. Don’t try to escape”…. And avoid any 30-years later remakes and sequels above the 5^th outing because they tend to be awful.

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Directed By: Florent Emilio Siri
Starring: Bruce Willis (Jeff Talley), Kevin Pollak (Walter Smith), Serena Scott Thomas (Jane Talley), Jonathan Tucker (Dennis Kelly)
Running Time: 113 mins.
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