It’s ironic that, in an age when film moves forwards in leaps and bounds in terms of technology and innovation, it takes an almost obsolete format to encourage some of the of the most original, inventive and enjoyable filmmakers around. The idea of Straight 8 is deceptively simple: filmmakers get an 8mm cartridge of film sent to them and then have to make a three minute film shooting i…

It seems to me that I always talk about the weather in the introduction to these columns. I’ve vowed that I was going to stop that. Unfortunately, Danny Boyle’s latest film has kind of scuppered that. So I have to mention that, considering the general rain, it’s good that Special Edition # 21 has a new film that can bring some brightness into all our lives. Laurence Boyce also…

Whether it’s the fountain where Anita Ekberg frolicked in La Dolce Vita, the scuzzy convenience store where Dante wasn’t even supposed to be that day in Clerks or the hotel where Jack Nicholson went a little bit bonkers in The Shining, there are plenty of movie locations that remain a source of pilgrimage for holiday makers, movie buffs and – on occasion – completely bar…

  An Education, which which has its UK premiere tonight at the London Film Festival, is based on a short memoir written by newspaper journalist Lynn Barber, which was published in Granta. The story was adapted for the screen by Nicky Hornby, and stars Carey Mulligan in an acclaimed turn as 16-year-old Jenny (based on the young Lynn), and Peter Sarsgaard as David, the older man who shows her wh…

Laurence Boyce had just got back from enjoying the vodka in Krakow and sunning himself in Portugal and was ready to get back into business. And then his computer blew up. It’s always the way isn’t it? Thanks to friends, some technical nous and a lot of crossing his fingers, he’s managed to sort out the problems and is ready to bring Special Edition # 24 to the world. There are p…

  This is the animated banner that greets visitors to the new documentary website brought to you by the Documentary Film Group in association with the British Council. It's a one-stop shop for documentary, created especially for everyone interested in the art and craft of documentary filmmaking. The site will bringing the latest news and events from the global doc community, with…

How did we cope before the advent of DVD’s? Rewinding a video tape took ages, the quality was something less to be desired and there was a nary a special feature in sight. How our film loving predecessor’s must have suffered in that primitive world - well, unless they had loads of money and bought a Laserdisc. Thankfully, we’re now knee deep in DVDs and Special Edition # 28 is…

I watched the pilot episode of HBO’s The Pacific and all my fears of the same run off the mill macho war film were somehow true. As a follow up to Band of Brothers it lacks a lot of characterisation that made the 2002 10 part series a groundbreaking multi character epic. It is still a powerful piece of television with it’s visceral carnage but the characters revert to that macho American attitude…

As we reach the end of August, it appears as if everyone is retuning from their holidays as there are a ton of DVDs being released over the next couple of weeks. So whether you like French movies, Anime or comedy (or indeed French Anime Comedies) let Laurence Boyce and Special Edition # 9 help you sort the wheat from the chaff as the last hazy days of summer gently slip away. Or disappe…

As ever, there will be spoilers   Elite Squad has its UK DVD release tomorrow Rio de Janeiro, 1997. The Pope is about to visit. Some doofus has put him up right next door to a notorious favela. The Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE) have to clean it up before he gets there. So we get to take a look at a Brazilian slum through the eyes of the supposed law enforcers…

As the fare currently on offer at this year's London Film Festival shows, getting history up on the big screen is very much in vogue at the moment. Between Frost/Nixon, The Baader-Meinhof Complex and W., recent events are almost constantly being reappropriated for the screen at the moment. Mike Chopra-Gant, who teaches media, communication and cultural studies at London Met University…

Where did the summer go eh? About two days of sunshine and the rest of it grey and miserable. As always, thank goodness for the joys of the shiny discs which provide us with so much entertainment and edification. In Special Edition # 26, Laurence Boyce has a bumper selection of DVDs for you to enjoy in the latest column with feast of films, TV shows and shorts for you to devour over the coming…

The London Film Festival will close tonight with the world premiere of the feature debut from artist Sam Taylor-Wood, Nowhere Boy. It takes a look at the early years of John Lennon, when he was being brought up by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas in a fantastic performance), getting into music, and taking guitar lessons from a young squirt called Paul McCartney. Suchandrika Chakrabarti revie…

You remember where you were when you saw it happen. It was a normal Tuesday lunchtime in the UK, just after Neighbours in fact. Flicking through the channels, every one of them seemed to be showing a disaster movie, involving cinema’s most recognisable skyline. Like most of the western world, you watched, incredulously, as fiction and reality merged. No one knew then what was going to…

  Producer: Generic Pool Productions Wildlife films have long been family favourites on TV, but the smooth and easy presentation of the earth's fauna on the box belies the infinite patience and dedicated professionalism of the men and women who set out to capture it on film. This special interest video DVD gives us the inside story. And for those who feel they would enjoy the…

Films based on a comic book will always attract two forms of criticism. Firstly there’ll be those who judge the inherent quality of the film. Then there’ll be those who’ll judge the film and its fidelity to the original source material. For a perfect of example of this then you need look no further than V For Vendetta. Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s original graphic novel h…

  Stranded on that no-man's land between graduation and a media career? So was Engish Television and Film graduate Sabrina Ferro, but no more. Instead she's launched a high quality glossy mag aimed at people like herself and at those on the lookout for rising talent. Media Directions, as the director's chair on the front cover exclaims, is dedicated to showcasing…

 This Russian-French movie won the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1995, but is only being released on DVD in the UK this month.   Burnt by the Sun (Russian: Утомлённые солнцем) is set in Russia in 1936. Stalin has been in power for almost a decade. Colonel Serguei Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov, also directing and co-writing) is living the good life in his dacha with his much…

This review is going to be full of spoilers; if you don't want to know, best look away now. So, for the remaining reader: The Reader hinges on the power of writing, and the flexibility of the truth. It can make or break lives. Reading aloud draws two people into a decades-long relationship; the shame of illiteracy leads to a terrible crime and a life of penance; a  Holocaust…

Tim Burton has always had something of a schizophrenic career. On one hand he’s the eccentric visionary who works on the fringes of Hollywood with such films as the fabulous Edward Scissorhands and the commercially unsuccessful yet brilliantly twisted Mars Attacks. On the other hand he’s at the heart of the Hollywood machine, helming the merchandise monster that was Batman and th…

  by Robert Latham Brown Chalk Hill Books, L.A, March 2006, 416 pages, $29.95 Low budget film production is a chicken and egg scenario. For the production to be successful you need experience to avoid potentially costly mistakes. If you have that sort of experience already, you are unlikely to be making low budget films at all. If you want to go the low budget route, how do you get…

My very first encounter with a full feature film budget was quite terrifying, simply on grounds of complexity and sheer weight and volume of paper.  There were lots of  “line items” all number coded, running down the left margin. Thousands of them. The bundled pages would pass muster for a telephone directory. I felt the urge to run, but I swallowed, stayed and sent for a bo…

Grassroots and No are both political films based on real events that concentrate on the competition: to win a local election in the former film, and to win a regime-changing plebiscite in the latter. The fact that No succeeds as an engaging film to such a greater extent than Grassroots shows that political races on film need to be contested by sharply-out…

There's a rather funny viral doing the rounds by UK blog the Shiznit about what if the 2015 Oscar nominations told the truth, following similar posts they've done in previous years. I didn't feel like sharing it however because their poster for Selma ('Challenging Race Biopic: if you don't like it then you basially hate black people') troubled me somewhat. I had to see it to be sure - and no long…

Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G. Borat et al), Milo Twomey (Band of Brothers), Rebecca Craig (Casualty, Emma, Silent Witness) star in this recently discovered remarkable British comedy. The Jolly Boys Last Stand is a unique and unforgettable show of their raw talent available to rent and buy from 13th February 2006 (RRP £14.99) When "El Presidente&…