'My Beautiful Laundrette' for the UK stage

Jonny Fines and Omar Malik headline the production

Have you heard that My Beautiful Laundrette, one of our favourite 80s movies and one of the most beloved LGBTQ films ever, is getting the stage treatment? The production which is using the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Hanif Kureishi as its text, will open September 20th at Leicester's Curve. Though it's not a musical adaptation, the Pet Shop Boys are composing the score for it. The leads look the part but we are giggling a bit that they actually cast actors named Jonny and Omar for the lead characters of Johnny & Omar. 

If you are a UK-based reader who is plannning to see it, please do report back about your experience! I will be tense with anticipation until you do but, to quote Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) directly from the film...

In my experience it is always worth waiting for Omar"

New this weekend: "The Farewell" and "The Art of Self Defense"

The alligator thriller Crawl and the buddy comedy Stuber are the new wide releases this weekend but let us now direct your attention to the new films in limited release today, as we reviewed both during their festival runs...

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75th Anniversary: Double Indemnity

by Eric Blume

This week marked the 75th anniversary of Billy Wilder’s seven-times Oscar nominated noir classic Double Indemnity (1944).  If you haven’t seen this movie -- and I surprisingly never had, despite not one but two film noir courses in college -- rush post haste to view it:  it’s a classic noir that holds up powerfully.

Fred MacMurray is the patsy, an insurance guy who is convinced by Barbara Stanwyck to murder her husband and cash in on the double indemnity clause in the policy they conspire to have him secretly sign.  The performances by MacMurray, Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson (as the insurance boss) have incredible force.  Yes, this style of acting went out less than ten years later, but the raw power of their acting is undeniable...

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Introducing the Panelists for "Smackdown '60"

As indicated yesterday we'll shortly be looking at Psycho, Sons and Lovers, Elmer Gantry, and the Oscar nominated supporting actresses of 1960 on the next Smackdown (get your votes in!) on Sunday July 21st. It's time to introduce you to this month's esteemed panelists!

First, a hearty welcome to two first time Smackdown panelists...

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Doc Corner: Hitting the High Seas with ‘Maiden’ and ‘The Raft’

By Glenn Dunks

Did anybody see that Colin Firth movie about the amateur sailor who attempted to circumnavigate the world and failed miserably. It was called The Mercy, and while I never watched it, I did think of it as I watched Maiden. This is a film with such a remarkable true story that I couldn’t believe nobody had made a film out of it already but they had made The Mercy. Although I suppose one shouldn’t expect more: a movie about a male failure will almost always get made before that of a female success. But now we have Maiden, which puts a full stop at the end of that and seeks to settle a few more filmmaking blindspots with its oft-exhilarating telling of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old rebel who in 1989 became the skipper of the first ever female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round the World boat race.

Bless whoever invented the 16mm camera because anybody whose worth having a documentary about them apparently had one of them handy all the damn time...

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