I Blood Oath I 15) Bryan Brown stars as an Australian officer trying Japanese soldiers for war crimesin lU-lolndonesia. ln Stephen Wallace's mildly political drama. issues ofjustice and vengeance are raised but never satisfactorily dealt with. See review. ()deon Glasgow from Fri 5.
WIFW“
l . I
a
I Bonfire Of The Vanities (15 ) Tom Wolfe's modern classic brought to the screen by Brian DePalma in disappointing shape and with a completely new ending. Tom Hanks stars as the stockbroker whose car accident plunges him into a sea oftroubles. Melanie (iriffith his mistress. Bruce Willis the hack on his case and Morgan Freeman the honest judge. See preview. \‘ery wide release from Fri 12.
IThB Field ( 12) From the Irish team that scored a huge hit With My Left For)! comes a pre-war urban tragedy. starring Richard Harris. Tom Berenger. John Hurt and Brenda Fricker. See preview. ()deons Glasgow and Edinburgh from Fri 12.
5‘, 1".
j I sf I Golden Braid I 15) Complex. moving and slightly surreal love story by Australian Paul Cox. about a philandering but introverted clock-mender (Chris Haywood). His romantic life is deepened
I and enhanced by his discovery of an ancient but pristine braid ofhair in the drawer of an antique dresser. See preview. Edinburgh Filmhouse from Sun l-l'. (ilas‘gow
Film Theatre from Mon 2‘).
l
iii The List 5 — 18 April 1991
18 LISTINGS 25
>< LL] 9 .z.
GFT’s second coming
The special French double-bill of Jean Vigo's L’Atalante and its latterday
successor, Boy Meets Girl by maverick 5
80s auteur Leos Carax, on Sunday 7 April marks the public opening of
Glasgow Film Theatre's second screen '
and concludes a further giant step forward in the venue’s ongoing ambitious development plan. Undoubtedly, the arrival of an impressively appointed new 144-seat auditorium deveoted to expanding the GFT’s already wide-ranging filmic fare is splendid news for the city’s movie fans, for director Ken Ingles reckons the bonus of GFT 2 should enable him to increase the number of programmes screened by upwards of 30 per cent. ‘We’ll be continuing our policy of trying to give every film the screen-time it deserves depending on the business we think it's going to do,’
5‘ 4‘ “1 ' i
' L'Atalante—screening in GFTZ' the GFT Development Project by any
means, however, as the opening of the
7 new screen is only the second target in a larger four-phase plan. To get to this
stage has cost some £610,000, with the
he explains. ‘Obviously though with the 1
second auditorium there’ll be significant differences, mainlythatthe smaller but very worthwhile
largest grants coming from Strathclyde Region and the Scottish Film Council, a
; substantial interest-free loan from Glasgow District Council, plus
independent releases which previously i 1 from British Telecom and the project’s
took too long to get to Glasgow, or perhaps didn’t get here at all, will now geta much betterdeal.’
Ingles cites examples including Aki Kaurismaki’s I Hired A Contract Killer and ldrissa Ouedraogo’s Tilai as exactly the kind of offering that he’d been unable to so far accommodate in his main 404-seater, adding that GFT 2 will also allow a broader scope for both repertory programming, touring packages from the BFI and Film & Video Umbrella, and the already laudable work put in by his education officer, Paula Visocchi.
Not that this means the completion of
sponsorship deals of £25,000 apiece builders, Glasgow firm MDW. The GFT
: itself has topped up these monies with a further bank-loan and another
5 £50,000 raised by a seat-sponsorship l scheme. Still to come are the opening
of a new bar facility and improved office conditions for the long-suffering staff, which probably indicates why the brouhaha hasn’t been too loud for the opening of the new cinema. Instead, we'll have to wait until June when all the work should be closer to completion. A week of exciting preview screenings is already being planned. TrevorJohnston)
Dousing The Be
From the moment that novelist, commentator and raconteurTom Wolfe decided that he would have nothing to do with the project controversy has not been far behind Brian De Palma’s screen version of Bonfire Of The Vanities. A panoramic look at the New York scene of the late 80s, following the fortunes of slick Wall Street Broker Sherman McCoy’s trial for the
hit-and-run murder of a young black kid
one evening when the financier had mistakenly found himself lost deep in the city’s urban jungle, virtually everyone in the city seems to have voiced their opinion on what DePalma and co were doing wrong even before the film had finished shooting.
The Bronx authorities were up in arms at the on-screen treatment of their neighbourhood, while the, er,
nfire
curious casting (that nice Tom Hanks as Master of the Universe McCoy, Melanie Griffith as his chic ltalianate mistress, Bruce Willis as a sozzled English journo) came in for particular flak. When it was released over Christmas in the US, the critics had a field day, and though much of their vitriol was directed at the mishandled transition from page to celluloid, the ferocity of attack was enough to sink the estimated $75 million movie atthe box office.
In Britain, the film's distributors Warner Bros took fright and yanked it from its January 18 release date and cancelled all press previews anywhere in the country, bar one showing in London forthe national media afterthis magazine had gone to press, while their marketing manager Paul Lewis issued this terse statement: ‘Following the adverse criticism in America, we
took a decision not to screen the film until very close to the release date. We
did not see that we had anything to gain by screening the film earlier.’ This viewer, like many others, can thus only withhold judgement until the film opens in the UK and across central Scotland on Friday 12 April. (Trevor Johnston)
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Kenny Mathieson talks to the maverick Australian filmmaker Paul Cox about his new film. Golden -
f Braid.
l’aul Cox is one of those directors much prized by people who like cinema to reflect a personal. idiosyncratic vision. rather than follow the dictates ofcurrent fashion or commercial logic. which often as not proves to be illogic anyway. Cox was born and brought up in Holland. but has carried on his whole filmmaking career in Australia.
His latest film (in/den Braid is a mysterious and highly original one. but has clear connections with the almost obsessive themes which recur f throughout his work. He deals consistently with the simplest but arguably most difficult cinematic subject of all. the complex workings ofpersonal relationships.
In the past. Cox has dealt with relationships between a wealthy