DVD diary: September – part one

There’s still no recognizable pattern to my DVD watching, but maybe I shouldn’t worry about it. If my viewing became more systematic, it would probably start to feel like work. I finally finished getting through the British TV series Department S, which I mentioned a while back. It never really improved, though perhaps the production […]

Quality control

Rapidly developing video technologies are altering not just our expectations but also our responses to the experience of watching movies. Blu-ray, hi-def TVs, the digital technologies which are used more and more in production – all have helped to create particular standards which many viewers now apply to virtually everything they watch. A lot of […]

DVD of the week: The Feathered Serpent

British television in the ’60s and ’70s was limited by a lack of money, a fact which resulted in certain distinctive characteristics. Most shows were shot in studio, on videotape, with quite obviously flimsy sets. These limitations forced creators to follow a theatrical, rather than cinematic, model; at their worst, these shows seemed like creaky […]

Nigel Kneale & British genre television

British TV has always been primarily a writer’s medium; since the ’50s, the biggest stars have tended to be the writers, with writers’ names attached possessively to projects. Television production was often built around writers such as Alan Bennett, Alan Bleasdale and Dennis Potter, who was one of the biggest, with each of his new […]

A week of DVDs

It’s been a bigger than average week for DVDs, thanks to a couple of packages from Amazon UK, plus the usual Tuesday field trip to the local stores. (I first learned that Tuesday is “new release day” from my friend Sheldon when we were at the Canadian Film Centre together in 1998 and have quite […]

Blasts from the past

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Tired ageing badmen: Criterion Blu-ray review

They don’t make ’em like that any more …

My movie map of Winnipeg — part two

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