Roadshow - August 2008 Releases

WILD SOUTH: V1

STUDIO:             TVNZ    
RELEASE DATE:   28 August 2008
CATEGORY:         Documentary       
RRP DVD:           $29.99

As a world leader in factual documentary making, NHNZ has produced award winning programmes that have enthralled, engaged and entertained hundreds of millions of viewers in over 200 countries for more than three decades.

These highly acclaimed programmes have been re-digitised and made available on DVD for the first time.  The first volume in the Wild South series features:  

ISLAND OF STRANGE NOISES: The sheer volcanic cliffs and wind-swept tussocks of Antipodes Island form a breeding ground for many strange species that emit a weird cacophony of even stranger noises. The Antipodes Islands are named because they are directly opposite London - and they couldn’t be more different than the English capital. There are no red busses, no black cabs, no people. Fogs are the most familiar phenomenon, but Antipodes are more intense and more frequent. The storms of the furious forties drive huge swells to lash the cliffs, and gales and rain batter the huge tussocks. The wild weather adds to the symphony of strange noises.

This film won a major award at the 1980 New York Film & Television Festival.

LIVING TOGETHER: The wild citizens of Dunedin Peninsula have to share a coastline with man.  For the fur seals, albatrosses, penguins, wading birds, and shags, co-existence is on man’s terms. The programme examines the delicate balance of animal and man – a balance we must take great care not to upset if these species are to survive.  This can create problems, but communication is improving.

AS IT WASN’T IN THE BEGINNING: The ecological balance on Enderby Island in the sub-Antarctic was completely overturned when man marooned cattle and rabbits there to provide food for shipwrecked mariners.  These two animals not only revolutionised the existing order governing plants and animals native to the island, but they also had to change their own ways quite substantially just to survive.  There is now a new society and a new order on Enderby.  In showing how the island adapted, this film clearly illustrates the tenuous nature of any “ecological balance”.

SAME TIME SAME PLACE: One animal  is drawn to the same tiny patch of Antarctica at the same time every year to follow a strict timetable of mating and raising its young.  Along with its 50,000 neighbours and the tens of millions of these animals all around Antarctica, the Adelie Penguin must not  ignore the rules of time and place.  To do so  would  invite hazards for young and old alike.

SEALION SUMMER: Every summer the tiny sub-Antarctic Enderby Island becomes the breeding ground for the rare Hooker’s sea lion. This film records all the drama and tragedy that unfolds during the short season - the arrival and courtship of the adults,  the young bulls battling for supremacy, the life and death struggle as the new born pups are immediately confronted with a hostile world and the hazards they face before finally coming to terms with the ocean.

BEST OF COUNTRY CALENDAR 2007, THE

STUDIO:               TVNZ
RELEASE DATE:   15 August 2008
CATEGORY:         Television       
RRP DVD:           $29.99

Here comes another one!  It seems you just can’t get enough of your favourite programme and so here is another selection of stories from the past Country Calendar series.

As usual, we bring you the stories that you seem to love best but we have also tried to bring you a range of stories that best demonstrates the enormous range of enterprise to be found in New Zealand agriculture.

We meet up with a group of enthusiastic steam engine owners who take on the job of moving a homestead across the Canterbury Plains.  Then we join another group; endurance riders who tackle a 180 kilometre course to complete the harrowing journey.  Or how about mingling with a shearing gang whose job it is to remove the fine wool fleeces from the Merino flocks in Central Otago.  And we also go off-shore and into the turbulent Foveaux Strait to see, at first hand, the mighty efforts made to bring you that delicacy, the Bluff oyster.

These are just some of the stories you can see again in this the fourth selection from the very best of Country Calendar.

GUARDING THE QUEEN

Available to own in a 2 disc set
STUDIO:              Reel
RELEASE DATE:   1 August 2008
CATEGORY:         Documentary     
RRP DVD:           $29.99

For the very first time cameras have been allowed behind the scenes at the royal palaces to see the historic and hidden world of the Grenadier Guards. With their bearskins and red tunics they are the most recognisable soldiers in the British Army.

RENDITION

STUDIO:              Roadshow
RELEASE DATE:   5 August 2008
DIRECTOR:          Gavin Hood
STARRING:          Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Alan Arkin, Meryl Streep,
                         Peter Sarsgaard  
CATEGORY:         Thriller       
RRP DVD:            $9.99

What if someone you love… just disappeared?

When a man mysteriously vanishes from an overseas flight, his disappearance sends shockwaves all the way to the nation’s capital. Desperate for the truth, his wife begins a search for the missing man which leads a CIA unit head and a novice agent into an international web of deceit, conspiracies and top-secret truths far more frightening than the lies that conceal them.

DVD Special Features:   “Outlawed” Documentary; “Intersections: The Making of Rendition” Documentary; 5 Deleted Scenes including an Alternate Ending; Director Commentary, Plus More!

Published 28th Jul 2008

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