Wdeo/Dvn
dvd@list.co.uk
MOB DRAMA WISEGIRLS
(15) 92min (Momentum Video/DVD rental 8 retail) 0..
<5 e Wiselihls
.‘ '!
I was fully preparing to hate this. When a film is described as being one for The Sopranos crowd. you just know that it won't be fit to lick Silvio Dante's spats. And when yOu hear that Mariah Carey is in there. you will commence plans to whack anyone who recommends it.
Yet all I can do is heartily endorse this pleasingly stylish drama abOLit three waitresses (Carey. Mira Sorvino and MeIOra Walters) who get way too deep into the nefarious doings of their restaurant bosses. While many of the mob movie cliches are there. its fusilli-like twist makes it all worthwhile.
(Brian Donaldson)
KIDS' TV MICHAEL BENTINE’S POTTY TIME
(U) 286min
(Network retail) 0...
You could imagine any of the Goons sitting at a desk chatting to themselves as an array of often bearded
puppets wander around recreating scenes from history and mOments in culture. With Peter Sellers slowly killing himself. Spike Milligan self-indulging in anarchic ‘humour' and Harry Secombe seeking God's salvatioi‘i, it was left to Michael Bentine to do it for the kids.
These are the first 26 episodes of a magical and genuinely nutty show which is both entertaining and educational. Sort of. Carnage and dismembermerit may be too much for some. but witnessing these shuffling chaps re- enacting the legends of Robin Hood. the Marie Celeste and Sherlock Holmes is enough to make anyone go potty.(Brian Donaldson)
MUSIC DOCUMFN TARY MOMUS - MAN OF LETTERS
(E) 90min (approx) (Cherry Red Films DVD retail) 0...
ARGUR‘G THE WQRLS 5h 33 2MB The latest of seminal indie label Cherry Red's DVD reissues. this bona fide curate's egg. produced a decade ago. captures Edinburgh-born Momus in all his unsettling. fascinating. self- mythologising splendour. Much like his music. this film probes the fine line between provocation and naked honesty with unapologetic Wll and literacy. Whether folloWing the angel deVil duologue narration. the camp. often macabre fantasy used to dramatise many of his best loved songs or his arty peers scrutinising his life. work and ethics. it's hard to shake the feeling of being a voyeur at the funeral of some forgotten cultural dignity. which was dOubtless the precise intention.
(Jools Stone)
CLASSIC RFISSUE SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (15) 117min (Carlton Visual
Entertainment DVD retail) 0...
Welcome reissue of Bryan Whistle Down The Wind Forbes' excellent 1964 horror thriller based on Mark
110 THE LIST 1‘) I (2b .2 Mar 799'.
McShane's horrifying paperback. When charlatan psychic Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) convmces her ineffectual. sickly husband Billy (Richard Attenborough) to kidnap a rich family's child. her plan is to stage a seance in order to lead the police to the girl. thus highlighting her own telepathic abilities. Things obVIously do not go to plan.
Easily Forbes' finest film. Seance. . . is a disturbing tale of loneliness and madness untreated and saturated by the damp. American stage actress Stanley is stunning in this rare lead film role. Extras include a fascinating interView with Mr Nanette Nemnan himself. (Paul Dalei
TRUF. CRIME
A SENSE OF FREEDOM
(18) 85min
(Anchor Bay DVD retail) 0...
From 1979 this i iade for TV feature details the early. violent life of Glasgow gangbanger Jimmy Boyle and his road to redemption. Whatever your opinion of Boyle »- who later settled into a very comfortable life as a writer and sculptor. unlike many of his Victims ~ John The Long Good Friday Macken/ie's film offers a fascinating. lo\.'/-biidget portrait of cracked poverty of inner city Glasgow in the 1960:; and 70s. along WIN) a telling take on the brutality of Scotland's then penal system. DaVid Hayman in the
ARTHOUSE BOX SFT THE HERZOG/KINSKI BOXED SET (15) (Anchor Bay UK. DVD retail) .0...
Fitzcarraldo
Meat, madness and chemistry have a way of colliding in this world. From the bloody aftermath furious friendships and wide-eyed loyalties are often formed. And so it was with Werner and Klaus - a couple of ‘difficult’, slightly unhinged German boys who came together to make five films of burgeoning ambition and diseased vision.
Collected together here for the first time, the collaborated works of filmmaker Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski make stunning viewing. Depending on which book or article you read (the best is Paul Cronin’s excellent Herzog on Herzog from Faber) Werner and Klaus constantly tested each other and fought like dogs to the point of violent confrontation, or they formed a pact to build a cinematic Kubla Khan imbued with Austro Hungarian defiance. The truth is probably somewhere in between and these five feature films and one documentary feature are gifts from the heart of a remarkable friendship.
Look mummy, there are Spanish conquistadors in the jungle and they are all speaking German. Yes of course, it’s Aguirre: Wrath of God (1973). The first film Herzog and Kinski made together was a potty, fictional take on Peter Shaffer’s Pizarro-inspired The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Herzog hangs his story around a fictional monk Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro) who takes part in a doomed, mutinous mission to El Dorado, an imaginary land of gold just beyond the South American rainforests. A classic of period cinema, this boasts Kinski’s finest performance as limping hunchback nobleman Don Lupe de Aguirre. So began the affair.
Five years later they worked together again on the harsh, viral version of Georg BOchner’s anarchistic morality play Woyzeck and then on a tribute to FW Murnau a year later with the superb Nosferatu (1979). The demented and brilliant Fitzcarraldo followed in 1982 (opera buff takes his music to the jungle in the 18005). By 1988 Kinski’s health was failing but they still managed to work together on an interesting version of Bruce Chatwin’s The Viceroy of Ouidah called Cobra Verde. Best of all, this boxed set comes with a sweet (for Herzog) documentary — My Best Friend. At £39.99 this is as vital as blood. (Paul Dale)
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lead role is ren‘arkable. Extras include a l ./ fascinating French (1’31 L531, $5; 9; documentary about the legacy of the short lived Barlinnie Special Unit throughout I urope. featuring Boyle himself. (Paul Dalm
it all began as a solo artist. Filmed last year. this low key mix of
» material new and old. including ‘Pablo Picasso. and ‘Girlfriend'. is performed With sincerity. oodles of ad libbing. (both muSically and lyricallyi. all delivered
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MUSIC ‘.‘.’lll) the trademark geek ‘l’lcég‘l-lAh-‘garTAKE appeal that makes him ME TO THE feel like he's the best PLAZA and humour that friend and raconteur
(E) 60min emanates from Itichman. you've never known. A
(DVD retail) 0... homer performance.
(Simon Dehany)
one time Modem I over and now back to ‘-.'.'here "The good thing about my old records is that I had complete control. The bad thing about my old records is that I had complete controll' There's a subtle honest
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