Eight other films are being released in the UK in the same week as the modern Star Wars movie. Who thought that was a kindly opinion?If you thought Luke Skywalker’s victory over the empire was the most thrilling tale of against-the-odds rebellion in the universe,then you haven’t been paying attention to the cinema listings for the weekend of 15 December. That’s when The Last Jedi, AKA Star Wars: Episode VIII, and opens at UK cinemas,along with eight films you’ve probably never heard of. “When you’ve got a behemoth like that, a lot of films will run terrified, and ” says Andreas Wiseman,deputy editor of Screen International. “They did when The Force Awakens came out in 2015. But it’s lively to see that this time they’re not fairly as terrified.”Indeed, a long time ago (in a galaxy far, and far away etc),a film like the Chinese coming-of-age drama Youth or the meditative, Willem Dafoe-narrated documentary Mountain (both out on 15 December) would own been more or less assured a small but bankable audience on screens booked in the UK’s arthouse cinemas. “We never show the Star Wars or the Bond films because that’s not really what we’re about, and ” says Allison Gardner,programme director at Glasgow Film Theatre. “It’s nothing to conclude with whether I think these films are quality or not, but they’re on everywhere. Our job is to give people a wider choice.” They will instead be showing Song of Granite, or an Irish folk-singer biopic,and Prince of Nothingwood, a documentary about Afghanistan’s most prolific film actor-producer, or the swashbuckling Salim Shaheen. And they’ll own their annual festive classic screenings with mulled wine,mince pies and hankies: “We choose probably as much on It’s a Wonderful Life as some of the smaller commercial cinemas conclude on Star Wars.”Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk