Reviews

COMEDY ROMANCE DO YOU REMEMBER DOLLY BELL? (15) 105min

(Artificial Eye DVD retail)

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Emir Kustiirica usually works a (IOlllDillElilOll of nostalgia and rumbiistiousness. but often the former loses out to the latter and many of his films ilike Underground. Black Cat. ‘i'v/li/te Catt end up like cra/y multiple Circus acts. VVillCh is why. if you have i'(-3servations about Kusturica's style. and don't know his early work. check out this longingly lovely first feature. which offers a sense of reserve missing from his later works. Made in 1981 and set in SéllélJOVO. the film follows the growing pains of the teenage Dino as he looxs for life experiences to match those he watches on the silver screen. As Kusturica biographer Goran Gocic claims. ‘the characters are defined mostly by their dreams.‘ But there is plenty of harsh reality here too. as the young woman Dino falls for learns a few harsh lessons courtesy of a pimp. and. in this tough rite of passage. Dino lSl;i(:l<b Stimacl grows up with a full awareness of tough love. A rare. iiiisentimentally warm film. Extras include a rare Kusturica interwew. {Tony McKibbini

MUSIC (LOMTDY JERKBEAST (E) 81 min lVideosyiicratic DVD retail) 0

The people at Videosyiicratic are so painfully desperate to prove their really cool independent credentials

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that they remind us of them in this DVD's accompanying brochure and at the beginning of this 'film'. But the definition of ‘independent' has surely never been 'cack handed and amateur." With the vague aesthetic sensibility of Russ Meyer (without the hyper pumped mammariesl and early John Waters imiiiiis the excrement chompingl. this portrays the rise. fall and re rise of a rubbish punk band headed up by a vitriol fuelled monster. a rabbit murdering sociopath £llt(l {l liziiirls;()iiiee

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paranoiac.

What follows over the longest 81 m:nutes of your life is a brain dead stream of unfunny. scatological scenes and even worse 'dialogue' and ‘acting' The horrendous disc of extras includes an animated edition of Jerkbeasf. which. ama/iiigly. never aired. and a dOCumentary explaining the utterly regrettable roots of the movie. (Brian Donaldsoni

DANCE:

TALES OF BEATRIX POTTER

(U) 83min (Optimum Home Entertainment DVD retail) 0..

Dance on screen rarely captures even half the magic of seeing it live on stage. Which is why this adaptation by the Royal Ballet is so successful it doesn't even try. Instead the action takes place in a variety of locations. from the green fields of the l ake District to the inside of a giant doll's house.

All of Beatrix Potter's

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most famous faces strut their stuff Peter Rabbit. Jemima Puddleduck. Mrs Tiggy winkle et al. Constrained by their costumes. not all the dancers have a chance to shine. But Michael ()oleiiian as Jeremy Fisher would put any real frog to shame with his leggy leaps.

Filmed in 1971. the ballet has a traditional charm, which crosses the generational divide. With Just enough naughtiness. in the form of food fights and plate smashing mice. to spice up the odd moment of twee blandness.

(Kelly Apterl

HISTORY HORROR BLACK SUN: THE NANKING MASSACRE

(18) 90min

lTartan Grindhouse DVD retail) 0..

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This is a very weird amalgam of sub- standard video nasty style gore and sanctimonious documentary footage of the Nanking massacre of 1937. The film might have been a genuine exploitation classic. or a horrifically reflective examination. had it decided to be one thing or another. As it is the generally inept special effects pale next to the archival footage it intermittently offers up. in this exploration of the

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Review of the Year

Film Editor Paul Dale picks his DVD releases of 2006.

I As Internet rental services continue to dent the once all-consuming (not to say exorbitant) high street video shop, interesting patterns seem to be emerging.

Recent research showed a minor downturn in both DVD purchases and rentals (nothing compared to the recent worrying downturn in cinema admissions in the UK), but those that are consuming are exhibiting some fairly eccentric behaviour. Box sets of TV series and big Hollywood blockbusters aside, the biggest trend in the market seems to be for re- releases. Ealing classics, film noirs and 705 and 805 youth classics released on DVD for the first or second time currently seem to be doing good business. It is a trend that I wholeheartedly approve of, for as a film reviewer friend recently pointed out to me on returning from a classic Italian film retrospective curated by Martin Scorsese, ‘We watch too many new films; you do know that they are shit don’t you? Old films rule man!’ With all this in mind and for the purposes of this article I would like to only address the re-issues that came out on 2006.

The absolute highlight of the year was the release of four Fassbinder films on DVD. Fear Eats The Soul, The Merchant of Four Seasons, The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant and The Marriage of Maria Braun (pictured) are the first of a planned attempt to release all of the great German auteur’s film work on DVD. Fassbinder, for me anyway, was the prolific beating heart of European cinema in the latter part of the 20th century and these films underline why.

Other great re-issues this year included loads of Buhuel, the best of which - Nazan’n, The Ascent to Heaven, The Exterminating Angel, Viridiana and The Great Madcap - deserve a place in any cineaste’s collection. 2006 also saw a clutch of rare releases from the east, noticeably Yukio Masumara’s Red Angel and Blind Beast plus Seijun Suzuki’s bonkers Pistol Opera.

The British Film Institute continued doing great restoration work this year with superb reissues of the key films by Danish legend Carl Theodor Dreyer (Master of the House, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud) and Melville’s surprising and brilliant Army in the Shadows. Artificial Eye’s long overdue three disc box set featuring Bela Tarr’s 419 minute masterwork Santiago also made my pretentious heart skip a beat this year.

Just so it’s not all homework and hard work let’s end on a bit of seamless pleasure. The Billy Wilder Box Set (Double Indemnity, The Major and the Minor, The Lost Weekend and A Foreign Affair) came out towards the end of the year and what a joy! As Billy Wilder once said, the general rule of thumb when renting or buying DVDs is to ‘Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.’

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China. the director Tun l-ei Mou i/ osl Souls. frr/ogv of Lover shows us atrocity after atrocity. but the prosthetic aesthetic doesn't always work. One potentially horrific moment shows

remoVing a woman's almost fully formed foetus from her Just sliced ()()(?l‘. stomach. But for all its vwrd re enactment it lacks even a hint of the haunting moment where we see.

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white pl‘cto. a man’s tread barely hanging 0') to its neck after a summany beheading. l-xtras llltil‘iittO a 'l “810M, of Nanking' illustrated With a virtual map. iTony McKibbinl

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