A classic BBC “Play For Today,” written and directed by the great David Hare (“Plenty”) and starring Bill Nighy and Kate Nelligan. It is NOT AVAILABLE ON DVD. Here’s a synopsis from AMG:
Dreams of Leaving is centered around the Candide-like experiences of novice journalist Bill Nighy. He is determined to experience first-hand the social and mating habits of London’s elite. Nighy gets more than he bargained for at the hands of bed-hopping socialite Kate Nelligan.Read More »
Quote: World ecological collapse; the next ice-age has already begun! Lucky for us, governments know what to do…
As it was produced like a documentary and meant to be shown an episode of the series “Science Report”, many people still believe Alternative 3 was based on a true story. The fact it has never been repeated on British TV has given ammunition to conspiracy theorists who believe Alternative 3 was meant to blow the whistle on an actual government project and alien threat. The film was originally intended to be broadcast on April Fools’Day as a hoax, but it was delayed until June by industrial action Music by Brian EnoRead More »
Annie, the mistress of a middle-aged financier, accompanies him on a trip to Hong Kong. When his business interests collapse Annie ends up destitute. She is befriended by a group of socialites and begins her rite of passage in their world.Read More »
Quote: Bona, released in 1980, is perhaps his best–regarded work. The title character is a young, starstruck schoolgirl (played by Nora Aunor) who falls in love with an ageing actor (Phillip Salvador) and becomes his servant. She waits on him loyally in his decrepit shack, receiving nothing for her labors but the privilege of being his slave. When the actor decides he has had enough of her and attempts to toss her aside, Bona retaliates in a wholly unexpected, utterly justified fit of violent rage. As with many of his other independently made films, Bona reveals Brocka’s uncanny ability to join the personal and the political, to locate the overarching social statement in an intimate, deeply individualized gesture. Read More »
Jim Jarmusch’s first full length film “Permanent Vacation”, is a day in the life of a ‘beat-down’ young fellow, interested in Charlie Parker. He wanders the streets of Manhattan, engaging in detached conversations with likes of his girlfriend, strangers, and his mentally feeble mother. Using lots of long takes, the film takes it time wandering, giving it a humerous candid feel. With a soundtrack and cameo by John Lurie playing a ” vibrating bugged-out” versison of ‘Over the Rainbow’ giving it a jadded ‘beat-jazz’ feel.Read More »
From DVD booklet: Right from the opening credits we come into contact with logograms, starting with the place where this desire to write was fantastically formed, inspired by the love Dotremont has for Gloria, the woman of his life for whom he invented this new poetic form. Throughout the film the camera records the position of the body, the hands, the progress of the ink, the birth of his visual poems, right up to the burning that awaits those that are not perfect. With the fictional reconstruction of a morning’s work, ‘Pension pluie de roses, Tervueren, Belgique’, the film also gives an account of a morning like any other, one that summarises all of them: the confinement of an ill man, connected to the world by a huge amount of correspondence, infinite telephone calls, an accumulation of papers, books, souvenirs from travels, with Lapland, a mythical place, ever present. A Lapp song, Dotremont’s gravelly voice, that of a correspondent, Gloria maybe, emphasize what the image shows, the creative effort during ‘Proust-like’ declining years that are confined and feverish.Read More »
Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures (1978)
This lighthearted romp through Royal India presents a world of Maharajas, palaces, imperiled art objects, and the foreign collectors who will stop at nothing to possess them. Peggy Ashcroft and Larry Pine star as two rapacious art collectors who come to the decaying Art Deco palace of a young Maharaja (Victor Banerjee) to examine a legendary collection of Indian miniature paintings. While vying with each other to get the pictures away from the royal couple—nicknamed Georgie and Bonnie as children by their Scottish governess—they must also divine the true motives of the Indian curator of the collection (Saeed Jaffrey), who, in league with the Maharaja’s beautiful sister (Aparna Sen), may be working against them. Amidst the backdrop of lavish tourist entertainments, Christmas parties, fireworks, and even an English ghost, a desperate game of palace intrigue will determine the ultimate resting place of the priceless paintings.Read More »