This week's new film events Jul 20th 2013, 05:00
Shock And Gore | British Airways Silent Picturehouse | Pride film festivals | Mogwai + Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Shock And Gore, Birmingham
Like all good horror festivals, this is a mix of old classics and new blood, the latter led by James "Saw" Wan's Amityville-like The Conjuring. Talking of blood, Xan Cassavetes makes her fiction debut with modern vampire flick Kiss Of The Damned, while a post-dinner dare game gets horribly messy in Would You Rather. For the more civilised there's Coppola's Dracula, and for the sincerely debauched, Saturday is an all-nighter, with films, parties, horror-director guests and offbeat awards such as Best Death and Worst Nicolas Cage Movie.
Various venues, Sat to 25 Jul
British Airways Silent Picturehouse, London
Cementing the relationship between movies and air travel, BA transforms the arched caverns of Vinopolis into a sumptuous cinema lounge this week, where you can choose between five films playing simultaneously (in different rooms) by switching between channels on your headphones. By day, there are children's films, including Oz The Great And Powerful and The Muppets; at night, "travel-inspired" films including Slumdog Millionaire, Top Gun and Skyfall. Plus a gourmet "in-flight menu" and champagne cocktails. So it's just like being on a plane, apart from the lack of turbulence, engine noise, cramp and unwanted announcements from the captain. The fact that you don't have to endure a rigorous and time-consuming security check to get in is also a bonus.
Vinopolis, SE1, Mon to Fri
Pride film festivals
Pride season is in full swing, and there's plenty of LGBT-related cinema to see this week. Brighton celebrates queer icons, starting with a Mark Ravenhill-fronted documentary on Bette Bourne, the gay rights campaigner whose touring drag act came to resemble a real-life Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert. There's also The Times Of Harvey Milk (the doc) and Judy Garland's camp 1963 classic I Could Go On Singing. Liverpool starts its season on Wednesday with She Said Boom, a documentary on Toronto all-girl post-punk "queercore" collective Fifth Column, followed by a panel discussion on art and activism, with more LGBT films to follow in the summer.
Komedia & Duke of York's, Brighton, Sun to 4 Aug; various venues, Liverpool, Wed to 29 Aug
Mogwai + Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Manchester, London & Glasgow
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's 2006 film is that rarest of things: a sports film that's fascinating to art fans and an art film that's fascinating to sports fans. With cameras positioned around Real Madrid's Bernabéu stadium, it tracks Zidane over the course of a game and provides a radically different view of a football match and a unique study of an iconic figure in their element. Glasgow noisemongers Mogwai provide the haunting score (they also scored French TV hit The Returned), and the group play live alongside the movie for the first time this week.
Albert Hall, Manchester, Sat; 220 Broomielaw, Glasgow, Sun; Barbican, EC2, Fri
YOUR COMMENT
