Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 133: Wed May 14

No1: The Small Back Room (Powell & Pressburger, 1949):
Stratford East Picturehouse, 6.15pm



A rare chance to see perhaps the most underrated film in the Powell & Pressburger canon.

Chicago Reader review:
Cut to ribbons by its original American distributor, this 1949 film remains the most elusive of Michael Powell's mature works. David Farrar stars as a crippled, alcoholic bomb expert who tries to solve the secret of a new Nazi device—small bombs made to look like toys that explode when children pick them up. With Kathleen Byron, memorable as the mad nun of Powell's Black Narcissus, and Jack Hawkins, Anthony Bushell, and Michael Gough.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an excerpt.

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No 2: Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993):
Rooftop Cinema Club, Queen of Hoxton pub, Shoreditch, 9pm


I've been to a few screenings here in recent summers at this venue and was very impressed. Seating in directors' chairs; lovely food and drink and blankets to keep warm in cool weather. Here is a list of their upcoming attractions.


Time Out review:
School's breaking up for the summer of '76. The seniors debate party politics while next term's freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they'll wield the stick one day. No one's looking much farther ahead than that. This has a free-wheeling, 'day-in-the-life-of' structure which allows writer/director Linklater, in his second feature, to eavesdrop on an ensemble cast without much in the way of dramatic contrivance. There's a quirky counter-cultural intelligence at work: sympathy for those on the sidelines, and a deadpan pop irony which places this among the hippest teenage movies. While the camera flits between some two dozen youngsters (played by uniformly excellent unknowns), Linklater allows himself to develop a handful of stories. Seriously funny, and shorn of any hint of nostalgia or wish-fulfilment, this is pretty much where it's at.

Tom Charity

Here (and above) are clips.

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