Film, DVD

Twin Peaks complete series released on DVD - Mark Frost interview - complete transcript

5 Mar 2010

The List: We’re almost upon the twentieth anniversary of Twin Peaks since it first aired in the US. It seems incredible that it was such a long time ago until you consider the influence it’s had on television drama since. How do you think it holds up…

Twin Peaks boxset released on DVD - Mark Frost interview

2 Mar 2010

Almost twenty years to the day since Twin Peaks first aired, the long-awaited conclusion to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal series is finally released on DVD. Series co-creator and executive producer Frost tells Murray Robertson what took so…

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

2 Mar 2010

(U) 92min (Oracle) Premiering on DVD to coincide with the release of Hollywood goth Tim Burton’s take on the Lewis Carroll classic, this 1972 British musical version can certainly be described as both lavish and faithful to its much-loved source.

I Think We're Alone Now

2 Mar 2010

(15) 64min (Spirit/Kaleidoscope) To Jeff Turner, Tiffany is ‘the most Christ-like person’ he’s ever known. Talking about the 80s teen popstar; Turner considers Tiffany a close friend, despite her taking a restraining order out on him. This…

Kamikazi Girls (Shimotsuma Monogaturi)

2 Mar 2010

(12) 103 min (Third Window Films) Kawaii-cute Momoto (Kyôko Fukada) lives in a beruffled fantasy world, more at home in 18th century Rococo France than the small Japanese farm town of Shimotsuma, until tough teen biker-girl Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya…

Motherhood

2 Mar 2010

(15) 90min (Metrodome) Released in time for Mother’s Day, this comic drama about a day in the life of a harassed middle-class New York married mom of two sets hard about eliciting the sympathy of maternals everywhere. In an unlikely role…

The Bargee

2 Mar 2010

(PG) 102min (Optimum) Forty years before Ewan McGregor shagged his way up and down the Edinburgh to Glasgow canal, Harry H Corbett was doing the same thing between Hertfordshire and Middlesex (oo-er). Corbett’s handsome Hemel Pike is a scruffy…

An Inspector Calls

17 Feb 2010

(PG) 77min (Optimum) Edinburgh’s famous son Alistair Sim leads the quality cast in this excellent 1954 adaptation of JB Priestly’s celebrated play. Set in small town England in 1912, it opens with the interruption of a dinner party at the home of a…

Bernard and Doris

17 Feb 2010

(15) 103min (HBO) During the DVD extra in which director Bob Balaban discusses the vastly wealthy life of socialite heiress Doris Duke, he reveals that she was investigated for a fatal accident on her property and had a couple of camels living at…

Chaw

17 Feb 2010

(15) 117min (Optimum) This blackly comic South Korean horror film arrives on the back of the success of the Asian monster movie The Host. Like that film, Chaw (pronounced ‘chow’, meaning animal trap, but probably intended to invoke Jaws) is at once…

The Constant Husband

17 Feb 2010

(U) 85min (Optimum) A man wakes up in a strange country with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. Enlisting the assistance of a local psychiatrist, the dazed chap begins to piece together his life and discovers to his mortification that…

Tower of London

17 Feb 2010

(15) 92min (Optimum) This long unavailable (on DVD), deliciously nasty historical horror made in 1939 is all dungeons, manacles, torture and beheadings. But it’s also fairly classy stuff, boasting a fine cast headed by Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff…

Central Office of Information and Agnes Varda among DVD highlights

DVD boxsets roundup

3 Feb 2010

(15) 116min Director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro) returns to the scene of one of his early successes with this feature film adaptation of the 1985 BBC television series that helped make his name. Mel Gibson (in his…

Died Young, Stayed Pretty

1 Feb 2010

(E) 95min (ICA) Eileen Yaghoobian’s film delves into the underground poster culture in North America. In detailing the motivations and examining the creative spirit of these independent graphic designers, Yaghoobian uncovers a whole stratum of…

In The Electric Mist

1 Feb 2010

(15) 117min (High Fliers) The real mystery surrounding this adaptation of James Lee Burke’s bestselling crime novel In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead is why a perfectly respectable Hollywood movie boasting such an impressive cast and…

Mary, Queen of Scots

1 Feb 2010

(PG) 126min (Second Sight) Charles Jarrott’s 1971 historical melodrama chronicling the tiaras, tantrums and Machiavellian spite traded between Tudor royal cousins Mary and Elizabeth re-emerges on DVD as something of a surprise. For Mary, Queen of…

Taking Chance

1 Feb 2010

(PG) 78min (HBO) There’s something to be said about a movie which doesn’t take the knee-jerk sensationalist route to making its point. And with a sensitive subject, such as the war in Iraq, you can see why Taking Chance would opt not to ramp up the…

The Fox Family

1 Feb 2010

(15) 102min (Terracotta) Manic Korean tale about a family of shape-shifting ‘kumiho’ (literally a nine-tailed fox) spirits hiding out with a circus troupe as they prepare to become human beings permanently. The chance occurs only once every thousand…

Beast Stalker

15 Jan 2010

(15) 110min (CineAsia) Dante Lam’s Hong Kong action thriller is one of those impressive genre works where the plot hurtles along but the emotional bits are on go-slow, with heavy-handed bits of sentimentsitting uneasily alongside commendably…

Greek Pete

15 Jan 2010

(18) 75min (Peccadillo) Pete (Peter Pittaros) is a young man on the make, a hustler with a nine inch appendage and a telephone patter that gets the customers banging on his Covent Garden flat door. Andrew Haigh’s film is half documentary, half…

La Grande Dadrouille

15 Jan 2010

(PG) 118min (Optimum) The principle attraction of this madcap 1966 Gallic comedy (aka Don’t Look Now – We’re Being Shot At) is the presence of British comic marvel Terry Thomas, here delivering his lines in a mix of English and badly dubbed French.

Mad Monster Party

15 Jan 2010

(U) 94min (Optimum) You can see how this 1967 stop-motion animated feature (allegedly being remade) has had an enduring influence on Tim Burton, from his most recent foray into old-school-style animation The Corpse Bride, all the way back to his…

Privilege

15 Jan 2010

(15) 99min (BFI) Long overdue high definition DVD release of Peter Watkins’ remarkable satire on the cult of celebrity. Best known for his controversial mockumentaries The War Game and Culloden and his little seen but much admired adventures in…

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

5 Jan 2010

‘The director John Maringouin first contacted me and my son Borut in 2002 after John’s wife Molly had seen a report on CNN about me swimming the Mississippi. When they found out that I was planning to swim the Amazon in 2007 to raise environmental…

Night of The Comet

5 Jan 2010

(15) 91min (Optimum) Cult classic alert! This 1985 sci-fi horror parody benefits from just the right combination of genre knowing and lightness of comic touch. Its apocalyptic storyline has the Earth pass through the path of the titular celestial…