Didn't know that BFI had started limiting their booklets. Got I Start Counting today. If I'd known, I think I'd of made sure I got a booklet copy for this one.

Ah well, if you snooze you lose, I guess :(

June 26th
 

The Driver's Seat.

Director: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi

Elizabeth Taylor stars as a troubled woman who, upon arriving in Rome, finds a city fragmented by autocratic law, leftist violence and her own increasingly unhinged mission to find the most dangerous liaison of all.

Never before released in the UK, The Driver’s Seat (aka Identikit) remains the most obscure, bizarre and wildly misunderstood film of Taylor’s illustrious career. Adapted from an unnerving novella by Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), the film marked a wild step into the unknown for the screen icon, as she cast off the shackles of the US studio system in the shadow of her tumultuous personal life. Co-starring Ian Bannen, Mona Washbourne and Andy Warhol, The Driver’s Seat stunned critics and audiences alike upon its premiere in 1974 but failed to secure a UK release – until now.

Directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi ('Tis Pity She's a Whore) and featuring cinematography by three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), this much-sought after cult classic is presented in a new 4K restoration by Cineteca di Bologna and Severin Films.

Special Features

Restored in 4K by Cineteca di Bologna and Severin Films and presented in High Definition

Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women (2022, 6 mins)

Audio Commentary with TCM Underground curator Millie De Chirico (2022)

A Lack of Absence (2022, 22 mins): writer and literary historian Chandra Mayor on Muriel Spark and The Driver's Seat

The Driver’s Seat (credit sequences) (1974, 4 mins)

**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by the BFI’s Simon McCallum and Canadian artist, writer and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. Also includes Kier-La Janisse’s piece on The Driver’s Seat, previously published in her acclaimed book, House of Psychotic Women

Other extras TBC

As much as i like the artwork for the film they should have gone with this original Italian one.

Seems like it's quite near to Giallo territory in plot, although not in the conventional sense.

Is this one you can recommend??

Never seen it.

As the blurb says it's never before been released in the UK.

This is the sort of release i like and want to support.

This was on the recent Severin Films box set 'House of Psychotic Women' as Identikit and also featured Footsteps on the Moon. The contents of the disc look identical to the Severin one. The Box Set was around £70, too rich for me although I'd REALLY like Footprints in HD.

Apparently Ken Russell's Gothic is on the the BFI's Jul-Sep slate, along with Gregory's Girl UHD and something for John Wayne fans...


https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/bfi-blu-...september-2023

Brannigan - Awesome. Can't wait.

Targets, Brannigan and Gothic! Can't wait.

Gothic will be my Halloween film.

Mention of Brannigan reminds me. We've never had a Blu of The Young Americans as far as i know. Danny Cannon's reworking of Brannigan starring Harvey Keitel as the American cop sent to London. Also very good.

Noticed they are selling a Werner Herzeg boxset.


The Werner Herzog Collection – an extensive 8-disc Blu-ray box set compiling 18 films from the legendary German director.

The set features digitally remastered presentations of classics such as Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972); The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974); Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) plus many of Herzog’s hugely acclaimed short films.

Extras include Jack Bond’s long-unseen South Bank Show episode on Herzog from 1982 and Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams.



Films:

The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967)
Last Words (1968)
Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)
Handicapped Future (1970)
Fata Morgana (1971)
Land Of Silence and Darkness (1971)
Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1975)
Heart of Glass (1976)
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
Stroszek (1977)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Woyzeck (1979)
Huie's Sermon (1980)
God's Angry Man (1980)
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Cobra Verde (1987

Extras

All films remastered to High Definition
Alternative German and English versions of selected titles
Full-length audio commentaries with Werner Herzog on selected titles
Optional 5,1 German and English audio on selected titles
Nosferatu on-set documentary (1979, 13 mins)
Werner Herzog Eats His shoe (Les Blank, 1980, 21 mins)
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982, 95 mins)
Guardian Lecture with Werner Herzog (1988, 83 mins, audio only)
The South Bank Show: Werner Herzog (Jack Bond, 1982, 56 mins)
Original trailer on selected titles
Stills Galleries on selected titles
Illustrated booklet with extensive essay by Laurie Johnson; full film credits

£29.99

I have that set. There's so much material on it but I've barely scratched the surface. Nosferatu the Vampyre looks stunning.
Never seen Gothic, I'm not sure if I fancy it or not. Always seemed a bit too arthouse for me.
Haven't seen Brannigan before. Like the crisps though.
I see they have the new(ish) Get Carter 2 disc set in the sale. Bad timing sadly.

Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo and Woyzeck i had on dvd but its a set id gladly buy if HMV stock it.

I've only recently watched my Second Sight blu-ray of Gregory's Girl that I bought about 5 years ago for the first time :lol: I'll buy this new version though it was an instant favourite.

The Dvd Beaver review for Enys Men

http://dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid=7486

It gets an A score for everything and Mark Kermode is all over the extras.

Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume II will be hitting Blu-ray later this year.

The Signalman is one of the films featured.

I love these adaptations, almost every one is utterly superb. I don't like this volumes nonsense though. Just put a full set out, it's never been a problem with dvd, why does the bluray need to be in volumes.

Sent from my SM-G780G using Tapatalk

I don't think it's a case of it needs to be in volumes, rather than they're taking a lot of time scanning and remastering these from film, so rather than make us wait longer just put it out as it comes. Realistically there is only going to be a volume 2 as they did half of them on the last set. The Gatiss ones might come, but they just released them on DVD recently and there is no reason they were not HD ready already.

There might be a complete volumes set later but it doesn't make much difference between 2x £20 to buy the separate ones or £40 for a set containing both.

It’s the same with Indicator’s ongoing Jean Rollin project, which is essentially being released in the order of “when they’re ready”.

Given the gargantuan cost of the entire project, waiting for all (or even half) of them to be finished before putting them out in a box set would risk bankrupting the label first - and in any case the RRP of such a thing would unavoidably have to be eye-watering, as the per-title cost of production is far in excess of a typical release based on an off-the-shelf master.

The BFI’s costs won’t be quite as hefty, but they won’t be negligible either, so getting some out there and generating income before work has finished on the rest makes a huge amount of sense.

"It's never been a problem with DVD" because DVDs are much cheaper to produce, not least because you can get away with a lot more in terms of the source - for instance, DVDs of telly productions almost invariably tend to be sourced from the existing broadcast master (or worse). But once you factor in 2K/4K scanning and painstaking frame-by-frame restoration, you're essentially manufacturing a wholly different product.

October 9th
 

Short Sharp Shocks Vol 3 (Flipside No.47) (2 x Blu-ray)
Director: Various

The third in the critically acclaimed BFI Flipside series – continuing its ongoing mission to curate an alternative Brit-screen history of overlooked rarities in deluxe home-entertainment editions – is a further compelling compendium of strange, striking, thrilling, horrific, eerie and eccentric short subjects from the heyday of the British cinematic supporting programme.

Settle down for another strange cinematic journey through uncanny stories, twists in the tale, low-budget weirdness, stylish spectacle, avant-garde art, peculiar public information, monstrous music and provocative experiment – many ultra-rare and all with oodles of atmosphere and in High Definition.

The Films:

Return to Glennascaul (Hilton Edwards, 1951, 22 mins)

Strange Stories (John Guillermin and Don Chaffey, 1953, 45 mins)

Strange Experiences (1955, 10 mins)

Maze (Bob Bentley, 1970, 15 mins)

Skinflicker (Tony Bicât, 1973, 41 mins)

Beach Litter: Broken Bottle (1 min)

Firework: Chick (1 min)

Wings of Death (Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson, 1985, 20 mins)

The Terminal Game (Geoff Lowe, 1982, 40 mins)

Extras:

Interview with filmmaker and artist Bob Bentley, director of Maze (2023)

Interview with Tony Bicât, director of Skinflicker (2023)

Interview with Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson, directors of Wings of Death (2023)

Interview with Colin Towns, composer of the music for The Terminal Game (2022)

The Strange Stories Scrapbook (2023): video essay on 1950s British film producer Roger Proudlock by Vic Pratt

Interview with Geoff Lowe, director of The Terminal Game (TBC)

Rare scripts, stills, images and behind-the-scenes footage (TBC)

**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet including new writing by directors Bob Bentley, Nichola Bruce and Tony Bicât

GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS VOL. 2 (3 x Blu-ray)
Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark

Broadcast in the dying hours of Christmas Eve, the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series was a fixture of the seasonal schedules throughout the 1970s and spawned a long tradition of chilling tales, which terrified yuletide viewers for decades to come.

After the best-selling release of Volume One last year, this much-requested follow-up gives five more festive landmarks their Blu-ray debut, having been newly remastered by the BFI from original film materials. As well as two MR James adaptations, the series includes the celebrated version of Charles Dicken’s The Signalman starring Denholm Elliot, as well as specially written stories set in the contemporary 1970s. These influential films, all but one directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, were written by some of the best scriptwriters working in British TV in the 1970s: John Bowen, David Rudkin, Andrew Davies and Clive Exton.

The Films:

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974, 37 min)
The Ash Tree (1975, 32 min)
The Signalman (1976, 39 min)
Stigma (1977, 32 min)
The Ice House (1978, 34 min)

Extras:

A View From a Hill (2005, 39 mins): a young museum curator, Fanshawe finds himself in possession of a pair of binoculars that grant him a strange new ability. Ignoring all warnings about their necromantic creator, Fanshawe carries out his research, but the bloody past of the area is best left undisturbed…

Number 13 (2006, 40 mins): infuriated by the ghoulish noises made nightly by his neighbour, Professor Anderson is soon driven to investigate the diabolical secrets of the old hotel and its mysteriously vanishing room 13.

Newly recorded audio commentary on The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by TV historian Simon Farquhar

Newly recorded audio commentary on The Ash Tree by author Johnny Mains

Newly recorded audio commentary on The Signalman by TV historian Jon Dear

Newly recorded audio commentaries on Stigma and The Ice House by Kim Newman and Sean Hogan

Ghost Stories for Christmas With Christopher Lee (2000, 30 mins): Ronald Frame's adaptation is brought to life by horror maestro Christopher Lee

Introductions by Lawrence Gordon Clark (2012, 39 mins): the director introduces The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, The Ash Tree, The Signalman and Stigma

Illustrated booklet with archival essays by Alex Davidson, Dick Fiddy, Matthew Sweet, and Helen Wheatley

Have you seen any of the stuff on this one Dem? Your review of the first volume (I think) didn't sell it at all for me. Not that you were trying to.

No. None of them. It's not a set i'll be getting to be honest. I got rid of the first one and didn't bother at all with the second.

The best film by a mile on volume one was The Lake which was added to The Appointment Blu-ray plus all it's extras so i was well happy with that one.

Brannigan extras

Presented in High Definition

Audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and critic Nathaniel Thompson (2017)

A Duke Out of Water (2023, 37 mins): reminiscences from the people who made Brannigan

Frank Henson on Brannigan (2021, 4 mins): the veteran stuntman looks back on doubling the Duke

Take It to the Bridge (1905-1956, 23 mins): historical glimpses of the Thames, Tower Bridge and other Brannigan locations

A Policeman’s Lot (1896-1973, 35 mins): a copper’s clutch of films concerning crimefighters and crooks, proceeding from the very earliest days of cinema towards the Brannigan era

The Guardian Interview: Richard Attenborough (1983, 89 mins, audio only): the award-winning actor and director, and John Wayne’s Brannigan co-star, reflects upon his illustrious career

An extensive selection of location photographs, featuring cast and crew

Original trailer

**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet with new essays by Johnny Mains and John Oliver, notes on the special features and credits

Gothic (Blu-ray)
Director: Ken Russell

As a wild storm rages over Lord Byron’s literary house party, the poet suggests that his famous guests concoct a ghost story. But after deciding a séance would liven up the evening, they soon conjure up their deepest fears and are plunged into a surreal horror. Is it merely the power of their own intense lust and vivid imaginations that is tormenting them or have they, in fact, raised the dead?

Directed by cult favourite Ken Russell (The Devils ) and starring Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary), Julian Sands (A Room With a View), Natasha Richardson (The Comfort of Strangers) and Timothy Spall (Mr Turner), Gothic delves into the erotic and terrifying night on the shores of Lake Geneva that ultimately gave birth to Mary Shelley’s classic horror story Frankenstein.

Extras

Presented in High Definition

Feature commentary by film historian Matthew Melia and Lisi Russell (2018)

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002, 83 mins): Ken Russell returns to gothic themes in this legendarily lurid late video work featuring an all-star cast

A Haunted Evening (2023, 35 mins): Stephen Volk, the writer of Gothic, revisits his earliest feature script

The Sound of Shelley with Julian Sands (2017, 18 mins): the actor reflects upon the making of Gothic

Amelia and the Angel (1958, 27 mins): in this charming early Russell short, a young girl, cast as an angel in the school play, is distraught when her brother damages her treasured wings. Pocket money in hand, Amelia traverses London on the hunt for a new pair in time for the play

The Guardian Lecture: Ken Russell in conversation with Derek Malcolm (1987, 87 mins, audio only): the director reflects upon his career, at the time of Gothic

Original trailer

**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Ellen Cheshire, Jon Dear, and Matthew Melia and full film credits

This was a must buy for me anyway but with The Fall of the Louse of Usher added it's unmissable -

'23 Seconds to Eternity' (2023) - Blu-ray / DVD combo pre-order available from BFI direct - £16:99

Release date: November 6

"The KLF became the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991 with a series of international smash hits including acid house anthems 3 A.M. Eternal, Last Train To Transcentral, and Justified & Ancient, released on their own KLF Communications record label.

Produced and directed by Bill Butt in collaboration with Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond in their various guises as The JAMs, The KLF and The Timelords, one of the most successful, subversively creative and enigmatic electronic bands of the early 90s, 23 Seconds to Eternity takes viewers on a film journey through the collected music videos and short features including The White Room (1989), The Rites of Mu (1991), narrated by Martin Sheen and the previously unreleased Krash (1992). Also included are the world famous music videos for the hit singles 3 A.M. Eternal, What Time is Love? and Justified & Ancient.

This release is the first ever compilation of KLF Communication’s films and this release will feature an array of special features and an illustrated booklet featuring rare and previously unseen material."

Special features:

• KLF: Unfinished (1992, 30 mins): making of documentary including optional commentary by director Robert Milton Wallace
• Interview with Bill Butt by Mick Houghton (2023): the producer and director discusses the making of 23 Seconds to Eternity
• This Is Not What The KLF Is About (1991, 15 mins): a short film shot and edited by Jimmy Cauty capturing the making of Stadium House Trilogy, newly remastered by Rich Osborn
• 23 Seconds to Eternity theatrical trailer (2023, 2 mins)
• KRASH trailer (1 min)
• The White Room trailer (1 min)
• Stills gallery
• Limited edition includes an illustrated booklet with new writing by Mick Houghton and the BFI’s William Fowler, Bill Butt’s filmography, an introduction to The White Room, and rare images from the personal collections of Bill Butt and Mick Houghton

That looks like something worth getting. I really hope their performance at the Brit Awards with Extreme Noise Terror is on there. That was fantastic.

I know it's on YT but i want it in all it's glory smashing my surround system to bits.

The many stills shown here have convinced me i need this. They look gorgeous. A stunning upgrade on the dvd versions.

Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2 Blu-ray - Denholm Elliott

I agree, I saw the review yesterday. I was buying it regardless but it’s a clear upgrade all around. Same with volume 1.

Yeah - those stills are absolutely night and day in comparison.
I already have Vol 1 and looking to get Vol 2 for Xmas :rockon:

I got Volume one the other week and was thinking of leaving Volume II until next year. However, those stills...:loveeyes:

Have you watched any of Vol 1 yet, Dem?

Not yet, i watch them all in December usually. It's an annual Christmas tradition for me.

Me too :nod:
I watched the Vol 1 set last Xmas and looking forward to watching Vol 2 this year.
I remember thinking that the original dvds couldn’t be improved that much, but they really are a big improvement.

They look it. The later ones such as Number 13 and Stigma look beautiful.

'Big Banana Feet' (1976) - Blu-ray / DVD combo pre-order available from BFI direct - £16:99

Release date: May 20

"Billy Connolly is at the peak of his powers in this hilarious ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary filmed on his 1975 tour of Ireland"

Special features:

• Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
• **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Booklet featuring new writing on the film and slipcase
• Other extras TBC

Not a new release but just an appreciation of how nice these 2 box sets were. Pretty impossible to get these days since they went out of print. I almost didn’t buy volume 2 either but I’m glad that I did.

Derek Jarman volumes 1 & 2

https://i.ibb.co/926Qsjr/IMG-2895.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/c8rxMvN/IMG-2896.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/BBTfg9h/IMG-2897.jpg

They do look nice box sets, Justin, although i'm not sure all the films appeal to me.

Not the greatest bard fan for a start.

It seems that the BBFC have passed 'Thundercrack' with an '18' certificate for 'VOD / Streaming'

I wonder if this means it will get a physical release as well

The BFI Blu-ray and DVD Release Thread
 

It?s featured heavily in the Scala doc so it might be they are doing something on the BFI player around the films featured there.

I don?t know if you can still buy it, but I have the Blu from Synapse

Die, Monster Die! (Blu-ray)
Preorder on Amazon

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