NEW IN CINEMAS THIS WEEK
2040 – Damien Gameau’s picture of what the future may be – if we make the necessary changes.
The Heiresses/Las Herederas (2018) – in Asunción, Paraguay, a middle-aged gay couple, both from wealthy families, feel the financial pinch. Their straitened circumstances bring very unexpected changes to their lives.
Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption and Rock ‘n’ Roll – Part concert footage, part biopic of Bruce Springsteen’ s life.
Aladdin – Guy Ritchie directs this live-action version of the old yarn, starring Will Smith as the Genie in the bottle, and Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine.
The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales (2017) Animated fun at a farm in the country.
Brightburn – horror as an alien child makes an unexpected stopover on our planet.
The German Film Festival begins on May 21st
Recommended is the thoroughly entertaining, old-fashioned road movie, 25km/H, about two very different brothers (Bjarne Maedel & Lars Eidinger), who take off on their mopeds to find adventure, romance, etc. Finely tuned, perfectly cast and never predictable, it’s a tonic. Also featuring Franka Potente.
ON THE TELLY
Sunday 4.30pm 9Gem, the 1948 Western Red River, (left) is directed by Howard Hawks, photographed (b/w) by Russel Harlan, and stars John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru. It’s a sort of Mutiny on the Bounty cattle drive. Goes on a bit, but packs a punch.
VALE
Doris Day, who was the most popular female movie star of the early 1950s, was born Doris Mary Anne von Kappellhoff in 1919. She trained to be a dancer, but a car crash changed that. While recuperating in hospital, Day listened to a lot of singers on the radio – particularly to Ella Fitzgerald. Day had a lovely singing voice – by turns silky smooth, warm and dramatic. She was singing with dance bands in the 1940s, when director, Michael Curtiz, spotted her. He needed a replacement for Betty Hutton in Romance on the High Seas (1948); thus, Day landed her first starring role. Her indefatigable cheerfulness, acting ability and freckly girl-next-door looks made her rise to movie stardom rapid. After a string of musicals – the most famous being Calamity Jane (1953) - Day essayed dramatic roles. Her best was as singer, Ruth Etting, in Love Me or Leave Me (1957). Beginning with Pillow Talk (1959), she starred in a run of popular romantic comedies (often with Rock Hudson), which continued throughout the 1960s. She spent the early 1970s on TV, then retired circa 1975. Her personal life was chequered by unsuitable husbands, but she and her optimism survived them all.
The versatile and prolific American screenwriter, Alvin Sargent, was descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants. He was born in Philadelphia in 1927, and after high school, he enrolled in the navy – mainly so he could get a degree and learn how to type. In Hollywood, he became an actor, and sold ads to Variety, until he scored some writing gigs for TV, and then for movies. His screenplay for Paper Moon (1973) was a great success; as, in a very different vein, was Julia (1977). The brilliantly tense, criminals-in-limbo movie, Straight Time (1978), was a far cry from the family-in-crisis drama, Ordinary People (1980), except that Sargent’s understanding of human relationships is what made both movies so strong. Sargent also wrote one of the best superhero movies, Spider Man 2 (2004), and after penning The Amazing Spider Man (2012), he retired. Apparently, he wanted written on his tombstone: “Finally, a plot.”
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