Latest video: Make Dad's day

By Ewan McDonald

Dads can go fishing, go flying, go to Springfield, the Rugby World Cups or war ... those are just some of the options in new videos on sale for Father's Day, September 5.

* Best moments from the first three tournaments are featured in Highlights of the Rugby World Cup, sure to be a big seller as it arrives in the shops at the same time as Keith Quinn's Legends series hogs Monday-night TV screens and the hype begins for this year's tournament. Those still high after the week's cricket results might like to boost Dad's morale further with reminiscences of Dickie Bird, the great English umpire and eccentric, A Bird's Eye View of Cricket.

Fishing apparently attracts more participants than just about any other leisure activity around the country. From out of left field - well, Hamilton - a small company called Fish'n'Tips has produced Coromandel Safari, which explores and promotes fishing using ocean kayaks to gain access to remote rocks. Their hour-long video, available only via freephone, shows off the Coromandel scenery, tips including bait and berley, rod action, tying knots, snorkelling and (of most interest to me) how to cook the catch. Unlike other videos in this report, Coromandel Safari is not available in shops. Contact the producers via their freephone, 0800 XXX XXXX.

More conventional fishing on two new videos from Herald columnist Geoff Thomas. Magic Fishing Moments has the man and his mates flying by helicopter to fish for big snapper off the Northland coast and the Hauraki Gulf. This video includes saltwater fly-fishing in the Bay of Islands, featured in our Travel section recently. In Outdoor Paradise Thomas undertakes the Great Southland Challenge, to see how many fish and other game can be harvested in 24 hours; deerstalking on the Wairarapa coast and trout fishing at Lake Tarawera.

Plane Crazy Kiwis is a history of New Zealand aviation from the day when Timaru farmer Richard Pearse unofficially beat the Wright Brothers to the first flight. It's a fun, tragic and controversial story of New Zealand, at the bottom of the world, and its struggle to conquer that isolation.

And for those who like to live life on the edge - of the couch - the BBC Comedy Greats series replays classic moments from the careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and Ronnie Barker.

* Collections of movies released around this time have traditionally featured war'n'westerns. With a new generation of dads coming along, add sci-fi to the list.

There's a special edition of The X-Files Movie which includes footage deleted from the cinema and rental versions, interviews with creator Chris Carter and star Gillian Anderson, and collector cards, in addition to the story of Fox and Mulder tracking down a conspiracy which starts with a terrorist bomb destroying a building in Dallas and involves a virus which might destroy all life on Earth.

Our future is also on the line, though less seriously, in the offbeat Starship Troopers, from Paul Verhoeven, director of Total Recall and Robocop. Here humanity comes face-to-face with an intelligent race of alien bugs, some 10m tall, some that fly and all capable of destroying everything on Earth. Brave young freedom fighter Johnny Rico and his top fighter-pilot girlfriend Carmen join the mission to the aliens' home planet for an all-out intergalactic war.

The all-star cast of Gary Oldham, William Hurt, Matt Le Blanc, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham and Lacey Chabert revive the 60s telly favourite Lost In Space, set in the not-too-distant future when Earth is on the verge of collapse and survival lies in colonising outer space. The Robinson family's mission is to establish life on Alpha Prime, the only other habitable planet in the galaxy, but their spacecraft is sabotaged by traitor Dr Zachary Smith.

Dark City is a place where everything is controlled - even your memories. John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in the bath of a strange hotel to discover that he is wanted for a series of brutal murders. He has no recollection of the killings; in fact, he has no memory of anything. A phone call warns him that men are coming to get him. He escapes into the city and plunges headlong into a labyrinth of twisted truth.

And finally in this fantasy world, there's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, the computer game coming one step closer to virtual reality.

For more traditional dads, Roadshow's War Collection has Twelve O'Clock High, starring Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger in one of the more realistic portrayals of the heroics and perils of war; Tora! Tora! Tora!, a spectacular account of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on Sunday, December 7, 1941, told from American and Japanese viewpoints; and the original version of The Thin Red Line, James Jones' moving novel of a young American soldier fighting the war in the Pacific. This set is our giveaway this week (see panel).

Columbia's war range features The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Caine Mutiny, Cockleshell Heroes, The Guns of Navarone, King Rat, Night of the Generals and Humphrey Bogart in Sahara.

Another set on sale for the big day is the MGM Western Legends collection (result of that giveaway also in the panel). To recap, titles in that set are A Fistful of Dynamite, the original spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Hang 'Em High, The Magnificent Seven, Return of the Seven, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Again, Columbia has a range on sale, including 3.10 to Yuma, Alvarez Kelly, Cat Ballou, Mackenna's Gold, The Man from Laramie, They Came to Cordura and Texas.

Sport-themed movies promoted for the weekend include Robert Redford in The Natural, Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams and Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire.

Finally, there are a whole bunch of new episodes of TV favourites The Simpsons.