#West End Cinema

[shattereddteacup]

Howards End (1992)

Dir. James Ivory

Language: English

[thollandnewsbra]

Tom Holland leaves the Duke of York Theatre after his second performance as Romeo Montague in Jamie Lloyd's ROMEO & JULIET.

(I don't know about you, but lately I've been feeling such a old-school movie-star vibe from his candids. The type of pictures you normally see in flashback page from the 90's with Keanu, Brad, Julia Roberts... it just hits different.)

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Congratulations to OMITB on boldly going where no one else has gone before. It's about time we got a rude, creepy, money-crazy, sexist, vulgar, full of shit, ethically questionable Hollywood exec who is a woman. A woman named Bev Melon. God I love this show

[dwsavideos]

BIG SPRING AWAKENING NEWS!!!

If you live in the UK, a live filmed version of the Almeida Theatre’s ‘Spring Awakening’ will be playing in select cinemas across the UK in November!! (Cinemas TBA)

Once I find out which cinemas are playing it, I’ll add it to this post! UK friends, go see it and tell me all about it! Super excited!

Edit: Sign up to be notified about tickets below!

[filmap]

Bis ans Ende der Welt / Until the End of the World Wim Wenders. 1991

River Piccaninny Creek, Purnululu WA 6770, Australia See in map

See in imdb

[mariocki]

Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, 1967)

"I'm already dead, hanged. Yes, I was hanged. Your body soon adapts a resistance to bullets."

"But, sir, I've not done anything wrong!"

"Of course not. All you did was shoot me somewhat."

[schlock-luster-video]

On May 6, 2011, Deep End was re-released in the United Kingdom.

Here's some new Jane Asher art!

[reachexceedinggrasp]

[regentstreetcinema]

We don't mean to brag, but our auditorium might just be one of the most beautiful cinema auditoriums in the world.

Photography: Bertie Watson

[robynsassenmyview]

Chekhov to the max

‘NO, Helena, you cannot play my mother’s piano!’ Andrew Scott as one of the nine characters he performs in Vanya, screening via NT Live and Ster Kinekor in South Africa this week. Photograph courtesy hampshireattractions.co.uk WHAT IS IT about Chekhov that makes us relate so beautifully to his characters that we can be unbridled in our laughter, cringes and agony of recognition at their…

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The critically acclaimed West End production of “Macbeth,” starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo, is getting a cinema release across the U.K., U.S., Australia and other select international territories.

 In an exclusive first clip of the filmed version — which was shot during the play’s run at the Donmar Warehouse last year — Tennant and Jumbo passionately perform Act 1, Scene 7, where they conspire to kill Duncan, the King of Scotland, so Macbeth can take the throne. Watch the clip above.

“Macbeth” will screen in cinemas beginning Feb. 5, 2025 from Trafalgar Releasing in partnership with Donmar Warehouse. Tickets will go on sale starting Oct. 16 at MacbethDonmarCinema.com.

👀.

[shattereddteacup]

Howards End (1992)

Dir. James Ivory

Language: English

[komsomolka]

Since the early days of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks and later communist parties everywhere placed a great emphasis on culture and on the contribution cultural workers could make to the building of socialism. One of the first things the Soviet Army of occupation did at the end of the war, was attempt to resuscitate cultural activity in a war-ravaged and demoralised Germany. The one thing the Russians could never get their head around was how a country with such a high level of culture, a nation that had produced a Bach and a Beethoven, a Goethe and a Schiller could have carried out such barbaric crimes in other countries. The Soviet army had cultural officers attached to each battalion and the war had hardly ended before they began seeking out cultural workers and encouraging them to take up their batons, musical instruments, pens and paintbrushes again. Temporary cinemas were established, orchestras formed, theatres opened and publishing houses set up.

In contrast to West Germany, in the Soviet Zone and later in the GDR, there was also an early emphasis on making films about the Nazi period as a means of educating and informing a nation ignorant of or in denial about what had happened. [...]

The GDR had more theatres per capita than any other country in the world and in no other country were there more orchestras in relation to population size or territory. With 90 professional orchestras, GDR citizens had three times more opportunity of accessing live music, than those in the FRG, 7.5 times more than in the USA and 30 times more than in the UK. It also had one of the world’s highest book publishing figures. This small country with its very limited economic resources, even in the fifties was spending double the amount on cultural activities as the FRG.

Every town of 30,000 or more inhabitants in the GDR had its theatre and cinema as well as other cultural venues. [...] Subsidised tickets to the theatre and concerts were always priced so that everyone could afford to go. Many factories and institutions had regular block-bookings for their workers which were avidly taken up. School pupils from the age of 14 were also encouraged to go to the theatre once a month and schools were able to obtain subsidised tickets. [...]

All towns and even many villages had their own ‘Houses of Culture’, owned by the local communities and open for all to use. These were places that offered performance venues, workshop space and facilities for celebratory gatherings, discos, drama groups etc. There was a lively culture of local music and folk-song groups, as well as classical musical performance.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[annoyinglandmagazine]

I just spent another afternoon trying to explain the entire silmarillion to my dad and I think he’s regretting getting me into Tolkien in the first place. You see he’s a pretty big Lord of the Rings fan, he read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when he was in his early teens and they were his favourite books for years until he got older and had other interests.

He watched all the movies in the cinema when they came out and he loved them, he always tried to get me and my siblings to watch them with him when we were younger and so on.

So I eventually watched them through with my cousins while they were visiting and I got really interested and decided maybe I should give the book a go after all.

Fast forward to when I’ve devoured the silmarillion and am googling which of the supplemental material is best to start with, buying and reading Beren and Luthien and looking for the Fall of Gondolin in bookshops.

I’m also writing fanfic about my favourite murder elves that died several millennia before LOTR started and have maybe five lines of dialogue at the bottom of the middle earth rabbit hole.

My dad was originally excited to have someone to watch the movies with him but now instead of him subjecting me to his favourite fantasy movies I am now subjecting him to my rants about why Maedhros is actually more of a Shakespeare style tragic hero than a villain and he’s trying to find the reference point for who tf Maedhros is and how this relates to why the elves sail into the west at the end of the LOTR.

I have once again taken something he’s really enthusiastic about (I did the exact same thing with classical studies) and managed to autism all over it until he only agrees to let me talk about it to be nice.

[evan-collins90]

Lloyd Center Cinemas - Portland, OR (1986)

"Tom Moyer knows the figures all too well: By the end of 1986 more than one out of every three households in the United States was equipped with at least one VCR. But the Portland, Oregon, businessman who owns the Pacific Northwest's largest theater chain, Tom Moyer's Luxury Theatres, thinks he has come up with a key to "getting the moviegoer out of the house and into the theater." He commissioned the local architectural firm Broome, Oringdulph, O'Toole, Rudolf, Boles & Associates (BOOR/A) to design not one but two multi-screen cinema complexes that would turn any couch potato into a live wire.

The Lloyd Center Cinemas was designed with the intent to rekindle the spirit and excitement of the '20s and '30s when a night out at the movies was a special occasion.

Neon signs within the glass and red steel galleria are visible from major arterials that access the shopping center. Ticket booths and queuing areas are located to assure an unobstructed view into the neon-faced lobby. Once patrons are drawn to the building's activity, they find themselves, indeed, becoming part of an event. More than 3,000 square feet of specially colored and textured exterior concrete block and tile arcades protect patrons from weather as they line up at the four-station ticket booth. Next, they proceed into the brightly lit glass galleria and the rotunda which acts as a waiting room and point from which to view the rest of the building. These areas are lit with suspended concentric rings that contain spotlights, providing uplight to the structural frame. The underside of the rings contains circles of neon, backed with a mirrored surface."

Designed by BOOR/A Architects (now BORA Architects)

Scanned from a 1987/1988 issue of Designer's West Magazine

[twig-tea]

East Palace, West Palace in ep5 of Blue Canvas of Youthful Days

I have been punched in the solar plexus by Blue Canvas of Youthful Days episode 5. So much happens in that episode that is overwhelming, from Qi Lu setting up a Netflix-and-chill date with the clear intention of making a move, to his putting on the famous film East Palace, West Palace (1996), to Qi Lu hiding Qin Xiao in the closet, to Qi Lu's panic at his father realizing he's been lied to, to the devastatingly practiced way Teacher Liu steps to Qi Lu being abused and handles his father, to the way Qi Lu shuts down, to the way QIn Xiao keeps sending mixed signals and Qi Lu calls him on it directly. And nobody else in this episode let me rest either; Tan Fan trying to ask Teacher Liu to wait for him and Liu brushing him off AGAIN, and Turtle trying to call out

@lurkingshan was already more coherent than I can be right now about what happened in the episode in her post.

So instead I want to focus on some queer cinema history that this episode evoked by using East Palace, West Palace as the film that Qi Lu shows to QIn Xiao.

For those who don't know, EPWP is considered to be the first realistic depiction of a gay man in film by a mainland Chinese production. It is to my knowledge the first time a gay man says "I love you" to another man on screen. It was made before being gay was decriminalized in China (1997), and it was filmed by an independent production company and smuggled out of China to France in order to be finished and distributed. It ended up at the Cannes festival in 1997, but the director's passport was seized and he was placed under house arrest to prevent him from attending. Despite pressure to pull the film, it still aired that year. In 1998, the Film Law was passed to prevent anyone from making films outside of the studio system (and therefore censorship review), effectively preventing anything like EPWP from being made in the future.

The film is about a gay man who cruises in the notorious bathrooms in the parks on either side of Tiananmen Square getting harassed by police officers (a situation extremely familiar to the historical queer experience in Canada [where I'm from] as well) and playing what I'd describe as a psychological game with one of them; A Lan kisses the cop, runs, and then gets caught a second time, and uses the second police confession as an excuse to tell his life's story in the public record, all while pushing the police officer a little further into deviance. As far as I'm aware, this film has been banned in China since being made and never shown (please correct me if I'm wrong about that!).

This is hitting me hard because of the much more recent history of Blue Canvas of Youthful Days itself. As most of you know, but I'll capture here for posterity, episodes 1-4 of this show aired on iQIYI (a China-based app) on August 6, and within 24 hours they were pulled from the app with no information about the future episodes being shown. When I watched episode 5 today, after waiting for it for 3 months, I was immediately hit with a wave of anger that this gorgeous, emotionally moving and powerful episode had been held back from public consumption for months, for the same reasons that the film being shown within the episode had been withheld from viewing in its own country.

Censorship is such an ugly thing, it's hard to articulate but the emotions around it are so strong because we know, when they pull or refuse to show media that depicts our lives, it's because they don't want our lives to be real; they don't want us to exist. It's a very real threat. And to have this episode--which is all about an abused boy who is in very real danger but so bravely insisting that he shoot his shot and take his best chance at love and happiness anyway, using the iconic confession scene from one of the most famous banned films in Chinese queer cinema history to do it--to have this episode be the one that was prevented from airing......I am overwhelmed.

In the scenes they watch in episode 5, A Lan tries to prevent the officer from uncuffing him, and then the officer lets him go, but A Lan doesn't go far and comes back. He declares his love to the officer's face, and demands that his love be acknowledged and not dismissed. And the officer does not know what to do with it and reacts with violence, which is partially what A Lan has been angling at all along. The show really played with this by having all three of the couples in the show stymied by having their overtures dismissed this episode, but we almost didn't get to see it.

I'm so grateful this got distribution now, and on multiple platforms. Blue Canvas of Youthful Days is airing Saturdays and Sundays on GagaOOLala and Youtube (note, as per @thisonelikesaliens's excellent language posts, the subs on Gaga are much better), and on Mondays on Viki. I know there is an avalanche of content right now, but this show is so good and worked so hard to make it to us, please give it some love!