Friday, December 15, 2006

Ken Russell's The Devils, Philip Ridley's The Reflecting Skin


We have resumed monthly film events at Blim! Next Friday, December 22nd - with doors opening at 7 PM -- we'll be playing the widescreen, "restored" version of Ken Russell's infamous (and currently unavaible) film The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon - and starring Oliver Reed as a debauched priest on the road to martyrdom. Naked orgying vomiting nuns? "The Rape of Christ?" Perverse witchhunters and the Black Death? What a PERFECT CHRISTMAS MOVIE!
No, really - it's a good film; equal to Women in Love, and far superior to most of Russell's subsequent work. We'll be projecting this off DVD; it's an imperfect version, but the best possible one availble - far superior to the cropped, stretched, and mutilated VHS edition.


After The Devils, to continue in a seasonally dark vein, it's Philip Ridley's neglected cult hit The Reflecting Skin - a perverse prairie David Lynchercise about a young boy growing up surrounded by evil, confusion, and twisted religion. We'll be screening a seldom-seen widescreen version (projected off Japanese VHS); features an early role by Viggo Mortensen, as the boy's brother, nearly returned from the bombing of Hiroshima. Vampires? Serial killers? Pedophiles? Exploding frogs? Yep, that's the Christmas spirit for ya! Hope to see you at Blim, December 22nd!

By the way, on the 23rd, Bela Tarr's Satantango will be playing at the Vancity Theatre, a 7 hour long Hungarian film about the decline of communism and the nature of evil. Shot in a lovely, transfixing black and white, it's one of the most significant works of film art of the last 20 years. This one is for the SERIOUS cinephiles, tho', folks. But you probably figured that out.

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