A Short Film About Love

My most recent DVD addition is the fantastic A Short Film About Love. It's a tale based loosely on the commandment 'thou shall not commit adultery', a Polish film about a young man who spies on his older arty neighbour across the street - a woman who 'spreads it around'. He falls in love with her through the eyepiece of a telescope and comes to know all about her, even going as far as to set an alarm for when she arrives home so as not to miss a moment. He is painfully introverted, lonely, and self afflicting and.. well, just completely weird really. When I first read the description I thought I might identify with him at least a little bit (not that I'm a peeper!) but he was just such a weirdo that I didn't really. Also I was kind of put off by his freaky resemblance to Roman Abramovich..

However that doesn't stop it being a fantastic film, with highly interesting characters and interplays. When the two main characters get together it becomes highly dramatic and intriguing in equal measures. The climactic moments as the neighbour herself looks through the telescope makes for a brilliant round up and conclusion to the story.

I give it four peepers out of five!

Masters of Cinema Collections

I've been looking over the Masters of Cinema DVDs recently and it seems that they make some really nice DVD packages. These sorts of sets are the things that real film lovers want. Highly collectible, well thought out, and well presented DVD releases, with lots of original and interesting content. They could contend with companies like Criterion, that is if it didn't have such a massive emphasis on art films..

However today I stumbled across this DVD:


How awesome does that look? I want it for the artwork alone!

I'm currently reading Dracula so I'm especially interested - it's an amazingly brilliant book.

Incidentally I recommend hunting out Shadow of the Vampire, a (sort of) parody on Nosferatu. It's a fictional tale about the making of the film, and has the premise that the guy playing Nosferatu is an actual vampire. Funny and original, worth checking out!

- Jimmy

There's a New Kid in Town

I've never mentioned Virgin Megastores on this blog before, but now that it's been rebranded as Zavvi (Zavvi?? What the hell kind of name is that?) I thought it would be worth a mention..


It does seem quite weird being called something different. It made me look twice as I was strolling down Oxford Street the other day.. anyway, going onto their new website I realised that there are some AMAZING DVD bargains! Whether these prices will hold up or not who knows, or whether they're just offers of the week.. but check out some of these offers:

Complete Fawlty Towers - £14.99 !!
Alien Quadrilogy - £13.99 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eddie Izzard MMVI (Every single one of his live shows) - £11.99 !!!


I don't know about you, but I'll be keeping a close eye on some of these offers in the coming weeks. As always, stay chooooooned!

- Jimmy

You haven't worked a day in your life. How could you be exhausted?

Here are just a few of the key ingredients: dynamite, pole vaulting, laughing gas, choppers - can you see how incredible this is going to be? - hang gliding, come on!


Breaking News!! (well.. couple of weeks old now but ah well...)

Bottle Rocket is coming to the Criterion Collection!!
(and yes I know if you look at the top of this blog it does in fact say "Region 2" DVD news but.. erm.. fuck you! It's my blog, I'll do what I want! ...Incidentally why can't Criterion ever produce DVDs for the UK market? There's certainly a demand here, and we're seriously missing out *sob*)

On the run from Johnny Law... ain't no trip to Cleveland

Personally I think Bottle Rocket is one of Wes Anderson's greatest films, and certainly his funniest (greatest 'lolz' to running time ratio) It features the Wilson brothers in their first acting roles, and you even get to see the lesser known Andrew Wilson (appearing as the character "Future Man")

It's about time it got the Criterion makeover, given that all of Anderson's later films did. And when Criterion worked on those films, they really worked on them. The sets are absolutely terrific, just check them out here:

Rushmore
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Here's what Wes had to say incidentally:

“We’ve just begun work with the Criterion Collection to do ‘Bottle Rocket’ on a new DVD that’s going to have all kinds of stuff. There’s a lot of ‘Bottle Rocket’ that was on the cutting room floor, so we have a lot to work with on that one.”

They'll also have the opportunity to include the original short film (on youtube here)

My advice to you, buy this DVD! You won't be disappointed I can guarantee it.. don't wait up though, as it's likely going to take ages until it hits the shelves. Still.. always good to have something to look forward to..