Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 342: Sat Dec 7

No1 Taffin (Megahy, 1988): ICA Cinema, 10.30pm


The ICA is being taken over for the weekend by Little White Lies magazine who have celebrated 50 issues with a special celebrating one film each year from the last half-century. This is their midnight movie choice and it is looks positively awful, if you like that sort of thing. Here are the full details of the Little White Lies ICA Weekender.

Here is their introduction to tonight's offering:
Francis Megahy's 1988 film Taffin was recently made famous by the incessant (and highly amusing) radio-based blatherings of Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish. Here, for one night only, we present the film in all its glorious awfulness. See Pierce Brosnan as a face-pummelling loan shark as he takes care of business in the mean (and green) streets of Thatcher-era Wicklow County. Though the film itself was made to ride Brosnan’s ascending star as TV’s Remington Steele, it wasn’t until he was cast as James Bond that the cinema work really started to look good on his CV. Taffin is a textbook midnight movie, a veritable trove of bizarre supporting turns set against an oddly quaint rural backdrop and boasting various action set pieces which appear to have been spliced together from other films. Don’t miss.

This is the scene made famous by Buxton and Cornish.

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No2 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972): Screen on the Green, 11.30pm [Screening on 35mm]


One of a series of excellent Saturday late night films at the Screen on the Green. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The ultimate family film. Francis Ford Coppola gives full due to the themes of clannish insularity that made Mario Puzo's novel a best seller, though his heart seems to be with Al Pacino's lonely, willful isolation. This 1972 feature is sharp, entertaining, and convincing—discursive, but with a sense of structure and control that Coppola hasn't achieved since. With Marlon Brando, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, and Diane Keaton.
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) are some excerpts from the opening scenes.

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