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DVD Our Mutual Friend
One of Charles Dickens' darkest yet also most romantic novels gets a lavish treatment in this BBC mini-series of Our Mutual Friend. The heir to a great fortune made from the garbage business is drowned--and his death affects everyone. His father's manager, Noddy Boffin (Peter Vaughan, Brazil), gets the money, to the alarm of snooty society. The man who pulled the heir's body out of the Thames is accused of his murder; his daughter, Lizzie Hexam (Keeley Hawes, Tipping the Velvet), finds herself pursued by both an idle gentleman (Paul McGann, Withnail & I) and an obsessed, violent schoolteacher (David Morrissey, Basic Instinct 2). The heir's intended bride, Bella Wilfer (Anna Friel, Me Without You, gets socially adopted by the Boffins, where she succumbs to the lure of money above all and spurns the interest of a mysterious stranger (Steven Mackintosh, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels). The plot creeps up and down London society like a tenacious plant, twining around a pair of golddiggers who mistakenly married each other and a heartsick bone merchant named Mr. Venus (Timothy Spall, Secrets & Lies). This excellent adaptation moves with aggressive speed, drawing the viewer into the grimy worlds of the riverside and the dust heaps and the glittering, gossiping parties of the rich. Our Mutual Friend balances one of Dickens' most entrancing love stories with his creepiest gothic turns--it's a rich stew of characters both earnest and vile, made with sumptuous production values and movie-quality cinematography. --Bret Fetzer
I like Dicken's stories for his memorable characters. The good are so kind and innocent and the villains dispicable and rotten. This movie takes its time to develop the personalities and lives of these fascinating people. It's six hours long but you won't want to miss a minute.
Dickens' rats and angels come from all manner of social strata in turn of the century England. No one is free from Dickens scathing critique. The plots are set amidst the backdrop of an aristocracy which is collapsing under its own weight. The middle class grows and the born-rich are forced to socialize with "new" money. How distasteful! Even the poor are not immune to the social structure of the time; a river boatman, who dredges the river for bodies, will not let his son go to school; he must carry on the family trade, like his father did!
The casting is just right and the acting strong. Oh, the faces of these actors and actresses! They say so much without a word spoken. You will fall in love with the hero's and heroine's as they try to figure out what they should do.
I must admit, I like Dickens' evil guys! They are simply awful to the core. One of my favorite scenes is when Riderhood unexpectedly shows up in the school teachers (Mr. Headstone) classroom sitting among the young pupils, sharing his wisdom. After his little lesson, he ruffles a boys hair as he leaves. I wanted to douse the poor lad's head in Lysol. There are a lot of neer-do-wells in this story who need their comeuppance. Dickens does not fail to deliver!
The movie is filmed in London. Often dark and rainy. The scenery and locations are wonderful. The costumes perfect. I love period pieces and this one ranks up there with the best of them.
Extra scenes!
This DVD has two serious advantages over the VHS version--first off, it's in the original wider-screen format. One of my complaints with the VHS version is that the pan-and-scan cropping had sometimes chopped off characters, or bits of them. They are now fully visible throughout, and the camera work can be appreciated as it was intended to be.
The second big advantage is that there are several scenes in the DVD version that are not in the VHS version! The scenes don't give us any "new" information, but they add to the coherence and flow of the story. This footage was probably cut to fit American time slots, but why it was not added back onto the VHS is a mystery. Buy the DVD if you like Dickens adaptations and lush BBC period dramas--you won't be sorry.
our mutual friend (purchased 9/8/05)
the dvds arrived in the timeframe estimated and in the condition in which they were described.
The BBC has raised the mini-series to an astonishing creative peak. A prime example is the 1994 production of Middlemarch, based on the classic novel by George Eliot, which juxtaposes morals and money, grand ambitions with petty jealousies, and pursuits of the mind with bodily needs. A handsome young doctor named Lydgate (Douglas Hodge, Vanity Fair) comes to the provincial town of Middlemarch to start a new hospital; a headstrong young woman named Dorothea (Juliet Aubrey, The Mayor of Casterbridge) yearns to contribute to the greater good of the world. These idealists enter into marriages that derail all their intentions and lead them into lives they never imagined. The network of characters in this six-episode program, ranging up and down the societal ladder, create... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Anthony Page DVD Release Date: Released the 19 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Others here have done a good job of reviewing this excellent mini-series adaptation of Bleak House, so I will focus briefly on the DVD from BBC/Warner. Bleak House is conveniently divided into eight episodes of about 50 min. each. Four episodes appear on each side of a two-sided disc. Each episode is in turn divided into chapters that can be accessed quickly from the menu. The 4:3 (fullscreen) presentation looks pretty good for the most part, and I didn't notice any problems with dust or scratches on the source print. The picture does, however, vary somewhat in sharpness from scene to scene. Colors and contrast, for the most part, look very good. For a made-for-TV production, the overall video quality is quite watchable. The audio is also nice and clear. Though there are no... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Ross Devenish DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Greed, selfishness, and hypocrisy drive another rollicking story from Charles Dickens. Martin Chuzzlewit features two Martin Chuzzlewits: An elderly and extremely wealthy one (the magnificent Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons), who loathes the sleazy, grasping relatives that hope to profit from his death; and his grandson (Ben Walden), a well-intentioned but self-absorbed young man who has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward, Mary Graham (Pauline Turner)--and because the elder Martin disapproves, the younger Martin has been disowned. In the gap between these two are a host of schemers, crooks, and even one or two good people--but at the center of it all is the pompous and oily Seth Pecksniff (Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom, Eternal Sunshine of the... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Pedr James DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The first two episodes of this BBC miniseries only hint at the delights to come. A lawsuit aimed at church reform in the town of Barchester forces a decent middle-aged clergyman (the august Donald Pleasence, best known in the U.S. for the Halloween movies) into a moral crisis and a conflict with his son-in-law, a pompous archdeacon (Nigel Hawthorne, The Madness of King George). The gracefully written and acted narrative shows glimpses of dry wit--but in episode 3, the arrival of a new bishop (Clive Swift, Keeping Up Appearances), his imperious wife (Geraldine McEwan, The Magdalene Sisters), and his devious chaplain (Alan Rickman, Truly Madly Deeply, the Harry Potter movies) launches The Barchester Chronicles into a satirical power... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Giles (III) DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Jane Eyre--the mother of all gothic romances--gets abundant passion in this 11-episode BBC miniseries. Young Sian Pattenden is wonderfully willful and impetuous; viewers will immediately identify with the child Jane as she fights against ill-treatment at the home of her aunt and at boarding school. It's a shame to see her grow up into Zelah Clarke--until Clarke asserts her own quiet yet fierce spirit. The plot really starts rolling when Jane takes a position as governess at Thornfield, a handsome estate owned by the imperious and tortured Mr. Rochester (Timothy Dalton, a few years before he became James Bond). From there, this 1983 adaptation rips through the perilous highs and devastating lows of Charlotte Bronte's powerful novel, in which the courtship of these two... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Julian Amyes DVD Release Date: Released the 19 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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