As a movie, Lolita is flawed, albeit interestingly so. The sexual innuendo (a summer camp called Camp Climax, for example) seems jarring and pointless, while Sellers' comic turn detracts from any sense of guilt, tension or tragedy...
Easy, 2009-10-15
Ordered the dvd without going out to the shops and it came in two days! Very good contidion,had never been used! .... yaaaaay

In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her sixteenth birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Fortunately, some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are on hand to assist.

It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here, alongside Maleficent's castle, which, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke, Amazon.com
Not just for the kids, 2010-08-28
I bought this as a Birthday present for my wife, who had never seen it. Was great fun to watch and nice relaxation from the TV

On the DVD: Featuring interviews with Honor Blackman...
Goldfinger - 2006 double disc Ultimate Edition - Bond strikes gold on his third outing, 2010-08-22
These were the Golden years for the Bond series. Following from the success of From Russia With Love, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made everything bigger and better for Sean Connery's third outing as the superspy. The gadgets, the world peril, the stunts are all stepped up to provide a BIG adventure that thrills all the way.

Bond is drawn into the world of international gold smuggling, and is soon entangled with Auric Goldfinger, another in a long line of memorable Bond villains. Gert Frobe does sterling work as Goldfinger, putting over a performance that imbues the character with a creepiness and ruthless cunning that really makes him believable supervillain. Honour Blackman is an excellent Bond girl, with a strong and pivotal role in the plot. Harold Sakata as Oddjob provides one of the most memorable henchmen, with a bowler hat to die for.

Full of iconic sequences - the girl covered in gold paint, Bond about to be sliced in two by a laser, the attack on Fort Knox, this is a big and entertaining film. It also introduces the famous Aston Martin, and brings Q's gadgets to the fore, which really adds to the fun.

This ultimate edition really is the best version of the film I have owned. The picture has been lovingly restored and cleaned up, and looks amazing. Really, I am not just saying that. It looks superb. The sound has been similarly treated and there is an option to listen to it in 5.1 DTS surround, which is truly exceptional.

As well as the superb presentation of the film, there is also a host of extras, original trailers, informative audio commentaries and the such. These are exhaustive and some of them quite interesting, especially the featurette on the Aston Martin DB5. But these really a garnish for the main course, which is the film itself.

This is an excellent release, and does this classic film justice. This series of `Ultimate editions' really sets the standard for film releases. It really does not get any better.

On the DVD: The Naked Truth comes to DVD in 4:3 ratio and with a mono soundtrack. The only extra feature is a trailer. More TT tomfoolery can be found in the three-disc Terry Thomas Collection. --Adrian Edwards
Funny, British ensemble comedy from 1957, 2010-08-25
First things first, the original title of this 1957 film seems actually to have been "The Naked Truth," if the standard filmographies for Peter Sellers are to be believed. Fifty years later, as I write this, the title seems a little unfortunate, considering the company this black little comedy currently shares here on Amazon and elsewhere. On the DVD itself, the title card shows not "The Naked Truth," but "Your Past is Showing." I presume that was the American title, for a movie called "The Naked Truth" was unlikely to gain much acceptance or profit in small- or even big-town America during the Eisenhower years. "Your Past is Showing" is hardly scintillating, but it's a better title, being perfectly appropriate to the story and having the advantage of removing the DVD from the present company of its booty-shaking peers.

This is one of that amazing series of relatively low-budget, witty, intelligent, often hilarious, usually black-and-white comedies that various English studios seemed to turn out at a rate of about one every couple of months throughout the 1950s and into the mid-60s. While "The Naked Truth" is hardly great, it's a perfectly respectable and sound representative of the class.

Like many fine British comedies, it has a heart of inky darkness: four individuals, initially strangers to one another, are being blackmailed by a particularly despicable character. Two of them independently hit on the notion of solving their problems by murdering the blackmailer. When their initial individual schemes fail in blackly humorous ways, they resort to the very British practice of forming a committee to carry out the murderous deed (or not, as the case may be) ... again with blackly hilarious results.

This is one of those films in which the plot is of secondary consideration, for the cast is a mini-Who's Who of mid-century comedic talent and skill. This crowd would have an audience rolling on the floor with laughter with a reading from an airline arrival and departure list: gap-toothed Terry-Thomas, ever-formidable Peggy Mount, indomitably unaware Miles Malleson, so-gorgeous-you-don't-realize-she's-smart Shirley Eaton, incomparable Joan Sims (frazzled here rather than brassy), smooth, charming, despicable Dennis Price and Peter Sellers.

This is Sellers' third major film role. He made his movie debut in 1955 in "The Lady Killers." His second film was "The Smallest Show on Earth" in 1957. All three of these films are ensemble films and in all three, Sellers was teamed with, to say the very least, performers of impressive talent: Alec Guinness in "The Ladykillers," Margaret Rutherford in "The Smallest Show on Earth" and Terry-Thomas in "The Naked Truth." In each of these films, Sellers has a memorable but subordinate part. That would all change in his Wunderjahr, 1959, when he became a one-man picture franchise with back-to-back international triumphs in "The Mouse That Roared" and "I'm All Right Jack." In the former, he played (at least) three starring roles. In the latter, he outshone the brilliant Ian Carmichael.

If memory serves me correctly, I first became aware of Sellers' new star status when the then-mighty Life Magazine devoted a full picture spread to the wonderful new, satirical comedy about labor relations, "I'm All Right Jack." (The magazine even felt obliged to explain to puzzled Americans what the title meant.) The only star that I can recall receiving an equivalent accolade was Jacques Tati in "Mr. Hulot's Holiday."

Time and the publication of tell-all memoirs place this film is a rather different light than the one in which I viewed it in 1957. I certainly see things in "The Naked Truth" (by whatever title) that I entirely missed fifty years ago. Amazon's US editorial reviewer, Adrian Edwards, touched on this, but his gaze was firmly fixed on what he perceived as gay elements in the film: the relationship between Sellers' character and his Welsh dresser (heh-heh), and perhaps an overly butch caricature of Agatha Christie. Well ... maybe.

Of more significance to me is the nature of the character played by Sellers. He's a widely-loved television personality who is massively insecure in his private life. He's a man who hops manically from persona to persona, never taking rest in any one of them, while on the hop, he concocts grandiose and unworkable schemes that only bring him pain. This, it turns out, was a coldly accurate portrait of Peter Sellers, himself, whose agonized cry to the universe was, "I don't know who I am!" Who knew?

This is a funny picture from a brilliant epoch with a superb cast. Of course it deserves five stars.