One of the most acclaimed celebrity fitness DVDs of recent times, Charlie Brooks’ Before And After Workout finds fitness trainer Dee Thresher putting the former soap star through her paces with a series of five ten minute workouts.

Brooks herself claims to have lost a couple of stone using the routines on the disc already, and it’s easy to believe why. And rather than, as some in the genre choose to do, focusing heavily on the celebrity, this fitness discs puts its firm emphasis on the workout routines. They’re explained clearly, are straightforward to follow, and there’s enough variety to ensure you don’t get bored.

The routines are of varying difficulty, and unless you’re already fighting fit, it’s feasible that you’ll have some trouble with them in the early days. But then that’s the point. And because none of the workouts outstay their welcome, there’s little reason not to stay motivated. Sure, you’ll end up working hard, but there’s nothing on this disc that outstays its welcome.

It’s surprising perhaps to find a fitness DVD that has earned such acclaim, but having followed Charlie Brooks’ Before And After Workout through, the plaudits are well deserved. So if you’ve ever been frustrated by a celebrity workout disc that’s proven to be more about the former than the latter, then this will be a very welcome treat.–Ann Foster

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Amazon.co.uk Review
A milestone of the silent film era and one of the first “art films” to gain international acclaim, this eerie German classic from 1919 remains the most prominent example of German expressionism in the emerging art of the cinema. Stylistically, the look of the film’s painted sets–distorted perspectives, sharp angles, twisted architecture–was designed to reflect (or express) the splintered psychology of its title character, a sinister figure who uses a lanky somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) as a circus attraction. But when Caligari and his sleepwalker are suspected of murder, their novelty act is surrounded by more supernatural implications. With its mad-doctor scenario, striking visuals, and a haunting, zombie-like character at its centre, Caligari was one of the first horror films to reach an international audience, sending shock waves through artistic circles and serving as a strong influence on the classic horror films of the 1920s, 30s, and beyond. It’s a museum piece today, of interest more for its historical importance, but The Cabinet of Dr Caligari still casts a considerable spell. –Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Michael Powell lays bare the cinema’s dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (the director in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father’s work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colourful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock’s Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell’s film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell’s picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full colour photography, documentary techniques and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 re-release, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made. –Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Peeping Tom – Criterion Collection

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