Reviews
ROMANTIC THRILLER THE TAMARIND SEED
(15) 125min
(Network DVD
rental. retail) 0..
l 1
_ 1716-3“! Seed
Blake Edwards' 1974 cold war jape was SumptuOusly shot in widescreen by Freddie YOung. presumably to fit stars of the then magnitude — Omar Sharif and Julie Andrews. Andrews is the humble British civil servant to Sharif's military attache from the Soviet Union. Opposites attract while the powers that be lay obstacles in the path of true love. Edwards plays up the impossibility of the romance at every opportunity while Sharif is on Casanova autopilot. The film's charm now stems from its being so obviOusly of its period both in subject matter and star appeal — and isn't necessarily the worse for that. Extras include a couple of enjoyable interviews with Sharif on The Russell Harty Show. (Tony McKibbin)
DRAMA BLISSFULLY YOURS
(18) 122min
(Second Run DVD retail) 0...
Blissfufly Yours
A film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul made his reputation with his 200/1 gay shape shifter jungle tale Tropical lvlalady. but this earlier outing is worth seeking out. Working as usual outside the strict Thai Studio system,
Weerasethakul is more interested in the observational possibilities in city life and the tactile relationship his characters have with each other. than he is in furthering plot. Whether exploring urban living in the film's first section, or the languorous longings of the touch and the caressineg therapeutic immediacy of the sights and sound of nature later on in the film. Weerasethakul keeps psychological and narrative ambiguity to the maxunum. It is as though he wants us to achieve the ‘voidness' he speaks of in interviews. that he wants us to respond to the sense of things rather than their meaning. With vivid use of sound and colour the director reminds us that cinema is. as Susan Sontag once proposed. a great medium of ‘sensuous elaboration'. Presented fully uncut in a new digital transfer approved by the director. extras include a filmed introduction by Wet-3rasethakul and a booklet featuring a new essay on the film by Tony Rayns.
(Tony McKibbin)
ROMCOM
THE BEST MAN (12) 93min
(Fox Lionsgate DVD retail rental) .0
best * A ' c 9
If you're yet to hear the name Cyrano de Bergerac and have no room in your brain for the knowledge that a film called The Graduate was ever made. then The Best Man might seem a breath of fresh air. When a struggling writer (Stuart Townsend) is asked to be the guy who makes the funny speech at the wedding of a guy (Steve John Shepherd) he hasn't seen in years. wedding (and alarm)
bells start to ring.
That the groom-to-be is a cad of the highest order and our best man will fall for the fiancee are never in dOubt. That the dialogue. acting and script will be guite so woeful is no less than staggering. Having a mildly listenable soundtrack is one of the only things that can be said in this film's favour. though its greatest achievement is to make fluffy romantic comedy purveyor Richard Curtis seem like Ken Loach. No extras.
(Brian Donaldson)
DOCUMENTARY GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: AUTOPORTRAIT (E) 90min
(Eureka DVD retail) O...
. v’ hu. ' If? it To coincide with the DVD release of Kevin MacDonald's excellent fictional feature The Last King of Scotland comes the re emergence of this disturbing and illuminating 197/1 biographical portrait of Idi Amin by German filmmaker Barbet Schroeder (Barf/y, Reversal of Fortune). Taking a very direct and inquisitive approach to the words and dreams of Uganda's then promising young dictator. Schroeder and his crew follow Amin as he berates some cabinet members. supervises a war game simulation (of an invasion of Israel) and addresses some Ugandan physicrans while all the time unspooling his pro- Arabic state. anti- semitic rants. It's a really remarkable portrait of a tyrant in the making. the kind of which no filmmaker would try and make today for fear of being branded a terrorist alongside their subject matter. Minimal extras. (Paul Dale)
DVD ROUNDUP
From Luchino Visconti's 1963 masterpiece The Leopard to more recently Marco Tullio Giordana’s six-hour Best of Youth, Italians have always had a certain flair for the familial epic. Made in 1976. Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (Novecento) (Fox 0000 ) is one of the best. It follows the lives and interconnections between two men (Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu). one of peasant stock, one from the land owning classes. who are both born on the same day in 1900. This highly purchasable reissue is. however, not the long promised original uncut five—and-a-half hour version of the film which features explicit sex scenes with the leads and Italian goddess Stefania Casini and an alleged scene of prepubescent boys examining each other’s penises. Another country that was torn apart by political turmoil in the early part of last century was Ireland. not that you would know it from Leonard Abrahamson‘s strikingly downbeat (you could even say Beckett-ian) junkie drama Adam and Paul (Metrodome 0000 ). This is modern day Dublin seen through the eyes of two strung out heroin addicts. Full of pathos and incidental joys (and heartbreaks). if you can stomach it. Adam and Paul really
is worth seeking out.
There’s some really odd collections out this fortnight, the cheeky George
Formby Collection (Optimum 000
) features two of the buck toothed
ukulele playing vaudeville star's best cinematic turns No Limit and Let George Do It. This is broad, dated stuff but not without a sort of innocent appeal. Sadly. both the Terry Thomas Collection (pictured) and the Sid James
Collection (both Optimum, both 00
) feature a tawdry selection of these
two gifted performers’ lesser works. You'd be better going for the beautifully presented Elvis Presley Collectors Edition Tin (Fox 0000 ) featuring the handful of half decent films that the King made, including Love Me Tender. Flaming Star (see Elvis with a beard!) and Frankie and Johnny.
And that's it. We haven't even had time to consider the cheesy charms of
Jacques Cousteau: The Ultimate Collection (Delta .0.
) or Alex
Cox's pneumatically re-released Sid and Nancy (Momentum .00. ). Next time we will be looking to the clouds and the stars while masked Mexican wrestlers pull us into the dirt. (Paul Dale)
CULT
THE JODOROWSKY COLLECTION (18) 334min
(Tartan DVD retail) 0..”
We've been banging on about the return of deranged visionary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for so long that we COLlld hardly overlook. however briefly. this six disc box set featuring three of the master's films. El Topo and The Holy Mountain are his two long unavailable psychedelic
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masterpieces which should be seen in all their mystical sacrilegious gun toting glory. Almost as interesting is one of
Jodorowsky's earlier films. Fando 8 Us (1968). ab0ut love and paralysis in the mythical city. which was based on Jodorowsky's memories of a play by surrealist Fernando Arrabal. The other three discs contain La Constellation Jodorowsky a fascinating dOCumentary by LOuis Mouchet plus El Topo and The Holy Mountain s0undtrack CDs. Quite simply one of the best releases of the year. (Paul Dale)
10—24 May 2007 THE LIST 41