DVD collection offers 15 hours of British romance
The adjective Victorian usually is shorthand for repression, repression and more repression. Men during that era weren't allowed to express feeling but were expected to keep a stiff upper lip, while young women were to stay entirely ignorant about sex and remain passive as their husbands did to them whatever it is husbands do in bed.
The adjective
Victorian
usually is shorthand for repression, repression and more repression.
Men during that era weren't allowed to express feeling but were expected to keep a stiff upper lip, while young women were to stay entirely ignorant about sex and remain passive as their husbands did to them whatever it is husbands do in bed.
It's ironic then that the young, newly crowned Queen Victoria herself was passionate - with a mad, mad pash - about her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, whom she wed in 1840.
Their love story is told in Victoria & Albert, a three-and-half-hour drama from 2001 starring Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth.
It's one of three historical romances collected in Romance Classics, a five-disc collection featuring nearly 15 hours of good diction, British reserve and bodice-constricted passion.
The affordable volume also includes BBC's critically acclaimed 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. And the six-hour Edward & Mrs. Simpson, a 1978 production starring Edward Fox as Edward and Cynthia Harris as Wallis Warfield Simpson, the woman he gave up the throne to marry. (www.lionsgateshop.com; $24.98; not rated)
Other titles of note
The Railway Man. Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman channel classic film heroes of yore in this heartrending post-WWII story. Firth plays real-life war hero Eric Lomax, who was captured by the Japanese and forced to work building the Thai-Burma Railway. Years later, he and his wife face one of his Japanese tormentors. (www.anchorbayentertainment.com; $29.98; Rated R)
Out Of The Past. Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas, Jacques Tourneur's rich 1947 crime yarn is one of the best films noir ever made. Finally restored for Blu-ray, it's available directly from the Warner Archive Collection. (shop.warnerarchive.com; $21.99; not rated)
Frankie & Alice. Halle Berry got the kind of role actors would die for in this psychological drama about a go-go dancer in the early 1970s who has multiple personalities, her other selves being a vulnerable young girl and a racist white woman. Stellan Skarsgård plays the distraught dancer's therapist. (www.lionsgateshop.com; $26.98; rated R)
High School Confidential. Produced in 1958 as an antidrug movie, this hilarious rock-and-roll picture has become a cult favorite for the pot-smoking set. Featuring music by Jerry Lee Lewis, who also appears, it's set at an affluent suburban California high school which has become a hotbed of pot addiction! (We're treated to several scenes of nubile 16-year-old pothead girls writhing in pain, begging their dealer for a joint!) Russ Tamblyn stars as a transfer student who becomes the school's top dealer. The insanely curvy Mamie Van Doren plays his drunk, sex-starved aunt. It's trippy stuff, man. (www.olivefilms.com; $24.95 DVD; $29.95 Blu-ray; not rated)
The Blacklist: The Complete First Season. A middle-aged man walks into an FBI office, hands the guard his passport and gets on his knees in classic surrender pose. He's waiting for the alarms to go off once his identity is established: This is Raymond "Red" Reddington (James Spader), a freelance spy wanted by the feds for like 9,000 counts of treason. He's here to make a deal: He wants to work for the bureau solving crimes but only if he is teamed up with this obscure young rookie agent (Megan Boone) barely out of her diapers. So begins NBC's terrific hit. It gets even stranger and more awesome from there. (www.sonypictures.com/movies/discanddigital/; $69.99; $75.99 Blu-ray; not rated)
Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down. Spain's naughtiest film parodist Pedro Almodóvar followed up his 1988 hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown with this 1990 dark romantic comedy starring a then-unknown Antonio Banderas as a psychiatric patient who is fixated on an actress and former porn star (Victoria Abril). He's convinced his life would be complete if the two of them could live together as man and wife. So what's a demented boy to do? He kidnaps the hapless woman. Previously available only on laser disc, it has been restored for this DVD/Blu-ray Combo pack due Aug. 19 from the Criterion Collection. (www.criterion.com; $39.95 Blu-ray/DVD Combo; rated NC-17)