Celebrating the release of The Avengers: The Complete 50th Anniversary Collection (Optimum DVD) the Vintage Festival at Southbank Centre this weekend will be showing all of the episodes featuring Diana Rigg back to back in a specially 60s themed Gallery space at the BFI Southbank, curated by Vintage film creator Stephen Woolley. There's even a Diana Rigg Look-a-like Contest: "please present yourself in costume between 3pm and 5pm on any of the above days, and your photo and details will be taken and kept for the judging on Sunday evening at 5pm. You will then be notified by email if you have one The Avengers complete box-sets."

Another Brit classic out this week on DVD/Blu-ray is Whisky Galore! (1948) packed with 103min of extras as well as a highly informative audio commentary. If you're not a fan of looted shipwrecked whisky movies (even after seeing this one anew!) and even producer Michael Balcon wasn't, this release allows a quite fascinating insight into the film, the Scottish island of Barra, and historical context. And an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in British cinema. Though trained in documentaries (and with Roberto Rossellini) it was Alexander Mackendrick's first film and unusually for Ealing Studios shot on location. The head of Universal in the States was impressed enough at the time to give it a 'sleeper' release under the title Tight Little Island - due to the ban on drinks titles. On the disc there's a 1990 Channel Four doco interviewing those still alive to tell the movie's tale and the modern day salvage operation. And the audio commentary goes into much comparison of the characters' detail and that of 'Englishness' vs Scottishness of the time and the "elasticity of morality". Writer Philip Kemp (Lethal Innocence: Cinema of Alexander Mackendrick) is quoted as comparing The Wicker Man as almost a remake of Whisky Galore! - Captain Waggett (Basil Radford) of the English Home Guard being the outsider 'scapegoat'. Other comments note that Waggett epitomised the petty bureaucracy of the ration book under the then Labour government. In fact there's quite a contemporaneous tone to the whole show, n'est pas?