L.A. Confidential.
THE best cinema release of 1997 is the essential video release of 1998. Set over four months beginning at Christmas in 1952, Curtis Hanson's complex, intelligent and dynamic thriller based on James Ellroy's novel is a taut saga of duplicity, criminal ambitions and multiple murders. Directed with panache, it features a fine, astutely chosen cast: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger and David Strathairn. Now available on sell-through video for £14.99.
William Shakespeare's Romeo Juliet.
The Strictly Ballroom director Baz Luhrmann gives the play a radical and vibrantly cinematic - and swooningly romantic - treatment as he relocates it to a contemporary American setting, while retaining Shakespeare's dialogue. The fine cast features Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the principal roles, with Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Paul Rudd and Pete Postlethwaite. Few recent films stand up to repeated viewing like this passionate joy of a movie. Buy the wide-screen format. Costs around £14.99.
The James Bond Set.
If you're feeling particularly generous towards an 007 buff, there's now a complete James Bond set - featuring 17 (count'em) movies along with a CD-ROM sampler of Tomorrow Never Dies. The set is available exclusively at HMV stores, costing £149.
The Last Temptation of Homer.
For the Simpsons fans in your life, this compilation features four classic episodes - One Fish, Two Fish, Blow Fish, Blue Fish; Colonel Homer; Homer Alone and Simpson and Delilah. The compilation costs £12.99.
Or there are the CD-ROM games, The Simpsons Virtual Springfield, which explores every corner of their town in a navigable 3-D universe with over 50 interactive locations, and The Simpsons Cartoon Studio, an animation tool kit with which one may create one's own original Simpsons episodes. The CD-ROMs cost £19.99 each.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex- Drugs-and-Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (Bloomsbury, £20 in UK).
In what is much the most fascinating film book for quite some time, Peter Biskind chronicles the last golden age of Hollywood cinema, from 1969 to 1980, as maverick film-makers ripped up the rule book and astonished the studios with their achievements and their success.
Biskind interviewed most of the key players and the quotes he elicits are remarkably candid. Some of the more printable examples include producer Don Simpson on director Robert Altman - "None of us really wanted to make Popeye, and we hated Altman, who was a true fraud" - and Altman on the now deceased Simpson: "Simpson was a bad guy, a bum . . . It's a big plus to our industry that he (died). I'm only sorry he didn't live longer and suffer more."
Battleground (Milestone, £10).
With Steven Spielberg's powerful war drama, Saving Private Ryan, looking like an unstoppable front-runner for Oscars next spring, this attractive, large-format paperback chronicles its production and background, with specific and detailed emphasis on the filming of its harrowing opening 25-minute sequence set on Omaha Beach in Normandy and shot on Curracloe Beach in Wexford. Written by Tom Mooney, editor of the Echo in Enniscorthy, and Stephen Eustace, the paper's film critic, the book is abundantly illustrated in colour and black-and-white.
The Time Out Film Guide, 7th edition (Penguin, £13.99).
The market is awash with movie guides, most of them much stronger on the basic data they have gathered than in the opinions they express. One of the more original, and highly opinionated, exceptions comes from the lively weekly London listings guide, Time Out. The new edition features over 12,000 reviews, and part of the fun is in disagreeing regularly with the well-expressed but sometimes pretentious views on offer.
The Beach (Penguin, £5.99 in UK).
Not a film book, but a book about to be made into one of next year's most heavily anticipated film productions - to star Leonardo Di-Caprio and to be directed by Danny Boyle, who made Trainspotting. The debut novel by the very talented young English writer, Alex Garland, it follows the adventures of a young backpacker and the people he encounters on a remote lagoon off the coast of Thailand. Peppered with movie references and offering terrific visual possibilities, this is a bright, imaginative page-turner. And you might agree with my view that Leo seems physically all wrong for the central role.
Variety.
To be fully informed on what's going on in the wide world of film, forget most of the glossy monthlies in the shops and take out a subscription to the weekly edition of the leading film trade paper. It's packed with news of productions, disputes, festivals and awards, along with the earliest reviews of new films from all over the world, box-office data and obituaries. The recipient of your gift will think of you every Wednesday morning when the magazine drops in his or her letterbox. A year's subscription costs $339. For further details, fax (01-310) 9786901.
If you really want to splash out on a lover, friend or child - or, indeed, on yourself - hire a cinema for a private screening of a favourite film. Most cinemas are available for hire in the mornings before they open to the public. Hiring a cinema for an evening show, which would necessitate cancelling a public show, would be altogether more expensive.
If you're in Dublin, the Irish Film Centre has the advantage of having bar and restaurant facilities for post-screening entertainment. Hiring the larger Cinema 1 (which seats 260) costs around £150. There will be the additional cost of hiring the film of your choice, which can run from £80 upwards, and if it's an older movie no longer in circulation here, about £80 extra to transport it from and back to London. The IFC telephone number is (01) 6795744.