Adam Bowen's Talkie Talk #54 - New films in the cinemas include TRANSIT (Christian Petzold) and as always some masterpieces on TV by Weir, Kubrick, Hitchcock and Hawks

NEW IN CINEMAS THIS WEEK

Back of the Net (2018) – Aussie family movie about a teen soccer academy.

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) – Maggie Gyllenhaal believes one of her pupils is a child prodigy. Also starring Gael García Bernal.

Transit (2018) – in order to flee the Nazis, a man impersonates an author (whose identity papers he possesses). Then he meets a woman, desperate to find her husband – the author. Major film from German master Christian Petzold

Watch the trailer here

Hellboy – Sorceress meets Hellboy for a biff-fest.

Little – The stress of being an adult is relieved by the stress of being a kid, when Regina Hall reverts to being her younger self (Marsai Martin).

Watch the trailer here

Missing Link – Animated adventure about an expedition to the fabled valley of Shangri-La, where the locals want to Vote Tony Out.

The Aftermath – during the post-WW2 reconstruction Ikea Knightley and her hubby are assigned to an old mansion in Hamburg. Tastefully photographed drama ensues.

A Hole in the Ground – Horror in rural Ireland. 

The Tashkent Files – thriller about the death of the Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.

The Spanish Film Festivalbegins on April 16th 

ON THE TELLY

Monday 10.15pm Fox Classics: Peter Weir’s thriller, Witness (2006), set amongst the Amish of Pennsylvania, is shot by John Seale, and stars Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. The only drawback is Maurice Jarre’s score, but you could probably watch the movie mute; Weir’s storytelling is so cinematic.

Watch the trailer here

Tuesday 8.35pm & Noon Wednesday, Fox Classics: Rio Bravo (1959) Character piece in which sheriff, John Wayne, his drunken deputy (Dean Martin), ol’ Stumpy (Walter Brennan), and a young gunslinger (Ricky Nelson) take on some evil outlaws. Director Howard Hawks’ version of High Noon - spun out at a nice leisurely pace, never taking itself too seriously. Also starring Angie Dickinson.

Friday Noon 9Gem: The Cruel Sea (1953) WW2 naval drama about the crew of a convoy escort ship. The emphasis on realism and lack of melodrama makes it all the more gripping and moving. Starring Jack Hawkins.

Watch a trailer made in the days when they made loooooooong trailers

Saturday 1.30pm SBS Viceland 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968) An extraordinary journey from apes to outer space, directed by Stanley Kubrick. It seems to be about mankind’s quest to understand whatever it is that’s out there. Hard to imagine what this Panavision epic will look like on a TV screen, interrupted by commercials, but it was an absolute knock-out when it was first screened in cinemas, and many revivals didn’t dim its power.

Saturday 8.30pm Fox Classics: in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), retired cop, James Stewart suffers from vertigo. After an accident in which a fellow cop dies, Jimmy retires, and takes on a private assignment, involving the enigmatic beauty, Kim Novak with whom he becomes infatuated. Kim leads him to a further bout of vertigo...and there’s more…all slightly improbable, but fashioned with enormous style, and underscored by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann. Also starring Barbara Bel Geddes.

Watch the  official 60th anniversary trailer

Sunday 4.15pm 9Gem: The Dam Busters (1955) – fascinating account of how scientist, Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) developed a bouncing bomb, and how the RAF used it to destroy the Ruhr dams in Germany, during WW2. Understated and unsentimental.

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CINEMA REBORN - Short notes and booking link on the selection (1) - IN A LONELY PLACE (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1950)

The new restoration of In A Lonely Place  premiered at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2018. Introducing the program, Columbia Pictures executive Grover Crisp mentioned that he had never been happy with the previous restoration prepared for the DVD release in 2001. Since that time, the technology had been developed which enabled the damaged Original Camera Negative to be repaired and then used, for the first time, as the material for this stunning 4K digital restoration.

With the passage of time, In A Lonely Place  has emerged as a career highlight for Humphrey Bogart, Nicholas Ray and Gloria Grahame, and one of the most thought-provoking movies in that most provocative of genres the film noir.

To get yourself a front row seat for our Saturday night festival highlight.

Book tickets if you click here

Czech & Slovak Film Festival - Barrie Pattison dips a toe into FREIHEIT (FREEDOM, Jan Speckenbach)

As if a month of the French Film Festival weren't enough, Dendy competes with a half-hearted Czech and Slovak event - four days, eleven films. If they were cheaper and better documented I would have been tempted to get stuck into this. It's a source from which we see little.

Testing the water with Jan Speckenbach's new Freiheit/Freedom, it was odd to front up to a film made in Vienna with a German star who speaks her own language, and English, for most of the picture.

Confusingly we get severe featured Johanna Wokalek (Gudrun Ensslin in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) motionless in an art gallery before a bus trip filmed so that the camera on the reflective side of the vehicle creates an almost abstract image converging with the scenery passing. Our heroine has slept past her stop and is still in the bus when bike hoons lure away the driver and empty the takings. 

An Australian hitch hiker she planned on hooking up with passes her in the street next day without recognition. It’s not long before she’s bare assed (nice) in the sack with pick-ups and hocking her no receipt jewellery to get by. About this time in Berlin bearded public defender Hans-Jochen Wagner is trying to get through to his German kid client whose attack put a black refugee into a coma. The boy’s parents can’t see that he did anything wrong. Wagner offers to bribe one of his co-workers to take over the case. 

After his teenage daughter has found him in the sack with one of mummy’s friends, he’s having single parent problems with the girl who he catches smoking (what?) in the family home. His solution of going on a reality TV program to ask for information on his missing wife reveals that it’s Wokalek.

It turns out, through conversations with her new sex worker friends (their explicit show is seen), she left home for a lover and that didn’t work out. She settles into being a hotel maid, getting a buzz out of having to dress a bed that Vladimir Putin once slept in but a dinner with aggro black visitor Ricky Watson triggers a nervous attack and we get a flash back to her earlier home life with then clean shaven Wagner suggesting why she’s off seeking freiheit.

There’s half a dozen story leads set up but none are worked out during the piece’s hundred minutes. It’s not exactly thrilling. Performances and diffused ‘Scope film making are good and the unfamiliar Berlin, Vienna and Bratislava settings are occasionally attention getting but the overall inconclusiveness contributes to a feeling of time wasted.

The diffusion may be in the transfer incidentally. All the trailers in the festival reel looked like this.

CINEMA REBORN - Links to the Randwick Ritz website for sales to all individual sessions

Folks

Things are moving at a rapid pace. The Ritz Cinema in Randwick, the venue for our 2019 season of Cinema Reborn has now posted a page for each film which you can go to to buy individual tickets to each session. Here they all are in the order of screening.

Thursday 2 May at 6.30 pm 
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1946) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK HERE

To read David Hare's  elegant program notes Click on this link

Friday 3 May at 4.15 pm
Lucky to be a Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, Italy, 1956) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK HERE

To read the program notes Click on this link

Friday 3 May at 6.30 pm
Wanda (Barbara Loden, USA, 1970)
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK HERE

To read Adrian Martin & Cristina Alvarez Lopez's program notes
 Click on this link








Saturday 4 May at 10.15 am
Le Trou (Jacques Becker, France, 1960)
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK  

To read Mark Pierce's Program notes click on this link
Click on this link

Saturday 4 May at 1.40 pm
Sons of Matthew (Charles Chauvel, Australia, 1949)
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK 

To read the scholarly program notes by Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper
Click on this link

Saturday 4 May at 4.10 pm
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1968) TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK

You can read Rod Bishop's comprehensive program note
by clicking here

Saturday 4 May at 6.30 pm
In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1950)
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK  

To read Eddie Cockrell's Program Note
Click on this link

Sunday 5 May at 1.15 pmThe Nun/La Religieuse (Jacques Rivette, France, 1966) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK

To read Adrian Martin's program note 
Click here

Sunday 5 May at 4.10 pm
Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium, 1986) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK  

You can read Angelica Waite's Program Note 
by clicking on this link

Sunday 5 May at 6.30 pm
Yol: The Full Version (Yilmaz Guney, Turkey, 1982-2017) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK 

To read Jane Mills comprehensive Program Note
Click on this link

Monday 6 May at 6.30 pm
Neapolitan Carousel (Ettore Giannini, Italy, 1954) 
TO BOOK TICKETS CLICK ON THIS LINK

To read Peter Hourigan's Program Note
Click on this link

CINEMA REBORN - Be the first to pick up the program leaflet from the Ritz cinema on Thursday 4 April

CINEMA REBORN - links to all Eleven titles in the 2019 program and the timetable for screenings

Sales of tickets to individual sessions will commence at the weekend 6/7 April. Check on the Ritz Randwick website

Here is  the Ritz Timetable Final for all screenings  and following each poster is a link to the notes, essays and commentaries we've posted with contributions by David Hare, Angelica Waite, Peter Hourigan, Jane Mills, Adrian Martin & Cristina Alvarez-Lopez, Mark Pierce, Rod Bishop, Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper and Eddie Cockrell

Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium, 1986)  by clicking on this link

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1968) by clicking here

Neapolitan Carousel (Ettore Giannini, Italy, 1954) Click on this link

Sons of Matthew (Charles Chauvel, Australia, 1949) Click on this link

In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1950) Click on this link

A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1946) Click on this link

The Nun/La Religieuse (Jacques Rivette, France, 1966) Click here

Lucky to be a Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, Italy, 1956) Click on this link

Wanda (Barbara Loden, USA, 1970) Click on this link

Yol: The Full Version (Yilmaz Guney, Turkey, 1982) Click on this link

Le Trou (Jacques Becker, France, 1960) Click on this link

Adam Bowen's Talkie Talk #53 - The new movies, film music on 2MBS, a fabulous week for classic Brit cinema on the telly and Vale to Agnes Varda

NEW IN CINEMAS THIS WEEK

Galveston (2018) – Ben Foster (very good in Leave No Trace) plays a hitman, returning to his hometown with revenge on his bucket list. 

Mid 90s (2018) – a troubled thirteen year-old boy, growing up in LA. Written and directed by Jonah Hill.

The Happy Prince (2018) – directed by and starring Rupert Everett, as Oscar Wilde, during his final days. Also starring Colin Firth and Emily Watson.

Pet Sematary– re-tread of the Stephen King horror classic.

Shazam – fourteen year-old boy shouts “Shazam!” and becomes a superhero, just like that.

Wonder Park –the animated imaginings of a young girl in an amusement park.

P Storm -Hong Kong action.

Romeo Akbar Walter – Hindi action.

Yaara Ve – Punjabi comedy.

MOVIE MUSIC on 102.5 fm …or stream it at finemusicfm.com

Fellini's 8 1/2 with music by Nino Rota

Saturday 7pm Italian Film Music of the 1960s: Boccaccio 70; Mafioso; Eight and a Half; The Leopard; Seduced and Abandoned.

ON THE TELLY

Monday Noon 9Gem: Peter Sellers is a small-town Welsh librarian who has a fling with a socialite (Mai Zetterling), in Only Two Can Play (1962). Also stars the wonderful Virginia Maskell and Kenneth Griffith. Based on the Kingsley Amis novel, “That Uncertain Feeling”

Monday 10.25pm & 1.45pm Tuesday,Fox Classics: The Hour of the Gun (1967), stolid but vivid Western, set during the aftermath of the OK corral gunfight. James Garner as Wyatt Earp, Jason Robards as Doc Holliday. Directed by John Sturges.

Tuesday Noon 9Gem: A Kind of Loving (1962) - the feature-film debut by director John Schlesinger. Set in the English Midlands, and based on a novel by Stan Barstow, it stars Alan Bates as an engineering draughtsman, who falls for blonde typist, June Ritchie. He gets her “in trouble”… they have to marry, and live with her mother. British neo-realism vividly captured by Schlesinger, his cameraman, Denys Coop and an excellent cast.

Watch a trailer here

Tuesday 10.45pm & 2.15pm Wednesday, Fox Classics: The Eye of the Needle (1981) – full throttle WW2 melodrama. To facilitate a German invasion of Britain, Nazi spy, Donald Sutherland (at his creepiest), exploits Kate Nelligan (excellent) and her crippled husband on a remote Scottish island. Miklos Rosza’s score boasts every shade of purple.

Watch the trailer here

Friday Noon 9Gem: The Green Man (1956) – lively British farce about a professional assassin (Alistair Sim) on the trail of a pompous politician (Raymond Huntley). Delightful character turns by Terry-Thomas, Dora Bryan, and (as a cuckolded BBC announcer) Colin Gordon, who tells George Cole: “I’d thrash the life out of you if I didn’t have to read the 9 o’clock news.”

Saturday 11.30am 9Gem: I’m Alright Jack (1959) A naive university graduate (Ian Carmichael) takes a job in heavy industry, causes a strike, and reveals the shameful corruption rife amongst management and workers. With Terry-Thomas, Margaret Rutherford, Richard Attenborough, Liz Fraser, Dennis Price and John Le Mesurier. 

Watch the trailer here

Sunday 2.15pm 9Gem: Orders to Kill (1958) - Paul Massie plays a WW2 bomber pilot on a secret mission, an assassination, which later plagues his conscience.  Well written (Paul Dehn) and directed (Anthony Asquith), but distressing. Also starring Irene Worth.

VALE

Agnes Varda circa 1960 and Cleo de 5 a 7

By the time Brussels-born writer-director Agnès Varda (of Greek-French parents) was in her late twenties, she had hardly spent any time inside a cinema, yet she directed her first feature film, La Pointe Courte (1956), which was later hailed as the first film of the French New Wave (it was edited by Alain Resnais). Her next feature, Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961), an absorbing character study of a pop singer, has the attention to detail that elevates all Varda’s films. Le Bonheur (1965), an ironic analysis of happiness has a prettiness probably inspired by her husband, director Jacques Demy (about whom she made three documentaries). Varda’s ouput was sporadic, but in her late fifties, she had a great success with her docu-drama, Vagabond (1985), about a homeless woman. The Gleaners & I (2000) was a fascinating documentary about gleaners in the countryside and the city. More recently Varda made The Beaches of Agnès (2008), an autobiographical documentary. She was 90 years old when she died on March the 29^th.

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