Madman DVD competition – July

EREBUS: OPERATION OVERDUE

A deeply emotional account of one of the darkest moments in New Zealand history.

On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours 11 ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to uncover the mystery of how a jet could fly into a mountain in broad daylight. Did the airline have a secret it wanted to bury? This film tells the story of four New Zealand police officers who went to Antarctica as part of the police operation to recover the victims of the crash. Set in the beautiful yet hostile environment of Antarctica, this is the emotional and compelling true story of an extraordinary police operation.

THE PAST

The acclaimed new film from Asghar Farhadi, the director of the Academy Award®-winning masterpiece, A Separation. It stars Academy Award® nominee, Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), who was awarded the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

At the request of his estranged wife Marie, Ahmad returns to Paris after four years in Tehran to finalise their divorce. He soon discovers that Marie plans to wed her beau Samir, ignoring the protests of her teenage daughter, Lucie. Ahmad finds himself attempting to repair the rift between Marie and Lucie, piecing together the puzzle of lies and unspoken guilt connected to misdeeds of the past.

A BIT OF A DO – THE COMPLETE SERIES

When Paul Simcock, son of common-as-muck toasting-fork tycoon Ted and his insecure wife Rita, marries Jenny Rodenhurst, only daughter of well-heeled, snobbish Laurence and his glamorous, sensual wife Liz, the happy couple don’t suspect their conventional white wedding will be the beginning of a bizarre tangle of love, lusts, hypocrisy and jealousy. Against the background of a different ‘do’ (a christening, a funeral, various parties and several weddings), arguments, personality clashes, drunken displays and affairs of the flesh bubble to the surface. With an inability to get along due to their differing social backgrounds, will there be eternal happiness for anyone on the invitation list? This four disc set includes all 13 episodes of the cleverly funny, moving, slightly risqué and totally unpredictable series written by best-selling author David Nobbs’ and based on his own novels. Starring British favourites David Jason (Only Fools & Horses, A Touch of Frost) is joined by Gwen Taylor (Heartbeat, Duty Free), Nicola Pagett (Upstairs, Downstairs), Paul Chapman (As Time Goes By), Michael Jayston (Tinker Tailor Solider Spy) and Stephanie Cole (Doc Martin, Waiting For God).

SECRETS OF THE MANOR HOUSE

Exactly 100 years ago, the world of the British manor house was at its height. It was a life of luxury and indolence for a wealthy few supported by the labor of hundreds of servants toiling ceaselessly “below stairs” to make the lives of their lords and ladies run as smoothly as possible. It is a world that has provided a majestic backdrop to a range of movies and popular costume dramas to this day.

But what was really going on behind these stately walls? Secrets of the Manor House looks beyond the fiction to the truth of what life was like in these British houses of yesteryear. They were communities where two separate worlds existed side by side: the poor worked as domestic servants, while the nation’s wealthiest families enjoyed a lifestyle of luxury, and aristocrats ruled over their servants as they had done for a thousand years.

The series includes the following estates:

Althorp – The Spencers

Henry VIII’s Palace

Highclere Castle

Chatsworth Estate