DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Starsky & Hutch: The Complete First Season

Fantastic DVD package compiling the ultimate '70s cop show's first and best season—seasons two onwards added Tom Scott's catchy sax theme but were considerably toned down and increasingly played for laughs. Five discs of '70s cornball TV at its absolute best. Watch out for banned-by-the-BBC episode "The Fix", in which Hutch gets hooked on heroin by a dastardly mob boss.

Carl Perkins And Friends – Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session

And the "friends" include Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Recorded in front of a studio audience in London in 1985, Perkins never needed six guitarists back at Sun Studios in the '50s, and producer Dave Edmunds should have booted out half of them. But Perkins is in vigorous voice, a quiffed-up George turns out to be a total rockabilly king, and when the Teds start jiving in the aisles, it's irresistible.

Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary

Filmed shortly before her death, this extended reminiscence from Traudl Junge about her time working for Hitler promises more than it delivers. Junge opens with a doubtless sincere condemnation of Hitler for his evil-doings and reproaches herself for failing to recognise the evil in him. You suspect she's still a little starstruck and her recollections of him depict a kind man, albeit with a lot on his mind. Banal, unilluminating.

Swimming Pool

François Ozon's psychological thriller finds repressed crime writer Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) retiring to her editor's house in France to work on her new novel. Then his wayward daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives, shattering the calm. Sagnier does her best teenage temptress, Rampling's initial disapproval turning to fascination as Julie racks up the notches on her bedpost. Until there's a murder. Quietly clever.

Gun

This six-part TV anthology, produced by Robert Altman in 1997, follows a pearl-handled handgun as it passes from owner to owner across America. The premise is strong, as is the cast (Martin Sheen, Randy Quaid and Kirsten Dunst), but the show never quite lives up to the first two episodes—"Columbus Day", in which James Gandolfini and Rosanna Arquette knock acting spots off each other, and "All The President's Women", directed by Altman in kooky mood.

ABC – Absolutely ABC

For all their recorded lushness—and was there a more pristine '80s bauble than The Lexicon Of Love?—ABC never quite nailed the visuals. The Jerome K Jerome river-larks of "The Look Of Love" and cartoon capery of "How To Be A Millionaire" aside, it was disappointingly standard fare: Martin Fry doing lost and lovelorn while being cold-shouldered by aloof waifs. As the decade (and the hits) thinned out, the videos almost stopped trying altogether.

Death In Venice

Nobody wants a painfully slow death: do you want to watch one, even if it's set against the crumbling beauty of Venice? Visconti's '71 adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel is a classic no one dares question, but its study of ageing composer Dirk Bogarde falling in unrequited love with a golden, fey young boy is stately and overwrought, and so enamoured of itself it forgets the audience. Perilously sluggish.

Mr Majestyk

The greatest chase thriller about a melon farmer ever! Charles Bronson is the melon man, prevented from gathering his crop when he's handcuffed to mafia hitman Al Lettieri. Escaping, Bronson wants to turn the killer over to the cops so that he can harvest his melons, but soon the hoods are after him. Directed in pulpy style by Richard Fleischer from an Elmore Leonard script. Bronson's melons look lovely.

CSI: Season 3

The hugely popular crime series continues to thrive, with William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and team solving heinous murders by looking very intensely through microscopes at bloodied strands of fibre while beautifully back-lit. That one trick's wearing a little thin, but the crash-bang camerawork, designer violence and Vegas vistas keep it shinily seductive.

The Fall – A Touch Sensitive: Live

Capturing the ramshackle chaos and converse musical tautness of new millennium Fall, this professionally filmed gig in Blackburn from September 2002 is a connoisseur's delight of old faves ("Mr Pharmacist") and recent classics ("Two Librans"). A great fan souvenir, blighted only by Mark E Smith's foolish decision to allow some leery Mancoid guest singer to ruin "Big New Prinz".
Advertisement

Editor's Picks

Advertisement