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More’s hopelessly vain out-of-work actor is joined by a blue chip cast in a zippy tale that does unfortunately rather show its age

Before Richard E Grant’s Withnail, there was Kenneth More’s Chick Byrd. In Alvin Rakoff’s 1964 British drama, Byrd is an out-of-work actor whose breezy, cynical exuberance masks increasing terror of permanent unemployment and, like Withnail, he is desperate for his agent to call, stunned by his flatmate booking a glamorous film job and stuck living in a scuzzy boarding house in Camden Town (although exteriors were shot in Paddington).

After being fired from his job in provincial rep, Chick has come back down to London to try his luck, meeting up with all the old faces, the familiar parade of ageing thespian losers hanging round West End pubs and cafes during the day and mooching desolately past theatres with huge hoardings showing rave reviews for successful actors.

Deserting a festival’s official competition for a thematic retrospective can feel somewhat awkward, especially at an extravaganza so rich in new voices as the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr). Yet the decision proved most fruitful with “The Spying Thing,” a sidebar Iffr devoted to “espionage as a way of filming and the camera as a spying weapon.” A 21-strong lineup offered timeless classics as well as some of the world cinema's latest offerings (László Nemes’ Sunset and Yoon Jong-bin’s The Spy Gone North). Yet “The Spying Thing” started—according to Gustavo Beck, who co-curated it alongside Gerwin Tamsma—with the second of Mariano Llinás’ monumental 3-part, 14-hour epic La Flor. I shall not attempt to dwell into Llinás’ opus magnum—Ross McDonnell already did an egregious job for the Notebook reviewing it at its Locarno premiere last August. Suffice it to say that La Flor’s second chapter...

(John Krish, 1959-77; BFI, 15)

John Krish entered the cinema as a teenager early in the second world war, working for the Crown Film Unit (on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain) and the Army Film Unit (as an editor on Carol Reed and Garson Kanin's The True Glory), before joining British Transport Films. It was with the latter group that he made his classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a beautiful movie about London's last tram journey. It was shown in a much acclaimed quartet of his pictures that travelled the country in 2010, and was included, along with his infinitely moving I Think They Call Him John (1964), in Shadows of Progress, the BFI's four-disc survey of postwar British documentary.

Now, in Krish's 90th year, the BFI help clinch his reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive and distinguished documentarians with a compilation of his work,...

Network DVD have announced the UK DVD release of the classic horror series Mystery and Imagination on July 5th 2010. This critically acclaimed and extremely popular anthology series presents a selection of Gothic tales by legendary 19th Century writers: Robert Louis Stevenson’s nihilistic The Suicide Club, Sheridan le Fanu’s Uncle Silas plus Edgar Allen Poe to name but a few, not to mention a most faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Famous faces and well – known names lend this most chilling collection of tales authenticity and truth. Ian Holm, Denholm Elliot and Patrick Mower are among the many who turn in powerhouse performances for each of the six specially commissioned, featured-length TV plays. Freddie Jones’s performance as the demented pie-maker, Sweeney Todd, lingers in the memory long after the credit has rolled and the television turned off!

This release contains every remaining episode of Mystery and Imagination,...