In the early days of MovieNight, one of our guests recommended a film called Ratcatcher. She claimed that I would love it. After a quick trip down to Kim’s video in St. Marks Place (those were the days…) I discovered that she was right. Ratcatcher is remarkable. Although officially in “English”, the dialect in Ratcatcher is heavily Glaswegian (Scottish is hard at the best of times, but Glaswegian is, well, “Fuck yoooo Jimmah!”), but thankfully, the Criterion DVD is presented with English subtitles. Ratcatcher charmed us in such a way the we moved right along to the next Lynne Ramsay feature, Morvern Callar, a tense thriller that gave Samantha Morton another opportunity to shine, early in her career. Ramsay’s attention to detail is phenomenal.

We Need to Talk About Kevin marked Ramsay’s return to film-making after an absence of nine years… why this absence occurred remains unknown to me, but I’m happy to say that the intervening years have done nothing to dull her film-making skills. Kevin is mesmerizing from its opening feast of non linear-imagery (just watch… don’t bother trying to figure it out) to its shocking end. Gasps were heard… applause followed. Thank you, Lynne. Please don’t keep us waiting another nine years… unless that works best for you.

Oh yeah… and Tilda. What can I say? Thank you, too.

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For some reason, Lovers of the Arctic Circle remains unavailable on DVD in this country. It’s probably only a matter of time until it gets released, but we first showed it almost eight years ago! It still delivers a punch to the gut – a wonderful and tragic love story. A story of coincidences, and unlucky timing.

My apologies to those who turned up for a nightcap just as the final credits were rolling and I was sobbing uncontrollably. That is powerful movie-making (and powerful cocktail-making too!)

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Things were going quite smoothly at MovieNight this week… happy people, delicious fresh sangria, super-sweet Maïa Vidal short, etc., but when we switched over to the computer to present Shame… nothing. Nada. Zilch. Although our audience made a lot of potentially useful suggestions… I believe it was Julien who suggested that I should bypass the receiver and connect directly to the projector – a suggestion that was taken up, and which led to the discovery that the cause of the problem – a dodgy mini DV to HDMI adaptor. A bit of massaging got the $4 item to get back to work, and I was able to climb down off the bar stool/ladder and get back to the program. Happy ending! Update: It turns out that there was nothing wrong with the adaptor (sorry for all those curses I made, China!). The receiver had just come back from repair and I had assigned the computer to the wrong HDMI input. Human error! Luckily, I did a “pre-flight” check before the next projection from the computer, and discovered my mistake. Phew.

The program was great, after all that.  Another happy ending? Not so much.

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I can’t remember exactly how we discovered this one. Certainly under-promoted, and seemingly up against some distribution obstacles, A Swedish Love Story was made in 1970 and saw limited release outside of Sweden in 2007-2008. The trailer emphasizes the sweetness and beauty of young love, and indeed that is the film’s central theme, but the two adolescent principals are hysterically surrounded by adult dysfunction and what is coming to be known here at MovieNight as Swedish eccentricity. The movie was knee-slappingly funny between moments of tenderness and teen angst… so much so that I thought of making a new trailer and showing it again the following week… not making our own trailer in the first place was fuck-up number one. Sorry number one.

Fuck-up number two was just another in our current spate of technical glitches. I guess it was a just bit of schmutz on the disc. Fortunately, I had another copy, and after a comical moment of audience speculation over which chapter to go to (“Four!”, “No, I’m sure it’s five!”) we were back in business. Quite embarrassing… I hate interrupting a feature! Sorry number two. 🙁

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I guess we should have shown this one for St. Patrick’s Day, and given everyone a green cocktail.

Not.

Unlike the celebration of St. Patrick’s day (in New York City at least), The Guard was intelligent, and actually Irish. In fact, so Irish that we left the subtitles on and picked up a few words that had evaded comprehension on a previous viewing.

Above all, though, The Guard was funny. Thanks to all who came and laughed. Comedy, comedy, comedy! will continue soon.

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