Interviews

This Summer the British Film Institute is celebrating the 60th anniversary of groundbreaking British film studio Woodfall Films. Arriving on June 11 the nine-disc Woodfall: A Revolution in British Cinema Blu-ray and DVD boxsets boast eight of the studio’s most revered films – Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tom Jones, Girl with Green Eyes and The Knack… and How to Get It – plus a huge array of special features and an exclusive 80-page book.

While major studios prove adept at handling home media releases for their modern blockbuster titles, there's a growing stable of independent labels bringing much-loved catalogue titles and cult classics to Blu-ray in the UK.

Even during the early days of Laserdisc, UK film fans looked with envy across the Atlantic thanks to the effort US distributor Criterion put into its releases. Not only were titles presented in the most complete version possible and at the correct aspect ratio, they were bundled with newly-produced bonus material designed to act as a sort of 'film school in a box'.

Ridley Scott's latest sci-fi smash The Martian finds Matt Damon playing NASA astronaut Mark Watney, who is mistakenly presumed dead and left stranded alone on Mars by the rest of his crew during a dust storm. Marooned millions of miles from home and facing at least a four year wait for a rescue mission, Watney must learn to adapt to life on the inhospitable planet. With The Martian about to make it's bow on Blu-ray and DVD, leading man Matt Damon opens up about making the film and why he particularly enjoys watching films on Blu-ray...

Hammer Films is a studio reborn. The British film icon, which enjoyed worldwide success in the 1950s, '60s and '70s with a swathe of fright flicks and launched the careers of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing among others, had seemed to be dead and buried by the mid-80s, with production ceasing completely. Yet since 2007, under the guidance of CEO Simon Oakes, Hammer is back in the limelight, chilling new audiences first with an innovative web-based horror series and then a blockbusting – and controversial – adaptation of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black. Its latest movie, The Quiet Ones, is out now on Blu-ray/DVD.