Producer: Generic Pool Productions Wildlife films have long been family favourites on TV, but the smooth and easy presentation of the earth's fauna on the box belies the infinite patience and dedicated professionalism of the men and women who set out to capture it on film. This special interest video DVD gives us the inside story. And for those who feel they would enjoy the…

This review is going to be full of spoilers; if you don't want to know, best look away now. So, for the remaining reader: The Reader hinges on the power of writing, and the flexibility of the truth. It can make or break lives. Reading aloud draws two people into a decades-long relationship; the shame of illiteracy leads to a terrible crime and a life of penance; a  Holocaust…

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan will screen tonight at the London Film Festival's Jameson Gala. Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder, this drama/horror is set in the physically and mentally demanding world of New York ballet. Never thought that a film about ballet would have you on the edge of your seat? Think again. It's less about ballet than about perfectionis…

Is the end of February already. It only feels like five minutes ago when the tinsel was all around and the Xmas decorations were up. Actually, it was, but that’s because Laurence Boyce has been dead busy watching a new batch of DVDs for you to all enjoy. Let Special Edition # 37 take you on its usual journey through some of the best shiny discs for you to enjoy from brand new feature films to the…

Wow. When Mike Leigh goes comic, he really goes for it. Happy-Go-Lucky , the tale of Poppy, a North London primary school teacher with a very un-London persistently sunny nature and a whole host of whacky quips, gets driving lessons and talks too much. That's the film. The latest Mike Leigh film. No, really.             Here's th…

In this fine appraisal of his oeuvre, Heylin looks at the director's failure to capitalise on the promise of Citizen Kane. In this fine appraisal of his oeuvre, Heylin looks at the director's failure to capitalise on the promise of Citizen Kane. Welles' own uncompromising attitude didn't help his later projects, such as The Magnificent Ambersons and A Touch of Evil, but neith…

Paul Taylor takes a tragic story and makes an up-lifting, life-affirming, non-preachy film. We Are Together (Thina Simunye) has as its backdrop one of the most urgent (and shameful) issues of our time: the spread of HIV, Africa's 1.2 million AIDS orphans and the lack of access to life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. That less than 17% of HIV sufferers have access to the drugs in a…

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…

This book is the complete guide to digital filmmaking by the owner and chief engineer of DVfilm Digital Transfers. Everything from selecting a camera to promoting and marketing your finished film is covered in this comprehensive guide, written specifically for those who wish to shoot with digital cameras and project their movie on 35mm film. The author, Marcus Van Bavel, is an electrical engineer…

Shane Meadows has been awarded almost iconic status as one of the pioneers of low budget filmmaking in Britain, which he certainly is, but some people find his work on screen doesn't always reach – on the audience satisfaction scale - the parts others claim it does reach. This week his latest opus Dead Man's Shoes opens Stateside in Greenwich Village, the heartland of New Yor…

   Dont Go Wild Without it..... If you are prone to that urge for the great outdoors and the call of nature, but haven't yet got around to actually filming it, this little book makes an ideal companion. Slim enough to slip into a side pocket of your rucksac, its 122 pages are packed with  information, making it as essential to the success of your wildlife safa…

Films, films and more films. And some TV shows. Yes, Special Edition# 34 has plenty of fun things for you this time around. It’s a good job the clocks went back or Laurence Boyce wouldn't know where to find the time…. It seems that all our directors have decided to have a laugh: after Mike Leigh decided to head down the comedy route in Happy-Go-Lucky and some would say that Guy Ritchie has been…

Laurence Boyce brings you an eclectic selection of some of the best DVD releases available over the coming weeks. If you like Cubans, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Anime and Francis Bacon then you’re in for a treat … and you probably also have weird things on your walls. Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) (Mr Bongo Films) is, simply put, one of the best films ever made. Made in 1964, it’s ta…

 There's a real air of independence with Special Edition # 17 as there’s no Hollywood blockbusters in sight. Instead there are movies from across the world, which show the real diversity of things available to movie goers nowadays. Whether it’s French horror, some classic documentaries or a curious Sci-Fi film then Laurence Boyce is here to show you can find just abo…

Ken Loach finally gets a DVD collection worthy to his name, the horror continues seven months after everyone thought it has ended and Shane Meadows proves that he's still one of the best UK directors today. Add in more classic and contemporary films and - of course - some of the best comedy and TV shows available then you've really got no excuse: read Special Editon # 22 before you go shopping as…

I watched the pilot episode of HBO’s The Pacific and all my fears of the same run off the mill macho war film were somehow true. As a follow up to Band of Brothers it lacks a lot of characterisation that made the 2002 10 part series a groundbreaking multi character epic. It is still a powerful piece of television with it’s visceral carnage but the characters revert to that macho American attitude…

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…

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…

Whether it’s the fountain where Anita Ekberg frolicked in La Dolce Vita, the scuzzy convenience store where Dante wasn’t even supposed to be that day in Clerks or the hotel where Jack Nicholson went a little bit bonkers in The Shining, there are plenty of movie locations that remain a source of pilgrimage for holiday makers, movie buffs and – on occasion – completely bar…

Back in March during the battle between The Hurt Locker and Avatar at the Oscars, much-loved political theorist Zizek waded in with a comparative review of the politics of the two films. His conclusion was that James Cameron's film had been the best attack on the military-industrial complex and US corporate hegemony. Kathryn Bigelow, on the other hand, he argued, legitimised the Iraqi invasion…

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…

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…

You remember where you were when you saw it happen. It was a normal Tuesday lunchtime in the UK, just after Neighbours in fact. Flicking through the channels, every one of them seemed to be showing a disaster movie, involving cinema’s most recognisable skyline. Like most of the western world, you watched, incredulously, as fiction and reality merged. No one knew then what was going to…

      Which is to avoid this self-important, uninspiring look at the effect of police incompetence upon race relations.   It's a shame, as the film begins so intriguingly. It opens with a disturbed young woman, Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore), from a posh suburb in New Jersey, who stumbles into hospital with injuries to her hands. She…

The Sixth of May , directed by the late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh , is a thriller that re-enacts the murder of right wing Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, on 6th May 2002. The slick movie has a Hollywood feel to it, but might prove impenetrable without a little Wikipediaing of the facts (at least), unless you're clued up on your Dutch politics.       Van Go…