Christopher Nolan’s excellent Following had a lot of people wondering what happened to the director. Why did he sell out? My guess would be money. Duh! After making the critically-acclaimed Memento (some say the non-linear framework for Memento was laid in Following) he went on to make Insomnia. Insomnia wasn’t bad, but it didn’t hold a candle to Erik Skjoldbjærg’s original Norwegian version, from which it was remade. After that, things just seemed to go more and more mainstream.  Hey, what do I care? As long as he’s happy… that’s the main thing.

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With Following clocking in at a mere 69 minutes, it seemed only fitting that we start the night with a longer short than usual, and to keep it black and white all night, we picked the delightful Little Red Riding Hood, directed by David Kaplan, starring a very young Christina Ricci, and narrated by non other than Quentin Crisp. What a hoot!

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The Vanishing was our pre-hallowe’en  feature, intended to get you just a bit nervous, before the weekend of mischief and nonsense. The charming thing about The Vanishing though, was it’s ability to keep us smiling, mostly by re-living endearing scenes played out between the young, holidaying couple. Saskia was just so damned cute! Playing that off against the sense of inevitable doom, and you have, in my not-so-humble opinion, a very fine piece of film making.

It occurred to me that The Vanishing and last week’s selection, Fat Girl, had a lot in common… holidaying in France, danger on the road, terror… but the things that made one laugh in Fat Girl were also discomforting. Next week we’ll try to get off the road, and out of France. Stay tuned.

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Michael Winterbottom’s hillarious The Trip certainly dragged in an audience! We haven’t exactly been needing to unfold the unfolding chairs so far this season. While the impressions were entertaining and the laughs plentiful, there was an air of bittersweet sadness surrounding Steve Coogan, in his role as Steve Coogan.

In an eleventh hour moment of inspiration, I attempted to prepare Abba’s Winner Takes it All, to play as an outro, but only managed to have twenty seconds or so ready. Oh well… nobody’s perfect. Even me. ; )

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As Chris put it… MovieNight returned with a bang. Naively, I thought he was referring to the report of a shotgun or rifle, but of course there was also a different sort of bang. In any case, it was great to start up a new season with Straw Dogs. We were concerned that it might be a bit much, but our lovely audience took it for what it was: A great piece of seventies cinema, superbly directed shot and acted. In fact, we enjoyed Dustin so much that we added a second feature. Tootsie! Not many made it though to the end, but… what fun!

Now, about those jagged fonts… I got a new computer (finally) and need to spend some time getting up to speed with the latest version of iMovie. Hopefully that will be sorted by next week. You know how much we like a smooth font. Don’t you?

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