Cinema
LIFF25!
Last weekend, the 25th annual Leeds International Film Festival launched its programme, ahead of the festival in November. There’s heaps and heaps of exciting things to look forward to in what is, surely, one of the UK’s premiere film festivals, so I thought I’d do a (very) brief preview here.
The Official Selection is the home of the big names, high-art and gruelling drama but really does host all sorts of things. It’s nice to see the festival score the coup of a whole bunch of UK premier showings of European and World cinema as well as a handful of very exciting retrospectives. Psycho on the big screen is surely one not to be missed and, though I’ve seen them before, Waltz With Bashir and Persepolis are both great and worth a cinema trip. For the more hardy, Bela Tarr’s epic Sátántangó - which is seven and a half hours long! - is screening in the Hyde Park Picture House. Thankfully it comes with two interval breaks!
The death of cinema?
So I’ve been meaning to write this for a few days now. Shame it’s taken me so long…
As reported in the Guardian and many other places on Sunday, several big-name directors have joined the cinema industry in attacking movie-industry plans to shorten the amount of time between the cinema debut of a film and its home availability, by making video-on-demand (that’s streaming) films available as little (?) as two months after the film’s release.
Suspiria
SUSSSSSSSSPIRIA! On a great big screen!
Last night, after a week of Argento film’s, I got to see his spellbinding masterpiece Suspiria on a cinema-screen in the National Media Museum as part of the Bradford International Film Festival. I’d obviously wound myself into a bit of a frenzied excitement about it through the week and it certainly did not disappoint.
Every time I hear someone say they choose to watch films at home rather than at the cinema, mostly due to all the other film-goers, I think to myself “You’ve just been going to the wrong films with the wrong people!”. Last night’s audience had almost all seen the film before and sat in captivated silence, tittering nervously at the occasional gentle comic moments and - even before fun - audibly anticipating oncoming moments of horror. If a bad crowd can ruin a film, a great crowd can make one. Not that Suspiria needed any help in that respect…
Argento Week's FINALE!
Of course, all that Dario Argento film watching wasn’t just for fun, it was all to build up to the fantastically exciting screening of Suspiria tonight in the Bradford International Film Festival. It’s hardly going to be worth me reviewing it - I love the film so much already a review will probably be just a string of superlatives and smiley faces - but I’m hoping that, given the big screen treatment, I’ll find even more to love about it!
CRUNCH CRUNCH BANG
[CC Licenced photo by Katerha]
Now, I love going to the cinema. And I take it pretty seriously. Your behaviour in the cinema should be determined by the kind of film you’re watching.
Tense psycho-drama? Don’t talk, mutter, mumble or make a noise.
Comedy? Laugh.
Splatter horror at a film festival? Laugh along with everyone else at all the inappropriate gory moments that you all love.
Dead End Drive In
I’ve had this film hanging around for ages now and just hadn’t quite got round to watching it. In that time, I’d forgotten what little I knew about it and, in my head, it had become just some run of the mill slasher set in a drive-in cinema. I was wrong.
This is an Australian film from the 80s (and it really is very 80s…) that play on/cashes in on the popularity of Mad Max. Taking a similar kind of post-apocalyptic society as it’s base, this plays as a kind of Mad Max flavoured meeting of Escape from NY and The Cars That Ate Paris (If you haven’t seen either of those, go and do so. Now).