[screenings] Once Upon A Time

“The good news, on the other hand,
Is that schoolboys
And girls will not have to memorize me.

Who got the Nobel for literature?
Who the Booker?
Who won the cup at Wimbledon?

And who did Time magazine pick
As the Man of the Year?
I have already forgotten.”

- Man of the Year, Arun Kolatkar, Kala Ghoda Poems

It’s yet early December but we’re calling it an year. This year end, we think it means we’re calling it a decade. And like the good old, good times, we’re calling all bets off, all maps invalid, the chips are plastic, sand is the new stone and like Brautigan says, everything is after all- in watermelon sugar. Senor Edward Abbey, however, prefers the term ‘epicurean hedonism’ and Otis Redding sings,” I’m just sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away”. Les Paul accompanies on guitar and Chet Baker on saxophone. The picture is 30 x 60 in., oil on canvas. Signed by Edward Hopper.

All the good folks.

We would like to thank all the good folk who’ve been with us through the year, the decade and have been the real reason to the fact that we’re still around and doing our thing. Thank you all very very much. For more than just being there. So once again the lights will dim, the projector will flicker and we’ll all hope that the electricity holds on. Proudly presenting this December, ‘Once Upon A Time’- a weekend of three cinema classics, old and new, from right across the world. Music, Comedy and the Sentimental stuff.

That’ll be all for now. Next year we’ll be on Facebook.

Friday 4th December, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949/106min) Dir: Robert Hamer

"If fit opportunity offer in the hour of unusual affliction, minds of a certain temperament find a strange, hysterical relief in a wild, perverse humourousness, the more alluring for its entire unsuitableness for the occasion."
- Herman Melville, Pierre

It all started at the Ealing Comedies. In the late 1940s, the London-based Ealing Studios ran into something of a ‘golden period’ and satire and comedy on film were never quite the same again. And off all the Ealing Comedies, ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ is the greatest. Smart, sophisticated, impeccably acted and side splittingly hilarious, the movie is as the poster puts it ‘a hilarious study in the gentle art of murder’ as the charming Mr. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price who would later go on to play P.G. Wodehouse’s eponymous valet Jeeves), ostracized from aristocratic society because his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer makes a determined and diabolical attempt for Dukedom. The problem- eight relatives in the way. And all of them played with classic thespian relish by Ealing’s go-to-guy Sir Alec Guinness.

Saturday 5th December, 2009 Time: 6.30pm
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989/102min) Dir: Hayao Miyazaki


“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

In the world animation, Hayao Miyazaki is an institution like few others, like Walt Disney or Chuck Jones. His films are meticulously hand crafted, preferring good old cell animation over CGI, and as cinema they’re closer to the films of Ozu, Satyajit Ray and Charlie Chaplin than the usual animated fare. As a chronicler of childhood and coming-of-age, he captures the essence of it like the best of Fellini or Truffaut. Hilarious, poetic, human and something like a good lazy yawn on a beautiful Sunday morning; ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ is a Miyazaki milestone, a bouncily told tale of Kiki, a thirteen year witch-in-training who has to leave her home with only her wise-cracking cat Jiji for company and truly find her place in the big wide world. (All Kids Enter Free)

Sunday 6th December, 2009 Time: 6.15pm
Night on Earth (1991/129min) Dir: Jim Jarmusch

"With mankind, forms, measured forms, are everything."
- Herman Melville, Billy Budd

‘Night on Earth’ is an incandescent film, a film of lights that glows and glitters and blinks against the dark like neon, not only with Jim Jarmusch’s beautiful twilight visions but with Frederick Elmes swooning cinematography, Tom Waits’ brilliant bebop waltz score and career best performances from a terrific star-studded ensemble which includes terrific turns from legends like Gina Rowlands, Armin Mueller Stahl, Rosie Perez, Beatrice Dalle, the late great Finnish actor Matti Pellonpaa and a bat-out-of-hell-mad-jazz performance from Roberto Benigni that has to be experienced to be believed. Chronicling five stories set in taxi cabs in five cities across the world from Los Angeles to Helsinki, ‘Night on Earth’ is at once and by turns a slice-of-life, comedy, drama and melancholy. All in all, it is beautifully human.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India

Tel:25493705/9886213516

Email:bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com

ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)