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>> Oz season 1 | Pasolini box set | Homicide - Life on the Street | World cinema from Second Run | Volver

Oz season 1 on UK DVD in February
29 December 2006, updated 17 January 2007

If you're a UK-based fan of HBO's superb prison series Oz but have been put off by the import price, then fear not, as in the new year Paramount Home Entertainment will be releasing the show on UK DVD, starting with series 1 in February. Co-created by Tom Fontana, whose major credits also include Homicide: Life on the Street (for which he contributed to 53 episodes as writer), this ground-breaking series was developed from ideas and themes found in John Hillcoat's extraordinary Ghosts...of the Civil Dead and paved the way for similarly adult orientated HBO dramas such as The Sopranos and Deadwood.

All eight episodes of the first series are present - what is not confirmed as yet is whether the special features from the 2002 US release, which included commentaries by Tom Fontana and star Lee Tergesen on two episodes, deleted scenes with audio commentary by Tom Fontana, a music video from the Oz soundtrack by Kurupt featuring Nate Dogg, a featurette and episode previews, will be on board. Here's hoping.

We now have confirmation that there will be no extra features on the UK DVD, in line with HBO's release of their prestige series over here (Deadwood suffered a similar fate). Well, multi-region DVD player owners, you know what to do.

Pasolini box set from Tartan in February
29 December 2006

Published poet at 19 and author of several novels before his first screenplay credit at the age of 32, Pier Paolo Pasolini's found international recognition when he began directing his own films, courting acclaim for works such as Martin Scorsese favourite The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Il Vangelo secondo Matteo - 1964), Theorem (Teorema - 1968) and The Decameron (Il Decameron - 1971), as well as widespread controversy for his final film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma - 1975). Rather than go for the obvious, Tartan have announced a UK release of Pasolini: Vol. 1 Box Set for February 2007 that will contain three of his not so widely seen but equally important and memorable works.

Accattone (The Scrounger - 1951) was Pasolini's first film as director and adapted from his own novel Una Vita Violenta (A Violent Life), a realistic, bleak and sometimes violent tale of life for a pimp in Rome's slum district and features a cast of largely non-professional actors, many of whom were re-enacting elements of their own lives.

Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) is Pasolini's third time at directorial bat and is made up of four separate stories, each handled by a different director. here Pasolini is joined by fellow luminaries Jean-Luc Godard, Ugo Gregoretti and Roberto Rossellini. Pasolini's segment, titled La Ricotta (Curd Cheese), depicts the making of a lavish film about the life of Jesus (titled 'the Passion of Christ' - read into that what you will, eh Mel?) in a poor district of Rome in which the locals find themselves exploited by the movie-making machine. On the film's release Pasolini was arrested and charged with blasphemy for his contribution.

Comizi d'amore (Love Meetings - 1964) is effectively an extended vox pop documentary, in which Pasolini himself ventures onto the streets of Rome to ask passers-by for their views on various aspects of sex, from sexual equality to homosexuality.

The box set is due for a 26 February 2007 release at the RRP of £39.99.

UK release for Homicide: Life on the Street
27 December 2006, updated 8 January 2007

Fans of great cop shows and, let's face it, great television have been faced with a dilemma if they live in the UK. The best police drama series ever and for my money just about the best US television series of them all, Homicide - Life on the Street, has been available for some time in the US, courtesy of Freemantle Entertainment. But the cost of importing them has remained high, and there's always that nagging hope that there will be a UK release at a lower price that won't risk being you clobbered by customs for their cut. Well it looks as if it may happen. Several on-line retailers are now taking advance orders for a UK release of seasons 1 and 2 of the series in what looks to be a carbon copy of the US release, and Freemantle are being listed as the distributor here too.

The only nagging doubt concerns possible picture quality issues - NTSC to PAL transfers are somewhat inevitable (although we can always hope - the series was shot on 16mm film after all), but will the picture be degraded enough to send fans back to the US discs? Let's hope not.

RRP is being quoted as £24.99 and is being discounted to £17.99. Release date is suggested at 26 february 2007. We'll keep you posted.

Confirmation is finally in, and the release date and RRP are correct. What is likely to cause some confusion among fans is the labelling of the set as 'The Complete First Season', as the thirteen episodes it contains are actually the first and second season as originally aired (season 1 consisted of nine episodes, season 2 of just four). If the releases continue, this will certainly get tricky for those who have already bought some of the US release box sets and decide to save money by going with UK releases, as by this numbering season five in the US will actually be labelled season four over here.

World cinema in the new year from Second Run
23 December 2006

British independent distributor Second Run has established a useful niche for itself by releasing lesser known and too rarely screened foreign language films, often from Eastern Europe, on DVD in the UK. With nineteen titles already under their belt, many of which were making their DVD premiere, they have announced their next wave of releases for the new year, and once again there are some intriguing and highly regarded films here.

January 29th release:

Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julia a tma - Czechoslovakia 1960) is set in Prague in 1942 and tells the story of young student Pavel and the Jewish girl he hides in his attic to protect her from the occupying forces. The two fall in love, but when Pavel's mother discovers his secret, events take a potentially darker turn. Directed by Jirí Weiss, one of the directors who paved the way for the Czech New Wave in the 1960s, and featuring striking monochrome photography, this will be the first time the film has been available on DVD.

February 19th release:

My Way Home (Igy jottem - Hungary 1965) is set in the final days of WW2, when a 17-year-old boy wandering in the woods is captured by Soviet troops, and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Russian soldier. His attempts to get home form the crux of this wonderfully lyrical film, which displays all of the director's consistent themes: the psychological presence of landscape, the randomness of violence, the arbitrary nature of power. Director Miklós Jancsó is regarded as one of the key European filmmakers of the past 60 years, and this is the second of a planned series of his films to be released by Second Run - his 1967 The Red & The White (Csillagosok, katonak) is already available and his 1966 The Round Up (Szegénylegények) is scheduled for later in 2007.

The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech - Czechoslovakia 1966) is notable for being 'banned forever' in its native Czechoslovakia and is seen as perhaps the most politically dangerous film made during the flowering of Czech cinema in the 1960's. Not only a biting satire on totalitarianism and an unflinching satire on conformity, its astute observations of human nature make it a universally relevant film, and one that was voted as one of the best films of the 1960's by the New York Times critics. This will be the first ever release of this film on DVD.

March 19th release:

Diary for My Children (Naplo gyermekeimnek - Hungary 1984) is the first in prolific director Marta Meszaros's renowned 'Diary' trilogy and is set in Hungary during the turbulent years between 1943 and 1956 and based on Meszaros' own wartime experiences and the Stalinist era that followed. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. Second Run are intending to release the other two films in the trilogy, Diary for My Loved Ones (Napló szerelmeimnek - 1987) and Diary for My Father and Mother (Napló apámnak, anyámnak - 1990) in 2007/2008.

Palms (Ladoni - Russia 1993) was designed by first-time director Artour Aristakisian as a cinematic poem to his unborn son, this is a truly original and challenging work that is is poetic, spiritual and hallucinatory, an extraordinary work on every level. Described in The Guardian as "A wholly remarkable experience," the film has won several international awards and is appearing here on DVD for the first time.

RRP for each of the titles is a most reasonable £12.99.

Volver on region 2 in February
22 December 2006

One of the few directors guaranteed to fill the cinema at our weekly screenings, Pedro Almadóvar has had an enviable run of fine films in recent years, from the 1995 The Flower of My Secret through Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002) to 2004's Bad Education, quality films all and multiple award winners to boot. His latest, Volver, stars Penelope Cruz as Raimunda, hard working and unappreciated mother and wife who looks after her ailing aunt Paula and dutifully shares the duty of attending to her mother's grave with her sister Sole. Her life is thrown into disarray one day by a sudden act of violence, and further complicated when she is visited by the spirit of her dead mother, played by one Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura.

Pathé Distribution Ltd have announced a UK region 2 release of the film for 12th February 2007 (which is good news for us as we're screening it early January), complete with an anamorphic widescreen transfer, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, English subtitles and the following listed extra features:

Commentary by Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz;
Pedro Almodóvar documentary (39:53)
A conversation with Pedro and the cast (37:59)
Interview with Pedro Almodóvar (10:53)
Interview with Penelope Cruz (5:28)
Interview with Carmen Maura (8:27)
Behind The Scenes musical montage (7:35)
Cannes Film Festival 2006 (17 seconds - erm, can this be right?)

RRP is £19.99.

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