Every month we will be featuring a new actor, actress and director, with information on what they've done, what they've won and links to the movies they've been involved in.
This month it's Helen Mirren, Ray Winstone and Ridley Scott Just click on the links to visit their pages and choose some superb titles for your list!
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 Slumdog Millionaire
winner of eight Oscars including Best Picture is released 4th May 2009, the movie also won Best Director for Danny Boyle. |
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 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and tells a story of a man who gets younger every day, the movie is directed by nominee David Fincher (Fight Club) it is released 8th June 2009. |
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 The Reader
won Kate Winslet her very first Best Actress Oscar ! the movie tells the story of a passionate love affair between a teenage boy and a mature woman, co-stars the excellent Ralph Fiennes, the DVD is released 25th May 2009. |
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 Milk
won Sean Penn his second best Actor Oscar, his first was for Mystic River. Milk tells the fascinating story of Harvey Milk America’s first gay political activist during the late seventies, the DVD is released 8th June 2009. |
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 The Wrestler
marks the return of Micky Rourke ! Rourke plays a washed-up aging wrestler searching for love, co-stars the brilliant Marisa Tomei who had previously won an Oscar for her performance in My Cousin Vinny. The Wrestler did not actually win any Oscars but still deserves a mention, the DVD is released 1st June 2009. |
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 Frost/Nixon
has been adapted from the successful stage play of the same name, it stars Frank Langella as Nixon and rising British star Michael Sheen (The Queen) as David Frost, the movie is based around a series of interviews given by then ex-President Nixon to Frost, the DVD is released 18th May 2009. |
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 Vicky Christina Barcelona
marks a return to form for Director Woody Allen, a light-hearted comedy that won Penelope Cruz her first Oscar, she is well supported by Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) the DVD is released 22nd June 2009. |
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Click here to see all the other Academy Award nominated films
Other GREAT titles released in May & June 2009:
Role Models – 11/05/09
Defiance – 18/05/09
Underworld – Rise Of The Lycans – 18/05/09
Seven Pounds – 25/05/09
Revolutionary Road – 01/06/09
Valkyrie – 08/06/09
Bolt – 15/06/09
Che – Part 1 – 29/06/09
Che – Part 2 – 29/06/09
Rachel Getting Married – 29/06/09
Doubt – 29/06/09 |
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 Over the past few months we have been building our range of BluRay titles, for those of you not sure what BluRay actually is, read on……………
Blu-Ray discs are one of the newcomers on the optical disc scene. The first optical discs available to consumers were the large video laser discs that were marketed during the early 1970s. By the 1980s the familiar CD became available. One compact disc was able to hold about 700MB (megabytes) of data. The first CDs were used for audio albums.
In the 1990s DVD (digital video discs) became popular. DVDs are the identical form factor of a CD but are able to hold much more data. The format was agreed upon because one DVD can hold a standard-length movie.
Blu-Ray is the next iteration on the optical disc timeline. The Blu-Ray standard was established to hold a standard-length movie in HDTV format, or high-definition television. Such movies are displayed in significantly higher resolution and therefore they require much more storage space. A standard Blu-Ray disc holds 27GB (gigabytes) of information which is about 40 times the amount of data that a CD can hold.
Although the technology is identical to CDs and DVDs, the fundamental difference with Blu-Ray is the laser that is used to read the discs. A blue laser (hence the name Blu-Ray) is used instead of the red lasers that are used on earlier discs. Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength (450 nanometers) than red lasers (650 nanometers), and therefore the beam can be focused on a smaller area which means that you can cram more data on an identically sized disc.
The new laser means that Blu-Ray discs are not readable on standard CD and DVD players and readers. Many Blu-Ray drives, however, will be backwards-compatible so they will be able to playback the older disc formats. The growth of Blu-Ray is expected to parallel the increasing popularity of HDTV and overtake legacy systems. |