Hidden (Caché)

I saw a brilliant new film on Monday night, free courtesy of Time Out. It's directed by Michael Haneke (Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher), and is bound to be one of the films of the year. It deals with issues like unacknowledged guilt, familial breakdown, class, and the very nature of how we perceive film itself. This is on top of being a cracking slow-burn thriller which will keep you going all the way through and give you loads to talk about afterwards. An ideal film club movie then? Maybe later in the year - who knows? I've got a longer review of it on the daily growl - highly recommended!

A feast for Babette

As you know, the next film club is at Pete and Inge's and we're showing Babette's Feast. We usually have food before the film if it's in a home, and this time we have a movie tie-in! If you're coming, please bring one item of food that you think would be part of a feast. And bring a drink. But not any dessert. And we'll see what kind of feast we get...

The Golden Globes

The Golden Globes were yesterday. Pleasingly there were big wins for Brokeback Mountain and Walk the Line and (finally!) a best actor for my personal favourite Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I've still to see most of these films (some haven't even come out here yet) but I'm looking forward to them! Walk the Line will be our film for February's film club. Full list of winners here. More Globes stuff on The Daily Growl.

Hollywood on hold

Well, after all the excitement generated by my lecture on the 29th, I've had to let everyone down by going and cancelling it! Well, postponing it till the next available slot (in the summer sometime - date tbc).

My excuse? Well it basically involves the kitchen sink! We've had to do some emergency work on our kitchen, which I reckon is going to take quite a lot of our time over the next week or so, and I won't be able to give the lecture enough decent preparation time to do it justice. So sorry about that. But I'm sure you'll understand. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait...

Film Lecture: 29 January

Well, it's official now, since it was in the notices last night. I'm doing the next Sunday evening lecture, and it's on the 29th January after the evening service. My title is 'Is Hollywood's Art in the right place? - A hundred years of tension between art and commerce in American cinema' Sound pretentious? Well, let's hope it's not too bad. I really need to knuckle down and get working on it more!

on the 29th the Bishop of Stepney is the visiting preacher. Do you think he could be persuaded to stay for the lecture?

13 (Tzameti)

I saw a good film last week - 13 (Tzameti), which is recommended for all fans of these grip-your-seat-because-of-the-tension thrillers. I've already posted it on my personal blog and reviewed it on Collective.

Top 10 films of 2005

As some of you may know, each year I compile a list of my top 10 films (as well as albums, gigs etc). The films are:

1. 2046
2. Crash
3. The Edukators
4. Maria Full of Grace
5. Sideways
6. A History of Violence
7. Broken Flowers
8. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
9. Life is a Miracle
10. Bombon El Perro

Honourable mentions: King Kong, Downfall, Palindromes, In My Father’s Den, Vera Drake


There's a little more on this list on my personal blog The Daily Growl (as well as other stuff, including my best music of last year)

Let me know what your favourites were, by posting in the comments. Who knows, if enough of you do so, I could even do a film club best of 2005!

Next film club: 27 January. Babette's Feast

The next film club will be on Friday 27 January. Thanks to Pete and Inge for agreeing to host it at their place. We'll be showing Babette's Feast (Cert. U), Gabriel Axel's 2002 film about a a remote Danish religious community, a French maid, and (unsurprisingly) a big feast. It's a lovely tale of self-sacrifice, thwarted ambitions, and lost love, sensuous joy, and grace.

Please let me know if you want to come, so we can tell Pete and Inge how many people to expect.

Upcoming film club dates.

February: The proposed date for February's film club is 20 February. We've not had a cinema event for a while, so it would be good to go out! My proposal is that we see the new Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny, and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. I've had some good feedback about this one already, so hopefully it should be a goer. The cinema and time will be confirmed nearer the time (but it will be early evening).

March: On 29 March Andrew is doing another lecture like the Taxi Driver one, this time it's the next film in the Martin Scorsese / Paul Schrader trilogy - Raging Bull. More on this film later, but it would be good to show the whole movie in film club. The proposed date is 17 March. I haven't got a venue for this one yet, so I'm looking for volunteers. It may need to be somewhere with a decent amount of space as the Taxi Driver film club was the biggest one we've had so far. Please let me know if you'd be happy to do this, or have any suggestions.

Welcome to the film club blog!

This is a new-for-2006 experiment for film club. I'm setting up this blog with the aim of making film club a wee bit more interactive. I've got a few ideas for the blog:

Firstly I can post info on upcoming film club movie showings, with further info about the films, directors, actors etc, for anybody who's interested in reading more.

It's also a chance for people to post comments and maybe even generate some kind of discussion about movies and related stuff. If there's a lot of people posting comments, it may be worth setting up a film club messageboard in the future, but for now we'll stick with the blog and see how it goes.

As well as me posting items, it would be good if there were other people interested in posting on the blog. If that's you, let me know and I'll try and sort out further posting rights. The idea is that other than posts about upcoming film club events, it may be fun to submit our reviews of films we've seen, invite people to see films outside film club and link to other sites which could be useful to film club.

Anyway, enough for now. Let me know what you think...