The Illusion of Depth

 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Act II of our series of films featuring adaptations and re-workings of da classics ! As you know, we have had a vaguely involuntary hiatus while they filled the Church basement with scaffolding. This they have now done, and we will be back in action on Thursday, the 3rd of March. It should be noted that scaffolding we were promised, and scaffolding we have received. Our venue is looking a tad "brutalist" at the moment, but we should still be able to show films down there (and possibly swing from the rafters, should the urge overtake us).      Anyway, this Thursday's film is possibly the most esoteric I have yet shown - not least because it isn't actually a film at all. Antigone was written by the Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles in the year 441 BC, and is one of the three so-called "Theban Plays". These plays recount the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, and the first of these plays ( Oedipus Rex ) is the one that has become...

  Does it bother anyone else that "Raise the Roof" and "Raze the Roof" have opposite meanings? It's just me? Okay, then. Those of you who have been attending our weekly film nights will know that the roof of the Church has been quite exploded lately. Perhaps this is one of the more obscure side-effects of COVID, but for whatever reason, the Church roof has thoroughly failed to fulfil its obligations as a roof, and consequently we have been assembling in the basement (which would seem to be a reasonably safe distance from a recalcitrant roof). Unfortunately, the roof appears to have caught up (or down , presumably) with us. For the next two weeks, the basement of the Church will be out of action while the construction crew install scaffolding down there, as part of their efforts to repair the afore-mentioned roof. I'm still not completely convinced by the idea that repairing a roof requires scaffolding in the basement , but who am I to second-guess the noble ...

  Macbeth . A play so dark and violent, actors refuse even to speak its name out loud; although truthfully, there are far worse in Shakespeare's repertoire. Titus Andronicus , anyone? Coriolanus ? And don't even get me started on John Webster (but I digress). Macbeth , of course, tells the story of the extremely brutal Medieval Scottish warrior who is told by a trio of witches that he will one day be King and (with a little encouragement from his wife) decides to murder, well, everyone, really.  Things do not go well (sorry; spoilers). Over the years, several films have attempted to update this ultra-violent tale of ambition, blood-lust and walking trees. Depressingly, the basic story seems to work beautifully in virtually any historical context, as long as that context features aggressive, ambitious men (hmmm). To wit, there have been re-tellings of Macbeth set in the American Mafia... in Michelin-starred restaurants... in hamburger joints (don't ask)... and (most relevant...

 Over the past three weeks we have seen a Jazz Othello , a Zombie Jane Eyre , and The Tempest in space.  On balance, I think it's about time to show a comedy. The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare's simply hilarious tale of sexism, misogyny and male oppression. On the surface, the message of the story seems to be that women who are assertive, who don't meekly submit to the authority of their husbands, who have minds and personalities of their own - are obviously bad, bad women who need to be punished. This, by the way, from the writer who gave us Beatrice, Viola and Lady Macbeth, so feel free to draw your own conclusions about that. No, really, please do; everyone else does (and everyone else has , for the last four hundred years). The basic premise of the story is very simple: Katherina and Bianca are the daughters of Baptista Minola, a gentleman of Padua. Everyone is in love with Bianca (the younger daughter) who is obviously beautiful, kind, meek and obedient: the pe...

 Having dispatched the Zombie Jane Eyre (and those of you who saw the film will appreciate what an over-simplification that is) we now turn our attention to a Jazz Othello . All Night Long is a British film from 1962 featuring a very distinguished cast - of actors (Patrick McGoohan, Richard Attenborough) and Jazz musicians (Dave Brubeck, Charlie Mingus, Johnny Dankworth).  It is also a very deft re-telling of Shakespeare's Othello . The story unfolds on the night of an anniversary party in honour of famed Jazz musician Aurelius Rex (played by Paul Harris) and noted nightclub singer Delia Lane (Marti Stevens). Over the course of the evening, drummer Johnny Cousin (Patrick McGoohan) sets about systematically convincing Rex that his wife is being unfaithful to him (spoiler: she isn't). In many respects, All Night Long follows the plot of Othello very closely - but it also departs from the original on a few key points; something that Shakespearian purists of the time were only ...

 When I announced the theme for this season of films at the Victoria Park Baptist Church, I promised off-beat and unlikely adaptations of "The Classics" and as you are about to see, I wasn't kidding. In 2009, Ben Winters published the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , which took Jane Austin's immortal classic and gave it the one ingredient that readers have always felt it lacked (or at any rate the one ingredient that Ben Winters had always felt it lacked). What might surprise Ben Winters is that sixty-six years before he published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, film-makers Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton gave us the Zombie Jane Eyre . (Full disclosure: I have never met Ben Winters. I have no earthly idea what surprises him.) Before I go any further with this, I should clarify that the Zombies of modern popular culture have almost nothing to do with the Zombies of I Walked With a Zombie . The modern conception of Zombies can be traced back to a single film: N...

 Happy New Year to everyone! I know that "time" is starting to lose its meaning after two years of this dystopian, apocalyptic nightmare we have all been enduring for the last two years, but who knows; maybe 2022 will be different. What is clear, at least in the short term, is that our Thursday-night film evenings at the Victoria Park Baptist Church will be resuming on the 13th of January. The Church's roof works are still ongoing, so we will still be gathering in the basement (the Crypt!) but the films will still be completely free and open to everyone. Last year, I deliberately chose "classic" films that were explicitly uplifting and (dare I use the F-word) Fun . I felt that we all needed some quality time at the movies, losing ourselves in some truly great cinema, and enjoying the experience of being able to sit in a darkened theatre for a couple of hours, sharing a movie-going experience with like-minded people.  That what cinema can do (at its best). It got...