MovieMail March 2014 Catalogue by MovieMail

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March 2014

Monthly Film Catalogue

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Philomena, Cat People, Jeune & Jolie, The Norman Conquests, Eastern European Sale Order Now

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About MovieMail MovieMail Team Q. Our Classic British Novels on Screen Sale (page 12) inspires this month’s question: ‘What is your favourite adaptation of a British novel?’

Dan Hunter Editor Roman Polanski’s Tess

Graeme Hobbs Writer Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Becky Smith Buyer Charles Sturridge’s Brideshead Revisited

It’s the year of our eighteenth anniversary but the idea stays the same – to share interesting films and to celebrate one of the world’s great communal art forms. Thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays 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.

The Monthly Film Catalogue Here we present the best new DVD & Blu-ray 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 we particularly recommend are highlighted with a star or ‘recommended’ badge and a review. Published from wood-free pulp grown in sustainable forests. Please recycle, and let us know if you’d rather not receive it.

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BBC’s Pride and Prejudice

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March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

MovieMail News

ur cover star beat that magnificent study of the ineffable The Great Beauty to the Cannes Palme d’Or, so it’s not one to ignore, though in this case that would be difficult. An engaging drama about a young woman’s path into adulthood, the film is more notorious for its explicit lesbian sex scenes than its perceptive take on a turbulent period that all adults have experienced. Unsurprisingly, it earned an 18 certificate from the BBFC – a curious state of affairs indicative of Britain’s conservative attitude towards sex in films. The film has plenty to say to us adults, but it’s more appropriate and indeed more essential viewing for those

Contributors

Film of the Month 5 Blue is the Warmest Colour Cat People The Hunchback of Notre Dame

World Cinema who are yet to go through the transition to adulthood themselves. In France, it received a 12 rating – impressively open minded. Cat People finally slinks on to DVD on p7. It’s been much requested over the years – I can’t wait to find out why. Enjoy your films

Alex Davidson (Sally Potter’s Orlando) is a Web Producer for the BFI who can be found at over at bfi.org.uk/people/alex-davidson

Jeune & Jolie Walesa: Man of Hope Le Mani sulla Città

Documentaries

Television

The Norman Conquests

Animation

Frozen

Contemporary

Philomena A. Charles Sturridge’s Brideshead Revisited

(Iain Softley’s The Wings of the Dove) When he’s not filing the weekly cinema reviews for MovieMail’s website, Mike is a freelance writer and broadcaster who contributes regularly to the Guardian, Metro, Scotsman and Sunday Telegraph. His Cinésthesia blog, incorporating an archive of his print reviews, can be found online at: cinesthesiac.blogspot.co.uk

Rick Burin (Merchant Ivory’s A Room with a View) is a freelance journalist who hosts a blog that can be found at advicetothelovelorn.blogspot.co.uk

Classic Movies

Mike McCahill

Michael Brooke (Walerian Borowczyk’s Docteur Jekyll et les Femmes) is a freelance writer and DVD producer, and also a prolific contributor to Sight & Sound

Contents

James Oliver (Jules Dassin’s Night and the City) is a freelance writer on film who has contributed to Sight & Sound, Total Film and many other less acclaimed, and less salubrious, publications David Parkinson (Anthony Pelissier’s The History of Mr Polly) is a film critic and historian whose books on cinema include Thames & Hudson’s History of Film, The Rough Guide to Film Musicals and 100 Ideas That Changed Film

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Gay and Lesbian 33 Blu-ray

From the Cheap Seats

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Special Offers Vintage Classics

Classic Novels

1950s & 1960s TV Sale 20-21 Eastern European 23 World Class Opera 25 Page 3

Information

Current Top 10 Chart

Bonus Points

1 Le Week-End

Scripted by Hanif Kureishi and with nods to the nouvelle vague in its make-up, this is a shrewd, bittersweet portrait of a weekend trip to Paris. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent excel as the couple who come to know each other anew. Item# 73598 UK | 2013 | 93 | 15 | £15.99

DVD: £10.99 Save £5

2 Blue is the Warmest Colour

Notorious for its explicit sex scenes and epic running time, this is actually an engaging, perceptive and profoundly moving hymn to love and life that follows a young woman searching for her place in the world. A modern masterpiece. Item# 73508 France | 2013 | 179 | subt | 18 | £15.99

DVD: £9.99 Save £6

3 Blue Jasmine

With an astonishing central performance from Cate Blanchett as a delusional, desperate woman on her uppers who is forced to move in with her adoptive sister, this is signature Woody Allen. It may be his best screenplay yet.

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Key to MovieMail Recommended Recommended by MovieMail is a collection of the very best DVDs. Visit www.moviemail.com/ recommended for the full archive

Extras Following the disc icon, we list details of the supplementary materials found in the package. Blu-ray A disc with superior picture and sound quality compared to DVD. Requires a blu-ray player and High Definition TV to enjoy. DVD+Blu-ray A pack containing DVD and Blu-ray discs, usually with the same content on each. Digital copy A video file that you can play on PC, Mac, iPad etc.

Page 4

Item# 73136 USA | 2013 | 98 | 12 | £19.99

DVD: £12.99 Save £7

4 Classe Tous Risques

An understated wintry masterpiece of French gangster cinema starring the great Lino Ventura as a once-powerful Parisian criminal grown weary of exile and Jean-Paul Belmondo as the small-timer who risks his neck to get him home. Item# 73440 France / Italy | 1960 | 108 | subt | B&W | 12 | £19.99

DVD+Blu-ray: £13.99 Save £6

Great Beauty 5 The

Studios 8 Ealing Rarities: Vol 10

6 War and Peace

DVD: £11.99 Save £4

DVD: £9.99 Save £3

Philomena DVD: £12.99 Save £7

DVD: £10.99 Save £4

Gravity DVD: £12.99 Save £7

10 Films: Vol 12

British Transport DVD: £13.99 Save £6

Reader Feedback John Chapman emailed to thank us for coming up with the answer for the Russian film he saw on BBC2 some years ago, namely Sergei Bodrov’s Freedom is Paradise. We haven’t had any film queries for a while – do get in touch if there is a film whose title you need help remembering. We’ll pool our knowledge and find the answer if we can. David Smith pointed out an error in last month’s catalogue, in which we wrote that Crossroads to Crime was puppet pioneer Gerry Anderson’s first and only feature. It should have said that it was his only directorial credit for a live-action film (1974’s Invasion: UFO was stitched together from the TV series), but space limitations made for unclear phrasing. Please email feedback@moviemail.com or send us a postcard.

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Names of the Month: Muriel Box, Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson, Guy Rolfe

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March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

MovieMail’s Film of the Month

Buying Details

Our DVD Price:

£9.99 RRP: £15.99 Save £6

B 45 Bonus Points If purchased for £9.99

Also on Blu-ray Blue is the...

Item# 73509 Fr | 2013 | subt | 18 | £19.99

Blu-ray Price: £12.99

See Also Andzrej Wajda War Trilogy

A Generation (1955); Kanal (1957); Ashes and Diamonds (1958). Item# 54084 Poland | subt | 12 | £29.99

Our DVD Price: £14.99

Man of Iron

Andrzej Wajda

Item# 58666 Poland | 1981 | 147 | subt | PG | £12.99

Our DVD Price: £7.99

Polish Cinema Classics: Vol II

Promised Land (Wajda, 1974); Illumination (Zanussi, 1973); Escape from ‘Liberty’ Cinema (Marczewski, 1990) Item# 70802 Poland | 1973-90 | 344 | subt | 15 | £34.99

Our DVD Price: £26.99

ith several of Poland’s greatest films on his CV, Andrzej Wajda could have honourably retired years ago – the grim, cathartic Katyn (2007) even felt like a conscious career-capper. But the remarkable thing about Wajda’s longgestating biopic of Lech Walesa – the dissident trade-union activist who presided over Poland’s transformation from a Communist state – is that despite the director’s advanced age (87 at the premiere), it’s his most exhilarating, propulsively energetic film in decades, and not just because the soundtrack is packed with punk-tinged pro-Solidarity songs. When it comes to this subject, Wajda has unmatchable authority: not only is he the pre-eminent chronicler of Poland’s troubled past in such films as Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds and Man of Marble, but he was in the Gdansk shipyards in the summer of 1980, filming Man of Iron against the backdrop of the actual Solidarity shutdown. Those concerned that this might compromise critical distance can relax – Walesa refused to have anything to do with the film, and Wajda grasps the tricky nettle of his alleged secret police collaboration at the start. The focus on long-suffering Danuta Walesa also speaks volumes: while

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Andrzej Wajda’s most exhilarating and energetic film in decades her husband is organising strikes, rabblerousing and getting imprisoned, she brings up their ever-expanding family singlehanded in desperately resource-strapped 1970s/80s Poland. If it’s not quite wartsand-all, it’s certainly not a hagiography. While Robert Wieckiewicz won’t be following in the Oscar-winning footsteps of Meryl Streep’s Thatcher or Daniel Day Lewis’s Lincoln, his performance is every bit as convincing. Poles have confirmed that he absolutely nails Walesa, especially his charismatic personality: at one point, when still unknown, he spontaneously lectures hunger-striking intellectuals on the futility of their gesture. This is a man who, upon spotting the tiniest chink of light through the Iron Curtain, crowbarred it open through sheer force of will – and if Wajda downplays the fact that Walesa didn’t do it alone, Wieckiewicz convinces you that he could have done. Wajda’s films don’t often end on a note of resounding triumph, but it’s easy to see why he made an exception here. Michael Brooke Page 17

Jeune & Jolie

TV Sale

from 1950

In the 1950s television really came of age, with landmarks events such as the 1953 Coronation and the adv colour along with continually evolving drama, action series and documentaries. Here are some of the deca

An Age of Kings

The Avengers

The Clangers

Michael Hayes

All 139 surviving episodes from series 1-6 of the original 1960s cult action series, starring the bowler-hatted Patrick MacNee, with, respectively, Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson as his sassy assistants.

Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin

BBC’s vivid 1960 productions, performed live on television, of Shakespeare’s pageant of eight History plays, presented as a coherent single story. An essential piece of broadcasting history.

5 discs.

Item# Various UK | 1961-69 | 12 | £199.99

Both series of the perenially popular animated series set on a blue planet populated by longnosed, knitted pink inhabitants and their friends. Postgate’s narration is lovely.

DVD: £27.99 Save £7

Complete Box Set: £109.99 Save £90 Series 1-6 DVD: £32.99 each Save £47

7-49 Up

Danger Man: Series 1

Face to Face

An enthralling series in which 14 diverse children are visited every seven years from the age of 7 to follow their lives. 6 discs.

Patrick McGoohan stars as British Intelligence agent John Drake in this complete first series of 39 half-hour episodes. 6 discs.

The landmark 1959-62 BBC series, in which John Freeman asked searching questions to important personalities of the day. 6 discs.

Item# 66731 UK | 1964-2003 | 500 | E | £29.99

Item# 73623 UK | 1960-61 | 975 | 12 | £39.99

Item# 58281 UK | 1959-62 | 1050 | B&W | E | £61.27

DVD: £19.99 Save £10

DVD: £32.99 Save £7

DVD: £22.99 Save £38.28

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Series 1-3

Death of a Salesman

The Forsyte Saga

Dir: Alex Segal. This landmark TV adaptation by Arthur Miller of his own play sees Lee J. Cobb recreating his Broadway role of Willy Loman.

The complete Victorian drama based on the novels by John Galsworthy. Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More and Eric Porter star. 6 discs.

Item# 73166 UK | 1960 | 960 | B&W | E | £34.99

Box sets of the complete first three seasons from the crime series, with some films directed by Hitch himself.

Item# 21935 UK | 1969 | 120 | U | £9.99

DVD: £5.99 each Save £4 each

Item# 21893 USA | 1966 | 110 | PG | £18.99

Item# 18886 UK | 1967 | 1320 | B&W | 12 | £71.48

S1/2 DVD: £12.99 each S3 DVD: £14.99

DVD: £9.99 Save £9

DVD: £16.99 Save £54.49

The Caesars

Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World

The Four Just Men

Item# Various USA | 1955-58 | PG | £34.99

Dir: Derek Bennett. One of the last great Granada dramas, made in 1968 and broadcast to great acclaim. Ralph Bates stars. Item# 28342 UK | 1968 | 300 | B&W | 15 | £19.99

DVD: £11.99 Save £8

Cathy Come Home Dir: Ken Loach. One of the most famous and influential British TV plays ever. Carol White plays the young mother driven to despair. Item# 65937 UK | 1965 | 77 | B&W | PG | £15.99

DVD: £7.99 Save £8

A Choice of Coward Four Noel Coward plays, as seen on ITV’s Play of the Week in 1964: Present Laughter, Blithe Spirit, The Vortex, Design for Living. 2 discs. Item# 59519 UK | 1964 | 290 | B&W | PG | £19.99

DVD: £11.99 Save £8

Dir: Barry Letts. Unseen in the UK for 45 years, recently rediscovered and restored. Patrick Troughton stars. Item# 73214 UK | 1967 | 150 | PG | £19.99

An ITC crime series, adapted from Edgar Wallace and starring Jack Hawkins, Richard Conte, Vittorio de Sica and Dan Dailey. 5 discs. Item# 64004 UK | 1959-60 | | B&W | 12 | £49.99

DVD: £13.99 Save £6

DVD: £21.99 Save £28

Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors Collection

The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show

Dir: Derek Martinus. All six episodes, including two animated ones, of the second Doctor’s 1967 adventure.

Highlights from the 1950s show from real-life married couple George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Item# 71748 UK | 1967 | 150 | B&W | PG | £19.99

Item# 27990 USA | 1950s | 76 | B&W | U | £9.99

DVD: £10.99 Save £9

DVD: £5.99 Save £4

Edgar Wallace Mysteries

Get Smart: Season 1

Seven volumes of British Edgar Wallace thrillers. A treasure trove of 1960s B-features. 3 discs each. Item# Various UK | 1960-61 | 420 | B&W | PG | £29.99

S1-6 DVD: £13.99 each S7 DVD: £10.99

Don Adams plays the inept Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 for CONTROL in this comedy spy series from Buck Henry and Mel Brooks. 5 discs. Item# 54557 USA | 1965 | 800 | 12 | £35.99

DVD: £19.99 Save £16

Order now at www.moviemail.

m the 0s & 60s

vent of the first soaps capturing the British imagination. The 1960s brought ades’ most memorable programmes, at bargain prices.

The High Chaparral

Dr Finlay’s Casebook: Series 1 A dapper Bill Simpson takes the role of the forward-looking Dr Finlay in this popular series set around a medical practice in a fictional Scottish town in the 1920s.

3 discs.

Item# 70804 UK | 1962 | 600 | B&W | PG | £34.99

DVD: £22.99 Save £12

Ghost Squad The complete 1961-64 adventures of the agents of Scotland Yard’s secret undercover crime unit – The Ghost Squad. 10 discs. Item# 33152 UK | 1961-63 | 1950 | B&W | 12 | £49.99

DVD: £36.99 Save £13

All three series of the 1960s American western series starring Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell as ranchers on the High Chaparral Ranch in Arizona Territory in the 1870s. 7 discs each. Item# Various USA | 1967-68 | 1400 | TBC | £39.99

DVD: £32.99 each Save £7

The Lone Ranger / The Lost City of Gold A double bill of Lone Ranger Westerns starring Clayton Moore, with Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Item# 72230 USA | 1956-58 | 163 | PG | £9.99

DVD: £5.99 Save £4

Railway Roundabout Patrick Whitehouse The complete collection of the 1950s-1960s BBC TV series featuring train lines that turned out to be on the point of closure and locomotives about to disappear.

4 discs.

Item# 72485 UK | 1958-62 | 480 | E | £29.99

DVD: £17.99 Save £12

Sergeant Cork Box sets of series 1-6 of the drama following the cases of the CID in Victorian London. John Barrie stars. Item# Various 1964-68 | BW | £39.99

S1/3/6 DVD: £22.99 each Save £17 S2/4 DVD: £12.99 each S5 DVD: £6.99

Interpol Calling

Manhunt

All 39 half-hour episodes from this classic 1959 ITC series starring Charles Korvin as the intrepid Interpol Inspector Paul Duval. 5 discs.

A tense drama set in Occupied France. The strong cast includes Robert Hardy, Philip Madoc and Peter Barkworth. 8 discs.

Item# 69756 UK | 1959 | 975 | B&W | PG | £49.99

Item# 57556 UK | 1969 | 1300 | £59.99

DVD: £22.99 Save £27

DVD: £24.99 Save £35

The Invaders

The Phil Silvers Show: Season 1

Star Trek: The Original Series

The Sergeant Bilko show! One of TV’s first mega-hits, filled with snappy dialogue and visual gags. 5 discs.

Classic sci-fi that changed the course of armchair space travel. Three series

Item# 62251 USA | 1956 | B&W | PG | £24.99

DVD: £12.99 Save £12

S1-3 DVD: £14.99 each Save £25 Complete DVD: £44.99 Blu-ray: £89.99

Jack Rosenthal at ITV

The Pogles

Stranger on the Run

A comprehensive collection showcasing the work of one of Britain’s greatest dramatists, as broadcast on ITV from 1961-88. 5 discs.

Early Smallfilms stop-motion magic from Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. Choose from The Pogles, Pogles’ Wood and Pogles’ Choice.

Dir: Don Siegel. Henry Fonda stars as a drifter who finds himself wrongly accused of murder by a powercrazed sheriff.

Item# 28368 UK | 1961-88 | 915 | 15 | £39.99

Item# Various UK | 1966-67 | B&W | U | £16.99

Item# 56947 USA | 1967 | 97 | PG | £15.99

DVD: £24.99 Save £15

DVD: £13.99 each Save £3

DVD: £8.99 Save £7

John Betjeman: A Bird’s Eye View

The Prisoner

The Twilight Zone: The Original Series

Series 1 and 2 of the classic paranoid sci-fi. Roy Thinnes is superb as the Everyman facing aliens that look just like us. 5 discs per series. Item# 50515 USA | 1967 | 169 | PG | £29.99

S1 DVD: £12.99 Save £17 S2 DVD: £15.99

An Englishman’s Home (1969), Beside the Seaside (1969) and One Man’s County; Cornwall (1964). Item# 66903 UK | 1964-69 | 145 | E | £12.99

DVD: £7.99 Save £5

All the episodes from THE cult 60s series starring Patrick McGoohan as No. 6. Prime enigmatic, surrealist, paranoiac televison. 7 discs. Item# 50274 UK | 1967 -69 | 850 | PG | £49.99

DVD: £26.99 Save £23 Blu-ray: £46.99

The Sherlock Holmes Collection Five cases with Peter Cushing in the lead, including The Sign of Four and 3 discs. A Study in Scarlet. Item# 18976 UK | 1968 | 300 | 12 | £24.99

DVD: £9.99 Save £15

Item# Various USA | 1966 | PG | £39.99

Box sets of seasons 1-5 of the seminal American science-fiction series created by Rod Serling. Item# Various USA | 1960 | 900 | B&W | PG | £34.99

DVD: £15.99 each Save £19

.com or call 0844 376 0009

World Cinema Fill the Void

Rama Burshstein

A nuanced Israeli drama that examines the possibilities of personal freedom within the strict confines of religion and tradition. When the eldest daughter of an Orthodox Hassidic family dies during the birth of her first child, plans for her younger sister’s own marriage are put on hold, with her mother demanding that she instead marry her dead sister’s husband. Israel | 2012 | ART-E | 91 | subt | Cert U Item# 73682 / 73683 | RRP £15.99 | 24th March

Five Films by Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray

Five 1960s films from the great Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray: The Big City (Mahanagar, 1963), The Lonely Wife (Charulata, 1964), The Hero (Nayak, 1966), The Coward (Kapurush, 1965) and The Holy Man (Mahapurush, 5 discs. 1965). India | 1963-66 | ART-E | 508 | Cert PG Item# 74093 | RRP £49.99 | 14th April

Our Blu-ray Price: £38.99

Last Days

Àlex & David Pastor

Spanish near-future horror film in which a mysterious epidemic is spreading across the planet. Humanity develops an irrational fear of open spaces. Soon, the world’s population is trapped inside buildings. As Barcelona descends into chaos, Marc sets off on a quest to find his missing girlfriend – without ever going outside. Spain | 2013 | MET-D | 100 | subt | Cert 15 Item# 73472 | RRP £15.99 | 24th February

Our DVD Price: £11.99

Meteora

S Stathoulopoulos The conflict between desire and religious calling is at the centre of this tale of forbidden love between a Greek Orthodox monk and a nun. The film is set in the extraordinary central Greek landscape of Metéora and incorporates occasional animated references to classical legends. Germany / Greece | 2012 | SodaElev | 82 | subt | Cert 12 Item# 73445 | RRP £17.99 | 24th March

Page 22

Recommended Director: Claire Denis

DVD Price: £11.99 Blu-ray: £13.99

Our DVD Price: £12.99

Bastards

Even judged by the usual criteria one applies to Claire Denis’ elliptical filmmaking, Bastards forms a tricky proposition: a film that spends its time feeling its way around a vengeance plot inspired by recent events in the financial sector. It catches a mood, but it’s a grim and foreboding one. That title, delivered through gritted teeth, isn’t for nothing. Denis’ love of ambiguity renders any straightforward narrative reading precarious at best, but here’s what the film looked like to these eyes. Sea captain Marco (Vincent Lindon) comes ashore upon learning of his shoemaker brother’s suicide, whereupon he installs himself in an empty flat and begins a warped relationship with the mistress (Chiara Mastroianni) of the financier Marco believes was responsible for his brother’s death. Denis’ storytelling remains unique in world cinema. Here it feels as if she’s using Bastards to purge something from her system, possibly some of the rage against the machine lacking from Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Her film replays the past couple of years not as ribald farce, but waking nightmare. MM

Buying Details Our DVD Price: £10.99 RRP: £15.99 Save £5

Le Mani sulla Città Recommended Director: Francesco Rosi Starring: Rod Steiger Released: 17th March Extras: 2 discs; Booklet. Item# 73523 Italy | 1963 | EUREK | 100 | subt | B&W | 15

Le Mani sulla Città (Hands over the City) is the perfect introduction to Francesco Rosi’s work, an excellent example of his talent for moulding complicated, politically charged stories into gripping narratives. It’s set in his home town of Naples; Edoardo Nottola (Rod Steiger, delivering one of his best performances) is a property developer whose ambitious schemes and generous bribes have won him the support of local politicians. Then one of his shoddily built buildings collapses and a leftwing councillor tries to implicate the businessman in the face of implacable bureaucratic opposition. Rosi’s skill is to make the exposure of this low-level criminality so riveting. While it abides by the gospel of Neo-realism – it was filmed in real locations and many of the cast are non-professionals – Rosi was a major stylist who knew how to put his films together for maximum impact: this political exposé is better paced than most thrillers. Rosi is the forgotten man of Italy’s arthouse golden age; as this splendid film illustrates, his work is ripe for resdicovery. JO

Buying Details Our DVD+Blu-ray Price:

Blu-ray Price: £13.99 RRP: £19.99 Save £6

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£12.99

RRP: £17.99 Save £5

Eastern European Cinema Sale With a reputation for provocative, subversive and beautifully-photographed films that often turned the strictures of a country’s censorship to positive advantage, the cinema of Eastern Europe is filled with rewarding works that richly repay exploration. To celebrate the release of Andzrej Wajda’s new film (p15), we present some of the very best.

Conspirators of Pleasure

Miklós Jancsó Collection

Tuesday, After Christmas

Jan Švankmajer

A triple bill of films from the great Hungarian director (19212014), containing My Way Home (1964), The Round-Up (1965) and The Red and the White (1967). 3 discs. Also available individually.

Radu Muntean

Item# 66514 Hungary | 1964-67 | subt | B&W | 15 | £24.99

Item# 67756 Romania | 2010 | 99 | subt | 15 | £12.99

Item# 68201 Czech Republic | 1996 | 82 | subt | 18 | £15.99

DVD: £6.99 Save £9

Box Set: £14.99 Save £10 DVD: £7.99 each

Alois Nebel

Damnation

Dir: Tomáš Lunák,. An accomplished animated feature which paints a portrait of a fractured country after the Czech Velvet Revolution.

Dir: Béla Tarr. A treatment of love and betrayal in a provincial town which calls up metaphysical beauty from the edge of desolation.

A nuanced adult drama in which a married man with a child is compelled to choose between his wife and lover in the run-up to Christmas. There are no easy resolutions. DVD: £8.99 Save £4

The Hourglass Sanatorium Dir: Wojciech Has. A dreamlike cinematic feast, adapted from Bruno Schulz’s novel. Restored.

Item# 69135 Czech | 2011 | 84 | subt | B&W | 15 | £12.99

Item# 57765 Hungary | 1988 | 120 | subt | B&W | 15 | £15.99

DVD: £6.99 Save £6

DVD: £6.99 Save £9

DVD: £7.99 Save £6

The Andzrej Wajda War Trilogy

Dekalog

In Darkness

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s series of ten films made for Polish TV, based on the 10 Commandments and set in modern Warsaw. 2 discs each.

Dir: Agnieszka Holland. An acclaimed drama based on the true story of a sewage worker who saved the lives of Jews in Lvov during WWII.

Item# 54084 Poland | 1958 | 313 | subt | 12 | £29.99

Item# 9698 / 9699 Poland | 1988 | 278 | subt | 15 | £24.99

Item# 68805 Poland | 2011 | 144 | subt | 15 | £19.99

DVD: £14.99 Save £15

1-5 DVD: £8.99 6-10 DVD: £8.99

DVD: £5.99 Save £14

A Call Girl

Diamonds of the Night

Katyn

A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds – films about the struggle 3 discs. for freedom in Poland.

Dir: Damjan Kozole. A Slovenian drama in which a girl escapes smalltown life and sets up as a call girl for Eurocrats in Ljubljana. Item# 68001 Slovenia | 2009 | 90 | subt | 15 | £15.99

DVD: £6.99 Save £9

Dir: Jan Nemec. A thrillingly original film in which two Jewish boys escape a train bound for a Nazi death camp. Item# 61181 Czech | 1964 | 64 | subt | B&W | 12 | £12.99

Item# 67183 Poland | 1973 | 119 | subt | 15 | £13.99

Dir: Andrzej Wajda. A historic film about ‘the Katyn lie’ – the cover-up of the massacre of 20,000 Polish by the Soviets at the outset of WWII. Item# 59641 Poland | 2007 | 121 | subt | 15 | £15.99

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Closely Observed Trains

The Fall of the Innocent

Romeo, Juliet and Darkness

Dir: Jiri Menzel. An Oscar-winning, blackly comic tale of a young stationmaster’s wartime adventures.

Dir: Petr Nikolaev. A drama based on the wartime massacre that took place in the Czech village of Lidice.

Dir: Jiri Weiss. A poetic film set in wartime Prague where a young man hides a fugitive Jewish girl in his attic.

Item# 17034 Czech | 1966 | 88 | subt | B&W | 15 | £20.99

Item# 67958 Czech | 2011 | 90 | subt | 15 | £14.99

Item# 32126 Czech | 1960 | 92 | subt | B&W | 12 | £12.99

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The Confrontation

The Fireman’s Ball

Dir: Miklós Jancsó’s virtuoso first colour film, in which wide-eyed revolutionary idealism collides with clear-eyed pragmatism.

Dir: Milos Forman. Hilarious, deadpan satire about a provincial firemen’s ball descending into complete chaos. ‘Banned forever’ on Czech release.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders

Item# 70343 Hungary | 1969 | 78 | subt | U | £12.99

Item# 58903 Czech Republic | 1967 | 73 | PG | £19.99

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Dir: Jaromil Jireš. A celluloid dreampoem combining horror, fairy-tale, folklore and surrealism. Item# 55334 Czechoslovakia | 1970 | 73 | subt | 15 | £12.99

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A film of delirious yet deadpan invention, which sees six people, aided by various household objects and some extraordinary ingenuity, realise their auto-erotic fantasies.

World Cinema

Documentaries

The Passion of Michelangelo

New Releases

Esteban Larraín

Chilean director Esteban Larraín turns his attention to the true story of a 14 year-old street child who becomes a prophet as the first street protests begin to pose a challenge to Pinochet’s regime. However, the boy himself undergoes a profound transformation from shy boy to capricious teenager who uses his divine gift to manipulate others.

Paul Crowder Michael Fassbender narrates this film about the history of Formula 1 racing which chronicles the sport’s development from the 1950s through to the present day. Features interviews with Jackie Stewart, Mario Andretti, Niki Lauda and others.

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USA | 2013 | STUDC | 106 | Cert 12 Item# 73469 / 73471 | RRP £17.99 | 17th March

Rurouni Kenshin

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Keishi Ohtomo

A manga-derived Japanese action drama in which former assassin Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satô) has now become a wandering samurai, offering aid and protection to those in need as atonement for his past deeds. In Tokyo, he meets a young woman whose kendo school is threatened by a crime boss who wants to use it as a facility for producing opium. Japan | 2012 | WHV | 134 | subt | Cert 15 Item# 73192 / 73194 | RRP £15.99 | Out Now

Shuichi Okita

The innocent Yonosuke takes pleasure in life’s simplest things and his positive approach alters everyone around him. As his friends recount their experiences with him, we start to build up his story. The touching characters of Okita Shuichi’s followup to The Woodsman and the Rain was a big hit at festivals worldwide. Japan | 2013 | 3RDW | 160 | subt | Cert PG Item# 73920 / 73921 | RRP £14.99 | 14th April

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur A highly acclaimed tribute to an extraordinary man – PK Nair, the founder and guardian of the National Film Archive of India and a living, breathing museum of cinema. This awardwinning documentary is at once a portrait of a man in love with film, and a paean to that obsession.

Fire in the Blood

Katell Quillévéré The second film from Quillévéré (Love Like Poison), Suzanne spans 25 years in telling an emotionally astute story of two close sisters discovering life’s unpredictability the hard way as childhood, death, motherhood and hopeless love course through their lives.

Page 24

Celluloid Man

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Suzanne

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An exquisite audio-visual tapestry of archive footage composed by Jarvis Cocker and Martin Wallace, The Big Melt is a feature length elegy to the men and women who toiled in Sheffield’s steelworks during the last century and a hymn to The Big Melt Britain’s proud industrial past. Live at the Crucible (2013, 73 mins); Booklet.

India | 2012 | 2RUN | 155 | Cert E Item# 73871 | RRP £12.99 | 14th April

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Martin Wallace

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The Story of Yonosuke

Raymond Depardon

Filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon (Modern Life) and his collaborator Claudine Nougaret journey around France over the course of six years. Depardon takes landscape photographs using a large-format camera, while Nougaret looks at some of the filmmaker’s unseen work. France | 2012 | SODA | 100 | subt | Cert E Item# 73444 | RRP £17.99 | 17th March

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The Missing Picture Rithy Panh

The Big Melt

UK | 2013 | BFI | 70 | Cert 12 Item# 73719 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

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Journal de France

Dylan Mohan Gray

An intricate tale of medicine, monopoly and malice that tells the story of how governments and western pharmaceutical companies aggressively blocked access to lowcost AIDS drugs for the countries of the global south after 1996 – and how an improbable coalition fought back. India | 2012 | NWORK | 87 | Cert PG Item# 73716 | RRP £12.99 | 24th March

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An Oscar-nominated documentary which details the horrors of the Cambodian genocide which occurred under the Pol Pot dictatorship of the late 1970s. Using clay animation as a way of illustrating the experience of the common people, Panh tells the story of how he and his family were taken from their home in the city and forced to work in rural labour camps as part of the Khmer Rouge’s social engineering policies. France | 2013 | NW | 92 | subt | Cert 12 Item# 73857 / 73858 | RRP £15.99 | 24th March

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Pray for Japan Stuart J. Levy

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Teenage

Matt Wolf ‘Teenagers’ did not always exist. In this collage of rare archival material, filmed portraits and voices lifted from early 20th century diary entries, a struggle erupts between adults and adolescents to define a new idea of youth. USA / Germany | 2013 | SodaElev | 78 | Cert 12 Item# 73463 | RRP £17.99 | 31st March

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March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Since 2007, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 La Traviata has been the most frequently performed opera in the world, ahead of even Carmen. So it’s the ideal subject for this enthralling behind-the-scenes look at the development of an Aix-en-Provence Festival production from 2011. We follow soprano Natalie Dessay and her co-stars from informal-dress, piano-accompanied rehearsals to full-scale orchestral run-throughs, their performances minutely calibrated throughout by director Jean-François Sivadier, not a man who believes in just plonking the singers on stage and letting them get on with it. Rightly, because one of the challenges of staging La Traviata is to spring surprises from this extremely familiar material without going to contentious extremes. Sivadier and Dessay examine the score and libretto with forensic precision, an occasionally frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience for both. Dessay resented Philippe Béziat’s cameras at first, but was won over, saying that the film simultaneously explained her work while keeping it mysterious. MB

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Bravo! We present a superb sale of the highest-quality stage productions, published by Opus Arte and Arthaus Musik. Take a front row seat for works by the greatest composers filmed at many of the most celebrated opera houses.

Così Fan Tutte: Glyndebourne

The Wagner Collection

Thomas Allen, Helen Dose and Sylvia Lindenstrand lead the cast in this 1975 performance of Mozart’s ever popular comic opera at the Glyndebourne Festival, with music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Contains Lohengrin (Wiener Staatsoper, 1990, with Plácido Domingo), Tannhäuser (Festspielhaus, Baden Baden, 2008) and Rienzi (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2010). 6 discs.

Item# 70437 UK | 1975 | 158 | E | £14.99

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The Berlin Philharmonic and the Third Reich Dir: Enrique Sánchez Lansch. The Nazi-era Berlin Philharmonic. Item# 69740 / 69744 Germany | 2007 | 90 | E | £19.99

Item# 70438 Germany | 1990-2010 | 580 | E | £29.99

Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices Dir: Werner Herzog. The strange chronicle of 16th century madrigal composer Don Carlo Gesualdo. Item# 32706 Germany | 1995 | 60 | E | £19.99

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La Bohème: Royal Opera House

Gilbert and Sullivan Collection

Hibla Gerzmava and Teodor Ilincai head the cast of Puccini’s opera, recorded live in December 2009.

From Opera Australia: The Mikado, The Gondoliers, HMS Pinafore, Trial 4 discs. by Jury and Patience.

Item# 62111 UK | 2009 | 121 | | £24.99

Item# 66652 UK | 2011 | 536 | E | £19.99

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Deutsche Oper Berlin 1912-2012

La Traviata: Royal Opera House

Some of the 20th century’s greatest opera stars feature in this set of 60s recordings from Berlin. 6 discs.

Soprano Renee Fleming heads an all-star cast in Richard Eyre’s 2009 production of Verdi’s opera.

Item# 69802 Germany | 1961-67 | 700 | B&W | E | £79.99

Item# 65072 UK | 2009 | 135 | E | £19.99

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Doctor Faustus: Globe Theatre

The Wagner Edition

Dir: Matthew Dunster. Christopher Marlowe’s dark tragedy, recorded live at the Globe Theatre in 2011. Item# 69999 UK | 2011 | 166 | 12 | £19.99

All of Wagner’s mature operas from seven leading European opera houses, featuring acclaimed Wagner singers of our age. 25 discs. Item# 69890 2001-11 | E | £99.99

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Don Giovanni: Glyndebourne 1977

Die Zauberflöte: Glyndebourne 1978

Dir: Peter Hall. The long-awaited release of the 1977 production of Mozart’s tragic ‘opera of all operas’.

Dir: John Cox. A performance of Mozart’s opera much praised for David Hockney’s imaginative sets.

Item# 71027 UK | 1977 | 172 | E | £14.99

Item# 71628 UK | 1978 | 165 | E | £14.99

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Page 25

Television Programmes Originally Broadcast

Churchill and the Generals

New Releases Beast: The Complete Series

Alexander Armstrong stars as a reluctant and dangerously incompetent vet in this sharply-scripted BBC1 sitcom from Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye. Sylvestra Le Touzel and Doon Mackichan co-star, along with an array of live 2 discs. animals.

UK | 2001 | NWORK | 346 | Cert 15 Item# 73293 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

Blandings: Series 2

Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders star in this BBC series based on PG Wodehouse’s comic creations. In series 2, Clarence grows a preposterous beard and faces the prospect of being committed to an asylum, his censorious elder sister comes to stay, and Connie plans to marry Freddie off to Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s unusual niece. UK | 2014 | G-VEN | 175 | Cert TBC Item# 74096 | RRP £14.99 | 31st March

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UK | 1981 | UPFRT | 180 | Cert TBC Item# 74161 | RRP £29.99 | 31st March

Our DVD Price: £22.99 All ten episodes from the new BBC series loosely based on the stories by GK Chesterton about a crime-solving Roman Catholic priest. Mark Williams takes the lead role, with Hugo Speer, Sorcha Cusack, Nancy Carroll and Alex Price in 3 discs. the cast.

UK | 2013 | DAZZL | 500 | Cert 12 Item# 74088 | RRP £29.99 | 24th March

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven Lloyd Kramer

The Brittas Empire: Complete Series 1-7

Chris Barrie stars as Gordon Brittas, manager of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre, whose staff try to keep things running smoothly despite Gordon’s best efforts. 7 discs; 1996 Royal Variety Performance; Christmas Specials.

UK | 1991-97 | EUREK | 1433 | PG Item# 74066 | RRP £49.99 | 14th April

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Call the Midwife: Series 3

A fascinating portrayal of a community on the brink of huge change, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth. Series 3 sees Chummy, PC Noakes and baby Freddy back in the East End, Shelagh preparing for her wedding and Jenny facing tough 4 discs; challenges. Also available: 10 disc series 1-3 box set. UK | 2014 | 2ENT | Cert TBC Item# 73851 / 73850 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

Page 26

A 1979 BBC docu-drama concerning the relationship between Winston Churchill (Timothy West) and the generals of the Allied forces between 1940 and 1945. The fine cast includes Eric Porter, Alexander Knox, Patrick Magee and Patrick Allen. Scripted by Ian Curteis; 3 discs. music by Wilfred Josephs.

Father Brown: Series 1

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Alan Gibson

On his 83rd birthday, Eddie (Jon Voight), a maintenance worker at the Ruby Pier amusement park, dies while trying to save a girl who is sitting under a falling ride. When he awakens in the afterlife, he encounters five people with ties to his corporeal existence who help him understand the meaning of his life. USA | 2004 | DAZZL | 160 | Cert 12 Item# 73912 | RRP £19.99 | 7th April

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A Game of Murder Alan Bromly

Discoveries play out to the final startling twist in this 1966 crime series written by Francis Durbridge (‘the creator of the television thriller serial’), and starring Gerald Harper as a Detective Inspector who refuses to accept the coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure for 3 discs. his father. UK | 1966 | UPFRT | 150 | Cert TBC Item# 74000 | RRP £29.99 | 14th April

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Gawain and the Green Knight John Michael Phillips

Adapted by David Rudkin (Penda’s Fen), this stunning TV dramatisation of the intriguing 14th century Arthurian tale of tale of magic, honour, romance and temptation stars Malcolm Storry as the otherworldly Green Knight, Jason Durr as the youthful Sir Gawain and Marc Warren as King Arthur. UK | 1991 | NWORK | 76 | Cert 12 Item# 73748 | RRP £12.99 | 31st March

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Inside No. 9 David Kerr

An anthology of darkly comic tales created by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (The League Of Gentlemen), which invites you into six very different No.9s, from a grand country house to a blood-soaked actor’s dressing room and a onebedroom flat. These unpredictable tales feature comedy, twists and claustrophobic horror. UK | 2013 | 2ENT | 172 | Cert 18 Item# 74077 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

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Jonathan Creek: Series 5

Jonathan Creek has left his windmill and the world of professional magic behind, but as he settles down for what ought to be a quiet married life, there are still plenty of bizarre mysteries to tax his deductive powers. Contains The Letters of Septimus Noone, The Sinner and the Sandman and The Stag Hunter. UK | 2014 | 2ENT | Cert TBC Item# 74127 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

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Mann’s Best Friends

A delightfully offbeat sitcom penned by Last of the Summer Wine creator Roy Clarke and starring Barry Stanton as the inheritor of a rambling old house along with its menagerie of strange animals and even stranger humans. Also stars Fulton MacKay, Patricia Brake, Liz Smith and Bernard Bresslaw. UK | 1985 | NWORK | 150 | Cert PG Item# 73936 | RRP £12.99 | 14th April

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March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

The Norman Conquests Recommended Contains: Living Together, Round and Round the Garden and Table Manners (Herbert Wise, 1978) Starring: Tom Conti, Penelope Wilton, Richard Briers, Fiona Walker, David Troughton, Penelope Keith Released: 7th April Extras: 2 discs. Item# 73914 | UK | 1978 | NWORK | 305 | Cert 12

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See Also The Good Life: Complete

Item# 63099 UK | 1975-78 | 880 | PG | £79.99

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Alan Bennett at the BBC

Item# 59908 UK | 1978-92 | 12 | £29.99

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Mike Leigh at the BBC Item# 58115 UK | 1973-84 | 12 | £59.99

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ainstream directors who experiment with narrative form – François Ozon in his back-to-front tale 5x2, Alejandro González Iñárritu with his skipping-record style in 21 Grams – are often praised for their daring (and rightly so in both cases). Irréversible and Memento have already entered modern classic status, but all these adventurous films owe a debt to the pioneering theatre of a middle class gentleman from Hampstead – Alan Ayckbourn. Many of Ayckbourn’s comedies subvert narrative conventions. The Norman Conquests plays with a time structure gimmick – three plays that all take place at the same time (though on separate nights) in three different places in the family house (the dining room, the living room and the garden). When a character walks out of the living room in one play, he or she may enter the action in the garden in another. This demanding time structure works incredibly well, and this Thames Television version of the play is the best televised adaptation of Ayckbourn’s work yet. The plot is simple – a family discovers that Annie (Penelope Wilton) is planning an affair with Norman (Tom Conti) and each person reacts in different ways. The work

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How comedy used to be; charming, wellacted and very funny is extremely well-cast, with a host of familiar faces gleaned from quality sitcoms (The Good Life’s Penelope Keith and Richard Briers are terrific as a permanently bickering couple). The comic timing is as acute as one would expect, but there are some surprisingly moving scenes as well, such as those involving the deceived wife, Ruth (Fiona Walker), whose acerbic facade eventually cracks when she realises the extent of her husband’s betrayal. It is the comic set-pieces that are the work’s real forte; beautifully well-observed sequences involving confused seating arrangements, a complicated board game and unfoldable deckchairs poke gentle fun at the ridiculousness of the middle-class characters. The humour is so frothy and affectionate – more recent films have been far more cutting about the bourgeoisie that The Norman Conquests serves as a charming time capsule of how comedy used to be; charming, well-acted and very, very funny. Alex Davidson Page 27

Television Merlin’s Revenge: The Grail Wars

Promoted to Glory Richard Spence

A highly original drama of love and redemption, originally screened at Christmas in 2003. Ken Stott plays the ordinary man who has slipped into alcoholism and homelessness; Lesley Manville the Salvation Army Captain who runs a detox centre.

Steve Barron

Sam Neill stars as the great sorcerer Merlin who sets out on a quest to find the stolen Holy Grail and restore Camelot to its days of glory. Among the excellent cast are Isabella Rossellini, John Gielgud, Rutger Hauer, Helena Bonham Carter (Morgan Le Fey) and Miranda Richardson (The Lady of the Lake). UK / USA | 1998 | THW | 174 | Cert 12 Item# 73493 | RRP £19.99 | 24th March

UK | 2003 | NWORK | 110 | Cert 12 Item# 73934 | RRP £12.99 | 7th April

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Salamander

F van Mechelen

Our DVD Price: £14.99 The complete second series that follows the spectacular rise of the American retail genius, Harry Selfridge. The lavish drama is set in a bustling London at the emergence of modern retail and tells the story of ambition and enterprise battling the 3 remnants of stuffy Edwardian values. discs; Also available: 6 disc series 1-2 box set.

A Belgian political crime thriller that begins with the robbery of private papers from sixty-six safes in a discreet private bank in Brussels. The owners are a who’s who of industry, finance, the military, the magistracy and politics. Pandora’s box has been opened. Filip Peeters plays the old-school police inspector who throws himself into the investigation but soon finds himself 4 discs. running for his life.

UK | 2013 | UPV | 450 | Cert TBC Item# 73863 / 73853 | RRP £24.99 | 24th March

S2 DVD: £19.99 S1-2 DVD: £32.49

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Mr. Selfridge: Series 2

The Musketeers

An all-new BBC drama with action, adventure and romance inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ characters. Tom Burke, Howard Charles and Santiago Cabrera play the musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis, Luke Pasqualino is d’Artagnan and Peter Capaldi the 4 discs. wicked Cardinal Richelieu. UK | 2014 | 2ENT | 550 | Cert 15 Item# 73841 / 73849 | RRP £24.99 | 31st March

As series three of Silk opens Martha (Maxine Peake) is already a QC of a year’s standing and is building a reputation for winning unwinnable cases. But now Clive (Rupert Penry-Jones) has got silk too and he specialises in Prosecution. Increasingly they are 2 discs; pitted against each other in court. Also available: 6 disc series 1-3 box set. UK | 2014 | 2ENT | 360 | Cert 15 Item# 74120 / 74119 | RRP £19.99 | 7th April

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The Professionals: Mk1 (Restored)

Silk: Series 3

S3 DVD: £13.99 S1-3 DVD: £24.49

The Steamie

Featuring the perfect cast of Lewis Collins (Bodie), Martin Shaw (Doyle) and Gordon Jackson (acting against type as their controller), The Professionals made a big impact on British TV. Now restored from the original camera negatives, it looks like it was made yesterday. Contains episodes 5 discs; Restored; Exclusive book. 1-13.

Haldane Duncan

UK | 1977-78 | NWORK | 650 | Cert 15 Item# 73891 / 73893 | RRP £29.99 | 31st March

UK | 1988 | ALBA | 78 | Cert TBC Item# 73720 | RRP £9.99 | 24th March

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Page 28

A comic insight into the wives of working men in 1950s Glasgow, adapted from Tony Roper’s play and set in 1953 in a Scottish wash-house. Eileen McCallum, Dorothy Paul, Katy Murphy and Sheila Donald play the women who gather to gossip about anything and anyone.

Walking Through History: Series 1

Tony Robinson embarks on spectacular walks through some of Britain’s most historic landscapes in search of the richest stories from Britain’s past. Contains the episodes The Birth of Industry, Frontline Dorset, The Tudor Way and Battle in the Glens.

UK | 2013 | DAZZL | 200 | Cert E Item# 73940 | RRP £19.99 | 7th April

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A Year in Provence: The Original Broadcast Version David Tucker

John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan star in the fondlyremembered BBC series based on Peter Mayle’s bestseller about his experience of living in a Provençal village. This is the original broadcast version, with over 2 hours of previously unreleased material spread across 12 episodes.

2 discs.

UK / France | 1993 | 2ND | 370 | Cert PG Item# 74152 | RRP £19.99 | 24th March

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Stage Variety Acts and Turns of the Early 1930s

A celebration of the golden age of British Variety from the earliest era of sound cinema, showcasing performers from radio, music hall and theatre, seen here making their fledgeling forays into the ‘talkies’.

2 discs.

UK | 1930-35 | C-RED | 362 | E Item# 74058 | RRP £19.99 | 24th March

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Can’t find the TV series you want? We don’t only sell what we can fit in this monthly catalogue – we can supply any film or TV series on DVD or Blu-ray in print in the UK. So, if you’d like another series, or something else entirely, get in touch and we’ll try to find it for you.

Order now www.moviemail.com

March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Animation New Releases Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 Cody Cameron

USA | 2013 | COL-T | 95 | Cert U Item# 73515 / 73516 | RRP £19.99 | Out Now

DVD Price: £14.99 Blu-ray: £19.99

Oliver and Company George Scribner

Disney’s version of Dickens’ Oliver Twist sees an orphaned kitten find friendship with a group of pickpocketing dogs in New York. He joins in the dogs’ fun and games, but then the girl who wants to adopt him is kidnapped by the evil Fagin. USA | 1988 | WDHV | 70 | Cert U Item# 23179 / 73673 | RRP £19.99 | Out Now

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The Secret of NIMH Don Bluth

Don Bluth’s first animated feature after leaving Disney, The Secret of NIMH sees plucky field mouse Mrs. Brisby determined to save her family home from Farmer Fitzgibbon’s plough, to which end she seeks the aid of a colony of super-intelligent rats, led by Nicodemus (Derek Jacobi) with whom she has a deeper link than she ever suspected. USA | 1982 | MGM | 79 | Cert U Item# 69012 / 73818 | RRP £12.99 | Out Now

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Turbo

David Soren A high-velocity comedy about a snail who dares to dream fast. After a freak accident infuses him with the power of superspeed, Turbo the snail seeks to realise his dream of racing in the Indy 500.

USA | 2013 | FOX | 95 | Cert U Item# 73629 / 73633 | RRP £19.99 | Out Now

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Frozen Recommended Director: Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel Released: 31st March Extras: Making-of; Deleted Scenes; Original Theatrical Short: Get A Horse. Item# 73944 USA | 2013 | WDHV | 108 | Cert PG

How did Frozen become Disney’s biggest hit since The Lion King and help it steal Pixar’s crown as king of animation? Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, and with more than a shade of Tangled 2.0, Frozen sees two sibling princesses at odds with one another, with Elsa in a self-imposed exile due to her uncontrollable icy magical powers and Anna struggling to save their medieval kingdom from tricksters and permafrost. So far, so Disney. But, co-written and co-directed by Jennifer Lee, one of the talents behind Disney’s excellent Wreck-it Ralph, Frozen is significant because it finally tears up Disney’s reductive fairy tale principles about love. By focussing on two sisters struggling to communicate instead of fetishizing marriage to a handsome prince, Frozen transcends being simply a hugely entertaining and wellcrafted film, and becomes a tale that its target audience can actually relate to – and indeed gain something useful from. DH

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Image from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

In the wake of the food storm at the end of the first movie, Flint Lockwood and friends are forced to leave their town of Swallow Falls. But when it is discovered that sentient food beasts have overrun the island, they are asked to return to save the world – again.

Page 29

Contemporary Film English Language Films, 1970 – present

New Releases The Butler Lee Daniels

Forest Whitaker stars as Cecil Gaines, head butler at the White House, who served eight American presidents over three decades. The film traces the dramatic changes that swept American society during this time and how those changes affected this man’s life and family. USA | 2013 | EV | 132 | Cert 12 Item# 73838 / 73839 | RRP £23.99 | 10th March

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The Counsellor

Where Angels Fear to Tread Recommended

Saving Mr. Banks Recommended

Director: Charles Sturridge

Director: John Lee Hancock

Starring: Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham-Carter, Judy Davis, Rupert Graves, Giovanni Guidelli

Starring: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell

Released: 24th March

Ridley Scott

Item# 73755 UK | 1991 | ODEON | 108 | Cert PG

Item# 73855 Australia / UK | 2013 | BUENA | 125 | Cert PG

A pacy thriller scripted by Cormac McCarthy. Michael Fassbender plays the lawyer who dabbles in cocaine trafficking with his acquaintances (Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt). When their shipment is hijacked, out-of pocket suppliers seek revenge.

Following his acclaimed adaptations of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1981) and A Handful of Dust (1988), Charles Sturridge took an excellent cast and ventured back a few decades for this handsome take on EM Forster’s first novel, about the English in Tuscany. Capturing the stuffiness of the Edwardian bourgeoisie and its smug Little Englander attitudes, the story centres on a family’s determination to avoid a scandal when Helen Mirren’s widowed in-law impulsively marries a much younger Italian and dies giving birth to his child. As in A Room With a View, Forster’s insights into the innocent abroad are cuttingly perceptive. But, while xenophobia is a key theme, this is much more about the passing of entrenched ethics and ideologies, as siblings (Judy Davis and Rupert Graves) dispute the best way to proceed. The performances are suitably intense, with Helena Bonham Carter and Barbara Jefford providing perfect support to the dour, disapproving Davis and the slowly thawing Graves, whose transformation is tinged with subtle homoeroticism.DP

There is something rather wonderful about Saving Mr. Banks, notably its attentive recreation of the making of Mary Poppins, which John Lee Hancock’s film reclaims as the basis for a light, fish-out-of-water comedy. Author Pamela Travers (Emma Thompson) – precise, thrifty, schoolmarm-like – arrives in Los Angeles from austerity-age Britain, dazzled and discombobulated by the California sunshine, keen to impress upon her new employer Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) she will resist any attempt to dress up her source novel with ‘cavorting and twinkling’. Emma Thompson seizes upon her most substantial role in years, with her warmth, subtlety and ever-sharp timing pulling the film back into shape after each of its cutaways to the quivering, doe-eyed child Travers, desperate for daddy’s approval in rural Australia. It’s a good go at recapturing the magic of a truly supercalifragilistic production, which, in spits and spots, nudges surprisingly close to that all-time great making-of movie, Singin’ in the Rain. MM

USA / UK | 2013 | FOX | 117 | Cert 18 Item# 73836 / 73835 | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

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Ender’s Game Gavin Hood

Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley join forces in the International Fleet to do battle with hostile alien race the Formics in this entertaining science-fiction movie based on Orson Scott Card’s bestseller. USA | 2013 | MOMET | 114 | 12 Item# 73501 / 73502 | RRP £19.99 | 10th March

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Peter Jackson

The second of three epic instalments of the blockbuster prequel to The Lord of the Rings. In this part, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) joins a company of dwarves to help reclaim a kingdom from Smaug the dragon. USA / New Zealand | 2013 | WHV | 161 | Cert 12 Item# 73772 / 73773 | RRP £19.99 | 7th April

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Philomena Recommended Director: Stephen Frears Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Charles Edwards Released: 24th March Extras: TBC Item# 73822 | UK | 2013 | FOX | 98 | Cert 12

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See Also The Magdalene Sisters Peter Mullan

Item# 14573 UK | 2002 | 115 | 15 | £17.99

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Mother and Child Rodrigo García

Item# 67431 USA / Spain | 2009 | 125 | 15 | £15.99

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Oranges and Sunshine Jim Loach

Item# 65566 UK / Australia | 2011 | 105 | 15 | £17.99

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tephen Frears’ true-life tale initially appears to be moving in similar circles to this director’s 2006 success The Queen, opening with a brisk thumbnail sketch of a crestfallen power player. In this case, it is Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan, who co-wrote with Jeff Pope), recently fired from his job as a New Labour spin doctor and now slumping through Knightsbridge dinner parties as a jobbing freelance writer. On the other side of London, yet somehow worlds away, there exists the Irish Catholic Philomena Lee (Judi Dench), working her way through her own, rather more graspable trauma: the memory of having her young son sold off by the nuns at the Magdalene laundry she was assigned to as a teenager. Worlds will collide – yet they do so in ways specific and idiosyncratic enough to suggest this collision might actually have happened. The two lead characters first meet at a Harvester, where Philomena spills the beans over the croutons and bacon bits, and Sixsmith’s professional instincts are sufficiently engaged to propose they pursue the lost boy together. Sixsmith is as cynical as one would maybe expect a New Labour spindoctor to be, but his snobbery and jadedness is

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Judi Dench stars in Stephen Frears’ compelling true story contrasted with his travelling companion’s simpler faith. And what extraordinary faith Philomena Lee displays: in the religion that looks to have taken at least as much from her as it has given back; in the idea her son might still be out there, and in need of a mother’s love. Philomena works because, on some level, the film believes, too: in stories, and their continued ability to engage, surprise and otherwise touch us. Some of the knowingness and self-referentiality, ported across from Coogan’s comedy endeavours, is pared back come the final reel to more clearly reveal this belief, and the emotions attached to it. Yet Philomena benefits at almost every turn from an almost ideal division of labour: allowing Coogan to push for the head and the funny bone in reaction shots that mark him, this once, as unmistakably the straight man, while his co-star – on her nowcustomary fine form – shores up the heart, cockles and tearducts. Mike McCahill Page 31

Contemporary The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Nebraska

Alexander Payne

Gary Ross

Jennifer Lawrence reprises her role as Katniss Everdeen in this second instalment of the sci-fi adventure trilogy. Fresh from her triumph in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, Katniss returns home to rest – but soon realises that rebellion is in Also available: the air. Two-disc edition with The Hunger Games. USA | 2013 | LGATE | 146 | | Cert 12 Item# Various | RRP £19.99 | 17th March

Bruce Dern is at the top of his game in this Oscarnominated road movie which sees him play a cantankerous old man who sets out for Nebraska to claim his winnings in a sweepstake. Shot in black and white across four states by the director of Sideways, the film tells the stories of family life in the heartland of America. USA | 2013 | PARAH | 115 | Cert 15 Item# 74052 / 74053 | RRP £19.99 | 14th April

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A Long Way from Home Virginia Gilbert

A tale of English ex-pats in France, beautifully filmed in Provence, where retirees Joseph (James Fox) and Brenda (Brenda Fricker) have moved. However, boredom takes hold, and when they meet a young couple staying nearby, Joseph finds himself revitalised by the girl’s presence. UK / France | 2013 | SODAelev | 80 | Cert 12 Item# 73465 | RRP £17.99 | 31st March

Orca: The Killer Whale Michael Anderson

Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling and Will Sampson set sail for a climactic man-versusbeast showdown with a killer whale in the frozen waters of the north after Captain Nolan (Harris) kills its mate and child at sea. USA | 1977 | STUDC | 88 | Cert PG Item# 74100 | RRP £17.99 | 14th April

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Savannah

Annette Haywood-Carter Jim Caviezel and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in this tale based on the true story of Ward Allen, a romantic character who rejected his privileged plantation heritage for the freedom of a life spent hunting. His loyal friend, the freed slave Christmas Moultrie, tells his story.

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The Man in the Steel Mask Jack Gold

An intelligent and intriguing Cold War thriller from Jack Gold (The Bofors Gun) in which an American physicist, badly injured while attending a conference in East Germany, is reconstructed by Colonel Azarin (Trevor Howard) and sent back to America as a spy. But can he fool Elliott Gould’s FBI agent? UK | 1973 | ODEON | 93 | Cert PG Item# 73732 | RRP £12.99 | 17th March

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Monarch

John Walsh A fascinating period piece, set in the winter of 1547, which seamlessly merges historical fact, political manoeuvring and foreboding drama. TP McKenna plays a vulnerable King Henry VIII, haunted by ghostly visitations from his wives. UK | 2000 | IND3D | 87 | Cert 15 Item# 74069 | RRP £12.99 | 7th April

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Page 32

USA | 2013 | 4DIGI | 101 | Cert 15 Item# 74118 | RRP £15.99 | 14th April

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White Dog

Samuel Fuller A daring late-career highlight for its director, this controversial film – originally withheld from release in the USA – is a head-on examination of racism, in which a young actress (Kristy McNichol) adopts an Alsatian she then discovers has been conditioned to attack any black person on sight. Its only chance lies with an animal trainer (Paul Winfield) focused on breaking the dog’s vicious instincts. A riveting, impassioned and 2 discs; Booklet. powerful film experience. USA | 1982 | EUREK | 90 | Cert 15 Item# 73524 | RRP £17.99 | 31st March

Wake in Fright Recommended Director: Ted Kotcheff Starring: Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Sylvia Kay, Chips Rafferty Released: 31st March Extras: 2 discs; Restored; Interviews; Behindthe-scenes; Director’s commentary; Booklet. Item# 73525 Australia | 1971 | EUREK | 109 | Cert 18

Trapped in the purgatory of the Australian outback, suburban teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) stops off in a small town on the way home to Sydney for Christmas. Introduced to the ways of ‘The Yabba’ – the backwater mining town of Bundanyabba – by the quietly sinister local copper, Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), Grant soon spirals into an existential nightmare involving ocker blokes, sex-starved women and Donald Pleasance as a goading, boozesodden medic. After hitting a losing streak in a gambling game, he finds he is unable to leave. Featuring a changing of the guard in Australian cinema – the final screen appearance of Chips Rafferty and the debut of Jack Thompson – that helped kick-start the country’s New Wave, Wake in Fright’s commentary on aspects of its culture is just as potent 40 years on. The survival of Kotcheff’s masterpiece, saved from destruction after being lost for decades, is worthy of its own film and Wake in Fright’s return from a prolonged walkabout is something worth celebrating. JM

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March 2014 MovieMail Film Catalogue

Gay & Lesbian Blu-ray White of the Eye Donald Cammell

Described by critic David Thomson as ‘one of the great secret works in cinema’, this bizarre thriller from British visionary Donald Cammell (writer and co-director of Performance with Nicolas Roeg) is a kaleidoscope of images and ideas, spanning Apache folklore, desert landscapes, Dario Argento-esque set-pieces and a vivid dissection of the fissures in a modern marriage. The film’s eclectic score is co-written by Pink 2 discs; Booklet. Floyd’s Nick Mason. UK | 1986 | ARROW | 107 | Cert 18 Item# 73531 | RRP £24.99 | 24th March

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Also Released... Carrie

Kimberly Peirce

Item# 73833 USA | 2013 | 100 | 15 | £19.99

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Don Jon

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Item# 73498 USA | 2013 | 90 | 18 | £19.99

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Escape Plan

Mikael Håfström

Item# 73627 USA | 2013 | 115 | 15 | £17.99

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Oldboy

Spike Lee

Item# 73689 USA | 2013 | 104 | 18 | £15.99

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Phantom of the Opera Dwight H. Little

Item# 73847 USA | 1989 | 93 | 18 | £14.99

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Blu-rays The King of Comedy Martin Scorsese

Item# 73840 USA | 1983 | 105 | PG | £17.99

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Ladyhawke

Richard Donner

Item# 73729 USA | 1985 | 116 | PG | £14.99

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Saving Mr. Banks / Mary Poppins Robert Stevenson

Item# 74158 Australia / UK | 2013 | 258 | PG | £25.99

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Boys On Film XI

The most eclectic collection in the series to date, featuring stories from every walk of gay life, from a one night romance in Paris and finding the power to fight against an oppressive regime to a heartfelt story of a father’s acceptance. Contains The Last Time I Saw Richard, We Are Animals, Alaska is a Drag and more.

USA | 2013 | PECCA | Cert 18 Item# 73687 | RRP £15.99 | 10th March

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Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves An award-winning threepart Swedish TV drama about a young gay couple living in 1980s Stockholm and the impact AIDS has on their lives. The series was a huge public and critical success when aired and it recently won the Kristallen (Swedish Emmy) for Best Television Drama.

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Floating Skyscrapers Tomasz Wasilewski

Polish coming-out drama marked by understated performances and impressively austere cinematography. Competitive swimmer Kuba shares an apartment with girlfriend Sylwia and his overbearing mother. Unbeknownst to Sylwia, Kuba has begun to take an interest in men, engaging in illicit encounters at the gym. Then he meets Michal and things start to get serious. Poland | 2013 | MATCH | 93 | subt | Cert 15 Item# 73685 / 73843 | RRP £15.99 | 24th March

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Lose Your Head

Schuckmann & Westerwelle A romantic adventure turns into a desperate chase as a young Spanish tourist gets lost between paranoia and reality in the streets of Berlin. A psychological thriller inspired by the true story of a young man who disappeared some years ago after a night of clubbing. Germany | 2013 | TLAUK | 105 | Cert TBC Item# 72911 | RRP £15.99 | 24th March

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Monthly Highlights Bastards

Claire Denis

Item# 73941 Fr | 2013 | subt | 18 | £19.99

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Blue is the Warmest Colour Abdellatif Kechiche

Item# 73509 France | 2013 | 179 | subt | 18 | £19.99

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Frozen

Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee Item# 73949 USA | 2013 | 108 | PG | £22.99

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The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Peter Jackson

Item# 73773 USA / New Zealand | 2013 | 161 | 12 | £24.99

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Jeune & Jolie François Ozon

Item# 73742 Fr | 2013 | 94 | subt | 18 | £24.99

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Le Mani sulla Città Francesco Rosi

Item# 73523 Italy | 1963 | 100 | subt | B&W | 15 | £17.99

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The Missing Picture Rithy Panh

Item# 73858 Fr| 2013 | 92 | subt | 12 | £19.99

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Nebraska

Alexander Payne

Item# 74053 USA | 2013 | 115 | B&W | 15 | £26.99

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Philomena

Stephen Frears

Item# 73823 UK | 2013 | 98 | 12 | £28.99

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The Professionals: Mk1 Episodes 1-13 Item# 73893 UK | 1977-78 | 650 | 15 | £39.99

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Saving Mr. Banks John Lee Hancock

Item# 73856 UK | 2013 | 125 | PG | £22.99

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Wake in Fright Ted Kotcheff

Item# 73525 Aus | 1971 | 109 | 18 | £17.99

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Page 33

Wake in Fright

James Oliver’s From the Cheap Seats

State of the Nation

Image from Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly

istory, of course, always looks differently from a vantage point than it does at ground level. Those of us with the luxury of peering down on the past see things that might have been invisible to those who lived through the period, a perspective that allows us to see things in a different light. So it is that I return to the subject of British film in the 1970s. Reviled for so many years, the films of that era are now beginning to get something of the appreciation that they deserve and, to these eyes at least, look like some kind of golden age, albeit of the most downmarket type. There are many things that intrigue me about this era and not just the quality of the films. I’m fascinated by how many of them reflect the era that produced them. Unlike literature, cinema has no great tradition of State of the Nation pieces and yet here, in this unfashionable decade, was a run of films that did exactly that. Take A Clockwork Orange. For all that Kubrick’s reading of Anthony Burgess’ novel was underpinned by the author’s meditations on free will and conscience, it grew into a film about a country on the skids, destroyed from below by thugs and above by inconsequential government. Or consider Death Line aka ‘TheCannibals-in-the-LondonUnderground’ film. While on one level it is most definitely about cannibals in the London underground, it’s also a striking satire on the the hypocrisy, cynicism and callousness of the British state, the way it buries difficulties and is surprised by their reappearance. Indeed, it strikes me that British filmmakers of the seventies were far better at addressing the matter of Britain than their more feted Kitchen Sink / British New Wave forebears: the anger

1970s British films are some of the most valuable cultural artefacts of the era at the country’s flaws is palpable and more viscerally expressed. These attitudes permeated everywhere. Juggernaut was presumably intended as a British riposte to US disaster movies (an all-star-cast finds itself on a stricken ocean liner). But as directed (quite brilliantly) by Richard Lester, it’s far closer to the work of Robert Altman. The boat it’s set on is called the Britannic (very subtle, Mr. Lester) and nothing seems to work apart from the bombs placed by a homicidal blackmailer. Maybe the best of this (already impressive) cycle is the least known, the thoroughly demented Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly. Set in an ossified (and evil) world of refined politeness destroyed by a subversive interloper, it can be seen as an allegory for the depraved old order being torn down by the permissive society. It’s one of the great oddball films and a forgotten classic that deserves wider recognition. There are more: the pointed gangster

drama Villain and Derek Jarman’s ferocious Jubilee; the wholly excellent crime reconstruction The Black Panther; the demented The Ruling Class; the razor of O Lucky Man! and the blunt instrument of House of Whipcord. With a few exceptions, such introspection was only one of the casualties as the rough and ready filmmaking of the 1970s regenerated into the more polished and presentable efforts of the 1980s. Viewed with hindsight, though, this brief flurry represents one of the most exciting cycles in British film, and contains some of the most valuable cultural artefacts of that benighted age.

Related Films Death Line

Gary Sherman

Item# 30012 UK | 1972 | 84 | 18 | £14.99

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Villain

Michael Tuchner

Item# 50609 UK | 1971 | 98 | 18 | £12.99

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Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly Freddie Francis

Item# 62233 UK | 1969 | 102 | 15 | £14.99

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New on the MovieMail Website Highlights • Discover – We begin a new monthly series that helps viewers appreciate cinema’s riches. First up, The Wonder of Silent Cinema • Crash Courses – David Parkinson steps in with the lowdown on the Ozploitation movement and influential producer Val Lewton • Top 10s, with clips – Lyrical Horror and Australian Film • The Essentials: 21st Century Directors You Need To Know About – Mike McCahill profiles the key filmmakers of our time • New podcast – Graeme looks behind the shadows of Cat People and its sequel, The Curse of the Cat People • World Tour – David Parkinson embarks upon a World Tour, profiling cinema-producing countries and finding out what makes each one of them unique. So far: Romania, Chile and Cambodia • The A-Z of Forgotten British Film – Julian Upton continues his series, highlighting forgotten British movies that deserve to be much better known • Cinema reviews – Under the Skin, The Past, Labor Day and more • Trailers, stills and expanded reviews for many films reviewed in the catalogue

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The horror classic finally comes to DVD Full review on page 7

Cat People Jacques Tourneur With lingering dread and sharp shocks created by inspired use of sound and shadow, Val Lewton’s landmark RKO production contains textbook scenes of cinematic suspense. Simone Simon plays the mysterious artist who believes she carries an ancient curse that will turn her into a panther when aroused, Kent Smith the smitten young man who marries her anyway, and Tom Conway the psychiatrist who fails to cure her when things go awry. Item# 73830 USA | 1942 | 70 | B&W | PG | £12.99

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