Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox will have its world premiere at the London Film Festival's opening gala tonight. Suchandrika Chakrabarti reviews. In case you don't know (shame on you if you don't), Fantastic Mr Fox is a 1970 children's novel by Roald Dahl. The film fleshes out the original storyline, which sees Mr Fox outsmarting the local triumvirate of mean farmers - Boggis, Bunce and…

Laurence Boyce takes time out of his busy schedule (well, takes time out of watching DVDs) to bring you the latest round of the DVDs that should either rock your world or destroy your faith in humanity in Special Edition # 12. Note that there's one film he doesn't like at all. I wonder if you'll be able to tell which one it is... Is The Da Vinci Code (Sony Pictures Releasing)…

The introduction and development of Apple’s Final Cut Pro software has created positive and negative waves of opinion throughout the various strands of the media industry in the UK and worldwide. You could say it has thrown a spanner in the works for its long-established competitors.   THE REVOLUTION The introduction and development of Apple’s…

Who would believe it but its mid-life crisis time as its Special Edition #40. But, before it grows its hair long, buys a motorcycle and searches for a girlfriend of an inappropriate age, it will find enough time to go through some of the latest and most exciting DVDs available. Laurence Boyce picks some new releases (including a ton of brand new animation), TV shows and classic film that will hop…

Early work by Hideo Miyazaki is cheap fun but lacks the depth admirers of the animation master will recognise in his later works. Director: Hideo Miyazaki Country of origin: Japan Length: 110 mins Format (DV, 35mm, etc): animation Genre: action fairy tale Film website: www.manga.co.uk From any other director this would be a film to write home about - at least if you're an animation fan. But this…

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…

Ahead of the London Film Festival's opening night tomorrow, here's a round-up of some highlights from Suchandrika Chakrabarti. The LFF's press screenings begin before the festival begins, and carry on during it, with the previews of the big gala films, like the opening night's Fantastic Mr Fox (gosh, they do love a bit of Wes Anderson) and the George Clooney-starring The Men Who Stare at Goats…

From the striking opening credits, with a boy throwing eggs at the screen, you know that Mischief Night is going to live up to its name. It is both an irreverent look at life in a Leeds suburb, as well as an exploration of the effects of increased ethnic segregation. The setting of Beeston, Leeds – home of three of the July 7th bombers – also provided the backdrop to Penny…

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…

Francois Truffaut memorably said that there was “… a certain incompatibility between the words ‘cinema’ and ‘Britain’.” Stephen Frears had an equally memorable retort, stunning in its simplicity and epic in its sentiments: “Bollocks to Truffaut.” Yet aside from certainly glorious moments – the Free Cinema movement, the Swinging Sixties…

Subtitled "The Oil Crash," this is, as co-director/producer Basil Gelpke puts it, "A film that promises to be a bit of a downer." He isn't  really joking: the documentary looks at the amount of oil likely to be left in the ground (not much) and what preparations have been made for a post-plentiful-oil society (not many). It's a wake-up call that comes without t…

Warning: spoilers (as far as I can spoil the plot of a very famous 8-year-old book for you) Ah. "We need to talk about Kevin." The words that the eponymous Kevin (Ezra Miller/Jasper Newell/ Rocky Duer)'s mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) never manages to say to her sweet, blinkered husband Franklin (John C Reilly). Lynne Ramsay's fine adaptation of the very unloveable 2003 novel dispenses with the e…

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…

  Making and Marketing Hobbyist DVDs The explosion in pro camcorder sales says there are a lot of people out there with video shooting kit that will produce professional results, many of them focused on traditional markets like film and television, but when it is not shooting that carefully constructed documentary, or between film assignments, how can your camcorder earn its keep…

As the  50th London Film Festival gets underway, a new update from Suchandrika Chakrabarti, with previews of Penny Woolcock's Mischief Night, the Spanish Dark Blue Almost Black and a real-life Argentine horror story, Buenos Aires 1977.             Mischief Night (Penny Woolcock, UK, 2006)   The third part o…

Chosen to be Microfilmmaker Magazine's lead camera analyst and reviewer due to his expertise in camerawork, Andy Yardy has over 10 years experience shooting documentaries in the most remote portions of the globe. Based out of LA, he creates films under his production company, New Link Media. As a filmmaker, I dreamed of the day that I could toss my standard def camera for a high Def one…

Fundamentalist atheism is as old as religion, and possibly time. Back in a less liberal era, the 16th century, the playwright Christopher Marlowe got into trouble for trashing religion as a translator of the classical author Ovid ("God is a name, no substance, feared in vain"), as well as in his own stuff ("I count religion but a childish toy "). US comedian Bill M…

It’s heartening to know that there is still life in the British film industry yet as Special Edition # 43 opens with an exciting example of some of the talent that this country has to offer. With the imminent closure of the UK Film Council and worries about arts cuts it’s films such as Skeletons that sure us that UK talent need to be nurtured and supported. And, as always, Laurence Boyce also wad…

Rather than being "a bold new call for peace," the first Palestinian film to be Oscar-nominated is an emotional look at what could possibly drive someone to become a suicide bomber. Paradise Now, like United 93, is a film that relies upon the audience's prior knowledge of world events for context. This device means that both films escape charges of didacticism, preferring…

As the film world anxiously awaits the release of David Lynch's latest film Inland Empire, Michel Chion's definitive book on the one of the most complex directors in American Cinema today is finally updated. But if you're looking for a book that explains all of Lynch's work then you're going to be disappointed: after all, it's sometimes questionable if Lynch himself knows…

Did anyone miss me? Didn’t think so…. Anyway,  due to an extended absence due to illness, work and alien abduction (OK, not really on the last one) the column that gives you all you need to know on the most eclectic DVD’s around has been conspicuously absent. Indeed, given its number, Special Edition # 13 has felt somewhat jinxed. But thanks to a combination of willpower a…

Morgan Spurlock’s POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold officially opened the 18th Sheffield Documentary Film Festival on Wednesday evening, also providing the doc with its European premiering slot. Product placement and chasing sponsorship lolly was the film’s raison d’être, and as I write this I’m drinking a bottle of POM Wonderful itself, dished out free in the delegate centre…

Whilst you wait in breathless anticipation for Special Edition # 27, Laurence Boyce gives you a quick Special Edition: Easter Egg update with one of the biggest summer blockbusters now available for your delectation as Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Paramount Home Entertainment) is now available to buy as double disc edition. Well, we know that it’s the run up to Chri…

It’s starting to become an interesting time to be a DVD fan. With an increasing number of movies being released on the format for a second time (watch out in the next column for a review of the upcoming ‘Definitive Edition’ of Fight Club which might gall the thousands who bought the already extra laden DVD only a – comparatively - scant few years ago) and talk of B…

"I'd like to finish with a word of warning. You may have started something. The British are coming." If that statement, made by Colin Welland during his 1981 Oscar acceptance speech for Chariots Of Fire, is true then the British have been taking their bloody time. More than 25 years on, it's only now that British cinema seems to be at the beginnings of resurgence that could pu…