The Stories We Tell. Tell me abowt it.

MovieNight stuff, Movies

One couldn’t accurately describe this week’s MovieNight screening as jam-packed… nevertheless, it was great to have some long-missing guests back in the house for Sarah Polley’s touchingly public revelation of a deep family secret. The Stories We Tell adds yet another feather to the cap of this talented Canadian woman.

BTW, might I just take this opportunity right a wrong that annoys the heck out of me and my fellow Canadians? We do not pronounce “out and about” as oot and aboot; it’s more like owt and abowt. So there, eh?

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The World’s End. The Blizzard’s birth.

Movies

Ahhh… the first blizzard of 2014 did little to discourage MovieNight guests from turning up this week! In fact, several of you confessed that you wanted, in fact needed, an excuse to get out and enjoy the bad weather. Director Edgar Wright’s third collaboration with writer/actor Simon Pegg was a thrill a minute when it got warmed up, and a fine way to start off a new year at MovieNight.

And then, of course, there was our new cocktail: The Blizzard. The recipe for this delicious and refreshing bourbon concoction can be found on our, as yet, underpopulated drinks recipe page.

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Raging Bull on Boxing Day

Movies

Just a day after the official Christmas day release of Grudge Match, a Hollywood contrivance which puts two fictitious boxers, Jake La Motta and Rocky Balboa, “back” in the ring (I haven’t seen it… it might just be wonderful, but c’mon…), MovieNight screened Raging Bull. Not an easy thing to watch, but very superbly directed and acted. This was De Niro at his finest. As we expected, not a huge turnout, but a great evening. On to 2014!

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Venus. Toodle-oo, Mr. O’Toole.

Love and Life, MovieNight stuff, Movies

Our MovieNight Christmas Special was an ironic tribute to Peter O’Toole, who passed away a few days before. Roger Michell’s Venus is a bitter-sweet comedy in which the Peter O’Toole-like character (played by O’Toole) confronts his mortality (or rather attempts not to) by pursuing the affections of a rough-edged, seventeen-year-old Mancunian girl. He achieves a certain amount of success in this pursuit, and life lessons are learned, but in the end… well… there’s “The End”.

We had a lovely crowd this week and, along with our newest recruits, some long-absent faces showed themselves. It was lovely to see you all.

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Silent Light – Wholey bright.

Movies

Just thinking...

I first “watched” Carlos Reygadas’s third feature, Silent Light, as a kind of background canvas to a special birthday celebration (mine) upstate, last year. The themed feature that night was to be Woodstock, but by way of making sure the system was working, and keeping the projector primed, we popped the unwatched DVD of Silent Light into the computer… it just happened to be a current “at home” Netflix  DVD, and to be honest, I can’t remember exactly why I’d added it to my queue in the first place. During the first part of that beautiful August evening, I found myself drawn to the stunning (silent… we were playing music at the time) imagery on the screen. A month or so ago, something triggered a memory of this movie, and I watched it properly. What a pleasure, and subsequently, what a great MovieNight!

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If… and butts….

MovieNight stuff, Movies

Ahoy sailors!

A relatively compact group of MovieNight guests enjoyed the quirky black comedy, If…. this week. This sixties British classic, set in a fictitious public (read “private”) school, is not widely know on these shores, but it introduced the Michael Shannon-esque (the eyes have it!) Malcolm McDowell to the world. As we promised in the MovieNight email, there was plenty of sex (some imagined, and some implied, often homo-erotic) and violence: lots of older being very nasty to the younger ones, the youngest being referred to as “Slime”. In addition, we delivered some fairly gratuitous nudity, and lots of bare-ass boys. Don’t you wish you’d been here?

Thanks to Olya for (once again) making it so easy for us to stay focused. KnowwhatI’msayin’?

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