The Talbot Cinema Society will lead off its 2017-2018 season with the Master of Suspense.
At its Sept. 11 meeting, TCS will screen The Lady Vanishes, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and released in 1938. Travelers on a trans-European train are delayed for a night due to bad weather in an unidentified country. The passengers cram into the small village hotel, where socialite Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) meets an old governess, Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty). Shortly after the journey restarts, Miss Froy is nowhere to be found. Also starring Michael Redgrave. Critic Leonard Maltin gave The Lady Vanishes 4 out of a possible 4 stars, and Rotten Tomatoes rated it 98% Fresh.
Tension mounts among her fellow passengers following the mysterious disappearance of Miss Froy in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.
As in years past, the season’s first meeting is the Cinema Society’s gift to the community. Everyone is invited to attend free of charge.
If Alfred Hitchcock is our most famous director, Steven Spielberg runs a close second. On Oct. 1, TCS will screen his Munich (2005), an historical crime drama starring Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush and Eric Bana. It is based on the true story of the Black September aftermath, about the five men chosen to eliminate the terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Munich was nominated for five Academy Awards and two Golden Globes. This meeting, and this meeting only, will begin at 3:30 p.m., and the doors will open at 3. All other TCS meetings will begin at 4 p.m., and the doors will open at 3:30.
On Nov. 5, the parade of silver screen icons continues with Daniel Day-Lewis, starring in My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears, who also helmed The Queen and Dangerous Liaisons. Released in 1985, this is the movie that put Day-Lewis on the map and started him on the road to four British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, three Academy Awards and two Golden Globes. Hanif Kureishi’s screenplay was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award.
Director Irvin Kershner mixes comedy, drama and romance into a delightful confection in A Fine Madness (1966), showing Dec. 3. In between Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery mesmerized as Samson Shillitoe, a mad genius of a poet irresistible to – and unable to resist –women. When plagued by writer’s block, he agrees to see a psychiatrist… and his beautiful wife. Connery’s performance made it clear that there was life – and plenty of it –after James Bond.
Ring in the New Year with a film by three-time Oscar nominee Christopher Nolan, the man behind the Dark Knight trilogy and the current World War II spectacular Dunkirk. Memento, the story of an ex-insurance investigator searching for his wife’s murderer as he wrestles with short-term memory loss,is on tap for Jan. 7, 2018. You’ll need to be on your toes to keep up with this neo-noir psychological thriller. As a result of a past trauma, Leonard (Guy Pearce) suffers from both anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new memories; and short-term memory loss that strikes approximately every five minutes. Memento tells two separate stories from Leonard’s recent past. One moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards, revealing more each time Leonard revisits it. Nominated for two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano co-star.
Be sure to wear your salsa dancing shoes on Feb. 11, when the Talbot Cinema Society presents Calle 54, a documentary featuring performances by 13 stars of the Latin Jazz music scene. Filmed in Mexico and all over Europe by Fernando Trueba, and released in 2000, Calle 54 chronicles his love affair with Latin Jazz as he follows a baker’s dozen musical giants into the studio. Winner of the Patron’s Award for Best Feature Film at the San Diego International Film Festival.
On March 4, TCS will take you back to the Golden Age of British Comedy, when the Boulting Brothers ruled the comic roost at England’s Shepperton Studios. Directed by John Boulting, this gleeful 1959 glimpse of class warfare, I’m All Right, Jack, stars Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Rutherford and the inimitable Terry-Thomas. Stanley Windrush (Carmichael), anaive aristocrat, returns from World War II, his mind set on a career in business and a corner office. Much to his dismay, he soon finds he has to start from the bottom and work his way up. Before long, he becomes an unwitting pawn in a power struggle between management (his uncle) and the labor union. Winner of two BAFTA Awards, and in America, it made the National Board of Review’s list of Top Foreign Films.
The season finale, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, is a seven-year-old documentary by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney. In government and politics in America, seven years is, if not a lifetime, at least a generation. But Gibney’s documentary tells a story that has been oft repeated before and since. For it chronicles the avarice and audacity of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the high-rolling influence peddler who skated too close to the edge. He not only took down House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, an Ohio congressman and two White House officials, but also wound up doing time. This movie was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
As in years past, the Talbot Cinema Society will meet monthly in one of the small theaters with the plush seats at Easton Premier Cinemas. To enhance your enjoyment, each movie will be introduced by one of TCS’s famous talking heads.If you’re hungry and thirsty, a mere $2 will buy you a small popcorn and a small soft drink. But wait! There’s more! Cinema Society members will receive discount admission to Easton Premier Cinemas’ Encore Cinema movies on Thursdays. Meetings will be held on the first Sunday of each month, with the following exceptions: Sept. 11 and Feb. 11, to avoid conflicts with Labor Day Weekend and the Super Bowl. Membership for the entire season costs $45 per person. To join, send your check to Talbot Cinema Society, P.O. Box 222, Easton, MD 21601. Or bring it to the Sept. 11 meeting.
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