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Film Reviews
By (248 reviews)
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if they want to eat they need to have white farmers
Mike Campbell acquired the large estate he calls a farm with all its farms and its 500 workers back in 1974 when a brutal white supremacist regime was running the country they called Rhodesia.
I feel no sympathy for the South African army captain Mike Campbell and his British son in law Ben Freeth because I watched Freeth interviewing Campbell on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vSbfhrr2NyH4
Have a look and watch Campbell telling the world if they want to eat they need to have white farmers.
I watched the documentary they call Mugabe and the White African and after watching the work of Ben Freeth on youtube I came to the conclusion that the directors of the documentary are Ben Freeth and Mike Campbell and not Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson.
They Shoot Horses Don't They
The film is awesome; gritty, moving, inspired!
This Fremantle produced DVD version is in the totally wrong aspect ratio of 4:3 - rendering the film unwatchable! Every carefully considered composition is destroyed by the idiot distribution company who took a phenomenal film produced in a widescreen aspect ratio and for some inexplicable reason, present it totally cropped and squished - shame on them!
And, shame on you too if you buy it - they've ruined it!
21st Century Curate's Egg
Must agree with the first reviewer - this is not the Complete Organ Works at all. However, the organs played are magnificent and we are treated to unique views of them, and the churches in which they stand. Sadly, in order to enjoy this, you also have to endure the often uninspiring playing of John Scott Whitely who, it must be said, comes over as being intensely creepy in these programmes ... and each programme inevitably ends up saying more about JSW than it does about JSB. As for the stupid Damian Hurst titles of Bach with bees in his bonnet - I'd sooner have 'a-pis'. But we must applaud the artist for conning the BBC into 'hiving off' such a hefty chunk of license-payers' money in so barmy a way. People who appear so daft as to commission something like that deserve to be taken for a ride! But even these 21st century banalities can't mask the age-old beauty of the music and the instruments on which it is played.
Outstanding Cinema
Having spent many years living in West Germany in the 60s I can probably appreciate and understand this picture more. It is a valuable piece of history which is excellent for any srudent learning this period of history. From the very early opening of part one until the final reel you could pretend that you were part of this family. With its great cast, photography,music, location shots, it is a must see for German cinema at its best.
haunting and powerful
Adapted from a novel, this is a great example of magical realism. I found it incredibly haunting, moving and powerful. It asserts the power of imagination and hope, that only through imagination can we hope to transcend the cruelties and injustices we make for ourselves.
Slow burning, but mesmerising and highly recommended.
Intelligent, ultra violent gangster saga
Saw this at Africa in Motion Film festival 2009 and I m very pleased to see its getting a DVD release.
Ultra violent, witty and intelligent it offers a jaundiced look at South Africa, post apartheid, using the rise of a gangster to comment on a deeply divided society. One which traded the injustices of aprtheid for those of neo liberalism. Apparently it was a bit too close to the mark for a lot of South Africans, who hated it.
I enjoyed it greatly, its a worthy addition to the genre of gangster epic, a thinking persons Scarface and I highly recommend it.
Canonical films from one of Africas's greatest directors
Essential viewing for anyone interested in African or indeed world cinema. Djibril Diop Mambety was one of the greatest talents to emerge from the continent and these early films of his are great examples of the socially committed cinema which emerged in the years immediately following independence.
They remain as relevant today as ever, The Little Girl being a tribute to the armies of street traders plying their wares on every African city.
The petty injustices and cruelties life dishes out to people whose determination and optimism nonetheless pulls them through make these inspiring films a real joy. Theres a lot of humour, West African style, slightly wry.
Highly recommended, I m so pleased these are now available.
Fury Series 1
Fury is my lifelong favourite TV series, and I had been waiting and waiting and waiting and longing for it to come out on dvd. Imagine my disappointment when I bought the long-awaited first season to find that all but 3 of the 30 episodes featured did not have the full original series opening sequence.
I was gutted. It just didn't seem complete as a result.
The episodes have not been digitally remastered so there are some nasty moments when the soundtrack 'wowls'. One or two of them are out of chronological order, in one case interfering with episode continuity. These are minor gliches really. And they can be lived with.
However, the last four episodes on the dvd are quite clearly the first four from second season, and the episode Timber is actually the fifth season episode The Timber Walkers which has somehow got mixed up with the first season episode of a similar title. Joey is visibly older than in the other episodes on the dvd and Packy - who does not join the series until Season 4 - is in the episode.
Having got those disappointments out of the way, I have to say that it is still magical to see Fury again after all these years (let's just say close to half a century!). The horse star is superb and every bit as beautiful as I remember him. Truly he is the King of Wild Horses. Fury's co-stars are all excellent as well, in particular the children. The story lines are simple but clear and very heartwarming, underlining principles that we seem to have sadly lost today.
Fury has lost none of its magic for me.
In an age when many old favourites of the infancy of TV broadcasting are becoming available on dvd Fury stands up extremely well against more modern children's series featuring horses. It just deserves better treatment - of all the TV series I have bought on dvd so far only Fury is not as I remember it when it appeared on TV. And for me it is the most important one of all!
Why the UK archive from which it was obtained for release has cut the opening sequence from all but three is baffling, frustrating and I am unable to say how deeply disappointing.
If further seasons are ever released on dvd, I hope Fury's fans are consulted first to ensure that those reliving it get what they recall seeing all those years ago.
Superb drama, wonderfully acted.
Filmed over six months from May to November, 1962, on picturesque locations in Africa and at Shepperton Studios, England, Sammy Going South is a truly remarkable and wonderfully acted film directed with consummate skill by Alexander Mackendrick. Chosen as The Royal Performance Film of 1963, the film covers a five months period from November, 1956 to March, 1957. Ten years old English boy and only child Sammy Hartland (Fergus McClelland) lives in an apartment block in Port Said, Egypt, with his English parents. It is the start of hostilities in the Suez crisis and Sammy is out playing at the docks when the RAF launch the first bombing raid on Port Said. Terrified, Sammy runs home to find that his parents, along with some Egyptians, have been killed when a bomb hit the apartment block. The Egyptians he believed were his closest friends turn on him because he is English and, lucky to escape being killed, he runs away, heartbroken; penniless; traumatised and completely alone. He knows that he has an Aunt Jane, his mother's sister, who runs a hotel in Durban, South Africa and so, with only a toy compass to guide him and the irrepressible optimism of a ten year old, he starts his journey south on foot to travel to Durban, five thousand miles away at the other end of the African continent. The adventures he has and the people he meets en route form the story.
On his first night out, he is found sleeping on a sand dune in the middle of the Egyptian desert by a Syrian peddler (Zia Mohyeddin) who is sexually attracted to him and wants to have his way with him (the British Board of Film Censors asked for cuts to be made in these scenes before they would give the film a U certificate and the producers had to comply...although some small parts of the cut scenes did make it to the final release print and are included in this DVD). The Syrian offers to take Sammy further south over the mountains and Sammy agrees to go with him. But after a few weeks, it becomes clear to Sammy that the Syrian has no intention of taking him to Aunt Jane, but merely wants to keep Sammy with him indefinitely for his own ends. Later, the Syrian comes to a very bad end and Sammy makes off across the desert to Luxor and is found by a rich American tourist (Constance Cummings), who takes him under her wing. But, when he realises she is going to take him back to Port Said, he escapes and continues his journey south.
Throughout his five thousand mile journey from Port Said to Durban, Sammy meets many different types of people...some who want to molest him, or use him, or exploit him, so that by the time he meets the diamond smuggler Cocky Wainwright, wonderfully played by Edward G. Robinson, who only wants to help him, Sammy is still withdrawn and untrusting. But he and Cocky get on wonderfully together and a very touching moment in the film occurs when Sammy, now finally trusting Cocky, asks him if he can stay with him forever and Cocky replies that he can. Cocky and his band have now become his new family and Cocky's home Sammy's new home and, for the first time since Port Said, he is happy. But yet more trauma is on the way for him...!
The film itself, like Sammy, continually gathers strength as it goes along until it reaches by far its best sequences with Edward G. Robinson. In fact, all the scenes involving Edward G. Robinson and Fergus McClelland are wonderfully acted by the pair and what a team they make.
Beautifully filmed in all the splendours of CinemaScope and Eastman Colour, it was not an easy film to make by any means. There were casualties among the cast and crew, including Alexander Mackendrick suffering a back injury; two crew members being bitten by poisonous snakes; one crew member falling out of a tree and breaking his arm and Edward G. Robinson suffering a near fatal heart attack. However, it seems that just like his character Sammy, Fergus McClelland came through it all without a scratch. Beginner's Luck, perhaps. Fergus, then aged 11 and a pupil at Holland Park Comprehensive School in London, had been chosen for the part from thousands of other boys because he had the toughness and independence of spirit that Mackendrick was looking for.
Looked at today, the film (even though the version on this DVD is shorn of ten minutes of footagethe original full length version now believed to be lost) still resonates as strongly with me as it did when I first saw it in 1963. I remember the Suez crisis, being myself nine and a half at the time and early scenes where Sammy is listening to the BBC news about the crisis on the radio (read by Frank Phillips) bring it all back to me as though it were yesterday. The film has an incredible sense of time and place and this, coupled with the facial resemblance between the young Sammy and the young me, means the film has a very special meaning for me and I find it so easy to identify with Sammy and his trauma and his experiences, as it tells its story entirely from Sammys viewpoint.
I highly recommend this DVD of the newly restored Sammy Going South. But be warned. This may be a film about a child, but it is in no way a kind of Disneyfied kids picture. In fact, there are some very cruel and disturbing moments in it and, if you are a sensitive person, it may have you in tears and sobbing before the end. Some scenes from the film are deeply profound. Like the part where the bedraggled Sammy, on his journey down the River Nile on a steamer, leans over the rail and says to a companion passenger: If I died, no one would knowaunt Jane wouldnt knownobody would know! At that moment, I want to put my arms around him and hold him to me and let him know that someone loves him and really cares about what happens to him and that he is not alone and will never be alone again.
Extras on the DVD are a scene selection and brand new interviews with the legendary Fergus McClelland (mistakenly spelt McLeland on the DVD menu) and with James Mangold, former colleague and friend of the late Alexander Sandy Mackendrick. Fergus looks and sounds very young and vibrant for his age, considering he is 60 this year and of course, he will always be Sammy to his fans. A pity, though, that the original CinemaScope trailer couldn't have been included, as it would have been interesting to be reminded of how the film was pitched to the cinema-going public way back in 1963. I am delighted to share these reviews with one from none other than Sammy himself...Fergus McClelland.
David Rayner,
Stoke-on-Trent,
England,
United Kingdom.
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1.
The Beiderbecke Trilogy
£19.99
2.
The Eric Sykes Collection
£12.99
3.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
£10.99
4.
While the City Sleeps
£7.99
5.
The Greengage Summer
£11.99
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