Year End 2018

Boriska (Nikolay Burlyaev) oversees the firing of the bell in Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966) ...

Despite continuing rumblings about the demise of movies-on-disk, numerous companies continue to produce excellent editions on disk of a vast range of movies covering the entire history of cinema. Once again in 2018 there were far more releases than even an obsessive viewer could keep up with.

I love a deal …

Richard O'Brien plays Dr. Cosmo McKinley on TV in Jim Sharman's Shock Treatment (1981)

I’m a sucker for sales and recently spent a lot on-line buying stacks of Blu-rays from Arrow Films and Severin at discount prices, adding a lot of titles to my backlog. In recent weeks, I’ve started making my way through the new Arrow titles, which include an assortment of genre offerings, some completely unknown, others old favourites.

The revival of Flipside

Sylvia Syms is touching as the talent-challenged Maisie in Val Guest's Expresso Bongo (1959)

After a two year hiatus, the BFI has revived the Flipside series with three notable releases: Val Guest’s musical satire Expresso Bongo, Edmond T. Greville’s juvenile delinquent exploitation movie Beat Girl, and Jose Ramon Larraz’s “lost” horror film Symptoms.

Blasts from the past

Anderson vs Anderson

Fractured dream: Georges Franju’s Spotlight on a Murderer (1961)

Titanic: a personal footnote

Rough Cut’s Third Anniversary

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