Film, DVD and Paul Dale

DVD Box sets of work by Terence Rattigan, Andrei Tarkovsky and Danny Boyle

Abbas Kiarostami and David Leland collections also released in June

21 Jun 2011

If you are still buying DVDs in these straightened, downloaded times then you are going to want a bit of bang for your buck. Box sets are the way forward and late June and July are surprisingly full of intriguing new releases. The Terence Rattigan…

Stone and Who Loves the Sun among DVD release highlights

Featuring boxsets of Akira Kurosawa, Richard Woolley and Luis Buñuel

2 Mar 2011

Here’s what may be of interest on DVD and Blu-ray that’s coming out in March. An Unflinching Eye: The Films of Richard Woolley (BFI ●●●●) brings together the almost complete short and feature work of this overlooked British filmmaker whose films were as…

Private Road

12 Jan 2011

(15) 89min (BFI) Barney Platts-Mills’ 1971 film is undoubtedly one of the great lost British masterpieces of the 1970s. Platts-Mills was a filmmaker whose previous cult film Bronco Bullfrog had taken a knife to the frothy London set cinema of the…

A Bay of Blood

Mario Bava’s 1971 film one of the most influential and imitated horror films ever made

30 Nov 2010

(18) 80min (Arrow Video) Out of all Arrow’s lush new DVD and Blu-ray issues of films from the American and Italian masters of horror, this is the one I have been looking forward to most. I was first introduced to Mario Bava’s 1971 film by friend…

Down Home Music

30 Nov 2010

(E) (Arhoolie) In 1963 German filmmaker Dietrich Wawzyn set out to shoot a series of films for German television that took him through the southern states in search of American jazz and roots music. He asked Arhoolie Records founder Chris…

37 Uses For A Dead Sheep

22 Sep 2010

(E) 84min (Cornerstone) For the last three decades the Pamir Kirghiz have lived in exile in Turkey. In 2005, British filmmaker Ben Hopkins (Simon Magus, The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz) and a film crew arrived in their village and asked the diaspora…

While The City Sleeps

22 Sep 2010

(PG) 100min (Exposure Cinema) Legendary Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang’s 1956 newspaper world set thriller was his penultimate American film. Lang, whose mighty filmography (both sides of the Atlantic) included stellar masterworks Metropolis…

Bonded By Blood

Solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick

25 Aug 2010

(15) 100min Second attempt (see 2000’s Essex Boys) to dramatise the events that led up to the murders of drug dealers Tony Tucker, Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe in 1995 in Rettendon in Essex. Decent, solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

23 Jul 2010

(12) 106min (Network) Gifted and celebrated Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly) threw caution to the wind and hung his reputation on the line in the making of this freewheeling semi-documentary about…

Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage)

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 72min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Previously unavailable on DVD, René Laloux’s 1973 animated sci-fi feature is a startling rediscovery. Based on Stefan Wul’s 1957 novel Oms by the Dozen, Laloux’s extraordinary film is a kind of Swiftian…

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People

7 Jul 2010

(18) 94min (Peccadillo) A new film from Bruce La Bruce – queer cinema’s very own Andreas Baader – is always something to celebrate and Otto, his first foray proper into the horror genre, doesn’t disappoint. Amnesiac zombie Otto (Jey Crisfar) hitches…

The Unpolished

7 Jul 2010

(15) 95min (Second Run) Overdue DVD release of Pia Marais’ hot 2007 festival film, which never found a home, until now, on UK screens, large or small. A sensitive and thought-provoking re-evaluation of the counter cultural dream, Pia Marais…

One Continuous Take/The Kay Mader Story

24 Jun 2010

(E) 253min (Panamint) This fascinating two disc set revisits and attempts to revive interest in pioneering and innovative documentarian Kay Mander. The first disc is taken up with Dr Adele Carroll’s 2001 film One Continuous Take featuring Kay…

The Garden

21 Jun 2010

(E) 77min (Dogwoof) Possibly the first film about guerilla gardening, Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s engrossing 2008 film tells a remarkable true story about born out of insurrection. In the aftermath of the 1992 LA riots, there suddenly appeared a…

Lizard In A Woman’s Skin

28 May 2010

(18) 103min (Optimum) After years of neglect and abuse, Italian horror puck Lucio Fulci’s controversial 1971 Freudian horror returns fully restored on a lovely new print and transfer. Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (which was butchered and released in…

Flickers

28 May 2010

(12) 300min (Network) Made for British television in 1980 and starring the then bankable pairing of Bob Hoskins (between Pennies from Heaven and The Long Good Friday) and Frances De La Tour (fresh from the set of hit comedy Rising Damp) this…

World on a Wire

18 May 2010

(15) 204min (Second Sight) What a beautiful world we live in. This is the restored, pristine digital print of little seen two-part 1973 German TV sci-fi drama directed by the great Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Even better it turns out it’s actually a…

We Live in Public

18 May 2010

(15) 89min (Dogwoof) Sundance favourite Ondi Dig! Timoner’s documentary unearths a very curious piece of recent cultural and media history. Josh Harris was the internet pioneer during the dot.com boom of the 1990s, he set up Pseudo.com - the first…

Van Dieman's Land

18 May 2010

(15) 100min (High Fliers) Why writer-director Jonathan auf der Heide superb film (arguably one of the best films screened at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival) is going straight to DVD in this country is a mystery. A lyrical and…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Treasure Island

5 Jan 2010

(PG) 86min (HBF) Robert Louis Stevenson’s 19th century tale of peg-legged pirates, treasure maps and derring-do has been surprisingly ill served by cinema. Countless Disney adaptations aside, this 1971 Russian version and Chilean filmmaker Raoul…

Best DVD releases of 2009

17 Dec 2009

Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle His satanic majesty’s maddest and most brilliant experimental filmworks in extras heavy set. Boom! Bizarre 1968 Tennessee Williams adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and directed by the…