Headstrong and passionate Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) unexpectedly inherits a large farm in rural Dorset. Struggling to manage the farm herself, she captivates the hearts and minds of three very different men: an honest and hardworking sheep farmer (Alan Bates), a wealthy but tortured landowner (Peter Finch), and a reckless and violent swordsman (Terence Stamp). But as emotions become entangled, free spirited and innocent folly soon leads to devastating tragedy. The restoration process of Far From the Madding Crowd was overseen by the film's cinematographer and acclaimed director, Nicolas Roeg. The Digital Film restoration was funded by STUDIOCANAL in collaboration the BFI's Unlocking Film Heritage programme, Awarding funds from the National Lottery. Extras: New Interview with Terence Stamp New Interview with Frederic Raphael New Interview with Nic Roeg New featurette Devizes, then and now Original Location featurette
A modish creation teased into life by Warren Beatty, Shampoo was an offbeat Hollywood hit back in 1975. Made after Watergate, it reflects on the hedonism of late-60s Los Angeles with a sad, somewhat cynical eye. Basically a bedroom farce, fuelled by some famously raunchy dialogue, its comedy is nevertheless underlain with melancholy. Screenwriter Robert Towne was inspired by Wycherly's Restoration comedy The Country Wife, wherein a wily fellow convinces friends of his impotence even while he is merrily seducing their wives. Hence, Towne invented handsome Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Beatty), who ought to be gay, but emphatically isn't. Shampoo begins on US Election Day, 1968, as Nixon is trouncing McGovern at the polls, and George Roundy is trying to sort his life out. An earnest advocate of sensual pleasure, he beds most of his female clients, from the fretful Jill (Goldie Hawn) to the wealthy Felicia (Lee Grant). Yet George is himself unfulfilled, and imagines that owning his own salon will satisfy him. He asks Felicia's husband Lester (Jack Warden) to back him, but first Lester coerces George into squiring his mistress Jackie (Julie Christie) to a Nixon victory party. Inevitably, Jackie is another of George's girls and, having seduced Felicia's vivacious daughter (Carrie Fisher) earlier that day, George has much to conceal from Lester and Felicia as the evening's festivities unravel. Shampoo shows the 60s turning sour. The characters are rich hippies, superficially liberated but deeply unhappy, and blandly indifferent to the dawning of the Nixon era. The excellent Lee Grant won an Oscar, but Shampoo is Beatty's film. He produced it, had a substantive hand in Towne's script, and deputised the nominal director, Hal Ashby. The film mildly exploits legends of Beatty's real-life sexual prowess, but mainly it embodies his commitment to making thoughtful movies for grown-ups. Richard Kelly
Nicolas Roeg's chilling film is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier. John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) journey to Venice for an off-season holiday in order to get over the sudden death of their young daughter. However upon their arrival John begins to suspect that he possesses latent psychic powers. A pair of weird sisters claim to have had visions of the Baxters' daughter and John later sees a red-coated figure who resembles his child flitting around the local canals.
Three of the 20th century's greatest cinematic spectacles, 1939's Gone with the Wind, 1959's Ben-Hur and 1965's Doctor Zhivago, are collected here in one irresistible box set. Long before computers turned every crowd scene and every grandiose backdrop into a pixellated virtual construct, these movies did it all for real. Nothing can substitute for their authentic sense of what really makes an epic: strong characters, emotionally involving storytelling and the grandest, most romantic sense of large-scale moviemaking. All three contain sequences and images that are indelibly burned into popular consciousness. Just recall Vivien Leigh's walk through the wounded of Atlanta, or her pledge never to be hungry again silhouetted against an achingly vivid sunset. Remember Charlton Heston rowing the Roman galley, or charging round the arena in his chariot. Or the enigmatic beauty of Julie Christie, the train ride to the Urals and the charge into No Man's Land. On the DVDs: These priceless treasures from the MGM archives have been preserved and restored so marvellously that all three almost look like they were made last year, not decades ago. The vivid colours and detail of Gone with the Wind look astoundingly fresh in this anamorphic 1.33:1 print (just let your eyes drink in those burnished skies). Both Ben-Hur and Zhivago, too, benefit from anamorphic widescreen presentations that reveal every last gorgeous detail. All three discs also contain the full music scores, complete with Overtures and Intermission music: Max Steiner's immortal "Tara Theme" sounds as good as ever on the rich mono soundtrack; Miklos Rozsa's magnificent music for Ben-Hur is deservedly regarded as one of cinema's finest, while Maurice Jarre's famous "Lara's Theme" can even be heard in a separate music-only track on Zhivago. There are no extras on the Gone with the Wind disc, but the other two contain commentaries (from Charlton Heston and Omar Sharif respectively) and new, in-depth making-of documentaries. Zhivago also comes with a second bonus disc that has several contemporary behind-the-scenes pieces. The only moan is the infamous Warner packaging, which consists of their notorious cardboard sleeves that are easily damaged when trying to cram them into the thin cardboard slipcases. --Mark Walker
Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet star in a biopic of "Peter Pan" author James Barrie.
Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom star in this jaw-dropping epic about the famous siege of the ancient city of Troy.
Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet star in a biopic of "Peter Pan" author James Barrie.
Murdoch Troon (Baxter) attempts to woo the daughter (Christie) of wealthy businessman Charles Chingford by impressing her with a vintage Bentley known as 'The Fast Lady'...
"It's far too pleased with itself. I wince when I see it now", director John Schlesinger observes of his 1965 film, Darling. You can tell why he's embarrassed. Looking back, his swinging 60s' satire about a model (Julie Christie) so keen to get ahead that she ditches her husband and betrays a succession of boyfriends looks hideously dated. With its self-consciously hip dialogue and unnecessary voice-over, the screenplay by Frederic Raphael (who also wrote Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) doesn't help. Most of the men Christie encounters, whether Laurence Harvey's slick businessman (who can't pass a mirror without preening himself in it) or Dirk Bogarde's neurotic TV pundit (who has delusions of literary grandeur), are as narcissistic as she is. Although this seems to be a cautionary tale about slick, superficial London media and fashion folk, it's obvious that the filmmakers are half in love with the world they're pretending to lampoon. The visual gags--rich, society matrons at a charity event gorging themselves on food or Christie's poster being plastered over an image of a starving child--are heavy-handed in the extreme. Still, Christie is tremendous in the role which established her as an international star (she won an Oscar). However shallow and selfish her character seems, we can't help but warm to her. --Geoffrey Macnab
Long ago when majestic fire-breathers soared through the skies there lived a knight who would come face-to-face and heart-to-heart with the most remarkable creature that ever existed. Dennis Quaid stars with the voice of Academy Award winner Sean Connery in director Rob Cohen's heroic adventure that blazes with fantasy humour and the most amazing special effects since Jurassic Park. Co-starring David Thewlis Pete Postlethwaite Julie Christie and Dina Meyer this epic adventure will move and thrill the entire family.
Summer 1900: Queen Victoria's last and the summer Leo turns 13. He's the guest of Marcus a wealthy classmate at a grand home in rural Norfolk. Leo is befriended by Marian Marcus's twenty-something sister a beauty about to be engaged to Hugh a viscount and good fellow. Marian buys Leo a forest-green suit takes him on walks and asks him to carry messages to and from their neighbor Ted Burgess a bit of a rake. Leo is soon dissembling realizes he's betraying Hugh but continues as the go-between nonetheless asking adults naive questions about the attractions of men and women. Can an affair between neighbors stay secret for long? And how does innocence end?
"It's far too pleased with itself. I wince when I see it now", director John Schlesinger observes of his 1965 film, Darling. You can tell why he's embarrassed. Looking back, his swinging 60s' satire about a model (Julie Christie) so keen to get ahead that she ditches her husband and betrays a succession of boyfriends looks hideously dated. With its self-consciously hip dialogue and unnecessary voice-over, the screenplay by Frederic Raphael (who also wrote Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) doesn't help. Most of the men Christie encounters, whether Laurence Harvey's slick businessman (who can't pass a mirror without preening himself in it) or Dirk Bogarde's neurotic TV pundit (who has delusions of literary grandeur), are as narcissistic as she is. Although this seems to be a cautionary tale about slick, superficial London media and fashion folk, it's obvious that the filmmakers are half in love with the world they're pretending to lampoon. The visual gags--rich, society matrons at a charity event gorging themselves on food or Christie's poster being plastered over an image of a starving child--are heavy-handed in the extreme. Still, Christie is tremendous in the role which established her as an international star (she won an Oscar). However shallow and selfish her character seems, we can't help but warm to her. --Geoffrey Macnab
An adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel set in the 19th century of Bathsheba Everdene and the three very different men who come to love her...
Billy Liar was the multimedia phenomenon of its era. Starting out as a novel by Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse, it rapidly became a long-running stage play, adapted by Waterhouse with playwright Willis Hall, which lead to the movie, scripted by Waterhouse and Hall for John Schlesinger to direct, then a stage musical and finally a spin-off TV series. Do you get the feeling it caught the mood of the times? The basic set-up owes a lot to James Thurber's classic short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Our hero, Billy Fisher, lives at home in a Bradford semi with his nagging parents and works as a lowly clerk in an undertaker's parlour. But, in his imagination he lives a rich and varied fantasy life as gallant military leader, suave socialite, best-selling novelist and so forth. Trouble is, he can't always keep fantasy and reality apart, any more than he can the keep two girls he's engaged to separate. Not to mention his other problemsÂ…. Schlesinger's direction brings out the desperation behind the comedy, and Tom Courtenay, at once defiant and hangdog, slips perfectly into the role created on stage by Albert Finney. But the whole cast's a joy, not least the great Leonard Rossiter as undertaker Mr Shadrach, Billy's saturnine boss. And then there's Julie Christie--the luminous spirit of the Swinging 60s--in her first starring role as the girl who offers Billy a chance of real escape. At the end, when she takes the train to London, away from the smoke and the grimness "oop" north, the whole British New Wave went with her. On the DVD: just the theatrical trailer which is a fairly crass affair. There's been no remastering, it seems, but both sound and vision are clean enough and the print preserves the original's full 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. --Philip Kemp
Stanley Baxter Collection (5 Discs)
A beautiful but amoral model sleeps her way to the top of the London fashion scene at the height of the Swinging Sixties
A thriller centered on a former Weather Underground activist who goes on the run from a journalist who has discovered his identity.
Comprising the 1961 & 1962 serials A For Andromeda and its sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough both written by Fred Hoyle and John Elliott. A For Andromeda sees the construction of an alien designed computer by scientist John Fleming (Peter Halliday). Once built however the computer secretly kills one of the lab assistants Christine (Julie Christie) then gives detailed instructions for a new biological organism to be created which quickly develops into a full
Anne (Julie Christie), a young historical researcher, inherits letters written by her great aunt Olivia (Greta Scacchi) and becomes obsessed with their revelations of her past in colonial India. Flitting between the present-day and the 1920s, the film examines their parallel journeys of self-discovery and the eternal, seductive allures of the country. Adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her Booker Prize-winning novel, and winner of Best Screenplay at the 1983 BAFTA's, Heat and Dust is a sensual and evocative Merchant Ivory classic. Now beautifully restored in 4K and available on Blu-ray for the first time, the set also features Autobiography of a Princess, Merchant Ivory's fictional study of Imperial India starring James Mason and Madhur Jaffrey. Special Features: Autobiography of a Princess (1975, 58 mins): Merchant Ivory's fictional study of Imperial India starring James Mason and Madhur Jaffrey Merchant Ivory's Royal India (2018): conversation between James Ivory and writer/director Chris Terrio Greta Scacchi and Nikolas Grace Remember Heat and Dust (2018): an interview by Claire Monk Onstage Q&A with Madhur Jaffrey (2018) Original theatrical trailer Re-release trailer Other extras TBC **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film and full film credits
Christie stars as Marian sister to Marcus and about to be engaged to Hugh (Edward Fox) a good-natured Viscount and her perfect match. During the course of summer 1900 13-year-old Leo comes to stay at the Norfolk stately home of his classmate Marcus and is soon befriended by Marian. Initially ignorant of the implications Leo agrees to carry messages between Marian and her neighbour the eminently unsuitable local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates). As the oppressive heat intensifies so do Leo's questions about the laws of attraction and love... and as his childhood innocence is threatened so is the fragile web of relationships so recently forged over the course of this summer's passions deceptions and revelations... Adapted from the classic novel by LP Hartley by Harold Pinter this was his third collaboration with director Joseph Losey and won him a BAFTA for Best Screenplay. Also a BAFTA winner for Best Actress the film also stars Michael Redgrave.
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