A classic from American director Spike Lee, an Oscar-winning music documentary and an intense romantic drama feature in my highlights this week. On Saturday July 27 at 7.55pm we’re also screening Rialto Channel 48 Hour Grand Final Special - congratulations to all the winners! This week's highlights are...
A classic from American director Spike Lee, an Oscar-winning music documentary and an intense romantic drama feature in my highlights this week. On Saturday July 27 at 7.55pm we’re also screening Rialto Channel 48 Hour Grand Final Special - congratulations to all the winners!
My highlights for this week are:
The Deep Blue Sea
Directed by: Terence Davies
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Ann Mitchell
Screening: Saturday 27th July, 8.30pm
If you like your romances measured and full of angst then The Deep Blue Sea is for you. Featuring a stunning performance by Rachel Weisz, this emotional drama is based on Terence Rattigan's 1952 play about the final days of a dying relationship. Set in post WWII Britain, Weisz is Hester, an intelligent woman who rebels from her passionless marriage, leaving her older and respectable High Court judge husband for charming and attractive RAF pilot Freddie (Hiddleston). When the relationship begins to unravel, Hester takes drastic action to draw Freddie back to her and we find ourselves immersed in the tragic moment when a relationship falls apart.
Searching for Sugar Man – 2013 Oscar Winner - Best Documentary.
Starring: Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman, Craig Bartholomew Strydom & Sixto Rodriguez
Directed by: Malik Bendjelloul
Screening: Thursday 25th July
The feel good hit of 2012, Searching for Sugar Man is an uplifting music documentary that solves the mystery of what happened to 70s’ folk singer Sixto Rodriquez. The documentary follows two South Africans who were massive Rodriguez fans, music journalist Craig Bartholomew Strydom and record shop owner Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman. Together they spent years searching for the truth about Rodriquez, who had supposedly committed suicide on stage. Rodriquez released two albums in the early 70s that didn’t fire and soon after he was dropped from his record label, returning to life as a construction worker. What Rodriquez didn’t know was that in South Africa he was a hero, and an important voice for anti-Apartheid whites. Searching for Sugar Man, quite rightly, pays tribute to Rodriquez’s talent.
Clockers
Directed by: Spike Lee
Starring: John Turturro, Harvey Keitel and Mekhi Phifer
Screening: Sunday 28th July, 8.30pm
Produced by Martin Scorsese, with a screenplay written by Clockers author Richard Price (known for his novels The Wanderer and TV shows like The Wire) and directed by Spike Lee, Clockers is a grim, urban crime drama about crime on the streets of a housing estate in Brooklyn. Ronald “Strike” Dunham (played by newcomer Mekhi Phifer) is a “clocker", the lowest link on the drug dealing chain, whose job is to hang around park benches and street corners selling small amounts of drugs. Already despondent about his deadbeat job, Strike’s life really begins to fall apart when he’s asked to take out another clocker. What unfolds is a murder mystery, with Detectives Rocco Klein (Keitel) and his partner (Turturro) left to work out what happened. Brutal, well acted, visually vibrant and powerful, there’s no doubt this is a Spike Lee film.