Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 346: Sat Dec 12

No1: Some Came Running (Minnelli, 1958): Barbican Cinema, 4pm


Marking the centenary of Frank Sinatra's birth, Adrian Wootton, CEO of Film London, presents an illustrated talk on the life and times of the great entertainer. This will be followed by a 35mm screening of one of the great Hollywood fims of the 1950s, Some Came Running.

Chicago Reader review:
Vincente Minnelli turns the James Jones novel into one of his finest and most garish melodramas (1959), with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Shirley MacLaine struggling to stay alive in the hopelessly small town of Madison, Indiana. Minnelli has said that he based his visual style on the inside of a jukebox, and the film is a sort of neon epiphany. The final sequence, set at a carnival, remains an object lesson in the expressive use of CinemaScope.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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No2: Looking for Mr Goodbar (Brooks, 1977): Art House Crouch End, 1pm


Introduced By... is a new season at Art House Crouch End where the cinema invite a special guest to choose a film that they introduce and discuss with the audience following the screening. For December they welcome the return of Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw to introduce this rarely seen and fascinating 70s movie.

Peter Bradshaw wrote about the film in an article he wrote for the Guardian recently to coincide with the release of Gaspar Noe's film Love. Here is an extract:
Diane Keaton plays a teacher: here, specifically a teacher of hearing-impaired children, a touch that accentuates her utterly respectable, in fact, laudable life. She gets involved in casual sex with men she meets in seedy bars. It ends in shocking violence. It is as if female sexuality is always a natural fit for the erotic thriller or crime thriller genre, and undoubtedly, Goodbar pathologises female sexuality to some extent, indicating that for a woman to have an interest in recreational sex is symptomatic of damage, and essentially tragic in origin and destiny. The film has been occasionally reviled and dismissed, but is arguably ripe for rediscovery as a confrontational exploitation classic from the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader 70s. It is not available on DVD, though I am soon introducing a special screening in London. 

Here (and above) are the opening credits.

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