It's that time of year again, when Christmas is just shy of a month away and we're gearing up for gatherings with family and friends. But what to get say for the science buff or vinyl enthusiast in your life? What book or DVD or CD will be the perfect knock-out gift?
Well, to lend a hand this festive season, we've asked Readings staff and experts to think up their best ideas for whoever it is in your life that needs something truly excellent these holidays. We'll post these suggestions daily in the lead-up to the 25th, beginning first with picks for resident cinephiles.
DVDs
Histoire(s) du cinéma
Jean-Luc Godard
Previously available only as a pricey UK import, Jean-Luc Godard’s late-career magnum opus has an affordable local edition at last. Spanning three discs, this staggeringly involved series of video essays was a project 18 years in the making, and marks the most daring deployment of montage that I’ve ever seen; its 264 minutes are composed almost entirely of footage excerpted from other texts. Exclusive to this Australian release is a truly indispensible subtitle track, which heroically identifies every video element quoted in this fascinating, densely intellectual work. Cinephiles rejoice.
Daria: The Complete Animated Series Box Set
Available in Australia for the first time, this eight DVD box-set – comprising each of Daria’s five seasons and two TV movies – will make the perfect gift for that sardonic, disaffected, Doc Martens-shod wearer-of-cargo-pants in your life. After all, isn’t rekindling adolescent angst with old friends what Xmas is all about? No? Just me then? Oh.
Nine atmospheric tales of terror and suspense from the father of the 'antiquarian ghost story'. Best of all is the ‘Christopher Lee’s Ghost Stories for Christmas’ installment. Perfect alt. Xmas Eve viewing to Carols By Candlelight – although only half as frightening, mind.
Meek’s Cutoff
Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy; Old Joy) wrests the reins of the Western away from the patriarchy for the best postmodern oater since The Proposition. Mike Paterson, DVD editor of the Readings Monthly, said it best when he called it 'Terrence Malick in spurs'.
Inni
Sigur Rós
Perhaps technically a music release, but just watch this beautifully illusory concert movie and try telling me it isn’t one of the most utterly cinematic experiences you’ve had this year. To solve the quandary of how best to shoot Sigur Rós, Iceland’s incumbent purveyors of ethereal post-rock, director Vincent Morisset seems to have set himself the challenge: what would Guy Maddin do? Available in multiple formats.
On Tour
Mathieu Amalric
Fans of John Cassavetes will find much to love about Mathieu
Amalric’s tragicomic slice-of-life-on-the-road drama.
On Tour follows the tribulations faced by a rakish French
impresario who gets more than he bargained for by bringing a
bodacious troupe of American neo-burlesque beauties across the pond
for a tour of his homeland.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly actor not only directs,
but stars alongside an incredible ensemble of real-life revue
performers. Film dramas rarely come more lived-in than this.
Books
Tim
Burton
Antoine de Baecque
Johnny Depp’s shock-haired BFF receives the Cahiers du cinema auteurist study in this lavishly illustrated monograph. In keeping with the magazine’s tradition of valorising select major Hollywood filmmakers via novel appraisals of their work, author Antoine De Baecque (a former editor of Cahiers) makes a convincing case for Burton as a furtive political polemicist. Speaking of Burton, hands up who else counts his Batman Returns as one of the best Xmas movies ever?
Cannes Cinema: A Visual History of the World’s Greatest Film
Festival
Serge Toubiana
This luxurious coffee table tome offers an elegant memoir of the world’s most glamorous film festival. With some 550 photographs spanning Cannes’ 70+ year history, you can rest assured that there’ll be something in here to excite and surprise even the most erudite film lover.
The Art of the Adventures of Tintin
Weta Workshop
With the mondo-budget Spielberg/Jackson Tintin extravaganza rolling out this Christmas, one topic sure to be on everyone’s lips is: isn’t motion-capture animation creepy? Impress your friends! Find out how Hergé’s beloved boy detective and co. were transformed into hollow-eyed meat-puppets by reading this book! I’m kidding, of course: this book is stuffed with gorgeous production artwork that testifies to the love and sensitivity that’s gone into bringing Snowy, Captain Haddock, Thomson and Thompson et al. to the screen.
Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide From Cannibal to
Cult
Howard Hughes
From Fellini and Pasolini to spaghetti westerns and the lurid tradition of gialli, no corner of Italian cinema is left uncharted by this thoroughly ace guide. Best chapter title? ‘Splats Entertainment: Italian Cinema Eats Itself’.
Browse more film books and DVDs.
Gerard Elson
works at Readings St Kilda.
