Two distinguished British actors passed away in June after long and varied careers in film and television: the imposing Christopher Lee and the debonair Patrick Macnee, both at age 93.
Patrick Macnee and Christopher Lee, 1922-2015
Tag: British Film
Law, disorder and cynicism in the ’70s
Two recent Blu-ray releases highlight very different attitudes to the crime thriller in the ’70s: Robert Culp’s Hickey and Boggs and Douglas Hickox’s Brannigan.
Criterion Blu-ray review: Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947)
Criterion’s Blu-ray release of Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947) should help to establish this masterpiece as the equal of Reed’s more famous The Third Man.
Val Guest on Blu-ray
Surprisingly, the underrated British director Val Guest has recently been represented by a flurry of Blu-ray releases, two of which highlight some of his finest work while the third makes available one of his lesser known minor films of the ’50s.
Year End 2014
Despite perennial predictions of the demise of movies-on-disk, 2014 offered a rich and varied selection of new and old titles in often impressive editions from many different companies, though not necessarily from major distributors. The cream came from specialty labels like Criterion, the BFI, Arrow, Eureka/Masters of Cinema, Shout! Factory, Olive Films, Kino Lorber, Flicker Alley and Twilight Time.
Val Guest and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
Val Guest instills story and characters with gripping realism in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, one of the greatest of all British science fiction movies, now released in an excellent Blu-ray edition by the BFI.
Terence Fisher and science fiction
Renowned British horror director Terence Fisher rarely tried his hand at science fiction; Odeon Entertainment has recently released new Blu-ray editions of his two best SF films, Island of Terror and Night of the Big Heat.
More from Twilight Time
Twilight Time continues to release an interesting assortment of titles, often now with excellent commentaries and impressive supplemental material.
Criterion Blu-ray review: Polanski’s Macbeth (1971)
Roman Polanski’s Macbeth stands as one of the finest adaptations of Shakespeare on film, a seamless blend of poetry and harsh realism in its depiction of a cruel medieval world and the futility of ambition.
Documentary and the evolution of movies
The documentary impulse was integral to the evolution of film and a key element was the application of the new technology to the 19th Century impulse to explore and “conquer” far-off exotic places and cultures.
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