Previews

I really meant to write something serious here yesterday. It was to do with sentencing policy and drugs and stuff. But I didn't. I did write some previews of DVDs that arrived in here yesterday so I'll post them instead.

Don't look back (classic DA Pennebaker Bob doc)

Into great silence (god botherers being quiet for once - most popular film in the IFI last year)

20 to life: the life and times of John Sinclair (doc on life of MC5 manager and White Panthers chairman who got 20 years for two joints)

Gram Parsons Fallen Angel (biopic of dilletante heir and musician whose sweethearts of the rodeo, Burrito deluxe, grievous angel etc. are the palimpset for ALL country rock)

South (Shackleton, antartic, in glorious white and white)

Life and debt (mandatory viewing apparently)

Sicko (Moore)

Early cinema primitives and pioneers (you've read about all the films here in media studies books. Now you can watch them too. You lucky lucky people)

Two disc version of Nosferatu (we have the BFI one. I challenge you to find a film this old which still works as well as a film and not just as a historical document)

Lenny - (biopic. Swearing is $$^$ing great. It's big AND it's clever)

Nil by mount (nil by eyes after watching this)

Control (Ian Curtis biopic - for the fans)

Britannia Hospital (was Lyndsey Anderson a ruined genius or just a prick who couldn't be bothered getting on with other people - transpose your opinions on Roy Keane)

Network (it's studied for the script - but there's much more going on. Inchoate rage. The only sensible emotion)

1984 (original poster tag - will ecstasy be a crime? prescient)

Animal farm (the CIA funded one unfortunately - not the famous video nasty)

Deathproof (Tarantino's entry in the torture porn genre)

What have I done to deserve this (perhaps Almadovar's most misanthropic film - a must see)

Coming home (Vietnam film I bought under the mistaken belief that it won the best film O$€£r the year that Apocalypse now and Deer Hunter were out - it didn't. But Hal Ashby is still the forgotten great of 70s US film)

Exiles (Cannes winner 2004)

Chinese Odyssey 2002 (Chinese spoof on Crouching homo hidden hamster)

Myra Beckinridge (legendary "they didn't do that? Did they?" version of Gore Vidal shock sex satire with Racquel Welsh)

Rio Grande (Wayne, O'Hara, River, Big)

Phil Mulloy extreme animation (he tattoos the animations on his schlong, lasers them out, starts again. Looks like a rasher in the microwave for 10 hours.)

Atonement (utter and complete SHITE. waste of two hours. By turns opaque and infuriatingly facile. Keira Knightley isn't even the most annoying thing in it.)

The wire (don't bother - I have it first)

Jury's still out on The Wire - I've watched two episodes and it doesn't strike me as being a radical departure from the genre. Maybe incremental rather than revolutionary.