apr 6 & 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
"If he's crazy, what does that make you?"
Directed by: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher
Plot: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.

Wednesday, April 6, 7:00pm
Sunday, April 17, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

mar 17 + 31 | danny boyle | national theatre live: frankenstein

I saw this Thursday. Absolutely extraordinary, I urge you to see it. The design elements are astonishing: no surprise, I suppose, when you consider Danny Boyle is so visual a director, and so bold. I thought often of Electric Company. It's clear that the approach is fully theatrical, very much conceived for the three-dimensionality of the live stage - but also that Boyle (or his cinematographer?) had always in mind just how it should be captured for film: the placement of the cameras is many times breath-taking. And the provocative questions about the nature of the human soul, the potential horror of man playing god, creating life in his own fallen image.

National Theatre Live: Frankenstein
Mar 17 @ 7pm | Additional performance Mar 31

Danny Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley.  Performed by Britain's National Theatre, broadcast live to cinemas.

Silvercity Riverport, Metropolis, Coquitlam
Park & Tilford, Scotiabank
Tickets
Cineplex

Danny Boyle: A rare man in a universe of monsters
Feb 27, The Telegraph

Fittingly for an Oscar-winning film director whom colleagues actually seem to like, the ex-altar boy’s foray into theatre exposes the human side of 'Frankenstein’, says William Langley.

. . . Last week, at the National Theatre, Boyle, the Oscar-winning film director, attempted to take a monstrous step towards rescuing the story from itself. Here was no lumbering Herman Munster-lookalike with spinachy skin and a bolt through its neck. The pared-down, elemental Frankenstein Boyle served up with playwright Nick Dear won rapturous notices, with The Daily Telegraph’s critic Charles Spencer declaring: “At its best, there is no doubt that Frankenstein is the most viscerally exciting and visually stunning show in town.”

. . . He was raised in a sternly religious home in Radcliffe, a down-on-its-luck Lancashire mill town, the son of a steel worker and an Irish-born dinner lady. “My whole life was full of saints, growing up,” he says. “It was a very strict Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years. I was supposed to become a priest, and, really, it was my mother’s dearest wish that I should become one.”

At the age of 14, when he was in advanced preparations to enter a seminary in Wigan, the family priest, Father Conway, took him aside and told him he shouldn’t go. “Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don’t know,” says Boyle. “But quite soon after that I started doing drama. And there’s a connection. All those directors – Martin Scorsese, John Woo – they were all meant to be priests. There’s something very theatrical about it. It’s basically the same job, poncing around telling people what to do.”

. . . In her preface to her novel, Mary Shelley declares that: “I have tried to preserve the elementary principles of human nature.” These, presumably, being the ones junked wholesale during the 200 years that the tale has been turned into hokum. If the National does have a triumph on its hands, it will be because Frankenstein has finally found someone who shares them.

apr 11- 21 | more bible movies on vision

Fire up those PVR's.... (April 4-8 selections here)

David and Bathsheba (1951)
Monday, April 11 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
A grand retelling of the Old Testament story of King David. Though well-loved by his loyal subjects, King David, a war hero, has finally met a force that he cannot contend with: love.
Having fallen for the beautiful Bathsheba, the beloved king must now find a way to handle her husband, Uriah. David sends Uriah, one of his most trusted soldiers, into a deadly battle, which ensures the fate of Bathsheba's husband and begins King David's downward spiral. The once-mighty king's eventual neglect for his kingdom and people incurs the wrath of God, who in turn destroys much of the country.
Photos

Esther and the King (1960)
Tuesday, April 12 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Joan Collins stars as Esther in this biblical melodrama. Set in Persia in the 4th century B.C., recently widowed King Ahasuerus (Richard Egan) is trying to defeat his enemy, Haman, who is leading a campaign of hatred against the Jews. After many intrigues, including the competing affection of another attractive woman, King Ahasuerus marries Esther and defeats the villainous Haman. The film was directed by Raoul Walsh, and also features Denis O'Dea. It also features a mostly Italian cast and crew with Mario Bava helming an Italian language version.
Photos

The Story of Ruth (1960)
Wednesday, April 13 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Plucked from the Old Testament, the story revolves around the character of Ruth, a pagan priestess who serves in her temple under the High Priestess, and who falls in love with a Hebrew man named Mahlon. This love brings her spiritual beliefs into question as she has trouble reconciling her pagan religion with his belief in one invisible deity. By the time they marry, she has decided to convert to Judaism, but her newfound spiritual beliefs are put to the test when Mahlon dies.
Photos

Salome (1953)
Friday, April 15 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
Desperate to save the life of the radical Christian preacher John the Baptist, Princess Salome (Rita Hayworth) pleads to her stepfather, King Herod of Galilee (Charles Laughton), for mercy. Fearing that a prophecy about John being a holy man is true, Herod agrees to grant Salome’s wish after she performs the seductive Dance of the Seven Veils…until the promise of having the beautiful princess to himself overpowers his compassion and he orders John’s execution.
Photos

The Robe (1953)
Monday, April 18 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
The first movie ever filmed in CinemaScope, The Robe Won 2 Oscars® and was nominated for another three. Best Actor nominee RICHARD BURTON stars as Marcellus Gallio, the Roman centurion charged with overseeing the crucifixion of Jesus. But when he wins Christ's robe in a gambling game at the foot of the cross, his life is changed forever. This inspired story set to a spectacular score features an all-star cast including Victor MATURE and Jean SIMMONS, and remains one of the screen's greatest Biblical epics.
Photos

Demetrius And The Gladiators (1954)
Tuesday, April 19 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
In this sequel to "The Robe," Demetrius fights for his life in the arenas of Rome and eventually challenges Caligula for possession of Christ's sacred garment.
Photos

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) –
Part One: Wednesday, April 20 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Part Two: Thursday, April 21 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Director George Stevens disavowed gimmicks and in his epic retelling of the Four Gospels of the New Testament, set this dramatization in a panoramic framework of splendidly evocative backgrounds, including the astonishing buttes of Utah. Jesus is portrayed by Max Von Sydow in a difficult and highly praised performance. A huge all-star cast (including Charlton Heston as John the Baptist) animate the vast landscape of the film. Based on the Bible, Fulton Oursler’s "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and radio scripts by Henry Denker. Carl Sandburg was a Creative Associate.
Photos

Apocalypse (2010)
Thursday, April 21 at 10pm ET / 7pm PT
Friday, April 22 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Distinguished screen actor Richard Harris portrays the aged apostle John, prisoner on Patmos and prey to physically and emotionally depleting visions that he records for posterity - as admonishment and warning to all mankind. Also stars Vittoria Belvedere, Benjamin Sadler, Christian Kohlund, Bruce Payne, and Ian Duncan.

overstreet | iambic admonit

Film buddy Jeffrey Overstreet talks movies and art and stuff on the Iambic Admonit blog - to which Soul Foodie Rosie Perera is a regular contributor.

mar 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
"Gaiety! Glory! Glamour!"
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton
Plot: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Sunday, March 27, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

becket | the new yorker, mar 14, 1964

click to enlarge

apr 4 - 8 | bible movies on vision

Check out the Bible movies coming up on Vision TV! Anybody got a PVR? Poke around Matt Page's excellent Bible Film Blog for more on all of these titles. Most interesting to me about the John Huston film "The Bible" is that the screenplay is by Christopher Fry, who pretty much led the very significant religious drama movement in England in the middle of last century (A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Lady's Not For Burning, A Sleep of Prisoners, The Lark, The Dark Is Light Enough, etc.)

Jesus (1979)
Monday, April 4 at Midnight ET
The life and words of Jesus Christ, whose followers form one of the world's great religions, come to life in this literal adaptation of the Christian Bible's Gospel According to St. Luke, filmed entirely in the land where Jesus lived.
Photos

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Tuesday, April 5 at Midnight ET
Basing his drama on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, master filmmaker Martin Scorsese delves deep into the mind and soul of Jesus Christ and the inner torment his experiences after discovering he is the son of God. With Oscar-nominees Willem Dafoe as Christ and Harvey Keitel as Judas, Scorsese received an Oscar nomination for directing this sweeping and vivid masterpiece.
Photos

Jesus Christ SuperStar (1973)
Wednesday, April 6 at Midnight ET
Based on the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and the hit broadway show, this classic rock opera tells the story of the last 6 days of the life of Christ as seen by Judas in contemporary Israel. Directed by Norman Jewison.
Photos

The Bible (1966) – Part One
Thursday, April 7 at Midnight ET
Conceived by producer Dino De Laurentiis, THE BIBLE dramatizes the first 22 chapters of Genesis in the Old Testament. Legendary director John Huston lends his talents to create a movie of epic proportions. Shot in sumptuous 70mm, the film is as visually rich as the story it tells.
Presented in an episodic narrative, the story starts at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, played by Michael Parks and Ulla Bergyd, respectively. Their tragic story leads to Cain and Abel, which is followed by the story of Noah, who is portrayed by the director himself. The Tower of Babel is next, followed by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. George C. Scott plays the beleaguered Abraham, and Ava Gardner stars as his wife, Sarah. In the end, Sarah is visited by the three angels of God, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole.
Photos

The Bible (1966) – Part Two
Friday, April 8 at Midnight ET

andrew o'hehir on the adjustment bureau

Andrew O'Hehir dubs The Adjustment Bureau the Pick Of The Week at salon.com. Bear in mind, it's a slow week. Still, kind of a fun movie. Here's an edited version of what O'Hehir had to say: if you want more, and don't mind spoilers, check out the original article.

"The Adjustment Bureau" is a science-fiction romance featuring Matt Damon and English actress Emily Blunt as a couple on the run from mysterious men with hats. Its somewhat awkward blend of Philip K. Dick-trapped-in-"The Matrix" paranoia and cut-rate Augustinian theology, feel clean and organic, if that makes any sense.

The real questions in "The Adjustment Bureau" aren't about what's happening but why the Plan apparently dictates that David and Elise must be kept apart, and whether there's anything they can do about it. Now, those questions engender other questions, and if those sound like debating points drawn from an episode of "The Twilight Zone," or a lecture by some Vatican II-style liberal theologian, you're on the right track. Have David and Elise stumbled into a Miltonic War in Heaven, in which Mitchell is playing the role of Lucifer? If we live in a universe designed by some Grand Poobah who stands outside time, is our sense of agency and free will an illusion? Etc.

OK, as you can see, either "The Adjustment Bureau" falls apart when you start to think about it, or you need to think about it a whole lot deeper and better than I just did. Nolfi makes no effort to conceal the Judeo-Christian roots of his premise (which is also true in the Philip K. Dick short story), and if you object to infusions of pop religion into your science fiction no doubt this movie will drive you nuts. But if you're looking for an end-of-winter cinematic palate cleanser that delivers a sweep-you-off-your-feet love story along with a few gooey, chewy, slightly silly philosophical niblets, then the Plan demands that you see this movie.

Adapted from a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" was the basis for BLADRUNNER, which also had a theological thing or two on its mind.

mar 13 | passion of joan of arc

PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
Sunday Mar 13 at Pacific Cinematheque

Is it only a year and a bit ago that The Passion Project was on the Pacific Theatre stage? And the memorable screening at the Cathedral with the premiere of a live score by Stefan Smulovitz?

Astonishing film, the masterpiece of spiritual cinema in the silent era. See it.

mar 11 | of gods and men

Of Gods and Men, the Soul Food movie of 2010, opened Friday March 11 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. The God-soaked movie that took godless France by storm.  Winner of the Grand Prix at The Cannes Film Festival, didn't even get an Oscar mention.  They really are bone-heads, that Hollywood crowd.

julie taymor | tempest, titus, universe, spidey

Must be tough being Julie Taymor these days. The news on March 10:

After days of rumors, the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark made the official announcement last night: Director Julie Taymor is out. The problem-plagued musical has also been delayed yet again, this time until 'early summer 2011,' according to the show’s blog... Newser

Also, we Taymor fans have been waiting since last fall for her film treatment of The Tempest to show up on a screen near us, but the longer it takes a movie to get into circulation, the more likely it is to be a disappointment. There are exceptions, but that's common. So I'm nervous.

I LOVED Titus: tough, brave, insane, with its excesses in all the right places; the perfect film of a fascinating mess of a play. The stage version of The Lion King is brilliant, inventive: she made art when you might expect schlock, using an amazing variety of puppets to render the movements of an array of specific animals that populate its African landscapes in a gloriously stylized, always specific way.

A Beatles fan, I was tremendously enthusiastic to see Across The Universe, and truly loved it, though I will say it veered into something pretty sentimental by the end. I was entirely up for the over-the-top cuteness of some of the early sequences: they were all about cuteness and naivete, and Taymor is brilliant at matching style and tone to specific material. And while the characters were types, I was willing to see them as archetypes more than stereotypes. I was with her when the story took an increasingly psychedelic direction, and really with her when it got darker. Only, the film seems to chicken out in the home stretch: instead of leaving things as messy as they should have been, it all got happy again, and the sunshine-lollipops tone that worked so well in the first was pretty cloying for me in the third. I still watch and rewatch the film: it's a favourite. But I wince a bit when things start wrapping up, and blame "studio interference" for the compromise.

The delays in Spiderman make me nervous: maybe Ms Taymor's being made the Judas goat, like a sports manager who gets fired when the team does bad and goes on to coach a string of championship teams. Somebody's got to pay, something must be done to sate the blood-lust of the fans and media, and who knows, maybe it actually works sometimes - "shake things up," "new chemistry," "restore confidence," all that. But often I think it's wrong-headed. Sometimes not.

In the face of all this, and fearing a trajectory, the delays in The Tempest make me queasy indeed, the quease aided and abetted by this chart in the last Film Comment;

click to expand

The best anybody could say is that the film is "of interest," with two "mediocres" and one out-and-out "bomb"? Ouch. Granted, these Film Comment reviewers are a tough crowd, and can be pretty darn snooty. But still, high marks for all the films I've liked the best lately; Blue Valentine, The Fighter, The King's Speech. Unmerited critic feeding frenzy, or a bad sign of something rotting - or at least slipping - in the state of Taymor?

I'll wait to have my own response. Actually, all this makes me more eager to see both the film (if it can get to Vancouver) and the play (if I can get myself to New York): nothing I love better than celebrating a maligned but deserving play or film.

Still...  I do worry about how Julie's doing.

mar 16 & 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
"Gaiety! Glory! Glamour!"
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton
Plot: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Wednesday, March 16, 7:00pm
Sunday, March 27, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

kurosawa + truffaut | looking + seeing

To be an artist is never to avert one's eyes.

Akira Kurosawa

I realize that it's presumptuous to write about a film one has only seen three times.

Francois Truffaut

Thanks, Andrew...

feb 27 | doctor zhivago | cineplex classic films

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
"A Love Caught in the Fire of Revolution"
Directed by: David Lean
Cast: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Alec Guinness
Plot: Life of a Russian doctor/poet who, although married, falls for a political activist's wife and experiences hardships during the Bolshevik Revolution

Sunday, February 27, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is available on DVD at Videomatica

for the record | anthony lane on blue valentine

No particular Soul Food angle on the one. Just a superb review of one of my favourite recent films.

COUPLE TROUBLE
review by Anthony Lane | The New Yorker, January 3 2011

TThe first thing we see in “Blue Valentine” is a small girl, standing alone in the grass, crying out a name. It’s a simple sight, yet fraught with alarming possibility, and that goes for the rest of the movie. Here is the tale of a man and a woman falling in and out of love: something that happens every day, to millions of people, as if that were any consolation. “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all,” Tennyson wrote, and instinct tells us to agree. But he was writing of bereavement—of a love cut off in its glory, through nobody’s fault. What if the love wizens and sours, through everyone’s fault, making the loss too bitter to endure? Who wouldn’t wonder, in a low moment, whether the whole damn thing was worth it, after all?

The girl is Frankie (Faith Wladyka), aged about five, the only child of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams). Frankie is calling for their dog, which has run off, and Cindy’s search for the wanderer strikes the first note of desperation in the film, though hardly the last. When she arrives late for a school concert, her eyes are wet; the news is not good, and you want to know how Dean will break it to their daughter. “Maybe she moved out to Hollywood and became a movie dog,” he says to her, which is as good a working metaphor for death as I have heard. It’s also a hint of how closely Dean is tuned to Frankie—more closely, sometimes, than her mother is. Together, father and daughter lick the raisins from her oatmeal off the kitchen table (“We’re eating like leopards,” he explains), which shows what a kid he is himself, and what sort of laceration would result if they were parted.

As if in response to this worry, the movie then parts company with itself. One moment, we’re watching Frankie being dropped off with Cindy’s father (John Doman) for a sleepover. The next, we see Dean, looking spry and chipper, applying for a job with a firm of house movers. What’s happening? It takes a while to realize that this is a flashback, to the period before he and Cindy met—the era in which, like all lovers, they feel in retrospect that they were arrowing toward each other. But notice what Derek Cianfrance, the director and co-writer, does not do. He supplies no title saying “Five years earlier,” or whatever, and arranges no major shift in tone, aside from a slight cranking up of the colors. In other words, the past is not so different from the present, and what should be horribly confusing about “Blue Valentine” becomes its most rending aspect; namely, that as we swipe backward and forward through the rest of the film, we can’t always tell the now from the then. Given that one means rage, silence, and failed sex and the other meant a flurry of eagerness and lust, you would imagine the gulf to be unbridgeable; but it doesn’t look that way, and the bridging is the saddest thing of all.

Nothing out of the ordinary happens in “Blue Valentine,” and that, together with the vital, untrammelled performances of the two leading actors, is the root of its power. Dean and Cindy try to mend their marriage by taking a short, child-free, romantic break—a sure sign that the damage is now beyond repair. They go to a motel with a choice of fancy suites: Cupid’s Cove or the Future Room. They pick the latter, which, with its revolving bed and planetary décor, is a tacky, dated vision of a future that will never be. “Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars,” Bette Davis said at the end of “Now, Voyager”; but she was eons away from the cratered desolation of these two, and she didn’t have a guy with smoke on his breath, arms covered in tattoos, and a head full of vodka trying to muscle her into submission on the floor. Not that the past was a paradise; when Cindy runs into an old boyfriend (Mike Vogel), we are spirited further back to the time when she got pregnant by him, with harrowing results. If you want to see an entire abortion debate dramatized in a few minutes, every angle is represented here, from the brutishness of the conception to the delicate courtesy of the doctor and the sudden, terrified realization of the woman that she cannot and must not withdraw her child from existence.

All of this demonstrates that “Blue Valentine” is that rare creation: a love story that doesn’t shy away from sex, ignore its consequences, or droop into pointless fantasy. The result is adult entertainment as it should be, in other words, right down to the laugh that Cindy lets out, in her leaping delight, when Dean goes down on her. Needless to say, the M.P.A.A., which cannot bear very much reality, took fright at all this and hobbled the movie with an NC-17 rating, which was overturned only after a concerted challenge. It is now an R-rated picture, and rightly so, although you have to ask: In what circumstances would you take a teen-ager, let alone a child, to see it? Who, on the verge of growing up, would wish to learn that the first heady bloom of rapture is doomed to rot and fall, and that even someone as devoted as Dean will wind up pleading to his paramour, with a kind of bullish grovel, “Tell me how I should be”?

127 hours | 'very much a spiritual experience'

This Guardian article about the real-life Aron Ralston provides an interesting side-note to 127 Hours.

Where Ralston is radically different today, in the flesh, compared with his pre-accident self as portrayed by Franco in the film, is in his recognition that he depends on other people. The love of others, his relationships with his family and friends, kept him alive, he says now. "It was very much a spiritual experience and different from Joe Simpson in Touching The Void. That reinforced his agnosticism – 'I did this all on my own and God doesn't exist because if he did, he would've helped me out, that fucker.' For me it was to go through this and realise, well, God is love, and love is what kept me alive and that love is what got me out of there."

Watching for... DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (Whit Stillman)

"Whit Stillman's new 'college comedy' is called Damsels in Distress, has musical numbers, and stars Greta Gerwig. Shooting took place in New York in the fall of 2010." Film Comment, January-February 2011

feb 25 - mar 3 | tokyo story | cinematheque

There's a brand new print of Ozu's masterful Tokyo Story at Pacific Cinematheque later this month. It is one of only forty films to have appeared on all four iterations of the Arts & Faith 100 list of "Spiritually Significant" motion pictures. Paul Schrader devotes considerable attention to the Japanese director in his book "Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer," and many consider Tokyo Story to be Ozu's finest work. My first introduction to the film was Roger Ebert's piece in his book "The Great Movies," and my first viewing was at the Cinematheque.

TOKYO STORY
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday, February 25, 2011 - 6:30pm
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - 6:30pm
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - 9:00pm
Sunday, February 27, 2011 - 8:30pm
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 8:30pm
Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 6:30pm

feb 16 & 27 | doctor zhivago | cineplex classic films

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
"A Love Caught in the Fire of Revolution"
Directed by: David Lean
Cast: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Alec Guinness
Plot: Life of a Russian doctor/poet who, although married, falls for a political activist's wife and experiences hardships during the Bolshevik Revolution

Wednesday, February 16, 6:30pm
Sunday, February 27, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is available on DVD at Videomatica

Watching for... CORIOLANUS

Ralph Fiennes takes Coriolanus to Berlin film festival

Modern-day interpretation of 17th-century tale is sole British production in competition at Berlin film festival. Shot in Belgrade by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who last worked with Fiennes on the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars, alongside Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler.