Long Day Closes

Through the use of music,soundtracks of films,minimal dialogue,imaginative lighting and camerawork,the director Terence Davies recreates the lost world of his childhood in 1950s Liverpool. The film is nostalgic but never sentimental and Davies has the marvelous gift of making the mundane poetic.Quite simply a masterpiece and a film that deserves to be better known. It should be in anybodys 100 best films of all time: it's certainly in mine.

Symphony No.8 - Dimitri Shostakovich

Berglund's impressive reading of this symphony is served well with a recording (in SACD surround sound) of amazing range and power. This disc is up there with the best interpretations; and for sure this symphony hasn't been better recorded. Highly recommended.

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer was not a new name to me; I certainly had heard of his films 'Day of Wrath' and 'Joan of Arc', but that was about all. I had never seen one of his works until the other day when I rented the Eureka two disc set of his 1923 silent masterpiece 'Michael'. What a revelation!

'Michael' is perhaps one of Dreyer's lesser known films and barely gets a mention in any film reference books. Why that should be is hard to understand.
I'm now looking forward to the Criterion boxed set of some of his better known films