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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: It's time for me to take a holiday (or two).
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-05-2008 01:23 PM
Well, that's holiday No. 1 over, I'm on my way back to London tomorrow morning, arrive mid afternoon, and then I've got to work 12.5 hours, 08:00-20:30, on Wednesday. I passed through another film location today. There are certain films which you are just 'supposed' to like; it's just not the done thing to say that you don't. I like many of David Lean's films, 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Dr. Zhivago', and going back to the older black and white ones, 'Oliver Twist' and 'Great expectations'. However, there's one which I simply cannot stand, Brief Encounter. I haven't seen it for many years, but my memory of is of a boring film about a boring woman who keeps running up the ramp to a boring railway station to meet a boring man and hold boring conversations with him in the boring station buffet on the platform.
The location was Carnforth, in Lancashire, which is famous for just about nothing else. A pleasant ride out to Morcambe, but any mention of that place makes me think of another film, and the awful women who ran the 'Society for the Bereaved' there in the BBC's brilliant production of Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' It was made for television, and has only had a handful of cinema screenings, a couple at the National Film Theatre and one at a Cinema in North London, as a tribute to Charlotte Coleman who played the adult Jess, and who sadly died a few years ago. She was also in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and, in her younger days, various children's television programmes. A sad loss at a very early age.
Anyway, holiday over, suitcase to be packed, and then a long journey home. There are a lot of other places that I would liked to have visited while I was here, but no time. Maybe another trip later on.
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 05-08-2008 11:26 PM
Well, maybe it HAS changed. It's been 27 years since I've been around there for any length of time... but I was in an industrial area there just 2 or 3 years ago, when I drove a truck, and it looked like it hadn't changed much.
Who knows, maybe I'll get a wild hair and venture over one day to scope it out...
Btw, WELCOME BACK to the states! I certainly would like to meet with you sometime while you're here, Stephen, but I'm off on holiday myself starting tomorrow night. I'm leaving for Kentucky and Ohio. Didn't you visit here about this same time last year? Seems like I remember missing you the last time, too.
Have fun in Poughkeepsie (birthplace of Ed Wood)! I service the South Hills Mall theatre there, and always enjoy the trip up. The managers are very nice to work with, too.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-09-2008 07:37 AM
When I land at Newark one of the first things I see is the Budweiser brewery; reminds me of the foul-tasting stuff they brew at Mortlake. I did wonder if it was just the British-brewed stuff which was terrible, but I'm told that the stuff they brew here, at Newark, or their main brewery in St. Louis MO, or several other sites, is just as bad.
It's a bit odd, because Anheuser-Busch is a long-established brewer. It's a bit like The Sun (newspaper), everybody says how terrible it is, yet vast numbers of people seem to buy it. Maybe tastes are improving however, a couple of years ago huge amounts of shelf space in the local Tesco were given over to the stuff, but more recently it's shrunk to maybe a third of the size, and I've noticed the same thing in other shops, with many more vastly better beers, ciders and even perry from smaller producers.
I think the last film I saw here was 'Brazil', and that has some scenes filmed at the old Croydon 'B' power station, now the site of Ikea. I don't think the still-existing chimneys were seen, but the very distinctive brickwork of the main building was.
The rather grim row of blocks of flats seen in 'A Clockwork Orange' is at Thamesmead North, I've passed quite close by when visiting the old Crossness pumping station and engines. This reminds me of a story in a local paper some years ago, before the preservationists took over the place and restored one of the engines to working order, with regular open days. In those days the engines and building were largely derelict, and there was no public access, but a private visit had been arranged by a group of industrial archeologists. This as reported in he local paper, but they had mis-understood the purpose of the visit, and they described it as a visit by a group of 'Sewage enthusiasts'! I somehow doubt there are such things, but I can just imagine it; they would travel all over the World, visiting sewage works, collecting samples in glass jars that they would display on shelves. ..."And this is a particularly fine specimen of Beckton 1992; you will observe the scum floating on it"
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-09-2008 11:01 PM
quote:
He goes all the way from South London to New Jersey, only to see a film shot in South London!
I've just come out from the Loew's Jersey, and I'm glad I did go to see it. The film was significantly different to the only version which I've previously seen.
For anybody who doesn't know, the film was officially unavailable in any form in the UK for many years. It is sometimes said that it was banned, which it was not. It was passed by the British Board of Film Censors (as it then was) with an 'X' certificate, which I think at that time was still age 16 and over. I don't know if any cuts were requested at this time. The film was released, but soon afterwards Kubrik had it withdrawn from distribution. There are several stories about why and how he did this, but the result was that the film was not available in the UK. It was still available in France, and was screened there for many years.
I would have been 14 when the film was released, so I didn't get to see it; whether I would have been interested enough to have gone to see it at that age, I don't know, probably not. There were attempts to get the film re-released, but these were not successful. Not long before Kubrik died a television company wanted to iclude a few brief clips in a programme; the matter went to court, and they were eventually allowed to do so. I saw this programme, the first time I had seen any of the film. The film was also screened as part of a Kubrik season at the NFT, I cannot remember if this was before or after his death; it was around the same time. I did not see this screening. Not long afterwards the film was released on DVD for the first time, and I bought a copy. This is the only version of the film which I had seen, until this evening. The version shown at the Loew's contained significant extra material. It's about three years since I last saw the DVD, but the sequence with the lodger was longer, as was the encounter with the two ex-droogs who had become police officers, and the visit by the government minister at the end of the film. The shot of Alex with the young woman at the very end of the film was completely missing from the DVD; in that version the large loudspeakers were wheeled into the room, and Alex, as narrator, says 'I was cured alright', which always seemed odd to me. The missing shot, although it's only a second or two, explains this strange ending.
I don't know if this extra material was included in the film as it was originally screened in the UK, but I find it somewhat strange that it wasn't restored to the DVD. I suppose I can sort of see why the 'police' and 'minister' scenes might have had cuts made in them, but not the lodger one. As for the final scene with the young woman, removing it means that Alex's final comment makes no sense, and the film contains other scenes of sex and nudity, so I can't really see why this one should have been removed.
Did anybody notice the continuity error in the scene where Billy Boy and his droogs attack the 'Weepy young devotchka' in the derelict casino?
quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
I'll be projecting Clockwork Orange tonight...
I didn't see you Mitchell; did you not come down from the box after the show.
Sorry to hear about the passing of Bob Eberenz (is that the correct spelling?) I met him just once, Bob Furmanek introduced him to me when I first came over, in 2002.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-10-2008 05:16 AM
Kubrick's self-imposed ban actually caused the closure of the Scala Cinema, in Pentonville Road, London. In September 1992 they screened a print from a private collection. Kubrick found out about it and sued for breach of copyright, and the resulting legal bill (I think it was more the lawyers' fees than the actual damages awarded) was enough to make the place go bust.
I've only heard one account as to why Kubrick withdrew it: that he wanted the film to serve as a warning against gratuitous violence, but that after a murder took place which was allegedly inspired by the film a few months after it came out, he thought that his message wasn't being heard and therefore withdrew the film.
He shot himself in the foot by doing so, IMHO. When I was a teenager and first starting to take a serious interest in cinema, there were two things which gained you instant respect among like-minded friends: owning a pirate VHS of Reservoir Dogs (which the BBFC passed for cinema release but not for home video until around 4-5 years later), and having seen A Clockwork Orange. In around 1995 or '96 I visited Paris and was looking round the Fnac video store just opposite Montparnasse station. When I asked the assistant, in halting French, if they had a copy of The Wages of Fear, she replied (in perfect English) that they didn't, but would I like A Clockwork Orange? All the English tourists seemed to want to buy it, she said, and they had it both on VHS and Laserdisc. To boost my street cred in the NFT bar I duly bought one, and two hours in front of the goggle box later was scratching my head, wondering what all the fuss was about.
So because Kubrick personally only owned the UK rights (and therefore couldn't embargo the film anywhere else), the ban didn't work: anybody who really wanted to see it only had to hop across the Channel. But because he did it, a film which otherwise would have disappeared without trace (and IMHO is one of his weakest films, if not the weakest) built up precisely the cult following he was trying to avoid. When the theatrical rerelease happened shortly after his death I was working at City Screen York - audiences were virtually non-existent. It was getting 20 punters at most on the Friday and Saturday evening shows.
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