Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995): The Book Club, Shoreditch 7.30pm
This is screening as part of the Scala Beyond, a six-week season
celebrating all forms of cinema exhibition across the UK, from film
clubs to film festivals, picture palaces to pop-up venues. You can find
more details here at the website.
No excuse for posting this other than it is my No1 film guilty pleasure. The introduction by the Amy Grimehouse film club suggests this is going to be a lot of fun: A
screening of Showgirls and the usual Grimehouse nastiness including
pole-dancing demonstrations, so you too can be a bit slutty. The film: a
young drifter, named Nomi, arrives in Las Vegas to become a dancer and
soon sets about clawing and pushing her way to become the top of the
Vegas showgirls.
Chicago Reader review:
'Director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas's fresh
meat market—a sleazy Las Vegas porn show with clunky production numbers
that resemble body-building exercises, backed by heaps of big studio
money. The story, a low-rent version of All About Eve, charts the
rise of one bimbo showgirl (Elizabeth Berkley) at the expense of
another (Gina Gershon); alas, the only actor who seems comfortable is
Kyle MacLachlan. It must be admitted that, as with Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers,
which I also underrated initially, this 1995 movie has only improved
with age—or maybe it's just that viewers like me are only now catching
up with the ideological ramifications of the cartoonlike characters. In
this case, the degree to which Las Vegas (and by implication Hollywood)
is viewed as the ultimate capitalist machine is an essential part of the
poisonous package.'
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the trailer.
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