I marched thru the night, looking up to the snow kissed trees, and arrived too late for Cloud Atlas. Half an hour later a film I didn’t know, beyond reading that it was about a student dropout in Berlin, and was Black and White. I dashed back across the road for a thai curry, laden with mushrooms, which I left. I returned in time to get a seat and a small bag of popcorn, hoping this would not be…

Break out the party hats and balloons as Special Edition # 10 means that the column that fearlessly tracks down the best DVDs available hits double figures. This time around Laurence Boyce discovers that the tide of classic French Cinema being released on DVD remains unabated, that Doctor Who did look slightly cheesy in the 80s, that people aren't waiting until Halloween to release horror mov…

Lots of new films this time around as Special Edition # 33 has more examples of Hollywood being unable to think of new ideas, a bunch of documentaries and the usual intriguing mix of world cinema and TV releases. Originally a BBC Drama, State Of Play (Universal Releasing) has transferred to the big screen under the direction of Oscar winner Kevin One Day In September Macdonald. The original was…

It’s the time again to move your eyes away from the screen and let them drift over to the printed word. In Page To Screen # 3, those books that are influenced by – and, indeed, influence - the worlds of film and television are brought to the fore as Laurence Boyce examines how someone is making a monkey out of biographies, someone else is making us nostalgic for classic Saturda…

How did we cope before the advent of DVD’s? Rewinding a video tape took ages, the quality was something less to be desired and there was a nary a special feature in sight. How our film loving predecessor’s must have suffered in that primitive world - well, unless they had loads of money and bought a Laserdisc. Thankfully, we’re now knee deep in DVDs and Special Edition # 28 is…

  That is how Barbara - the chillingly unreliable narrator of Notes on a Scandal, played by the pitch-perfect Judi Dench, describes her first in-depth conversation with Sheba, the new girl - sorry, teacher - at school. Barbara quickly becomes her confidant, and records the minutiae of her and Sheba's life and conversations in a diary that will prove to be the undoing of both of their…

Special Edition # 45 marks my return after a hiatus due to things that I can’t tell you about. Well, I could tell but then I’d have to kill you.Which would be a bit unfair given that there are lots of lovely DVDs due out very soon. So, rather than dwell on an emotional reunion, let’s just get straight on with it shall we? A Facebook movie? Whatever next? A musical about My Space? An opera abou…

Francois Truffaut memorably said that there was “… a certain incompatibility between the words ‘cinema’ and ‘Britain’.” Stephen Frears had an equally memorable retort, stunning in its simplicity and epic in its sentiments: “Bollocks to Truffaut.” Yet aside from certainly glorious moments – the Free Cinema movement, the Swinging Sixties…

Tim Burton has always had something of a schizophrenic career. On one hand he’s the eccentric visionary who works on the fringes of Hollywood with such films as the fabulous Edward Scissorhands and the commercially unsuccessful yet brilliantly twisted Mars Attacks. On the other hand he’s at the heart of the Hollywood machine, helming the merchandise monster that was Batman and th…

Everyone who says that there are no decent films being made in the UK are dead wrong. There are plenty of decent movies made in the UK. It's just that no-one really gets the chance to see them. With UK distributors consistently playing it safe, there's a raft of excellent stuff that - apart from an occasional screening at a film festival - that's gathering dust on a shelf. But t…

It seems that everyone has buggered off on holiday - especially those who release DVD's. So whilst Special Edition # 8 is a little bit shorter there are still some little gems to be found for your delight and delectation. It also allows Laurence Boyce to nip away from the computer and TV screen for a while for a spot of sunbathing. And, after turning pasty white sitting in the dark and watchi…

Morgan Spurlock’s POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold officially opened the 18th Sheffield Documentary Film Festival on Wednesday evening, also providing the doc with its European premiering slot. Product placement and chasing sponsorship lolly was the film’s raison d’être, and as I write this I’m drinking a bottle of POM Wonderful itself, dished out free in the delegate centre…

Now available to buy on DVD, September remains one of the most affecting and beautiful British short films of the past few years. The film beat off stiff competition from the likes Sam Taylor Wood’s passionate and impressive Love You More to walk away with the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Short Film (Live Action) to add to its numerous other awards and accolades. The film tells the story of Marvin…

It may have taken more than ten years for this one to come to the big screen, but it is a must-see for anyone with a liking for quirky humour, or film noir. It may be low budget, but there’s not a Lottery penny in sight. If low budget means you can end up with these production values on screen, then the UK Film Council needs to move over. They may have lost the plot, but the team behind Roo…

Michael Haneke's critically-acclaimed The White Ribbon, which was released on DVD yesterday, is a chilling look behind the apparently normal façade of a small north German village in the lead-up to the First World War. Narrated by one of the most sympathetic characters, the schoolteacher, when he has become an old man, the film shows us brutal events, some apparently perpetrated by children, b…

  Reviewed by James MacGregor Publisher; Wildeye      ISBN 978-0-9541899-3-8 It has the elements of all good screen stories; the long slow build of anticipation, the tension, the frustrations and finally, the reveal. Yet the wildlife film is film art in a class all of its own, requiring painstaking research and endless patience, often in less than com…

  Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox will have its world premiere at the London Film Festival's opening gala tonight. Suchandrika Chakrabarti reviews. In case you don't know (shame on you if you don't), Fantastic Mr Fox is a 1970 children's novel by Roald Dahl. The film fleshes out the original storyline, which sees Mr Fox outsmarting the local triumvirate of mean farmers - Boggis, Bunce and…

Early work by Hideo Miyazaki is cheap fun but lacks the depth admirers of the animation master will recognise in his later works. Director: Hideo Miyazaki Country of origin: Japan Length: 110 mins Format (DV, 35mm, etc): animation Genre: action fairy tale Film website: www.manga.co.uk From any other director this would be a film to write home about - at least if you're an animation fan. But this…

Director Jason Reitman's debut feature somehow manages to make a sympathetic character out of a tobacco spokesperson...  Surprisingly, for a film whose main character works in the tobacco industry, no one lights up at all in Thank You For Smoking. As the director has put it, to have lots of people smoking in the movie would distract the audience from his intended aim: to satiris…

There's a rather funny viral doing the rounds by UK blog the Shiznit about what if the 2015 Oscar nominations told the truth, following similar posts they've done in previous years. I didn't feel like sharing it however because their poster for Selma ('Challenging Race Biopic: if you don't like it then you basially hate black people') troubled me somewhat. I had to see it to be sure - and no long…

Years in the making, The Master Course In High-End Blocking And Staging is the most comprehensive and ambitious Directing Course in the world. A groundbreaking learning tool, the course teaches high-end camera work through over 9 hours of 3D animated instruction on 6 Region-Free DVDs.    WHO'S IT FOR? For Directors, Cinematographers, Script Supervisors, 3D Animato…

Laurence Boyce had just got back from enjoying the vodka in Krakow and sunning himself in Portugal and was ready to get back into business. And then his computer blew up. It’s always the way isn’t it? Thanks to friends, some technical nous and a lot of crossing his fingers, he’s managed to sort out the problems and is ready to bring Special Edition # 24 to the world. There are p…

Films based on a comic book will always attract two forms of criticism. Firstly there’ll be those who judge the inherent quality of the film. Then there’ll be those who’ll judge the film and its fidelity to the original source material. For a perfect of example of this then you need look no further than V For Vendetta. Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s original graphic novel h…

Television interviews for set-piece programmes somehow always get everything just right; the framing of the subject on screen, the facial modelling that gives definition to the features without making the face into something more like a silhouette. In the best interview examples, the lighting camera operator’s skill appears to put an apparently 3-D image on to a 2-D television screen – and in HD…

    Michael Powell's The Edge Of The World, a black and white classic film of 1937, filmed in Scotland's remotest island community, has been released for the first time on DVD by the British Film Institute. The film has been printed afresh and the DVD package comes with a wealth of supporting documentary material that shows just why this was such a remarkable testament…