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EPISODE FIVE
DVDs and books for the Holiday Season! First
broadcast: December 19, 2009
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Cinepod host Roger Garcia reviews some favorite films and books for the Holiday Season. He looks at a couple of classic
films that have been unavailable till now, the seminal British television series by Frederic Raphael "The Glittering
Prizes," and a newly-published book on a favorite filmmaker, Yasmin Ahmad.
 Tom Conti (above) turns in one of the best performances of 1970s television as Adam Morris in "The Glittering Prizes."
The series follows Morris and his class from their meeting at Cambridge in the 1950s, through their climb to prominence in
the media and academia in the 1960s, and their disillusionment in the 1970s. A searing and incisive portrait of British society
undergoing radical change, this major work by the BBC has been long unavailable until now. Adam Morris was a vaguely
autobiographical rendition of "The Glittering Prizes" author, Frederic Raphael. As a screenwriter, Raphael won an
Oscar for John Schlesinger's "Darling," was nominated for writing Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road,"
and more recently wrote Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."
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Douglas Sirk is a monument in film history. In the 1950s, Sirk made a series of so-called glossy melodramas, many with
Rock Hudson. For his adaptation of the classic novel "A Time to Live and a Time to Die," Sirk changed the title
from "Live" to "Love" and skilfully presented a sympathetic portrait of the protagonist, an anguished
German soldier fighting on the Russian Front during the Second World War. Long unavailable, "A Time to Love and a Time
to Die" has recently been issued in a special two disc DVD edition which includes the fascinating "Imitation of
Life: A Portrait of Douglas Sirk" made by the equally iconic, late Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmidt.
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Yasmin Ahmad was a leader in the new Malaysian independent cinema. Tragically, Yasmin died suddenly in July 2009. Deeply
affected by this loss, fellow filmmaker and writer (and himself a leader of the independent cinema in Malaysia), Amir Muhammad
reflected on Yasmin and her films and in a matter of months, has produced the extraordinary "Yasmin Ahmad's Films"
(Matahari Press). Neither strictly a book of film criticism nor biography, Muhammad's book is a combination of recollection,
reflection, and invaluable insights into both Yasmin's films and the Malaysian culture and politics that informs them.
One of the best film books of the year and now available on-line!
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