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Eye Candy: new release DVDs for hire

Sweeney Todd

Wherein Tim Burton and Johnny Depp finally find a project that ignites their joint magic most fully since Edward Scissorhands…

Sweeney Todd is the big-budget version of Stephen Sondheim's full-blooded musical, and earns a rare 18-certificate to prove it. Don't be put off by gore or singing, as Depp's performance is superb, even if the movie is all but stolen from under him by Helena Bonham-Carter as his cockerney partner-in-pies.

Cutting edge entertainment ?
You bet…

Picnic at Hanging Rock (special edition)

Eye Candy doesn't often salivate over a few hastily assembled cutting-room-floor scrapings bundled into a DVD box and called a Special Edition, as it's fast becoming as overused a description as "stunning".

But Peter Weir's cornerstone of '70s Australian New Wave cinema is re-released to include a feast of extras, thoughtfully put together.

This unexplainable, hypnotically-shot mystery in full sun is still as timely and compelling some 30 years on  -  and the package includes a rarely-seen 'director's cut', a venture that later-Hollywood-maverick Peter Weir would not have undertaken lightly.

Also released is Weir's earlier Antipodean oddball calling-card 'The Cars That Ate Paris', but still no sign of Weir's masterpiece 'The Last Wave', which took unexplained mystery into the city, and gave Richard Chamberlain his finest role.

O Lucky Man!

Director Lindsay Anderson has seen something of a renaissance recently, due in no small measure to the efforts of his frequent leading man and muse Malcolm McDowell  -  even down to a filmed theatre performance that McDowell released as a documentary in 2007.

McDowell starred in a loose trilogy for Anderson, playing the character Mick Travis across public school rebellion in if… (re-released last year in an Eye-Candy-championed deluxe edition) , O Lucky Man ! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1980).

The testy political satire of Britannia Hospital came out during the height of the Thatcher years, and its poor reception not only cut short Anderson's career, but seemingly made Warner sit on a DVD release of O Lucky Man for years, until online pressure finally yielded this great re-release package.

A loose update of Candide for the early 1970s, O Lucky Man ranges across different cinema styles, the state of the (British) nation, great character actors (often playing multiple roles in the movie) and Helen Mirren's surprisingly youthful face. It's also very funny at times.

One of its innovations at the time was the prominent score by Alan Price, which acts as commentary on the action, and who even appears in the film as a crucial plot saviour at one point.

To check on the availability of these titles and to request O Lucky Man! and Picnic at Hanging Rock free visit the Library Catalogue .

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