Mamma Mia! it's going to be a fine Christmas. Michael Dwyerhas a bunch of suggestions for DVDs - and all things movie-related - that won't bust your budget .
IT WILL take an outsized Christmas stocking to fit the gift pack of Mamma Mia!, the exuberant musical assembled from Abba lyrics and starring Meryl Streep as a diva in dungarees and a straw hat. Mamma Mia!was the biggest hit of 2008 at Irish cinemas. The gift pack includes a singalong option that's sure to be a staple of seasonal parties.
For something completely different, this year's other blockbuster hit, The Dark Knight, with Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as The Joker, is available from Monday in various editions. Extras on the two-disc DVD include six action sequences in their original Imax framing.
WORLD CINEMA
To mark the 75th anniversary of the British Film Institute this year, several online sources are selling box sets of BFI classics at substantially-reduced prices. For example, www.play.com has a 10-film set (€83.99) that includes Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu, Jacques Tati's Jour de Fête, Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Partand Luchino Visconti's The Leopard.
Recent BFI releases include John Maybury's visually striking Love Is the Devil, with Derek Jacobi as Bacon and Daniel Craig as his model and lover, George Dyer; Michelangelo Antonioni's remarkable Red Desert, starring Monica Vitti and Richard Harris; and the remastered version of Jean Cocteau's magical La Belle et la Bête.
BARGAIN BASEMENT
Xtra-vision has a three-for-€25 offer at its stores across the country. Movies included in the deal are thrillers No Country for Old Men, In Bruges, American Gangster, Cloverfield, Blood Diamondand The Departed; comedies Juno, Superbadand The Van; melodramas PS I Love Youand The Notebook; and, for younger viewers, Bee Movieand Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Pick of the bargains at Zavvi is the 14-film Alfred Hitchcock box set, retailing for €30 and containing such gems as Vertigo, Psycho, Rope, Rear Windowand The Birds.
RETURN OF THE 1980s
Only the Angelus is repeated more often than Reeling in the Yearson RTÉ, but the nostalgic series topped the ratings again this summer. Artfully blending archive material and period pop music, producer John O'Regan has re-edited 10 shows for Reeling in the 80s, an entertaining two-disc DVD that runs the gamut from the Rubik's Cube to Ronald Reagan to Banana Republic. It's a region-free DVD and will play anywhere in the world.
A ground-breaking TV series that became a staple of 1980s Sunday afternoons is revisited in MT USA 2, featuring two CDs and a DVD with 16 music videos, including Love Is a Battlefield, The Sun Always Shines on TV, Manic Mondayand the complete Thriller. It includes a booklet in which producer Bill Hughes pays tribute to the show's late presenter, Vincent Hanley.
RENT FROM HOME
Moviestar.ie, the online DVD rental service with a library of more than 30,000 movies and TV series, offers gift vouchers covering rental packages ranging from €29.99 (one title at a time over a three-month period) to €79 (six months of rentals, two at a time). The price includes return postage on all rentals. For terms and conditions, go to www.moviestar.ie
THE FESTIVE SEASON
Planning is already well underway for the seventh Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which runs from February 12th to 22nd. The full programme will be announced in late January. The festival has gift vouchers in denominations of €10, €20 and €50, along with season tickets for €230, at www.jdiff.com
REACH FOR THE STARS
For the starstruck person in your life (which may well be you) or anyone seeking the experience of being on a film set, Irish online casting agency www.movieextras.ie has gift vouchers that offer opportunities to be an extra on films and commercials shooting here. The voucher allows the recipient to add a personalised profile to the website, which is consulted by production companies and casting directors. An individual voucher costs €89 and a family voucher is €199. There's also an audition workshops voucher, which costs €169 and includes tuition from professional casting directors.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
My in-flight reading en route to the Oscars this year was Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood(Canongate). That was appropriate, as author Mark Harris pinpoints the nominees for the 1967 Best Picture Oscar as a cultural watershed: the new breed ( Bonnie and Clydeand The Graduate), the old guard ( Dr Dolittleand Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and somewhere in between ( In the Heat of the Night). Harris delves deep inside the complicated production histories of all five films, and their social and political contexts, to form an illuminating and fascinating book.
Eminent and prolific critic David Thomson has produced his weightiest tome in Have You Seen . . . ?(Allen Lane), his highly opinionated and elegantly written introduction to 1,000 films, from masterpieces to guilty pleasures. The movies are covered alphabetically and each is given a page, which makes it easy to dip in and out the book.
Finally, and I have to declare a certain interest here, Liberties Press recently published Michael Dwyer's Film Quiz Book: Irish, Hollywood and World Cinema, which contains 500 questions - and 500 answers.
• Prices for all DVDs noted vary, and it's best to shop around. Beware that sites such as www.play.com and www.sendit.com, which used to represent good value, now charge in euro for customers with Irish addresses, and the sterling conversions do not reflect current rates. For example, the Disney musical Enchantedcosts £5 at www.play.com, but Irish customers pay €7.49, although the accurate conversion this week was €5.93
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