MovieMail July 2010 Film Catalogue by MovieMail

About MovieMail Moviemail Team Q. The welcome release of the 1970s drama Clayhanger (see page 20) makes this month’s question: ‘which unreleased TV series would you like to see available?’

It’s our fourteenth anniversary but the idea stays the same – to share interesting films and to celebrate one of the world’s great communal art forms.

The Power of Nightmares (Curtis, 2004)

Thousands of DVDs are released every month; we select the best and most worthwhile and let you know about them – in our monthly film catalogue, on our website, in email newsletters and in the podcast.

Graeme Hobbs

The Monthly Film Catalogue

Dan Hunter Editor

Writer Ways of Seeing (Berger, Dibb et al, 1972)

Becky Smith Buyer

Here we present the best new DVD releases from a wide range of genres to bring great films, documentaries and TV programmes to your attention in an easily digested format. Those films and directors we particularly recommend are highlighted with longer reviews and features.

Lipstick on Your Collar (Rye, 1993)

Rena Markogiannaki

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Accounts Administrator Animaniacs (1993)

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Plus Alan Hunter The Brothers (1972)

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

MovieMail News

ast month we printed a small reminder that we sell a far greater range of films than can be fitted into the monthly catalogue. We had a huge number of responses so do remember that we can supply any title in print in the UK - a list that currently nudges 60,000 titles or thereabouts. So if you have any queries, do get in touch (or, if you have access, just use the search facility on our website). New releases of fondlyremembered programmes are coming out all the time – Testament of Youth and Wessex Tales come to mind – so it’s always worth checking, though the answers to this month’s question will give you a starter’s list of what is

Film of the Month 5 Samson & Delilah Lourdes Le Grand Jeu Father of My Children

Classic Movies unfortunately not currently available!

Sammy Going South Diana Dors Double Bill

Documentaries

Finally, we recently had the opportunity to interview the actor Simon Callow, who we were delighted to find is a long-time customer of MovieMail – see page 21.

Kay Mander No Greater Love

Enjoy your films,

Wessex Tales Simon Callow Interview

Stage

(Freaks and Geeks) Peter is the co-author of Before the Rain and the editor of The Flash, Perverted by Language: Fiction Inspired by The Fall, The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth and Paint a Vulgar Picture: Fiction Inspired by The Smiths. He writes the Bookmunch blog (http://bookmunch.wordpress.com) when he isn’t fashioning the new TiVo Times column for Moviemail.

to Crime Fiction. Mike McCahill (Holding On) writes on film for The Sunday Telegraph. James Oliver (Ken Loach’s Days of Hope) is a freelance film writer.

Rick Burin (Alfonso Bonzo) Go to advicetothelovelorn.blogspot.com

David Parkinson (Royal Heritage) is a film critic and historian.

Alex Davidson (The Cops) develops content for the BFI mediatheque.

Nick Riddle (The Shock of the New) is an editor at Bristol University.

Barry Forshaw (The Outer Limits) wrote British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and The Rough Guide

Julian Upton (Lou Grant) wrote Fallen Stars. Offbeat is due out in 2011.

Royal Opera House

Television

Contemporary A. Shoulder to Shoulder (1974)

Peter Wild

Michael Brooke (Ken Russell: The Monitor Years) is Screenonline Curator, BFI National Archive.

World Cinema

Contributors

Mike Bartlett (West Country Tales) contrbutes to BFI’s Screenonline.

Contents

The Last Station Double Take

From the Cheap Seats

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Special Offers Artificial Eye Sale Vintage British Cinema Sale

9 15

Summer Holidays Sale 16-17 The films of Dame Maggie Smith 25

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Current Top 10 Chart

1 A Prophet

Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is without doubt one of the best films of recent years. A young man (played superbly by first time actor Tahar Rahim) enters the French prison system and is shaped by his experiences there.

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France | 2009 | OPTIM | 149 min | subt | Cert 18 | # 61340 | RRP £19.99

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2 A Single Man

Renowned fashion designer Tom Ford’s film is an elegant work featuring a BAFTA-winning performance from Colin Firth who stars as George Falconer, a middle-aged English professor grieving the recent death of his long-time partner. USA | 2009 | ICON | 100 min | Cert 15 | # 61688 | RRP £19.99

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3 The Last Station

A historical drama starring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, The Last Station is based on the final chapter in the life of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Plummer stars as the famous writer who is nearing the end of his life. Germany | 2009 | OPTIM | 112 min | Cert 15 | # 61445 | RRP £17.99

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4 Sammy Going South

After an air raid in kills his parents, Sammy is left alone in colonial Africa. He defiantly sets out from Egypt to find his Aunt at the other end of the continent. Vividly evocative of a world long gone, Sammy Going South is a lesser-known film from the brilliant career of Alexander Mackendrick.

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Key to MovieMail Recommended

Recommended by MovieMail is a collection of the very best DVDs. Visit www.moviemail-online.co.uk/recommended for the full archive

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UK | 1963 | OPTIM | 118 min | Cert PG | # 60742 | RRP £15.99

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5 The Beekeeper

and 8 Samson Delilah

6 Lourdes

9 Youth

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Reader Feedback We were delighted to receive a website review of this month’s highlight in the classic section, Sammy Going South, by none other than the child strar of the film himself, Fergus McLelland, who writes: ‘at the time, aged 11, I didn’t have any idea of the subtlety of what Sandy MacKendrick was asking me to do. Some shots were heavily coached by him, others, he went over the wording with me and discussed what Sammy would be feeling like, in his view. I did the rest ... The film has a brooding presence ... very motivational, and very picturesque.’ He adds, ‘I can’t wait to see it again after so long!’ For all enquiries, comments and interesting snippets, do email us at feedback@moviemail-online.co.uk or send us a postcard.

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Names of the Month: André Dussollier, Leslie Dwyer, Kay Mander

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

MovieMail’s Film of the Month

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Also on Blu-ray Samson and Delilah Australia | 2009 | TRNTY | 101 min | Cert 15 | # 61798 | RRP £19.99

Blu-ray Price: £12.99

See Also Ten Canoes

de Heer / Djigirr Australia | 2006 | UN | 87 min | subt | Cert 15 | # 50171 | RRP £15.99

Our DVD Price: £5.99

Walkabout

Nicolas Roeg UK | 1970 | UCA | 96 min | Cert 12 | # 6118 | RRP £9.99

Our DVD Price: £8.99

he heroes of Samson & Delilah – two Aboriginal teenagers bored beyond belief in a quiet outback community – don’t appear immediately biblical. With their respective parents either dead, disinterested, or behind bars, Delilah (Marissa Gibson) tends to her ageing grandmother, while the larkier Samson (Rowan McNamara) spends his days huffing petrol fumes. Still, like all young lovers, they have music and hope in their hearts. The opportunity – and need – to leave soon presents itself; yet, alas, the city, in Warwick Thornton’s striking debut, is not the paradise they came looking for. Set against Ten Canoes, 2007’s altogether gabbier evocation of the Aboriginal storytelling experience, Thornton’s film, winner of the 2009 Cannes Camera d’Or and effusive praise upon its UK release earlier this year, operates wordlessly and stealthily. Scarcely one sentence passes between the leads, rather loaded looks and glances. A gallery owner’s abrupt ‘not interested’ speaks for the marginalisation of an entire people, the camera noting in passing the high price indigenous art goes for these days, and the pittance white Australia is

A striking debut that fuses the mythic and the contemporary willing to pay to the artists. Yet Thornton has as much to say about the Aboriginal community’s own shortcomings. This is the story of two youngsters who’ve been left without the means – not just the money, but the language and the self-belief – to mediate between themselves and the wider world: Samson, adrift on a solvent haze, simply doesn’t notice when his travelling companion is bundled away by a pair of passing yahoos. Thornton is alert to his characters’ plights, and their extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness: though their trajectory skirts hopelessness and despair, they finally arrive, against all odds, at their personal promised land. An odyssey in the truest sense, it’s an often bruising experience, yet – pushed onwards by exceptionally expressive central performances – it is both vivid and compelling in its fusion of mythic and contemporary elements. Mike McCahill

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World Cinema Films in a Foreign Language

Good Little Girls

New Releases

Jean-Claude Roy

1970s French erotica. Aristocratic teenage sisters Camille and Madeline, encouraged by their libertarian mother, look forward to a long hot summer of sexual awakening. When they rescue young Marguerite from a car accident, they find a willing companion...

Axis of War: Night Raid An Lan

The final part of the action-filled Chinese Axis of War trilogy. July 1937, and the Japanese troops are advancing through China. Then a regiment discovers a secret Japanese airfield in the hills, and – outnumbered and poorly equipped – map out a plan of attack. China | 2007 | MET-D | 85 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 62056 | RRP £15.99 | Released 5th July

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The Headless Woman Lucrecia Martel

Sex, sadism, perversity and dark satanic rituals are all part of the wicked brew in this collection of 1970s Eurosleaze. Contains Black Magic Rites (Polselli, 1973), Nude for Satan (Batzella, 1974) and Satan’s Blood (Puerto, 1978).

This third film from Martel (La niña santa) is an intriguing tale of a woman who thinks she has run over something or someone when driving alone on a dirt road. Even though police confirm there were no accidents in the area, her fears find her estranged from her society. An examination of the intricacies of class status and the role of women in a male-dominated society.

Our DVD Price: £12.99

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A Box of Black Magic

Argentina / France / Spain | 2008 | NW | 87 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 62012 | RRP £19.99 | Released 12th July

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Hotel

Breath

Jessica Hausner

Kim Ki-duk A death row convict is left mute after trying to hasten his own death; a housewife hears of the incident on the news and leaves her ostensibly stable life to meet him. In prison, the pair begin a healing process in the face of the implacable judgement on the condemned.

When Irene takes a position at a hotel deep in the Alps, she finds that the girl she replaced vanished mysteriously and begins to fear she is in danger. A disturbing journey through mystery and anguish reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. From the director of Lourdes.

Our DVD Price: £12.74

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Hungarian Masters Collection

Chiko

Ozgur Yildirim Gritty drama set in suburban Hamburg where two Turkish immigrants dream of money and respect – attributes local drug lord Brownie (Moritz Bleibtreu) seems to possess. As they do all they can to win his favour, they are drawn into an underworld where drugs rule and life is cheap. Germany | 2008 | E1 | 88 min | subt | Cert 18 Item # 61851 | RRP £12.99 | Released 28th June

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Three haunting and evocative films from Hungarian cinema’s most renowned filmmakers: My Way Home (Miklós Jancsó, 1964), Love (Károly Makk, 1971), and Diary for My Children (Márta 3 Meszáros, 1982). discs; Booklets.

Hungary | 1964-82 | 2RUN | 285 min | subt | Cert 12 Item # 61790 | RRP £24.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £17.99

Complex and uncompromising, cinematic and literary, acerbic and compassionate, Alain Resnais rivals JeanLuc Godard as the most challenging filmmaker of the nouvelle vague. No-one else could have produced the four films in this 1980s selection. A treatise on individuality, imposition and imagination, Life Is a Bed of Roses is a fantasy that slips between the 1910s and the present to explore the attainment of happiness. With characters occasionally bursting into song, it offers a very different insight into life-changing experiences to Love Unto Death, which sees Lutherans Fanny Ardant and André Dussollier attempt to revise an atheist couple’s attitudes to the afterlife. The air of filmic theatricality is more pronounced in Mélo, in which Resnais recounts the chronicle of a young flapper’s intensifying feelings for a womanising violinist. By contrast, I Want to Go Home is a teasing sketch on artistic value and middlebrow pretension which includes animated sequences to comment on an American cartoonist’s Parisian sojourn with his daughter, confirming that the unexpected is the only thing to expect from a Resnais picture. DP

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Lourdes Recommended Director: Jessica Hausner Starring: Sylvie Testud, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn, Léa Seydoux Released: 12th July DVD Extras: TBC Austria / France / Germany | 2009 | ART-E | 99 min | Cert U | Item # 62031 | P&P £1

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Also on Blu-ray Lourdes

Jessica Hausner France / Germany | 2009 | ART-E | 99 min | subt | Cert U | # 62032 | RRP £19.99

Our Blu-ray Price: £12.99

See Also Aki Kaurismäki Collection (Vol 1)

Contains: Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Finland | 1986-1990 | ART-E | 211 min | Cert 15 | # 50238 | RRP £29.99

Our DVD Price: £25.99

The Song of Bernadette Henry King

USA | 1943 | FOX | 156 min | B&W | Cert U | # 22000 | RRP £12.99

Our DVD Price: £11.99

eservedly one of the big critical hits of 2010, Jessica Hausner’s exquisitely nuanced comedy of manners takes on the perilously high-wire task of offering a sardonic commentary on the tourist-trap excesses of the famous French miracle-town of Lourdes, while at the same time maintaining a completely open mind as to the efficacy and indeed existence of the medically inexplicable cures that are said to happen there. A group of visitors, or ‘pilgrims’, many in wheelchairs (including Sylvie Testud’s nearparalysed MS sufferer Christine), arrive at the start, and are immediately herded into a series of numbingly repetitive routines by volunteers from the Order of Malta. Their stern-faced leader Cécile (Hal Hartley’s former muse Elina Löwensohn) keeps a beady eye on things, chiding her charges (pilgrim and volunteer alike) for making inappropriate jokes, over-enthusiastically jumping queues, pursuing romantic liaisons or doing anything else that might undermine the sanctity of the place – never mind that her own purist stance is constantly undermined by the proliferation of shops selling tacky Virgin Mary effigies or the fact that the local priests seem altogether more worldly and sceptical than their calling might suggest.

An exquisitely nuanced comedy and one of the big critical hits of 2010 Naturally, any tension between visitors, volunteers and Lourdes authorities is always expressed in the politest of ways, presumably lest God observe, disapprove and withhold a planned miracle as punishment. But when a cure does eventually manifest itself, does its recipient ‘deserve’ it when, for instance, a younger pilgrim might have more of a future? And what would be the appropriate reaction to something that even the Lourdes authorities admit is unprecedented? These and other moral, medical and spiritual dilemmas are explored through a series of low-key encounters that recall the similarly droll work of Aki Kaurismäki, with some terrific sight gags casually set up in the background or right at the edge of an immaculately-composed frame. Not least amongst Hausner’s achievements is the fact that believers, agnostics and atheists might well end up convinced that they’ve watched a completely different film – but they should all be equally impressed. Michael Brooke

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World Cinema The Island

Micmacs

Pavel Lungin

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Regarded as a contemporary Russian masterpiece, this beautifully filmed work of spiritual cinema sees an orthodox monk, Father Anatoly, live uneasily with the other monks, his bizarre conduct at odds with his healing powers. Then an admiral arrives with his daughter, whom he believes to be possessed by demons, and Anatoly’s troubled past returns to haunt him. Russia | 2006 | ART-E | 112 min | subt | Cert PG Item # 61818 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

Mulan

Knife in the Water

Jingle Ma

Roman Polanski

Brilliantly written by Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski, and with a soundtrack from jazz pianist Krzysztof Komeda, this tense and claustrophobic thriller of male power games and suppressed eroticism sees a couple on a yachting weekend pick up a youthful hitch-hiker.

Karan Johar

The Leopard (Blu-ray) Luchino Visconti

Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon star in this dramatic story of social turbulence in revolutionary times. This gorgeous evocation of an era is beautifully photographed, designed and costumed, and glitters with superb set pieces. An absolute visual feast. Commentary; Claudia Cardinale Interview.

Jessica Hausner

The directorial debut from Hausner (Lourdes), presents the story of a willful teenager whose sexual awakening leads her to intimacy with a young schoolboy and an older man, but whose efforts to break out of her claustrophobic enviroment isolate her even more. Austria | 2001 | ART-E | 79 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 62028 | RRP £15.99 | Released 12th July

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My Name is Khan

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Lovely Rita

Zhao Wei stars in this epic story of the Chinese girl-warrior who defies tradition by joining the army disguised as a boy. As the war drags on her bravery finds her leading thousands into battle. Making-of; Interviews.

DVD Price: £12.99 Blu-ray: £17.99

Poland | 1962 | ODEON | 94 min | Cert PG Item # 61359 | RRP £17.99 | Released 21st June

Blu-ray Price: £12.99 DVD: £15.99

France | 2009 | E1 | 105 min | subt | Cert 12 Item # 61852 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

DVD Price: £11.99 Blu-ray: £15.99

Our DVD Price: £10.99

Italy / France | 1963 | BFI | 185 min | subt | Cert PG Item # 61366 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

Dany Boon plays a man who is hit in the head by a stray bullet and joins some fellow misfits – an elastic woman and the human cannonball world record holder among them – on a quest to bring down France’s two biggest arms dealers. Typically unbridled fare from the director of Delicatessen.

Bollywood drama based on a true story. Shahrukh Khan stars as a Muslim with Asperger’s syndrome who moves to America, where in the post 9/11 climate he is detained by the authorities, who mistake his disorder for suspicious behaviour. India | 2010 | FOX | 161 min | 12 Item # 61893 | RRP £15.99 | Released 28th June

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Profound Desires of the Gods (Blu-ray) Shohei Imamura

The legendary culmination of Imamura’s examinations of the fringes of Japanese society, this extraordinary film, characterised by spectacular colour ‘Scope photography, presents a chronicle of life on a remote island where a Tokyo engineer has been sent to supervise the drilling Beautiful high-definition of a new well. transfer; Video introduction by Tony Rayns; Extensive booklet. Japan | 1968 | EUREK | 173 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 62101 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

Our Blu-ray Price: £12.99

Eric Rohmer: Six Moral Tales Recommended Contains: Suzanne’s Career, The Girl at the Monceau Bakery, My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, La Collectionneuse and Love in the Afternoon. Released: 7th June DVD Extras: 5 discs; Rohmer’s short films Nadja à Paris (1964) and Charlotte et son steak (1960). France | 1963-70 | ART-E | 362 min | subt | Cert 15 | Item # 61401 | P&P £2.50

In his later years, Eric Rohmer was renowned for intuitive insights into the conflicted emotions of garrulous young women caught between naivety and caprice. However, the confused protagonists in Moral Tales are all men and most of them should know better, as they allow fleeting fixations to tempt them towards potentially ruinous indiscretion. The students in The Baker of Monceau and Suzanne’s Career can be forgiven their juvenile folly. But art dealer Patrick Bauchau in La Collectionneuse, Catholic engineer Jean-Louis Trintignant in My Night at Maud’s, affianced diplomat JeanClaude Brialy in Claire’s Knee and married lawyer Bernard Varley in Love in the Afternoon are victims of their own psychological, sexual and ethical fragility, as they contemplate the consequences of acting upon impulse and repenting at leisure. Impeccably photographed by Néstor Almendros, this teasing, erudite quartet proves Rohmer to have been a deceptively daring, modern and compassionate filmmaker. DP

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The best DVDs from

Artificial Eye

HUGE SAVINGS ON GREAT dvdS

Artificial Eye is the cornerstone of world cinema in the UK, with a long history of making the finest foreign language films available to enjoy. For this sale we’ve selected 27 of our favourites and lowered the prices to bargain levels! Katalin Varga

Times and Winds

The White Ribbon

Peter Strickland

Reha Erdem

Michael Haneke

An amazing directorial debut from British filmmaker Strickland, this darkly atmospheric thriller set in rural Romania is based on a traditional Transylvanian ballad in which a woman seeks to right a past wrong.

An intimate and moving portrait of the pleasures and frustrations of life in a poor Turkish village, where villagers live according to the cycle of the seasons and the call to prayer.

Filmed in luminous monochrome reminiscent of Dreyer, this study of a village in 1913 shows the underlying currents that went to shape 20th century Germany. The Palme d’Or winner at Cannes in 2009.

Romania | 2009 | ART-E | 82 min | subt | 15 | # 60471 | RRP £15.99

Turkey | 2006 | ART-E | 110 min | subt | Cert 15 | # 56344 | RRP £19.99

Austria | 2009 | ART-E | 144 min | subt | B&W | 15 | # 60951 | £15.99

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Agnès Varda: Vol 2

The Apu Trilogy

Couscous

Contains Vagabond (1985), Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Beaches of Agnes (2008) and L’Une Chante, L’Autre Pas (1977). 4 discs.

Ray’s finest achievement in film, with each part of the trilogy a masterpiece. Contains Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu.

Dir: Abdel Kechiche. A richly-characterised and affectionate film in which a sixty year old man dreams of founding his own restaurant.

France | 2008 | ART-E | subt | Cert 18 | # 60476 | RRP £39.99

India | 1955-59 | ART-E | subt | B&W | Cert U | # 12274 | RRP £49.99

France | 2007 | ART-E | 151 min | subt | 15 | # 56136 | RRP £19.99

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Dekalog: Vols 1 & 2

The Class

Waltz with Bashir

Dir: Krzysztof Kieslowski. All ten of Kieslowski’s brilliant hour-long films based on the Ten Commandments, across two volumes. 2 discs each

Dir: Laurent Cantet. A sharplyobserved film set in a tough inner city Parisian school. The Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, 2008. 2 discs.

Dir: Ari Folman. A powerfully animated documentary in which Israeli filmmaker Folman faces up to his past as a teenage soldier.

Poland | 1988 | ART-E | subt | Cert 15 | # 9698 | RRP £24.99

France | 2008 | ART-E | 128 min | subt | 15 | # 57978 | RRP £19.99

Israel | 2008 | ART-E | 90 min | subt | Cert 18 | # 57258 | RRP £15.99

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Ashik Kerib DVD £6.99

Fantômas DVD £9.99

Koktebel DVD £6.99

Russian Ark DVD £6.99

Satyajit Ray Box Set (Vol 1) DVD £17.99

A Man Escaped DVD £6.99

Birdwatchers DVD £6.99

Heimat 3 DVD £39.99

L'Argent (Bresson) DVD £6.99

Sátántangó DVD £9.99

Three Colours Trilogy DVD £17.99

Antichrist DVD £7.99

Être et Avoir DVD £6.99

Hidden DVD £6.99

Mother and Son DVD £6.99

The Chess Players DVD £6.99

Uzak DVD £6.99

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4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days DVD £6.99

World Cinema She, a Chinese Xiaolu Guo

The story of Mei, a young woman on a journey from her native village in China, through city life in Chongqing, and then on, illegally, to London, where a heady combination of alienation and freedom draw her into a new kind of entrapment as she searches for a place to belong. UK / Germany / France | 2009 | OPTIM | 98 min | Cert 18 Item # 61545 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £10.99

The Unpolished Pia Marais

A study of a girl caught up in a complicated adult world, this assured debut sees a wild, intelligent 14 year-old coping with the instabilities of her hippie parents. Delineating the fall-out from a counterculture gone bad, what shines through is the resourcefulness of a girl who deserves better. Humanist filmmaking of the highest order. Germany | 2007 | 2RUN | 95 min | subt | Cert Item # 62030 | RRP £12.99 | Released 12th July

Our DVD Price: £9.99

Wild Target

Pierre Salvadori

One of the standout French comedies of the 90s (and now the subject of a British remake with Bill Nighy), this wickedly funny crime caper stars a deadpan Jean Rochefort as Victor, a middle-aged assassin who ends up on the run with the unlikely accomplices of a naive apprentice and a glamorous art forger. France | 1992 | 2ND | 97 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 62170 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £13.99

Pre-ordering from MovieMail If you see a DVD listed here that you want but is due for release sometime in the future, you’re welcome to pre-order it from us. It will be delivered to you on, or shortly after, the release date with your card being charged only on despatch of the DVD. Page 10

Heimat Finally available once again, parts 1 and 2 of Edgar Reitz’s landmark TV series, renowned throughout the world. For part 3, see page 9.

Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany

The first part of Edgar Reitz’s TV masterpiece Heimat (Homeland) is a staggering narrative achievement. Detailing the saga of a German family from the end of world war I, it has epic sweep, intimate drama, grandiose ambition and emotional resonance. It began when Reitz watched the US miniseries Holocaust on television. Despondent at its melodramatisisation of tragic events, and offended to ‘see German history reduced to the level of fiction in an American film studio,’ he began working on a film to correct these false impressions. The result was this feature. Although it provoked some angry domestic responses for its perceived glossing over of the crimes committed in the nation’s name, Heimat was lauded by international critics and became a must-see series. Do not be put off by its massive length – the film is worth each and every one of the 924 minutes it takes of your time, and it remains a landmark in European 6 discs. TV history. Germany | 1984 | 2ND | 924 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 61920 | RRP £69.99 | Released 21st June

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Heimat 2: Chronicle of a Generation

Taking up where the first series left off, Heimat 2 focuses on the exploits of young Hermann during the 1960s. Reitz describes the series as a journey to ‘that place which we, as adults, find: the place we choose of our own free will and which we call our second home’. Over 25 hours in length, it equalled the monumental achievement of his original masterpiece. Its 13 episodes introduce us to 71 principal characters, whose freewheeling interaction touches on many of the key social, political and cultural issues that helped define the 1960s. But, despite its epic scale, this chronicle of country boy Hermann Simon’s turbulent decade in the big city has the intimacy of a novel, in which each chapter explores a facet of a cold war Germany coming 7 discs. to terms with its Fascist past. Germany | 1992 | 2ND | 1530 min | subt | Cert 15 Item # 61921 | RRP £69.99 | Released 21st June

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Displaying an audacity and incredible maturity for a director still in her 20s, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Father of My Children (which she also scripted), follows a producer of arthouse films who is struggling to stay afloat as his projects threaten to drain his finances. Reluctant to sell his catalogue yet desperate to enable the vision of the talented directors he promotes, his desperation threatens to scupper his relationship with his family. Hansen-Løve based her story on the late Humbert Balsan, the legendary producer who funded extraordinary work by, among others, Lars von Trier, Claire Denis and Béla Tarr. Louis-Do de Lencquesaing gives a brilliant performance as the charismatic producer, whose films seem as important to him as his children (the title could refer to him as both family patriarch and a nurturer of talent). Charged with excitement for the power of cinema and the challenges of encouraging funds without compromising artistic vision, Father of My Children is worthy of comparison to other great movies about filmmaking, such as Truffaut’s Day for Night and Robert Altman’s The Player. AD

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Le Grand Jeu Recommended Director: Jacques Feyder Starring: Pierre RichardWillm, Marie Bell, Françoise Rosay, Charles Vanel Released: 21st June DVD Extras: New transfer officially licensed from Pathé’s film restoration; Booklet with essays, newly translated writings by Jacques Feyder and production stills. France | 1934 | EUREK | 110 min | subt | B&W | Cert PG | Item # 62059 | P&P £1

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See Also La Kermesse Héroïque Jacques Feyder

France | 1935 | BFI | 109 min | subt | B&W | Cert 12 | # 18826 | RRP £15.99

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Pépé le Moko Julien Duvivier

France | 1937 | OPTIM | 90 min | subt | B&W | Cert PG | # 19657 | RRP £19.99

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Vertigo (50th Anniversary)

Alfred Hitchcock USA | 1958 | UPV | 124 min | Cert 15 | # 55898 | RRP £15.99

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f all the great French filmmakers of the 1930s, none is so unfairly overlooked as Jacques Feyder. While acclamation for the likes of Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir has never abated, Feyder is remembered almost exclusively for his delightful film, La Kermesse Héroïque. But there was much more to him than that, as this welcome rediscovery shows. Young Pierre (Pierre Richard-Willm) is a wealthy playboy – but not wealthy enough to keep his girlfriend Florence (Marie Bell) in the manner to which she is accustomed. When he is found to have embezzled from the family firm, he takes the only career path open to a disgraced young man: he joins the Foreign Legion. But he is still not over Florence and when he sees a young prostitute who is her exact double, he becomes infatuated. The young woman – who calls herself Irma – has no memory of her past. Could she, in fact, be Florence? Or is she just another desert mirage? Awash with regret, fatalism and l’amour fou, Le Grand Jeu (and what a cynical title that is! – ‘The Great Game’ indeed) was a film ahead of its time, anticipating the pessimism which would come to dominate French film as war inched closer. From the

A marvellous discovery from the golden age of French cinema unfortunate, love-blind Pierre to his confidante, the world-weary barmaid Blanche (played by Feyder’s wife, Françoise Rosay), these are lost souls, trapped in a purgatory they can never fully escape. Just because it tackles a downbeat subject however, does not make the film a downer. Like all the best French films of that belle époque, it’s a film that celebrates cinema’s wonderful possibilities. Feyder’s camera is more fluid than even that of Renoir at this time, roaming around his sets in extended takes and using careful framing that is far more eloquent than mere words. It says much of the overall quality of French cinema of the period that Le Grand Jeu was allowed to sink into unjust obscurity; we should be grateful to Masters of Cinema for alerting us to this impressive film. It’s to be hoped more Feyder films will follow. If they’re as good as this one, he certainly won’t be overlooked for much longer. James Oliver

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Page 11

Classic Movies English Language Films, 1930 - 1969

New Releases Barbados Quest / I’m a Stranger

Bernard Knowles / Brock Williams Double bill of classic British 1950s crime films. In Barbados Quest, an avid stamp collector hires a detective to track down the source of some high quality forgeries, while I’m a Stranger sees a man arrives from India to claim a sizeable inheritance – but is he all he seems? UK | 1952-55 | ODEON | 125 min | Cert PG Item # 57444 | RRP £12.99 | Released Out Now

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Lewis Gilbert

A medical thriller about a police inspector’s frantic search for a donor with a rare blood type willing to save a young girl’s life. Anthony Steel’s chief surgeon, and Jack Warner’s Scotland Yard’s Inspector launch a nationwide hunt to save a life. UK | 1952 | RENOWN | 87 min | | Cert PG Item # 62376 | RRP £12.99 | Released 21st June

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The Iron Mask Allan Dwan

The last silent film to star Douglas Fairbanks, and ‘the last silent swashbuckler’, in which Count de Rochefort hatches a plot to exchange King Louis XIII’s secret twins for his own nefarious gains. Narrated by Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. USA | 1929 | EHE | 72 min | Cert U Item # 61874 | RRP £5.99 | Released 19th April

Landfall

Ken Annakin WWII drama starring Michael Denison as an RAF pilot who sinks a British submarine during a bombing raid. Disgraced, he turns to a sympathetic barmaid, who helps him to get to the bottom of his ‘fatal error’ and so clear his name. UK | 1949 | OPTIM | 86 min | Cert PG Item # 60754 | RRP £15.99 | Released 12th July

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Page 12

Recommended Director: Franklin J. Schaffner Starring: Charlton Heston, Rosemary Forsyth

Diana Dors Double Bill Recommended

Released: 21st June

Contains: My Wife’s Lodger (1952); Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953)

DVD Extras: New anamorphic digital transfer; Optional music & effects track; Original trailer.

Director: Maurice Elvey

USA | 1965 | EUREK | 116 min | Cert PG | Item # 62165 | P&P £1

Emergency Call

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The War Lord

Norman war lord Charlton Heston is sent by Duke William of Ghent to keep a group of marsh-dwelling peasants in order, while protecting them from Frisian raiders. Instead, he falls for a blue-eyed pig farmer betrothed to one of his subjects, and all hell breaks loose. Schaffner’s ambitious and absorbing medieval drama is a genuinely unusual piece of work, with a rich period flavour and an intriguing plot. Blessed with spectacular Panavision cinematography by Russell Metty and a breathtaking score from Jerome Moross, the film also sees Schaffner coax great performances from Guy Stockwell, as Heston’s brooding brother, and Richard Boone, underplaying to maximum effect as the lord’s trusted lieutenant. The War Lord is a marvellouslyphotographed historical drama: offbeat, satisfying and packed with expertly-paced action sequences that appear utterly authentic. There’s also a chance for Heston fans to hear him anticipate the most famous line of his career, complaining to Stockwell that he’s sick of ‘that damned dirty armour’. RB

Released: 21st June DVD Extras: Illustrated booklet with film notes. UK | 1952-53 | BFI | 152 min | B&W | Cert PG | Item # 61353 | P&P £1.50

Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? and My Wife’s Lodger feature very early performances from Diana Dors, and she stands out now as the best thing in both, poised and peroxide at 21 and demonstrating a comic versatility that wasn’t to reemerge until her glam days were well behind her. In the former, a frenetic bedroom farce, she holds her own among a troupe of accomplished performers (Bonar Colleano, David Tomlinson, Sid James) as the trampy ex-wife of a US serviceman who finds himself a new spouse – only to find he might still be married to the old one. In My Wife’s Lodger, she steals her scenes as the headstrong teenage daughter of demobbed Willie Higginbotham (lugubrious music hall turn Dominic Roche), who comes back ‘oop north’ after six years’ service to find himself cuckolded in his own house by Roger the Lodger (an impressively sleazy Leslie Dwyer). A treat for Dors fans (she even gives us a song), this double bill will also delight fervid collectors of long-forgotten British B-movies. JU

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Sammy Going South Recommended Director: Alexander Mackendrick Starring: Fergus McClelland, Edward G. Robinson, Zia Mohyeddin, Harry H. Corbett, Constance Cummings Released: 28th June DVD Extras: Digitally Restored; New interviews with Fergus McLelland and James Mangold, colleague of Alexander Mackendrick. UK | 1963 | OPTIM | 118 min | Cert PG | Item # 60742 | P&P £1

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See Also Koktebel

Boris Khlebnikov Russia | 2003 | ART-E | 102 min | subt | Cert 12 | # 21859 | RRP £19.99

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The Overlanders Harry Watt

Australia / UK | 1946 | OPTIM | 91 min | B&W | Cert U | # 56946 | RRP £15.99

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Rabbit Proof Fence Phillip Noyce

Australia | 2002 | BUENA | 89 min | Cert PG | # 15097 | RRP £17.99

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hen 10-year-old English boy Sammy Hartland’s parents are killed in a raid on Port Said during the Suez Crisis, the newly-orphaned boy, armed only with a tiny compass, starts a journey on foot to find his aunt in Durban, South Africa, some 5000 miles away. And so begins a series of picaresque adventures, seen almost exclusively from Sammy’s point of view, which range from the deathly dangerous to the unusually propitious – and back again. In the hands of former Ealing director Alexander Mackendrick, Sammy Going South amounts to more than just an exotic, late colonial era Boy’s Own yarn (although this it is, too). Sammy is thrown into some dicey situations, a couple of them decidedly unsavoury (early on in the proceedings a Syrian pedlar betrays an interest in him that is somewhat outside the remit of a Boy’s Own story); the result is that he changes very quickly from innocent, rosy-cheeked cherub to stoic, vigilant adventurer, trusting no-one and wriggling out of any perceived danger with the agility of a snake. Sammy’s lack of sentimentality is refreshing in a film that centres on a child, but it isn’t without a heart, or indeed a sense of humour. When the young protagonist

An undiscovered Ealing gem of a boy’s travels across Africa meets ageing diamond smuggler Cocky Wainwright (Edward G. Robinson), the two form an unlikely bond that develops into a touching and believable surrogate fatherson relationship. And in these scenes both actors shine. Fergus McLelland is quietly affecting as Sammy, his understated reactions conveying what seems a precocious grasp of screen acting (it’s a shame he won no further leading film roles); the great Robinson, gnarled and grizzled but wise and sturdy, gives one of the subtlest performances of his later career. As you’d expect from a film with solid Ealing credentials (it was made by Bryanston, the company headed by Michael Balcon after Ealing’s demise), Sammy Going South unfolds with polish and precision, and looks magnificent (cinematographer Erwin Hillier captures the Kenyan and Ugandan locations beautifully). Moreover, it’s all good, character-building stuff. Not surprisingly, then, it was chosen for 1963’s Royal Film Performance. Julian Upton

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Page 13

Classic Movies Documentaries Stage Marilyn / Stock Car

Royal Opera House

Wolf Rilla

Two films from Wolf Rilla, comprising his directorial debut, Marilyn (1953) – ‘a homegrown B-movie version of The Postman Always Rings Twice’ – and Stock Car (1955), a drama set in the world of stockcar racing. Said The Times of Marilyn: ‘an enticingly lurid snapshot of desperate, pleasure-starved, postwar Britain.’ UK | 1953-55 | RENOWN | 130 min | Cert PG Item # 62375 | RRP £14.99 | Released 21st June

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Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly

Recommended

Cult British horror film in which a wealthy, fatherless British family kidnap hippies and force them to participate in an elaborate role-play in which they are the perfect family; those who refuse are murdered. Then the arrival of a gigolo (Michael Bryant) on the run upsets the household with his very own brand of adult games... UK | 1969 | ODEON | 102 min | Cert 15 Item # 62233 | RRP £14.99 | Released 12th July

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Northwest Passage King Vidor

Robert Young and Spencer Tracy star in King Vidor’s first Technicolor film, which tells the story of Robert Rogers, the celebrated leader of Rogers’ Rangers, a company of colonial rangers attached to the British Army during the Seven Years War. USA | 1940 | PEGS | 121 min | PG Item # 62219 | RRP £5.99 | Released 21st June

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The Silent Invasion Max Varnel

Wartime drama set in a small French town where the stationing of a German garrison causes unease. After an attack from the local resistance goes horribly wrong, resulting in two of their members being tortured and publicly executed, the sister of one of the dead men vows to exact revenge. Petra Davies and Eric Flynn star.

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Page 14

One Continuous Take: The Kay Mander Story Director: Kay Mander

Freddie Francis

UK | 1962 | OPTIM | 67 min | Cert PG Item # 60743 | RRP £15.99 | Released 12th July

Expertly filmed live at the Royal Opera House in London, these DVDs & Blu-rays of the productions are the next best thing to being there.

La Bohème

Hibla Gerzmava and Teodor Ilincai head the cast of Puccini’s opera, recorded live in December 2009, with Andris Nelsons conducting the Orchestra and Chorus. UK | 2009 | OPUS | 121 min | Cert E Item # 62111 | RRP £24.99 | Out Now

DVD Price: £17.99 Blu-ray: £26.99

Released: 24th June

Dido and Aeneas

DVD Extras: 2 discs. UK | 1940-48 | PANA | 253 min | B&W | Cert E | Item # 61332 | P&P £1.50

A prolific contributor to documentary filmmaking in 1940s Britain, Kay Mander has not yet received her due. This retrospective, comprising 10 of her films, made between 1940-48, along with Adele Carroll’s 2001 portrait of the filmmaker, One Continuous Take, which includes clips from many of her films along with Mander recalling her life and work, at last begins to put this right. The collection showcases Mander’s diverse approach to filmmaking, taking in drama-documentaries, such as Highland Doctor (1943), about the government subsidised Highland and Islands Medical Service, exemplary training and instructional films – of which even unpromising titles such as Debris Tunnelling (1943) or How to File (1941) reveal her innovative approach – as well as important social documents, such as Homes for the People, a film made for the 1945 Labour Party campaign, in which women opened up to Mander as a female filmmaker regarding the housing problems they faced. This is an important and overdue collection. AB

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The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera join forces. Richly layered designs perfectly complement Purcell’s tale of a love thwarted by evil powers. Christopher Hogwood conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. UK | 2009 | OPUS | 72 min | Cert E Item # 62186 | RRP £24.99 | Out Now

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Don Giovanni

One of opera’s timeless classics. Mozart’s music is brought wonderfully to life in this engrossing production, recorded live in 2008. Simon Keenlyside stars as the eponymous womaniser. UK | 2008 | OPUS | 185 min | Cert E Item # 58715 | RRP £29.99 | Out Now

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Hansel and Gretel

Diana Damrau and Angelika Kirchschlager star in this acclaimed 2008 production of Humperdinck’s famous fairytale opera. Features two of Britain’s most revered musical figures: Thomas Allen, and the conductor Colin Davis. UK | 2008 | OPUS | 138 min | Cert E Item # 62188 | RRP £29.99 | Out Now

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Sophie’s Choice

A live recording of Trevor Nunn’s 2002 production of Nicholas Maw’s opera, based on the 1979 novel by William Styron. Angelika Kirchschlager performs the title role; Simon Rattle conducts. UK | 2002 | OPUS | 223 min | Cert E Item # 62189 | RRP £29.99 | Out Now

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Vintage British Cinema Sale Covering films made in Britain between 1940 and 1971, this selection of DVDs from Optimum Releasing and Renown are rich examples of British filmmaking. The Renown titles are largely drawn from the B-movies of the Butcher’s Films Service while Optimum make full use of Ealing Studios’ back catalogue. From romance on the canals in the 1940s to horror in the 1970s, there’s something for all tastes! Painted Boats

Secret People

Charles Crichton

Thorold Dickinson

A neglected gem, this thoroughly charming, beautifully filmed Ealing Studios romance is set on the boats that travel the Grand Union Canal and is a classic piece of British poetic realism.

A young Audrey Hepburn and Valentina Cortese play the young sisters who become involved in an assassination attempt in Dickinson’s suspenseful crime drama set in the 1930s.

Karl Grune

UK | 1945 | OPTIM | 61 min | B&W | Cert U | # 57903 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1952 | OPTIM | 96 min | B&W | Cert 15 | # 60807 | RRP £15.99

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UK | 1936 | RENOWN | 75 min | B&W | Cert U | # 59304 | RRP £12.99

Every Day’s a Holiday

The Siege of Pinchgut

Meet Mr Callaghan

Dir: James Hill. ‘When the dreamers meet the screamers it’s the swingin’est hit that ever swung!’ British 1960s rock’n’roll comedy.

Dir: Harry Watt. Made on location in Australia and Elstree, this was Ealing Studio’s final feature. Aldo Ray plays the convict on the run.

Dir: Charles Saunders. Derrick De Marney plays private eye Slim Callaghan, a man trying to get to the bottom of a dubious will.

UK | 1965 | RENOWN | 89 min | Cert U | # 60622 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1959 | OPTIM | 103 min | B&W | Cert U | # 60796 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1954 | RENOWN | 86 min | B&W | Cert U | # 59729 | RRP £12.99

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Fright

Svengali

Nine Men

Dir: Peter Collinson. Early 1970s British horror starring Susan George as a babysitter terrorised by Ian Bannen’s asylum escapee.

Dir: Noel Langley. ‘She was his toy... and his triumph!’ A sinister hypnotist uses dark powers to force his leading lady to ignore her true love.

Dir: Harry Watt. Classic WWII drama in which English troops are cut off from their batallion while behind enemy lines in the western desert.

UK | 1971 | OPTIM | 84 min | Cert 18 | # 60785 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1954 | RENOWN | 82 min | Cert PG | # 58868 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1943 | OPTIM | 64 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 57917 | RRP £15.99

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The Gelignite Gang

The Time of His Life

Noose

Dir: Terence Fisher & Francis Searle. Soho-set crime thriller in which an insurance investigator searches for a daring gang of jewel robbers.

Dir: Leslie H. Hiscott. Comedy in which Richard Hearne’s Mr Pastry finds himself locked in the attic by his daughter on his release from prison!

Dir: Edmond T Greville. Carole Landis stars as a nosy news reporter who gets on the trail of a gang of postwar black marketeers in Soho.

UK | 1956 | RENOWN | 71 min | B&W | Cert U | # 59720 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1955 | RENOWN | 74 min | B&W | Cert U | # 59314 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1948 | RENOWN | 91 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 60370 | RRP £12.99

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The Glass Mountain

Undercover

The Proud Valley

Dir: Edoardo Anton & Henry Cass. A married songwriter is rescued by an Italian beauty during WWII and falls into a forbidden love affair.

Dir: Sergei Nolbandov. Morale boosting WWII action cinema from Ealing Studios that pays tribute to the bravery of the Yugoslavian guerrillas.

Dir: Pen Tennyson. Welsh mining drama from Ealing which Paul Robeson declared was ‘the one film I could be proud of having played in’.

UK / Italy | 1949 | RENOWN | 94 min | B&W | PG | # 54337 | RRP £9.99

UK | 1943 | OPTIM | 80 min | B&W | Cert 12 | # 60985 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1940 | OPTIM | 73 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 59176 | RRP £15.99

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It’s All Over Town

The World Ten Times Over

Raising the Wind

UK | 1963 | OPTIM | 53 min | B&W | Cert 12 | # 60783 | RRP £15.99

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Dir: Wolf Rilla. Sylvia Syms and June Ritchie play the nightclub hostesses making their living in Pussycat Alley. UK | 1963 | OPTIM | 89 min | B&W | Cert 12 | # 60809 | RRP £15.99

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Romantic drama in which Hazel Terry plays a woman divided between Hugh Sinclair’s French aristocrat and Nils Asther’s revolutionary. Can he save her from the guillotine? DVD: £8.99 Save £4

Dir: Gerald Thomas. Comedy caper starring many familiar faces in which a group of music students decide to share a flat to cut their living costs. UK | 1961 | OPTIM | 87 min | Cert U | # 60780 | RRP £15.99

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Offer ends 25th July or while stocks last

Dir: Douglas Hickox. The Springfields, The Bachelors, The Hollies, Acker Bilk, Clodagh Rodgers and Frankie Vaughan star in this pop showcase.

The Prisoner of Corbal

Mamma Mia! Phyllida Lloyd Feelgood adaptation of the smash stage musical based on the songs of Abba. Meryl Streep, as a hotel owner on a small Greek island, leads the all-star cast. Features a singalong option!

2 discs.

UK / USA | 2008 | UPV | 104 min | Cert PG | # 60281 | RRP £19.99

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The Tree of Wooden Clogs

sleep furiously

Ermanno Olmi

A beautiful, poetically-rendered portrait of a small farming community in mid-Wales, combining subtle and striking cinematography to create a portrait of a way of life on the verge of disappearance.

An elegaic, Palme d’Or winning portrait of the lives of peasant families in turn-of-the-century Lombardy, where their life is revealed in a mosaic of wonderful sequences. Italy | 1978 | ARROW | 179 min | subt | Cert 12 | # 33019 | RRP £15.99

Gideon Koppel

UK | 2008 | NW | 94 min | Cert U | # 60027 | RRP £19.99

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Broken Embraces

Séraphine

The Camomile Lawn

Dir: Pedro Almodóvar. Penélope Cruz. Funny, tragic, romantic and prodigiously enjoyable, this Spanish film sees Almodóvar revelling in film.

Dir: Martin Provost. Award-winning French drama about the painter Séraphine de Senlis, notable for its beautiful filming of her landscape.

Dir: Peter Hall. Classic Cornish-set adaptation of Mary Wesley’s novel in which impending war brings a sense of freedom to five cousins. 2 discs.

Spain | 2009 | FOX | 127 min | subt | Cert 18 | # 60581 | RRP £19.99

France | 2008 | MET-D | 126 min | subt | 12 | # 60911 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1992 | 4DVD | 258 min | Cert 15 | # 53492 | RRP £19.99

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Eric Rohmer: Tales of the Four Seasons

Stealing Beauty

The Edge of the World

Four French dramas of love’s confusion, with tales of Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. 4 discs France | 1990-98 | ART-E | subt | Cert 15 | # 26164 | RRP £39.99

Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci. Liv Tyler plays the young girl looking for love in Tuscany in this subtle and sensuous film of ex-pats lonely for comfort. Italy | 1996 | 20CFX | 113 min | Cert 18 | # 18748 | RRP £12.99

Dir: Michael Powell. Trawlers collide with old island traditions on St. Kilda in this evocative drama. UK | 1937 | BFI | 74 min | Cert U | # 15231 | RRP £19.99

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The Grocer’s Son

Summer Holiday

Local Hero

Dir: Éric Guirado. The charming story of a man who rediscovers life and love after he reluctantly returns home from Paris to Provence.

Dir: Peter Yates. Four young mechanics head off in a double-decker looking for fun in the sun. Cliff Richard stars. Singalong edition! (Optional.)

Dir: Bill Forsyth. Delightfully observed comedy about an oil company rep looking to buy land near a Scottish village for a new refinery.

France | 2007 | ICA | 96 min | subt | Cert 12 | # 58707 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1963 | OPTIM | 104 min | Cert U | # 32905 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1983 | 4DVD | 107 min | Cert PG | # 53191 | RRP £15.99

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Journey to Italy

Les Vacances de M. Hulot

Miss Potter

Dir: Roberto Rossellini. A key work of modern cinema, in which Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play the couple in crisis in Naples. Italy | 1953 | BFI | 80 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 14960 | RRP £19.99

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Dir: Jacques Tati. A gentle, charming, languorous celebration of the yearly French summer seaside holiday. France | 1952 | BFI | 83 min | subt | B&W | U | # 20160 | RRP £19.99

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Dir: Chris Noonan. This story of children’s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter makes great use of the Lake District. Renee Zellweger stars. UK | 2006 | MOMET | 92 min | Cert PG | # 33344 | RRP £19.99

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Il Postino

A Year in Provence

Whisky Galore! (SE)

Dir: Michael Radford. A lovely, moving film in which a simple postman on an Italian island forms a friendship with exiled ‘poet of love’ Pablo Neruda.

Dir: David Tucker. John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan play the couple who leave Britain and head to the light, food and sun of southern France.

Dir: Alexander Mackendrick. Famous Ealing comedy in which a cargo ship with 50,000 cases of whisky founders off a Hebridean island. 2 discs.

Italy | 1995 | BUENA | 104 min | subt | Cert U | # 9490 | RRP £17.99

UK | 1993 | 2ND | 238 min | Cert PG | # 54889 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1949 | OPTIM | 80 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 24156 | RRP £19.99

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In the City of Sylvia

Paris

Invictus

Cedric Klapisch

Clint Eastwood

José Luis Guerín

A beautiful film, full of ideas and humanity, that is both a study of a city and some of its inhabitants. Romain Duris stars as a man whose heart condition gives sharpened meaning to his life.

Against the background of the 1995 rugby world cup, Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela, a leader convinced that the universal language of sport can help unite his divided country.

France | 2008 | OPT | 125 min | subt | Cert 15 | # 55868 | RRP £19.99

USA | 2009 | WHV | 133 min | Cert 12 | # 61536 | RRP £20.99

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Death in Venice

Paris vu par

Dir: Luchino Visconti. Dirk Bogarde plays the man so obsessed by a young boy that he cannot leave Venice. From Thomas Mann’s novel.

Portmanteau film of six short nouvelle vague films about Paris by six French directors: Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Douchet, Pollet and Rouch.

Born Free / Living Free

ITALY | 1971 | WHV | 125 min | Cert 12 | # 17231 | RRP £19.99

France | 1964 | ART-E | 95 min | subt | Cert 15 | # 60159 | RRP £15.99

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La Dolce Vita

Rendez-vous in Paris

A universally acclaimed morality play filled with gloriously memorable images. Marcello Mastroianni plays the disillusioned journalist in Rome.

Dir: Eric Rohmer. A delightful trilogy of stories of love, seduction, coincidence and misunderstanding in a variety of Parisian locales.

Italy | 1960 | NOUVE | 174 min | subt | B&W | 15 | # 20041 | £19.99

France | 1995 | ART-E | 95 min | subt | Cert PG | # 61394 | RRP £15.99

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Manhattan

Roman Holiday

Death on the Nile

Dir: Woody Allen. Shimmering monochrome camerawork, an exquisite Gershwin score and sharp dialogue make this Allen’s masterpiece.

Dir: William Wyler. Wonderful romantic comedy in which Audrey Hepburn plays a princess who falls in love with Peck’s newspaperman in Rome.

Dir: John Guillerman. A star-filled adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel about murder on board a steamer travelling down the river Nile.

USA | 1979 | MGMHE | 92 min | B&W | Cert 15 | # 388 | RRP £15.99

USA | 1953 | PARAH | 113 min | B&W | Cert U | # 58808 | RRP £9.99

/ UK | 1978 | OPTIM | 134 min | Cert PG | # 52510 | RRP £12.99

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Mid-August Lunch

Summertime

Dir: Gianni Di Gregorio. A charming, slice-of-life Italian comedy, in which a middle aged man looks after four elderly women in midsummer Rome.

Dir: David Lean. Katharine Hepburn plays the lonely American woman who finds romance on her trip of a lifetime to Venice.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: Series 1

Italy | 2008 | ART-E | 75 min | subt | Cert U | # 60156 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1955 | SECND | 116 min | Cert U | # 50426 | RRP £19.99

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Paris je t’aime

Tea with Mussolini

She

20 top directors, 20 short films, 20 vignettes about life and love in one of the greatest cities on earth. A diverse and highly enjoyable collection.

Dir: Franco Zeffirelli. Smith, Plowright and Dench star in this semi-autobiographical tale from Zeffirelli’s childhood, set in Florence.

Dir: Robert Day. Ursula Andress stars as the ageless queen who cannot die until she falls in love. Set in deepest unexplored Africa; filmed in Elstree.

France | 2006 | UN | 115 min | subt | Cert 15 | # 50912 | RRP £19.99

Italy | 1998 | UCA | 113 min | Cert PG | # 26830 | RRP £9.99

USA | 1964 | OPTIM | 101 min | Cert U | # 30654 | RRP £12.99

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France | 2007 | Axiom | 85 min | subt | Cert PG | # 58398 | RRP £19.99

Dir: Jack Couffer. George and Joy Adamson care for Elsa the lioness on the Kenyan plains. Family classics. UK | 1966, 1972 | COL-T | 204 min | Cert U | # 16542 | RRP £12.99

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Cry, the Beloved Country Dir: Zoltan Korda. Sidney Poitier stars as the minister searching for his son in the slums of Johannesburg. UK | 1952 | OPTIM | 104 min | B&W | Cert PG | # 52592 | RRP £15.99

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Female detective Precious Ramotswe sleuths in Botswana. 2 discs. S Africa | 2009 | CTEND | 350 mins | 12 | # 57940 | RRP £29.99

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Offer ends 25th July or while stocks last

A spellbinding film of a young artist searching for a beautiful girl he glimpsed years before in Strasbourg. Watching it is like taking a city break without leaving your seat!

Mystery and Imagination

This highly acclaimed anthology series presents a selection of Gothic tales by major 19th century writers. A distinguished cast includes Ian Holm, Denholm Elliot, Patrick Mower and Freddie Jones, who gives an astonishing performance as the demented barber Sweeney Todd. This release contains every remaining episode of Mystery and Imagination alongside an extensive image gallery and episode guide booklet. Available 5 July

Wheeltappers and Shunters The Complete Second Series

The legendary Bernard Manning comperes while fellow stand-up veteran Colin Crompton is ‘Mr Chairman’ at the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club – the friendliest working men’s club in the North. For the first time on home-video format, this release presents the complete second series, which features Roy Orbison, P.J. Proby, Marty Wilde, Russ Conway and Matt Monro. Available 5 July

Clayhanger The Complete Series

A major series for ITV in the mid1970s, this stunning drama adapted the celebrated novels by Arnold Bennett. Starring Janet Suzman, Peter McEnery, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott and Denis Quilley, the series is set in the squalor and unrest of the Victorian-era Staffordshire Potteries. Clayhanger is available here for the first time on DVD. Available 12 July Packaging design © 2010 Network

Documentaries “The Creative Interpretation of Actuality”

New Releases

The Most Dangerous Man in America Judith Ehrlich

Bastardy

Amiel Courtin-Wilson Provocative, funny and moving, Bastardy is the inspirational story of the self-proclaimed Robin Hood of the streets, the Australian aboriginal actor Jack Charles, who for 40 years has juggled a succesful acting career with a life of crime and addiction. Australia | 2008 | ARTF | 87 min | E Item # 61923 | RRP £14.99 | Released 28th June

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Capitalism: A Love Story Michael Moore

A typically outspoken film from activist filmmaker Moore, who examines the roots of the global financial collapse, showing the negative impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans and offering a fierce critique of the conspicuous consumerism that lies at the heart of the American Dream. USA | 2009 | PARAH | 127 min | Cert 12 Item # 61300 | RRP £19.99 | Released 24th May

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Coastal Command: 1936-68

A historical overview of RAF Coastal Command, whose job it was to protect the UK from naval threats, tracing its history from countering the threat from German U-Boats during WWII to its later role in tracking nuclear submarines with its Nimrod squadrons.

UK | 1936-68 | SFE | 90 min | E Item # 55924 | RRP £12.99 | Released 7th June

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In the Pit

Juan Carlos Rulfo A film about the workers constructing Mexico City’s inner Periférico freeway. This is the story of those men whose hands and sweat go into the making of this mammoth work of concrete, steel and asphalt: their hopes and dreams, their stoicism and their dignity, and ultimately, their survival. Mexico | 2006 | NETWR | 84 min | subt | Cert E Item # 61815 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

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In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg smuggled a top-secret Pentagon study to the New York Times that showed how five Presidents had consistently lied to the American people about the Vietnam War. This is the inside story of the pivotal event that led to Watergate. USA | 2009 | DOGW | 94 min | Cert U Item # 61627 | RRP £14.99 | Released 26th July

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Outsiders: Champions - The Films of Mike Wallington

Three films about the pursuit of excellence by people on the margins: Champions, in which Peter Dowdeswell shows us his feats which fill the ‘Gluttony’ pages of the records books; Ice Break, in which sensei Frank Perry demonstrates ‘breaking techniques’, and Arcade Attack, a profile of the first great video game, ‘Defender’. UK | 1978-80 | EDGE | 65 min | Cert E Item # 61862 | RRP £9.99 | Released 10th May

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A Poet’s Guide to Britain

Poet Owen Sheers presents this enlightening series in which he looks at six great works of poetry about the British landscape from William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Lynette Roberts, Sylvia Plath, Louis MacNeice and George Mackay Brown. Exploring a sense of place, the poems open the doors to stories about the lives of the poets themselves. UK | 2009 | DIGCL | 180 min | Cert E Item # 61415 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

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Stephen Hawking’s Universe A fascinating look through the mind’s eye of one of the finest brains on the planet, as Hawking explores the greatest mysteries of the cosmos. In three instalments, he reveals the wonders of the universe as never 2 discs. seen before.

No Greater Love Recommended Director: Michael Whyte Released: 28th June DVD Extras: TBC UK | 2009 | SODA | 100 min | Cert E | Item # 61381 | P&P £1

Anyone who was moved by Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence, a study of the Carthusian monks at Grande Chartreuse, should certainly check out this homegrown counterpart. Michael Whyte spent a year filming at the Carmelite nunnery in Notting Hill and has produced a compelling portrait of the women’s lives there. Whyte has a telling eye for detail – the rubber-soled sandals poking out underneath a habit, the groceries being ordered off the internet – while his editing acts as a subtle commentary, cutting from a discussion of death to a sunlit corridor, a shadowy doorway at its far end. As with the nuns’ own timetable, the film is structured around different services, most notably those of Easter, where one tiny, quivering flame in the darkness multiplies to become the many candles in a nighttime procession. All these activities are intercut with sensitive interviews with the women themselves along with the odd shock moment – the sudden buzz of a chainsaw in the garden, the sight of a dead nun’s face – which jolt us into realising that this is less a hushed retreat than a living, working community. NR

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UK | 1997 | DEMAND | 240 min | E Item # 61884 | RRP £24.99 | Released 21st June

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Page 19

Television Programmes Originally Broadcast

Behind Closed Doors

Architectural designer Charlie Luxton gives an access-all-areas tour of five selected buildings that tell different stories of power in Britain, including a rarely-opened WWII North London bunker, a neo-Gothic monument to industrial might, and the 3 discs. Treasury.

New Releases The Addams Family: Complete Series

Ted Cassidy, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan. Join Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch and Cousin Itt in every episode of the original series and revel in the misadventures of a ‘blissfully macabre family’. Based on Charles Addams’ fiendishly funny 9 discs. drawings.

USA | 1964-66 | FOX | Cert PG Item # 62085 | RRP £62.99 | Released 28th June

Our DVD Price: £56.99

The Avengers: Series 4 Diana Rigg, Patrick Macnee. The complete, remastered fourth series of the cult 60s TV show arrives with Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel replacing Honor Blackman’s Cathy Gale. Originally broadcast in 1965-66, this series is the beginning of what many consider the show’s 8 discs. best period.

Two more volumes of classic 1980s shows from Thames TV. With their combination of highspeed farce, risqué jokes, ‘Hill’s Angels’ and a trio of hopeless helpers (Henry McGee, Bob Todd and Jackie Wright), these shows turned Hill into a global household name.

Lawrence Gordon Clark

Philip Glenister, Keeley Hawes. The journey that began with Life on Mars concludes as Alex Drake embarks on her final mission: to uncover the truth about Gene Hunt and unlock the dark secrets of this world. 4 discs.

UK | 2010 | E1 | Cert 15 Item # 62070 | RRP £39.99 | Released 5th July

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David Askey

UK | 1991 | REV | 240 min | Cert 15 Item # 61638 | RRP £19.99 | Released 5th July

Terese Stevens, Philippa Howell, Pippa Page. Anglia sitcom about three Women’s Land Army volunteers with very different backgrounds. Dizzy debutante Daphne, cheerful Cockney Jenny and sensible Jewish girl Shirley find themselves in a Norfolk village, sharing a hasty agricultural education, mishaps and even a little romance.

Clayhanger: Complete A top drawer cast star – Janet Suzman, Peter McEnery, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott, Clive Swift and Dennis Quilley – star in this excellent ATV series adapted from the series of novels by Arnold Bennett set in the potteries between 1872 and 1897. Screened only once, this has lain unseen since its original transmission!

UK | 2009 | ACORN | 300 min | Cert E Item # 61565 | RRP £19.99 | Released 5th July

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Cuffy: The Complete Series Spinning off from comedy drama Shillingbury Tales, this engaging sitcom from 1983 stars Bernard Cribbins as a mischievous but kind-hearted tinker who lives in discomfort in his shabby caravan in a picture-postcard village. Other Shillingbury Tales cast members reprising earlier roles include Jack Douglas, Linda Hayden, Nigel Lambert and Diana King.

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A prophetic thriller, written and adapted by leading sc-fi author Stephen Gallagher, in which a fertility research centre is destroyed in an explosion and the entire staff wiped out by someone or something of superhuman strength. As a journalist investigates the tragedy, he is drawn into a nightmare of secrecy, violence and hostility as the Government seeks to hide the truth about 2 discs; Behind the the clinic’s work. scenes; Interview with Stephen Gallagher; Original Press Kit.

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Backs to the Land: Series 1

The complete first series of the programme that sees hotelier Ruth Watson visit struggling country houses to try and turn their fortunes around by giving advice and suggestions to the owners. Houses visted: Cothay Manor, Elmore Court, Chesters, Albury Park, 2 discs. Black Cauchrie House and Pentillie.

UK | 1983 | NWORK | 150 min | Cert PG Item # 61943 | RRP £14.99 | Released 3rd May

Chimera

Ashes to Ashes: Series 3

Page 20

Benny Hill Annual 1984 / 85

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Our DVD Price: £49.49

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UK | 1984 | NWORK | 100 min | Cert 12 Item # 62089 | RRP £12.99 | Released 5th July

UK | 1965-66 | OPTIM | Cert 12 Item # 60391 | RRP £59.99 | Released 5th July

UK | 1977 | NWORK | 150 min | Cert PG Item # 61804 | RRP £12.99 | Released 28th June

UK | 2008 | DEMAND | 315 min | Cert E Item # 61714 | RRP £24.99 | Released 31st May

Country House Rescue

8 discs.

The Fosters: Series 1 Stuart Allen

This popular 1970s LWT sitcom was Britain’s first comedy series with a predominantly black cast. Norman Beaton stars as the head of the household, with an 18 year-old Lenny Henry, a year after winning the TV talent show New Faces, playing Sonny. A British adaption of the American sitcom, Good Times, it transplanted the US show to a South London 2 discs. council estate. UK | 1976 | NWORK | Cert TBC Item # 62086 | RRP £19.99 | Released 5th July

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The Gaffer: Series 2

Bill Maynard (Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt) is Fred Moffat, the tight-fisted director of a small lightengineering firm in this bittersweet sitcom which sees the recession biting, and the gaffer under siege from the taxman, creditors and the bank manager. Militant shop steward Harry doesn’t help matters either.

UK | 1976 | NWORK | 1300 min | Cert TBC Item # 62072 | RRP £59.99 | Released 12th July

UK | 1982 | NWORK | 175 min | Cert TBC Item # 62087 | RRP £12.99 | Released 5th July

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

The Genius of Design

Wessex Tales Recommended Starring: Ben Kingsley, John Hurt, Claire Bloom, Billie Whitelaw, David Troughton, Jane Asher Contains: The Withered Arm, Fellow Townsmen, A Tragedy of Two Ambitions, An Imaginative Woman, The Melancholy Hussar, Barbara of the House of Grebe Released: 12th April DVD Extras: 2 discs. UK | 1973 | ACORN | 360 min | Cert 15 | Item # 59358 | P&P £1.50

One of the most celebrated of all television adaptations of great writers, fondly remembered by all who saw it, finally surfaces on DVD. In the 1970s, the BBC commissioned six writers, six directors and a striking cadre of actors to tackle Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales. The top-rank talent included writers such as Dennis Potter and William Trevor, directors such as Mike Newell and Gavin Millar, and starred actors of the calibre of Billie Whitelaw, John Hurt, Claire Bloom and Ben Kingsley. It’s interesting to note how (in the 21st century) the performances have a notably ‘modern’ feel; while never losing their plausibility as 19th century characters, the performers give no sense of preserved-in-aspic ‘heritage’ acting – these are real human beings engaged in human dramas that remain timeless. The adaptations (as one might expect from writers of this reputation) are superlative, with a strong emphasis on the macabre (notably in The Withered Arm). Throughout, the Hardyesque universe is powerfully evoked. BF

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This five-part series, made by the team behind the award-winning series The Genius of Photography, tells the story of design from the Industrial Revolution through 1920s modernism, the swinging 60s, the designer 80s and up to the present day. Features interviews with star designers like Philippe Starck and creatives 2 discs. from Apple and Ford.

UK | 2009 | ACORN | 300 min | Cert E Item # 61254 | RRP £19.99 | Released 7th June

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Julia Bradbury’s World Walks: South Africa Walks

Having tackled treks across the UK, Julia Bradbury embarks on a truly grand adventure in South Africa, where she sets out on four very different walks that explore South Africa’s claim to be ‘a world in one country’. She takes in the sundrenched Garden Route, the Drakensburg mountain range, the Kruger National Park and the edge of the Kalahari Desert. UK | 2010 | ACORN | 120 min | Cert E Item # 61484 | RRP £16.99 | Released 5th July

Our DVD Price: £12.74

Kojak: Series 1, 2 & 3

Box sets of the first three seasons of the gritty detective series that follows the investigations of the bald, lollipopsucking, tough-guy detective for the NYPD, the one and only Lieutenant Theo Kojak. Telly Savalas stars. Who loves ya, baby? 6 discs.

USA | 1976 | MEDRA | 1159 min | Cert 15 Item # 61185 | RRP £34.99 | All Out Now

S1: £14.99 S2 & S3: £29.99 each

Luther: Series 1

Starring The Wire’s Idris Elba, Luther is the BBC’s crime series which sees troubled cop John Luther go on a moral crusade, armed with only his convictions. Confronting depravity in its many terrible forms, the stakes get higher and ever more personal, and Luther is led towards the edge of temptation. Will his relentless pursuit of light tip him into the ultimate darkness? UK | 2010 | 2ENT | 354 min | Cert 12 Item # 62181 | RRP £24.99 | Released 21st June

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Interview with Simon Callow Regular readers will know how infrequently we do interviews, but after finding out that Simon Callow was a fan of MovieMail and was available due to the release of series 2 of Chance in a Million, how could we pass up the opportunity?

Highlights Q. When you were 12 years old what were your ambitions? A. To be a television personality Q. Is Brenda Blethyn as perfectly wonderful as her screen persona? A. Much, much more wonderful. That rare thing, a comic actress who is really gorgeous and sexy. But a remarkably clear-sighted human being, too. Q. Which film would you like to see on DVD that is not currently available? A. Orson Welles’s Falstaff film Chimes at Midnight, his masterpiece: greater than Citizen Kane. Q. We were delighted to hear that you are a fan of MovieMail, what is it in particular that you like about us? A. Bringing to my attention the huge range of remarkable movies being released all the time, especially the obscure ones, and the historic reissues. And your useful and informative notes. Read the full interview at moviemail-online.co.uk/callow

Chance in a Million: Series 2 An early sitcom success for Channel 4 in which Simon Callow plays the eccentric, amiable and ever-optimistic Tom Chance – prone to daily doses of outrageous coincidence and innumerable encounters with the law – and Brenda Blethyn his timid librarian girlfriend. UK | 1986 | REV | 180 min | Cert 12 | # 62179 | RRP £19.99

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Chance in a Million: Series 1 UK | 1984 | REV | 180 min | Cert 12 | # 61643 | RRP £19.99

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Page 21

search for The afghan girL

Triumph of Life

briTain’s greaTesT machines series 1

mega sTrucTures

big caTs

mysTeries of egypT

AvAilAble now on DvD! All available titles will be listed on page 23 of the catalogue

July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Television The Manageress: Series 1

Channel 4’s 1989 drama series stars Cherie Lunghi as Gabriella Benson, the first ever female football manager. However, with fierce resistance from the team and their trainer, and the constant risk of boardroom backstabbing, she needs all her business skills, paired with a keen eye for the game she loves, to prove she can 2 discs. succeed in a male world. UK | 1989 | ACORN | 300 min | Cert 12 Item # 61586 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

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Medics: Series 1 & 2

Sue Johnston, Francesca Ryan, Tom Baker, Peter Wingfield, Jimmy Harkishin. The first two series of the medical drama from Granada TV, available separately, which follows the everyday lives and loves, trials and tribulations of the doctors, nurses, patients and administrative staff of a large teaching hospital 2 discs. in the north-west of England. UK | 1990 | NWORK | 300 min | Cert 12 Item # 61364 | RRP £19.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £13.99 each

Midsomer Murders 13: Blood on the Saddle / The Silent Land

Richard Holthouse / Peter Smith Two new episodes from ITV’s long-running crime series starring John Nettles as Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and Jason Hughes as DS Ben Jones, forever engaged in rooting out the numerous crimes in the fictional county of Midsomer. UK | 2009 | ACORN | 89 min | Cert TBC Item # 61699 | RRP £16.99 | Released 5th July

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Midsomer Murders: Troy’s Casebook A 19 disc set celebrating all of DS Troy’s cases, featuring all 29 murder mysteries starring Daniel Casey, ranging from 1997’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift to 2008’s Blood Wedding. 19 discs.

UK | 2004 | ACORN | 2871 min | Cert 15 Item # 61601 | RRP £129.99 | Released 10th May

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The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder Dennis Vance

This classic Thames drama series, based on the short stories by Edgar Wallace, features one of the unlikeliest fictional sleuths: Mr. J.G. Reeder (Hugh Burden), a mildmannered, bespectacled civil servant with the unusual ‘gift’ of being able to put himself in the mind of a criminal. This complete set contains both 4 discs. series, screened between 1969-71. UK | 1969-71 | NWORK | 800 min | Cert 12 Item # 57295 | RRP £39.99 | Released 5th July

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Morecambe & Wise: Series 8 Classic comedy from the great double-act. All the programmes from series 8, originally broadcast in 1974, which includes guest stars such as André Previn, Magnus Magnusson, Hughie Green and June Whitfield. Series 8 also saw the introduction of harmonica player Arthur Tolcher. ‘Not Now, Arthur !’ UK | 1974 | 2ENT | Cert TBC Item # 61977 | RRP £15.99 | Released 5th July

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Mystery and Imagination

A set of every remaining episode of the anthology series, which contains all six feature-length teleplays from Thames TV as well as the two remaining ABC-produced episodes from 1966. A top cast includes Ian Holm (Dr Frankenstein), Denholm Elliot (Dracula) and 4 discs; Freddie Jones (Sweeney Todd). Episode guide booklet.

National Geographic on DVD With their aim of enthusing people about the wonders of our world, National Geographic documentaries are a continual source of inspiration.

The Mating Game Six-part documentary looking at the evolution of sex in the natural world concentrating on the habits of creatures with unusual mating methods. USA | 2000 | 282 min | Cert E | # 62395 | RRP £24.99

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Search for the Afghan Girl Sigourney Weaver narrates the worldwide search for the greeneyed girl who appeared on the cover the magazine in 1984. USA | 2002 | FHE | 52 min | Cert E | # 62295 | RRP £7.99

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Mysteries of Egypt Fascinating three volume set examining ancient Egypt. Pathways to Eternity explores a tunnel discovered at the bottom of Seti's tomb. USA | 2009 | 180 min | Cert E | # 62385 | RRP £19.99

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Africa’s Lost Eden USA | 2010 | 52 min | Cert E | # 62413 | RRP £7.99

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Britain’s Greatest Machines: Series 1 UK | 2009 | 188 min | Cert E | # 62394 | RRP £19.99

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UK | 1968-70 | NWORK | 540 min | Cert TBC Item # 57300 | RRP £39.99 | Released 5th July

Big Cats

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| 2009 | 156 min | Cert E | # 62383 | RRP £19.99

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width John Bluthal and Joe Lynch star as Manny Cohen and Patrick Kelly, unlikely partners – Jewish and Irish Catholic respectively – in an East End tailoring business. The two try hard to put their cultural differences aside, but mutual misunderstanding all too easily gets the better of them! 4 discs. Contains all the existing episodes. UK | 1969-71 | NWORK | 700 min | Cert PG Item # 61356 | RRP £39.99 | Released 28th June

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Extreme Universe USA | 2009 | 312 min | Cert E| # 62405 | RRP £24.99

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Giant Pandas: The Last Refuge USA | 1994 | 55 min | Cert E | # 62377 | RRP £7.99

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Megastructures 2009 | 156 min | Cert E | # 62382 | RRP £19.99

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More National Geographic DVDs will be featured next month

Enquiries enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

Page 23

Television Tony Robinson’s Crime and Punishment

The Rector’s Wife Giles Foster

Lindsay Duncan stars in this portrait of a trapped woman struggling to find a kind of freedom. She plays a vicar’s wife in a small English town where she chafes at her limited life. A small act of independence sets off gossip and domestic fights, and when she meets a man who seems to understand her frustrations, she 2 discs. is tempted into an affair. UK | 1994 | ACORN | 240 min | Cert 15 Item # 61701 | RRP £19.99 | Released 5th July

Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club: Series 1 and 2

The Smurfs: Season 1

4 discs.

USA | 1981 | FAB-F | 643 min | Cert U Item # 62291 | RRP £39.99 | Released 5th July

Our DVD Price: £13.99 each

Taggart: The Casebook Collection

Worried About the Boy

Blythe Duff, John Michie, Colin McCredie, Alex Norton. Contains five episodes from season 21 of the popular ITV detective series: Saints and Sinners, Puppet on a String, The Wages of Sin, The Ties That Bind and In 5 discs. Camera.

UK | 2005 | DELTA | 342 min | 15 Item # 62164 | RRP £24.99 | Released 28th June

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Tales of the Gold Monkey

Stephen Collins stars in this pulp-inspired period adventure series set in the South Pacific in 1938, from where bush pilot Jake Cutter flies his Grumman Goose on an air cargo delivery service. Featuring colourful characters, the romance of early aviation, exotic locales, spies and cliff-hanging action, the series was pure escapist fun and is presented 6 discs. here complete.

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Page 24

Series 1 and 2 of the TV variety show that was set in a mock-up of a northern working man’s club. Compered by Colin Crompton and comedian Bernard Manning, the show featured a mixture of stand up comedians and musical acts performing in front of an 2 discs per series enthusiastic audience. UK | 1974 | NWORK | 315 min | Cert E Item # 59527 | RRP £19.99 each | Out Now

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USA | 1982-83 | FAB-F | 1056 min | Cert PG Item # 60139 | RRP £59.99 | Released 5th July

UK | 2008 | DIGCL | Cert E Item # 61623 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Our DVD Price: £13.99 The complete first season of The Smurfs (which began life as a cartoon from the pen of Belgian cartoonist Peyo in 1958). Join Papa Smurf and the rest of the magical blue creatures in their mushroom village, where their one problem comes in the shape of the evil but inept wizard Gargamel.

Robinson goes on a fascinating and bizarre journey to discover the origins of our laws and what we do to people when they break them. From trials by boiling water, through the decapitation of a king, to the emergence of modern democracy, it is a journey that started two thousand years ago and remains unfinished today.

Also Released... Ashes to Ashes: Complete Series 1-3 UK | 2010 | E1 | Cert 15 | # 62069 | RRP £69.99

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Bananaman: The Ultimate Bananaman UK | 1983 | DELTA | 200 min | Cert U | # 62131 | RRP £14.99

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Chocky’s Children UK | | REV | 151 min | Cert PG | # 61344 | RRP £19.99

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Dynasty: Season 5 USA | 1985 | PARAH | 1305 min | Cert 12 | # 61273 | RRP £34.99

Our DVD Price: £31.49

Hallelujah!: Complete Series 2 UK | 1983 | NWORK | 170 min | Cert PG | # 62091 | RRP £12.99

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Kingdom: Series Three UK | 2009 | ACORN | 360 min | Cert 12 | # 61538 | RRP £19.99

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McCallum: Complete Series 1 and 2

Julian Jarrold

UK | 1995-98 | DELTA | 863 min | Cert 15 | # 62065 |

Starring Douglas Booth, Mathew Horne, Marc Warren and Mark Gatiss, this biopic is an affectionate look at a muchloved icon, Boy George. At its heart it is a comingof-age story about a 19 year-old boy moving to London, establishing his independence, and then helping to change a generation’s attitude to Behind the scenes. music and gender.

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RRP £29.99

River Cottage: Edible Seashore UK | 2010 | RIVER | 65 min | Cert E | # 62083 | RRP £17.99

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Surgical Spirit: Series 6 UK | 1994 | NWORK | 250 min | Cert TBC | # 62084 | RRP £19.99

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UK | 2010 | UPV | 90 min | Cert TBC Item # 62267 | RRP £17.99 | Released 5th July

The L Word: Season 6

Our DVD Price: £12.99

USA | 2009 | FOX | 0 min | Cert 15 | # 61585 |

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The Old Guys: Series 1 Dewi Humphreys

UK | 2009 | 2ENT | 180 min | Cert 12 | # 61252 | RRP £19.99

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The Spoils of War: Series 3 UK | 1981 | ACORN | 420 min | Cert PG | # 61588 | RRP £19.99

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The films of Dame

Maggie Smith Few actresses have received as many awards and nominations as Maggie Smith. Now 75 years old, her versatility in roles spanning stage, television and film is truly impressive. Below are 18 of her finest performances for you to explore, with prices from a mere £5.99

Ladies in Lavender

Othello

Charles Dance

This 1964 film of John Dexter’s production at the National Theatre masterfully captures the intimacy and excitement of theatre. Smith plays Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello and Frank Finlay’s Iago.

James Ivory

UK | 1964 | BHE | 166 min | Cert U | # 14490 | RRP £14.99

UK | 1985 | 4DVD | 119 min | Cert 15 | # 51991 | RRP £15.99

UK | 2004 | EV | 99 min | Cert 12 | # 21457 | RRP £19.99

A Room with a View A brilliant adaptation of Forster’s comedy, this features Smith and Judi Dench in their first onscreen pairing plus an immaculate performance from Helena Bonham Carter.

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California Suite

George Bernard Shaw Collection

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Ten classic GB Shaw plays from the BBC, including Pygmalion and Arms 8 discs. and the Man.

Dir: Ronald Neame. Smith earned a 1969 Best Actress Oscar for her schoolteacher in 1930s Edinburgh.

UK | BBC | 1032 min | Cert 12 | # 29481 | RRP £99.99

UK | 1969 | ACORN | 111 min | Cert 15 | # 61547 | RRP £16.99

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Capturing Mary

Gosford Park

A Private Function

Dir: Stephen Poliakoff. Spin-off from Poliakoff’s Joe’s Palace in which Smith stars as a once-great writer reminiscing over her elite social life.

Dir: Robert Altman. A fun country house whodunit, set in the 1930s, with a healthy sense of mischief in both plotting and production design.

Dir: Malcolm Mowbray. Classic Alan Bennett comedy starring a host of familiar faces. Smith and Palin play the 1940s couple hiding a stolen pig.

UK | 2007 | 2ENT | 100 min | Cert 15 | # 52099 | RRP £15.99

UK / USA / Italy | 2001 | EV | 137 min | Cert 15 | # 10978 | RRP £19.99

UK | 1984 | OPTIM | 92 min | Cert 15 | # 60861 | RRP £15.99

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David Copperfield

Harry Potter

The Secret Garden

Dir: Simon Curtis. The Beeb doing what it does best. A Dickens adaptation, here from 1999, featuring a who’s who of British actors.

The first five Potter adventures, from Philosopher’s Stone to Phoenix, available separately. Smith plays Professor Minerva McGonagall.

Dir: Agnieszka Holland. A timeless tale in which an orphaned girl is sent to live with her aristocratic aunt in a large, mysterious house.

UK | 1999 | BBC-DD | 180 min | Cert PG | # 8533 | RRP £19.99

UK | 2002 | WHV | 161 min | Cert PG | # 58695 | RRP £8.99

UK | 1993 | WHV | 97 min | Cert U | # 4404 | RRP £15.99

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Death on the Nile

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Talking Heads: Complete

Dir: Jack Clayton. Smith is unforgettable in this tale of a lonely middleaged spinster in 1950s Dublin.

Alan Bennett’s brilliant monologues brought to life by some of the UK’s finest talents. Essential. 3 discs.

UK | 1978 | OPTIM | 134 min | Cert PG | # 52510 | RRP £12.99

UK | 1987 | OPTIM | 111 min | Cert 15 | # 60802 | RRP £15.99

UK | 1988 | BBC | 428 min | Cert 12 | # 20951 | RRP £24.99

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Evil Under the Sun

My House in Umbria

Tea With Mussolini

Dir: Guy Hamilton. Peter Ustinov reprises his role as master detective Hercule Poirot in this Agatha Christie murder mystery at an opulent resort.

Dir: Richard Loncraine. An evocative drama in which Smith is a romantic novelist who invites bomb attack survivors to recuperate at her villa.

Dir: Franco Zeffirelli. Smith, Plowright, Tomlin and Dench star in this semiautobiographical tale drawn from Zeffirelli’s own childhood.

UK | 1981 | OPTIM | 111 min | Cert PG | # 52511 | RRP £12.99

UK / Italy | 2003 | MOMET | 103 min | Cert 12 | # 21207 | RRP £17.99

Italy | 1998 | UCA | 113 min | Cert PG | # 26830 | RRP £9.99

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Dir: Herbert Ross. Neil Simon’s comedy about guests in a Beverly Hills Hotel is star-studded and won Smith a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. USA | 1978 | UCA-C | 99 min | Cert 15 | # 23568 | RRP £5.99

DVD: £5.99

Dir: John Guillerman. A star-filled adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel about murder on board a steamer travelling down the river Nile.

DVD: £5.99 Save £10

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Offer ends 25th July or while stocks last

Smith and Dench play the elderly sisters who nurse a young Polish man back to health and encourage his musical talents. Certain to be appreciated by fans of Merchant Ivory.

Stuart Burge

Contemporary Film English Language Films, 1970 – present

New Releases

Capture Anthologies Volume 2: Love, Lust and Tragedy

This second Capture anthology takes viewers on a rollercoaster through the highs and lows of emotion and relationships. Contains Hard Labour, Lap, Bye Child, All My Dreams on VHS and Icicle Script 2 Screen: Melt. Character Design; Inside Industry: Distribution.

The Battle of Sutjeska Stipe Delic

World War II drama in which Richard Burton stars as Tito, commander of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, who in 1943 finally managed to break out of the remote mountain area in northern Montenegro where the Nazis had held them captive for several weeks. Yugoslavia | 1973 | ARROW | 126 min | Cert 12 Item # 59994 | RRP £15.99 | Released 7th June

Our DVD Price: £11.99

UK | 2010 | CRNRS | 66 min | Cert 15 Item # 62019 | RRP £9.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £7.99

Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair Willy Roe

Seventies sex comedy in which Alan Lake is David Galaxy, a playboy astrologer whose glamorous conquests include a high society debutante (Mary Millington) and a busty beauty queen (the real-life ‘Miss Bournemouth’), but who finds himself on the Remastered; Queen wrong side of the law. of the Blues (Roe, 1979); Mary Millington Short.

Beyond the Pole David L. Williams

Spoof environmental documentary charting the first carbon-neutral expedition to the North Pole. Unsure whether their priority is saving the planet or the record books, Brian (Rhys Thomas) and Mark (Stephen Mangan) set out on their epic journey.

UK | 1979 | ODEON | 92 min | Cert 18 Item # 62281 | RRP £12.99 | Released 12th July

UK | 2009 | BSPK | 90 min | Cert 15 Item # 62293 | RRP £19.99 | Released 5th July

DVD Price: £13.99 Blu-ray: £17.99

Blessed

Mark Aldridge An inspirational film that combines great performances with breathtaking locations, Blessed stars James Nesbitt as a city trader whose life is tragically turned upside-down. Seeking solace on a remote island, his life there is turned around by the arrival of a little girl.

Our DVD Price: £9.99

Cult Spaghetti Westerns

Contains the long-banned Django (Corbucci, 1966), starring Franco Nero as a lone gunfighter, Keoma (1976) – director Enzo Castellari’s masterpiece, and A Bullet for the General (Damiani, 1966), starring Gian Maria Volonté and set during the Mexican Revolution. 3 discs; Alex Cox introductions; Interviews with Franco Nero, Damiani and Castellari.

UK | 2008 | MOMET | 83 min | Cert 15 Item # 61523 | RRP £15.99 | Released 21st June

Italy / Spain | 1976 | AGT | 300 min | Cert 18 Item # 62017 | RRP £24.99 | Released 21st June

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Our DVD Price: £17.99

Breaking Away

Edge of Darkness

Peter Yates

Martin Campbell

This feelgood Oscarwinner is also the greatest sports movie about cycling ever made. Funny, moving and inspiring, it sees a small-town misfit dreaming of becoming a world-class cycling champion. Then, the town’s annual bike race, the Little 500, comes around...

Political thriller based on the award-winning 1980s BBC series. Mel Gibson stars as the veteran detective whose only child is murdered. As he delves into the case, he unearths his daughter’s secret life as a political activist, which takes him into the dark territory of government collusion.

USA | 1979 | 2ND | 97 min | Cert 12 Item # 61916 | RRP £15.99 | Released 28th June

USA | 2010 | ICON | 126 min | Cert 15 Item # 61694 | RRP £19.99 | Released 14th June

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Page 26

Double Take Recommended Director: Johan Grimonprez Starring: Alfred Hitchcock Released: 28th June DVD Extras: Behind the Scenes Belgium | 2009 | SODA | 80 min | Cert 15 | Item # 61380 | P&P £1

There’s only one Alfred Hitchcock, right? Belgian collagist Johan Grimonprez here suggests otherwise, creating a supremely intriguing historical supposition in which, while filming The Birds, Hitchcock encounters a doppelgänger bearing grim news from the future. Mashing up clips from the Master’s TV work, cold war reportage, and inserts featuring Hitch-alike Ron Burrage, Double Take is both a story in itself, and a film about the stories we have been, and are being, told – one that reaches out beyond cinema history to history itself. There’s something of Adam Curtis in this pointed deployment of archive footage: in Grimonprez’s hands, The Birds becomes an augury of things to come. The future-Hitch is convinced that ad-riddled television has rendered his cinematic project worthless. He needn’t have worried, of course: those master manipulators preying on our most irrational fears continue to gather across the media like ravens on a climbing frame. Double Take’s provocative thesis is that a bomb now sits under all our tables – for more, stay tuned through the end credits. MM

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

The Last Station Recommended Director: Michael Hoffman Starring: Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff, John Sessions, Kerry Condon Released: 21st June DVD Extras: Director interview; Conversations on The Last Station; Trailer. Germany | 2009 | OPTIM | 112 min | Cert 15 | Item # 61445 | P&P £1

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Also on Blu-ray The Last Station Michael Hoffman

Germany | 2009 | OPTIM | 112 min | Cert 15 | # 61446 | RRP £22.99

Our Blu-ray Price: £13.99

See Also Helen Mirren at the BBC UK | 1974-1995 | 2ENT | 1088 min | Cert 15 | # 52757 | RRP £39.99

Our DVD Price: £16.99

Ivans xtc

Bernard Rose USA | 2000 | TARTN | 91 min | Cert 18 | # 14092 | RRP £19.99

Our DVD Price: £16.99

his year marks the centenary of a legendary – and complicated – marital bust-up between the ageing Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and his wife, Sofya Tolstoya. The Last Station, adapted by director Michael Hoffman from Jay Parini’s novel, is an exquisitely shot drama based on several accounts of the proceedings. Hoffman portrays the Tolstoy estate in the waning days of pre-Revolutionary Russia as a troubled idyll presided over by the whiskery patriarch (Christopher Plummer) and his redoubtable wife (Helen Mirren) – a kind of elderly Oberon and Titania, forever quarrelling and reconciling. As the film opens, the callow young Bulgakov (James McAvoy) is thrilled to be hired as the great man’s secretary, only to find that the man who appointed him, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), the leader of Tolstoy’s utopian movement, expects him to report back on what he hears. Bulgakov finds himself drawn into a bitter dispute between Chertkov and Sofya over the royalties from her husband’s work: Chertkov wants Tolstoy to bequeath them to the Russian people; Sofya is naturally outraged by the idea. She’s none too pleased, either, that the deeply flawed man she has lived with for 48 years is now considered a living

The Oscar-nominated Mirren and Plummer excel in their roles saint. Sofya cajoles, berates and seduces her cantankerous husband, while Chertkov presses his case and Tolstoy is forced to choose between two betrayals. When he flees his estate and his family, the lush rural scenes appropriately give way to the bare, man-made surroundings of Ostapovo railway station, where Tolstoy’s final decline becomes the 1910 version of a media circus. Giamatti is good value as the idealistic but shifty Chertkov, and McAvoy’s diffident charm has never been better employed, but it’s Plummer and Mirren who are the beating heart of the film (both were Oscarnominated for their performances). Plummer’s Tolstoy is an old rogue but a passionate one, given to petty cruelty as well as to great sensitivity. The long-suffering Sofya could easily have come across as shrewish and unbalanced, but Mirren’s performance is all strength and dignity. It’s a tremendous portrayal of a remarkable woman. Nick Riddle

Enquiries enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

Page 27

Contemporary Green Zone

Paul Greengrass An electrifying thriller set in the chaotic early days of the Iraq War. Matt Damon stars as Officer Roy Miller, a man charged with finding WMDs but who stumbles instead on an elaborate cover-up that calls into question the whole purpose of his Commentary; mission. Deleted Scenes; Matt Damon: Ready for Action.

USA | 2010 | UPV | 114 min | Cert 15 Item # 62013 | RRP £19.99 | Released 12th July

Recommended

DVD Price: £13.99 Steel Book: £25.49 Blu-ray Price: £17.99

Life During Wartime Todd Solondz

Ten years after Happiness, Solondz returns to his familiar themes and characters with this blackly comic ensemble drama of modern life and love starring Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney, and Michael Lerner.

Our DVD Price: £10.99

The Lovely Bones Peter Jackson

An emotional drama based on the bestselling novel by Alice Sebold. Saoirse Ronan stars as a young girl who was raped and murdered in 1973 by a neighbour, and now watches over her family from heaven, trying to guide them to her hidden body to solve the ongoing mystery of her death. She also watches her killer – who is preparing to murder again. USA / UK / New Zealand | 2009 | PARA | 135 min | Cert 12 Item # 61756 | RRP £19.99 | Released 28th June

DVD Price: £13.99 Blu-ray: £24.49

Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief Chris Columbus

Fantasy adventure in which the gods of Mount Olympus walk into the life of a 12-year-old New Yorker, who has to find Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt and settle a feud between them. Sean Bean, Steve Coogan and Kevin McKidd play gods.

Starring: Jean Franval, Stephen Hirst

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Released: 21st June

Released: 14th June

DVD Extras: Commentary by Ken Loach; English and French language versions of the feature; Deleted scenes; Trailer; Illustrated booklet.

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes; Digital Copy.

Ken Loach is one of the more dependable figures in world cinema, seldom straying from the politically engaged social realism with which he is synonymous. The children’s period adventure Black Jack is therefore something of an oddity in his career. Typical neither of its director nor its genre, it is an uncharacteristic film, but one that’s thoroughly worthwhile. Black Jack himself is a rascally French sailor (Jean Franval), who first cheats death, then press-gangs Tolly, a young apprentice, into helping him escape; the two are soon embroiled in a series of picaresque adventures. Along the way, they meet Belle, a young girl escaped from the asylum. When she is reclaimed by the doctors, her friends decide upon rescue. What’s interesting is how much Loach stamps his mark on proceedings. There are characteristically naturalistic performances and a greater emphasis on social class than you get with, say, MerchantIvory. Best of all though is Chris Menges’ sumptuous photography, which is absolutely comparable to Barry Lyndon. JO

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Recommended Director: Scott Cooper

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Canada / USA | 2010 | FOX | 113 min | Cert PG Item # 62119 | RRP £27.99 | Released 5th July

Crazy Heart

Director: Ken Loach

UK | 1979 | BFI | 98 min | Cert U | Item # 61368 | P&P £1

USA | 2009 | ART-E | 98 min | Cert 15 Item # 62175 | RRP £15.99 | Released 12th July

Page 28

Black Jack

RRP: £15.99 Save £6 (38%)

USA | 2009 | FOX | 112 min | Cert 15 | Item # 61858 | P&P £1

Crazy Heart is like a song, a country & western song to be exact: one that comes draped in pedal steel and soaked in whisky. Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, a once great singer with his best days behind him, given to performing in bowling alleys and bars to a handful of people and a smattering of applause – not that he cares too much, often stumbling from the stage in an alcoholic haze to vomit in the dumpsters while the band pick up the slack. Hooking up with a youngish reporter the always excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal) following an interview he conducts in his pants from a motel room, we come to see the kind of man Blake is through a filter of rags and patches. Drunk, for the most part, and bitter about the successes bestowed upon his protégé, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), Bridges is in top form, rightfully deserving the Best Actor nod he picked up at this year’s Oscars. With its stately pace, sharply nuanced performances of the two leads, and Bridges’ own cuts at the microphone, this is something of a sleepy jewel. PW

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July 2010 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Gay & Lesbian The Valdez Horses John Sturges

Aka Chino. ‘They Took His Land...His Horses...His Woman...But...They Couldn’t Take Chino!’ Part-Indian horse breeder Chino Valdez (Charles Bronson) leads a solitary life, unwelcome wherever he goes. Trouble is ahead when he falls for the halfsister of a rival rancher. Italy / Spain / France | 1973 | OPTIM | 94 min | Cert 15 Item # 61428 | RRP £15.99 | Released 7th June

Our DVD Price: £10.99

Valentine’s Day Garry Marshall

Feelgood rom-com following the experiences of intertwining Los Angeles singletons and couples as they break up and make up on Valentine’s Day. The star-studded cast includes Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Shirley MacLaine and Ashton Kutcher. USA | 2010 | WHV | 119 min | Cert 12 Item # 61513 | RRP £19.99 | Released 12th July

DVD: £13.99 DVD+Blu-ray: £17.99

The Wolfman: Extended Cut Joe Johnston

Inspired by the Universal horror of the same name, The Wolfman stars Benicio Del Toro as a haunted nobleman lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his father (Anthony Hopkins), he sets out to find him – and learns that something with an insatiable bloodlust has been on the 16 minutes of additional footage. rampage. USA | 2009 | UPV | 102 min | Cert 15 Item # 61847 | RRP £19.99 | Released 7th June

DVD Price: £13.99 Blu-ray: £17.99 Limited Steel Book Blu-ray: £25.49

Also Released...

Inspired by 1970s existential road movies, this French coming-of-age drama sees young twin brothers hitch from France to Barcelona for their mother’s funeral, their journey marked by quarrels and reconciliation as they struggle to deal with their grief.

Nancy Walker

USA | 1980 | OPTIM | 120 min | Cert PG | # 61463 | RRP £15.99

Our DVD Price: £10.99

Everybody’s Fine Kirk Jones

USA / Italy | 2009 | WDHV | 99 min | Cert 12 | # 62153 | RRP £11.99

Our DVD Price: £8.99

Extraordinary Measures Tom Vaughan

USA | 2010 | COL-T | 100 min | Cert PG | # 61886 | RRP £19.99

Our DVD Price: £13.99

Hideous Kinky

Gillies MacKinnon UK | 1998 | UPV | 95 min | Cert 15 | # 62246 | RRP £9.99

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Solomon Kane

Michael J. Bassett UK | 2009 | EV | 104 min | Cert 15 | # 61778 | RRP £19.99

DVD: £13.99 Blu-ray: £17.99

The Dragon Chronicles Fire and Ice Pitof

Romania / USA | 2008 | 82 min | Cert 12 | # 62120 | RRP £5.99

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The Passage

J. Lee Thompson UK | 1979 | VINT | 98 min | 18 | # 62301 | RRP £7.99

Our DVD Price: £6.99

Animation Wizards

Ralph Bakshi

An offbeat coming-of-age comedy starring Michael Cera as a small-town outcast who is obsessed with Fellini, Serge Gainsbourg – and losing his virginity. Wondering how to attract a new girl’s attention, he develops a bad boy Gallic alter-ego – Francois Dillinger. USA | 2009 | MOMET | 89 min | Cert 15 Item # 61514 | RRP £17.99 | Released 12th July

USA | 1977 | EUREK | 80 min | | Cert PG Item # 61871 | RRP £15.99 | Released 24th May

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Miguel Arteta

Pascal-Alex Vincent

Can’t Stop the Music

An ambitious and inventive film from legendary animator Ralph Bakshi, Wizards is a dazzling fantasy adventure. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where technology has been outlawed, the film follows the story of rival wizards Avatar, the kindly ruler of a rainbow paradise and his evil brother Blackwolf, who dominates Scortch, a bleak land of goblins and wraiths. New transfer; Director commentary.

Youth in Revolt

Give Me Your Hand

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Hannah Free

Wendy Jo Carlton Moving American drama, set in the midwest, where traditional gender expectations challenge a couple’s deep love. As Hannah becomes an unapologetic lesbian and Rachel a reserved homemaker, Hannah Free reveals how these two passionate women maintain their love affair. USA | 2009 | PECCA | 86 min | Cert TBC Item # 62309 | RRP £14.99 | Released 5th July

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Otto; or, Up With Dead People Bruce LaBruce

Otto the amnesiac zombie hitches to Berlin where he is discovered by an underground filmmaker who is trying to finish a political-pornozombie movie. With a cast of lascivious ballet dancers, park carnivores, street ragamuffins, orgy zombies and even a ‘yummy boy eating ice cream cone’, you are definitely entering into the the cult queer world of Bruce LaBruce! Germany / Canada | 2008 | PECCA | 94 min | Cert 18 Item # 62326 | RRP £14.99 | Released 12th July

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Raging Sun, Raging Sky Julian Hernandez

A passionately symbolic exploration of love, sex and destiny and a visually stunning ode to the power of unconditional love, Raging Sun... sees the bond between two young, handsome Mexican men tested when one is abducted. Mexico | 2009 | TLAUK | 141 min | Cert TBC Item # 61612 | RRP £14.99 | Released 12th July

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Page 29

James Oliver’s From the Cheap Seats

Sins of Omission

It’s surely harder now than ever before to get a handle on ‘film history’ of which were always tantalisingly out of reach. Now, however, we can follow our nose and – should we wish it – become experts in our chosen fields. The consequence of this, of course, is that the stack of unwatched films grows ever larger: if we dedicate ourselves to one aspect of cinema, then we necessarily ignore others. And this has wider implications. There is a greater temptation to remain within our comfort zones, to concentrate on those things we already know we like at the expense of the unknown and the unfamiliar. The big question is how much guilt we should feel about this. Should we be doing our damnedest to catch up on the films that are agreed, by consensus, to be essential or resign ourselves to the fact that, well, there are just some important movies we’ll never watch?

It’s surely harder to get a handle on film history now than it ever was before. It was always a given that no one could see everything but it was possible to develop a comprehensive understanding of the medium; those days are long gone. It’s basically impossible to see anything other than a fraction of the whole. I’m thrilled at the possibilities but I can’t help feeling just a little sad about all the films I’ll never see.

Related Films The Bicycle Thieves Vittorio De Sica

It | 1948| 90 min | subt | B&W | U | # 60044 | £15.99

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Cassavetes Box Set USA | OPTIM | 750 min | Cert 15 | # 23555 | RRP £49.99

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Coffin Joe Collection Brazil | 1964-76 | subt | Cert 18 | # 57955 | RRP £39.99

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Tokyo Story Yasujiro Ozu

Japan | 1953 | BFI | 135 min | subt | B&W | Cert U | # 60977 | RRP £19.99 | Released 19th July

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* I don’t consider Carry On Columbus as part of the series. And even if it is, there’s no way on earth I’m ever sitting through it again.

Visit the Cheap Seats blog and join in on the discussion! blogs.moviemail-online.co.uk Page 30

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Image from Ozu’s Early Summer, out 19th July

he bald facts are these: no one sees everything. How could they? On average, there are (roughly) ten new films released into cinemas every seven days. Then there’s ‘Direct To DVD’ titles: let’s be conservative and say there are ten of them each week. If you are prepared to sacrifice your money, your social life and – frankly – your sanity keeping abreast of all these, you’ll basically be watching three films a day. And you’ll still be missing out on festival films which don’t get a regular release. Oh, and I’m sure you don’t need reminding that there’s an awful lot of ‘old’ films to catch up on too. So no. No one sees everything. Indeed, it can be an amusing parlour game for film buffs to nominate the most celebrated films they haven’t seen. For many years, I took perverse pride in boasting that I had seen not a single film directed by Woody Allen. That has changed but I’m aware that there are still horrible gaps in my viewing history, and not just the contemporary films that hold no interest for me. I’m weak on Italian neo-realism and huge swathes of Asian film. I’ve seen only one film directed by Ozu and not a single one by John Cassavetes. (I have, however, seen every Carry On... film at least twice*.) Here’s the thing. There has never been a better time to watch films. There are DVDs for every niche. Whole new vistas have now opened for us: you can track the tributaries of the French New Wave or soak up Brazilian horror movies (Coffin Joe, if you want to know). Every interest is catered for. But in these days of near endless choice, how do we decide what to watch? In ye olden dayes, it was easy to gain a broad film education, sampling genres and movements, the bulk

The New MovieMail Website March Highlights • Exclusive online sales – An extended Artificial Eye Sale, Arrow Films, Rare documentaries from Panamint, World Cinema from Optimum, Akira Kurosawa, Oliver Postgate • New Trailers – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Shutter Island, Tokyo Story, The Headless Woman, Lourdes, Double Take, Father of My Children, The Last Station, Micmacs • Latest Filmcast – Graeme looks at Diamonds of the Night • Full-length reviews – The War Lord, Father of My Children, Double Take, Crazy Heart Visit: www.moviemail-online.co.uk

MovieMail Filmcast The MovieMail Filmcast is a fortnightly programme that gives considered and insightful introductions to significant films and directors. Presented by Graeme Hobbs, the programmes aim to inspire you to watch the films with a fresh eye as well as introduce their themes and context. Listening and downloading is simple - you don't need an iPod or mp3 player, just a computer. Those with iTunes can easily subscribe to the podcast. Go to www.moviemail-online/podcasts

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The Last Station The final days of Tolstoy, starring Helen Mirren See page 27 for our full review

The Last Station Michael Hoffman A historical drama starring the Oscar-nominated Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, The Last Station is based on the final chapter in the life of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Christopher Plummer stars as the famous writer who is nearing the end of his life, while Mirren plays his wife Sofya, who must do all she can to protect her inheritance. UK | 2009 | OPTIM | 112 min | Cert 15 | # 61445 | RRP £17.99

DVD: £10.99 Save £7 Blu-ray: £13.99 Save £9