Competition - Dreams of a Life DVD

To celebrate the DVD release of Carol Morley's haunting docu-drama Dreams of a Life, the good folk at Dogwoof have provided me with a copy for one lucky person to win.

All you have to do is email me the answer to the question below by Friday the 23rd March and I'll draw the winner at random from the entrants.

Question: Dreams of a Life features a central performance by rising British star Zawe Ashton. In which Channel 4 comedy series did she recently appear as one member of a group of house-sharing University students?

Email the answer to: neil.mitch1972@googlemail.com

Buy Dreams of a Life from Dogwoof here - http://dogwoofdvd.com/products/dreams-of-a-life

To Die For... - Pam Hutchinson

A favourite film requires a few special ingredients. If you're going to return to a film time and again, and watch it when you're in need of solace or a smile, then it must be beautiful, it must have humour and for me, it must have a happy ending, or something close to one.
But there also has to be a spike of danger, and the chance that the precious happy ending might slip away. Adrenaline provides a thrill, and tears can offer as much comfort as giggles.
FW Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans has it all. It's a monochrome fairytale, with a seductive villainess and two heroes: the Man and his Wife who come to the brink of a crisis and escape, back into each other's arms.
Murnau's unchained camera snakes across sumptuous, pictorial scenes: a village, a lake, a glittering city. We're following winsome Janet Gaynor and downcast George O'Brien as they learn to love each other again, to laugh and to be themselves. The beauty of the film (that expressionist lighting, the extravagant sets) carries the audience away with the couple's passions: we share their despair and their delight.
Sunrise does all this in order to celebrate the most precious kind of love, that which is lost and found. And that's why I find myself returning to this exquisite film on wet Sunday afternoons, and being swept away by its sheer romance.

Pamela Hutchinson

Pamela Hutchinson is a journalist and blogger. She edits the silent film website:

http://silentlondon.co.uk/

Eye For Film review

My first review for the great Eye For Film website is on Michelangelo Antonioni's extraordinary documentary on Communist China in the 70s, Chung Kuo China. Click on the link, have a read and then track down a copy of the film.

http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?film_id=21723

Around the World in Eighty Movies - number 8

Country: France

Title: Le Voyage dans la Lune (Trip to the Moon)

Director: Georges Melies

Cast: George Melies, Victor Andre, Bleuette Bernon, Jeanne d'Arcy

Year: 1902

Running time: 14 mins

Genre: Science Fiction

Notable for: Being the first science fiction film and its innovative animation and special effects

With the release of Martin Scorsese's lavish 3D spectacle, Hugo, mainstream cinema audiences, and a new generation of younger film fans, were either reminded of or introduced to the world of silent film director George Méliès. Along with fellow French film-makers the Lumière Brothers, Méliès was a vital figure in the continuing evolution of the then fledgling artform. Méliès' pioneering use of animation and special effects is wonderfully showcased in what is probably his best known film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). Credited as being the first science fiction film, Le Voyage dans la Lune, co-written, produced and directed by Méliès, was released, as were many of his other films, in both black and white and colour versions. A shot depicting a spaceship landing in the moon's eye has subsequently become one of the most iconic images in cinema history, and the film itself has been referenced by the likes of Queen, Air, The Smashing Pumpkins and Futurama. There are hundreds of films that could have represented France in this series but Méliès enchanting, enduring Le Voyage dans la Lune deserves its place for both kick-starting a cinematic genre and for pushing the boundaries of the medium into what were then uncharted waters.

Beyond the Black Rainbow

Beyond science. Beyond sanity. Beyond control.

Yesterday I was led to a trailer for a movie I'd heard absolutely nothing about with the intriguing title Beyond the Black Rainbow. Now, I don't normally come over all excitable about trailers but this one instantly made an impact. The retro typefaces, block colour schemes, minimalist interiors, industrial exteriors and an analogue synth score composed by Jeremy Schmidt of Canadian rock band Black Mountain. This is sci-fi with an edge, a feel for design, a fittingly 'other-worldly' milieu and a sinister, lingering, unsettling aura.

I shared it on Twitter and Facebook and the feedback was uniformly positive, with suggestions as to the movies/shows it evokes. Phase IV, THX 1138, early Cronenberg, Altered States, Lost - hallowed company to be compared with. It's no mere parody of or homage to any of those though, the trailer for Beyond the Black Rainbow (what is the black rainbow? The edge of sanity? Death?) firmly establishes its own clearly defined hermetic universe. Described as 'a Reagan-era fever dream' inspired by 'memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons'. First time director Panos Cosmatos' movie has also been likened to a cross between 2001 and The Prisoner, and follows in the wake of the similarly off-kilter Canadian sci-fi/horror movie Pontypool. Watch the trailer and be prepared to be wowed and sucked into Black Rainbow's creepy, stylised world.

The Big Picture - new article

Over at The Big Picture website - http://www.thebigpicturemagazine.com/ you can find my latest 'Screengem'. This one is of the cardboard cut-out of 'Angelica' from Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970). Click on the link and see why 'Angelica' means so much to Deep End's unfolding narrative - http://tinyurl.com/6opaxk7

To Die For... - Francine Stock

Some films make your heart beat faster or prowl through your dreams – this one from 1953 I simply love for its humanity.

Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni (which roughly translates somewhere between veal calves and young bucks) follows a group of young men in a seaside town like his birthplace, Rimini. These boys are well-dressed and pampered by mothers, sisters and girlfriends. They dream of fame as singers,writers or film-stars yet they simply kick around town, playing pool, taking the odd dead-end job and letting people down.

It’s less flamboyant or self-conscious than later Fellini but all the themes are there – wry memoir, fabulous interludes like a carnival ball and moments of casual absurd beauty. One baleful winter Sunday, the boys go to the deserted beach: it’s magical, elegiac. Fausto, the charmer, takes his adoring new wife to the cinema. While she’s rapt at the glamour onscreen (the fridge! the beautiful actors!) he spies a femme fatale in the audience and recklessly pursues his own fantasy.

Deep dissatisfaction with home versus the bonds that keep you there, paralysed with yearning – I Vitelloni is a hilarious, vivid, tender portrait of people who could be stars in their own lives, if they could only accept their frailty.

Francine Stock

Francine Stock is a novelist and radio and TV presenter. Francine is the chair of the Tate Members Council and was the first female Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. After stints presenting Newsnight, The Money Programme, The Antiques Show and Front Row Francine now hosts The Film Programme on Radio Four, and her latest (non-fiction) book is In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it Has Shaped Us.