As part of our focus on the late Japanese director Kôji Wakamatsu, we take a look at his 1969 crime drama Naked Bullet, available as part of the Kôji Wakamatsu DVD box-set volume 3 released by Blaq Out.
Fritz Lang’s five-hour hallucinatory epic take on mythic tale Die Nibelungen is available now from Masters of Cinema (Eureka) in a spectacular new HD restoration DVD or Blu-ray set.
As part of our ‘Freedom’ theme this month we look at cult British TV series The Prisoner (1967-68).
This year the BFI is making all 12 of the classic BBC films from A Ghost Story for Christmas series finally available on DVD. The first two volumes, each containing a double bill of chilling tales, including Jonathan Miller’s Whistle and I’ll Come To You (1968), were released on 20 August.
Two more volumes - each containing three tales - are released on 17 September. The films are: Lost Hearts (1973), The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974) and The Ash Tree (1975) - all directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and all containing newly filmed introductions by him; The Signalman (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1976) Stigma (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1977) and The Ice House (Derek Lister, 1978) - with new introductions to The Signalman and Stigma by Lawrence Gordon Clark.
As part of our ‘Fakes’ theme, this month’s comic review looks at Eric Idle and Gary Weis’s Fab Four parody The Rutles (1978).
Davide Manuli’s The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser, 2012) is a re-imagining of the story of the 19th-century man who appeared from nowhere claiming to have had no previous contact with society as a techno Western starring Vincent Gallo and featuring music by Vitalic. It screened on 6 July 2012 at Hackney Picturehouse as part of the East End Film Festival.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the film’s original release, STUDIOCANAL and the ICO are releasing a re-mastered digital print of Luis Buñuel’s surreal comedy The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in cinemas on June 29, including an extended run at BFI Southbank as part of their Jean-Claude Carrière season. Carrière has written the screenplays for many classic films including Belle de Jour, The Milky Way, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Tin Drum, La Piscine, Sommersby and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is released on DVD, and for the first time on Blu-ray, on July 16.
Two years before Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Hammer Studios produced this socially conscious zombie thriller set in Cornwall and directed by John Gilling. The Plague of the Zombies (1966) is released on double play by Studiocanal on 7 May and screens in selected cities across the UK on 12 June 2012.
The screening is part of the Made in Britain season organised by Studiocanal and the ICO in celebration of classic British cinema between the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend and the Olympics. The other films in the season are Passport to Pimlico (5 June), The Man Who Fell to Earth (19 June), Hobson’s Choice (26 June) and Quatermass and the Pit (3 July). For more information, please go to the ICO website.
Takashi Miike’s 2007 high school actioner is released on DVD on 9 April 2012 by MVM. Another typically ultra-stylised and violent offering from the director of Ichi the Killer and 13 Assassins, Crows Zero charts the battle between two delinquent boys and their factions fighting for supremacy in the lawless Suzuran high school. Based on the bestselling manga by Hiroshi Takahashi (screenwriter of the original Ring movies), Crows Zero is one of Miike’s most commercially successful movies.
Comic strip review by Joe Morgan.
Newly restored by the BFI National Archive, Ken Russell’s 1969 masterpiece Women in Love is released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK on 22 August 2016.
