Film / Previews
Event Cinema for December 2015
Feeling festive yet? No? Then you’ll be wanting Cannoli & Gun’s Bad Santa screening, with a sarnie. Or maybe Bristol Bad Film Club’s outing for the utterly bizarre Santa Claus v The Devil. Traditionalists have two versions of The Nutcracker to choose from. Then there’s Bristol Old Vic’s production of Jane Eyre, beamed to cinemas nationwide, ENO’s The Mikado, a couple of art docs, Buster Keaton with live music and balloons (!), and much more. Yes, it’s another packed month of event cinema. As ever, full info can be found in our detailed daily film listings starting here.
is needed now More than ever
Exhibition on Screen’s third season kicks off with a new documentary to complement the National Gallery’s current blockbuster exhibition, Goya: The Portraits. The film uses extensive location footage and Francisco Goya’s own revealing letters, together with masterpieces from great collections around the world, to explore how the great Spanish artist revolutionised portraiture.
Screening Dec 1: Vue Cribbs Causeway
A behind-the-scenes doc about Blur’s reunion tour and recording of their The Magic Whip album, bookended by live performances in Hong Kong and Hyde Park. The blurb promises candid revelations about ructions within the band that raise questions about its future.
Screening Dec 2: Vue Cribbs Causeway
English National Opera: The Mikado
Nanki-Poo loves Yum-Yum. Just one snag. She’s betrothed to Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner. Yup, you either love Gilbert and Sullivan, or you don’t. If you do, then you’ll be delighted to learn that Jonathan Miller’s Marx brothers-inspired ENO production of The Mikado, set in a very English 1930s hotel, returns to the London Coliseum and gets an ENO Screen live cinema relay.
Screening Dec 3: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green, Orpheus, Cineworld, Curzon
Fifteen years in the making, Charlie Paul’s award-winning documentary portrait of the great Ralph Steadman includes contributions from Johnny Depp, Richard E. Grant and Terry Gilliam – plus archive footage of Hunter S. Thompson. The Watershed’s screening is part of the On the Margins: Cartoonists, Satire and Democracy weekend. It will be followed by a Q&A with director Charlie Paul.
Screening Dec 6: Watershed
Francesco Clerici’s debut documentary centres on a historic bronze foundry in Milan that still uses lost-wax casting, a technique that dates back to the 4th-century BC. Without any voiceover narration and minimal background conversation, this poetic and meditative film focuses on the hands of the artisans as they shape, knead, model, mix, repair, sand and polish their creation. Hand Gestures won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at Berlinale 2015. Director Clerici will be present to talk about his film at this special screening, alongside producer Jon Barrenechea.
Screening Dec 6: Watershed
Bolshoi Ballet: The Lady of the Camellias
Bourgeois Armand Duval gets the hots for saucy courtesan Marguerite Gautier and will stop at nothing to persuade her to abandon the high-class legover game. This isn’t going to end well, is it? Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s novel, John Neumeier’s great tragic ballet is set to Chopin’s exquisite music. It’s beamed live from the Bolshoi.
Screening Dec 6: Orpheus, Showcase Cinema De Lux, Cineworld
Director Sally Cookson brings her strikingly imaginative Bristol Old Vic production of the Charlotte Bronte classic to the National. Originally performed over two nights, it’s now staged as a single piece. Go here for more on the production, which returns to Bristol early in 2016.
Screening Dec 8: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Orpheus, Odeon, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green, Cineworld, Curzon
Nuit de la Glisse: Don’t Crack Under Pressure
Skiers, snowboarders, wingsuit pilots and surfers enjoy daredevil acts of exceptional foolhardiness for your entertainment in this latest Nuit de la Glisse film from Thierry Donard. The spectacular locations include Norwegian fjords, the waves of Fakarava and the Swiss Alps.
Screening Dec 9: Showcase Cinema De Lux
ROH: Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci
Often performed together, these two short Italian verismo tragic operas each tell tales of passionate love that sours to violent jealousy. For his new production, Damiano Michieletto sets both operas in a poverty stricken, mafia-dominated village in 1980s southern Italy. Antonio Pappano conducts a top-notch cast including Eva-Maria Westbroek and Aleksandrs Antonenko.
Screening Dec 10: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Orpheus, Odeon, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green
Encore screening Dec 13: Showcase Cinema De Lux
Bristol Bad Film Club: Santa Claus v The Devil
Bristol Bad Film Club‘s festive present to us all is this dubbed Mexican curio from 1959. On Christmas Eve, Santa is playing with his organ in his crystal Toyland space castle filled with alarmingly erotic machines, which he shares with fellow beardy child-botherer Merlin the Magician. Meanwhile, down in Hell, Lucifer dispatches a demon named Pitch to dispose of Santa and make all the world’s rug-rats do evil. Mr. Christmas ain’t gonna take this threat to festivities lying down, and promptly unleashes a toy cannon upon the demon’s bottom. Santa movies don’t get much weirder than this. It’s just one of a number of Mexican flicks redubbed by US producer K. Gordon Murray in the 1950s and unleashed on American audiences with such splendid titles as Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy and Samson vs. The Vampire Women. All proceeds from this screening go to One25.
Screening Dec 10: Trinity
“Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!” Oh yes, Billy Bob Thornton is very bad indeed. When he’s not boning groupies, this unshaven, perpetually drunken, foul-mouthed department store Santa is abusing the kids who queue to sit on his knee, most of whom flee in tears. Movies’n’nosh specialists Cannoli & Gun‘s screening at the Salt Café includes the sandwich of your choice. Advance tickets for this festive treat for everyone who loathes Christmas, price £10, are available here.
Screening Dec 13: Salt Café
Bolshoi Ballet: The Nutcracker
You know the drill: dancing nutcrackers, hordes of mice, a sugar plum fairy. Are these people on drugs? Choreographed by former Bolshoi Artistic Director Yuri Grigorovich, Tchaikovsky’s Christmassy ballet was recorded live last December.
Screening Dec 13: Orpheus
Florence and the Uffizi Gallery
Sky’s follow-up to its hit Vatican Museums 3D, which is apparently the most watched art doc ever shown in cinemas. The filmmakers make use of cutting-edge technology to offer a nose around the masterpieces on display in Florence’s Uffizi gallery and its grounds. These include Michelangelo’s David, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Annunciation, Birth of Venus by Botticelli and the Shield of Medusa by Caravaggio. But the money shot is the much-anticipated unveiling of the restoration of the Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo Da Vinci, which has been under wraps since 2011. The film was made in 4K and 3D, but is being screened in different formats, so you may want to check that the cinema of your choice is showing the version you want to see before making a journey.
Screening Dec 14: Vue Cribbs Causeway
Neil Brand Presents Buster Keaton
Composer, musician and broadcaster Neil Brand assembles his selection of Buster Keaton’s funniest moments, followed by a full screening of the stunt-packed classic Steamboat Bill, Jr – which includes that legendary scene where a house falls down around Old Stoneface. This event will be signed by a BSL interpreter and they’ll be using balloons during the screening to help amplify the sound of Neil’s accompaniment.
Screening Dec 15: Watershed
The Royal Ballet: The Nutcracker
The return of Peter Wright’s production of the festive Tchaikovsky ballet, based on ETA Hoffmann’s fairytale.
Screening Dec 16: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green, Odeon, Orpheus
Encore screening Dec 27: Showcase Cinema De Lux
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