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dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:51:55 CST

Welcome to the new year at the Dunbar Film Society!

We have an interesting and varied line up of films for you this year - please have a look at our 2008 programme and see what catches your eye.

Choosing the right films for the Society is a great responsibility - balancing the mix between entertainment and gravity, while making sure that each film is of the quality that the membership expect, is always a challenge. The committee have made a real effort to produce a programme that will meet these demands. There are award-winners, comedies, tragedies, romances and dramas - some from the last year's releases and some from a little farther back.

Members have suggested an increase in the social aspect of the DFS. We think that's a cracking idea and we've found that the bar is open until 12:00 - we hope that you will join us for a few drinks and a little film talk after the screening.

If you have any suggestions for future screenings or events, please let us know by email or via the log book. You will understand that we can't show everything but good ideas are always welcome and we shall give all suggestions a fair hearing.

Where All films are shown at the Hallhill Healthy Living Centre in Dunbar. Entry to screenings will be on a first-come, first-served basis on the night. Please bring and show your membership card to gain entry to the film.
When Doors open at 7.30 pm. Last entry is at 7.55. A short film may be shown from 8 pm, followed by a short break and the main feature.

Guests are welcome, and guest tickets will be available from 7.45 on the night at a cost of £4.

Dunbar Film Society has bought equipment generously funded by the Dunbar Community Council, Forward Scotland, and Viridor Credits.

Call for Volunteers

We are always in need of volunteers among our membership to set up and take the down the screening equipment.

Please contact us if you would like to help.

Film Vault

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:44:28 CST

Updates will be made to this page very soon. Welcome to the Vault. This is where you will find links to previous films, along with ratings given on the night. The ratings, made by members of the audience, are marks out of 10. For years previous to 2006, we offer only the titles of the films (and average ratings for 2005), which are arranged in alphabetical order.

2006 season

Hear My Song
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "Really quirky zany film -- enjoyed very much."
"Great! Just what's needed after a hard week!"
See also: Josef Locke Appreciation Site
A Very Long Engagement
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "Thought provoking and very beautiful as well as horrific in its contrasts."
"Really well made, a little over-ambitious."
"Tres tres bien."
See also: The Heritage of the Great War
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "Excellent choice. A 'feel good' film. Great scenery."
"Unusual, enchanting, congratulations on the choice."
"Very moving. Reminded me of my childhood on the farm (minus the camels!)"
See also: National Geographic Society
On a Clear Day
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "Nice gentle film, easy viewing."
"A wee cracker."
"Very interesting. Triumph of persistence in adversity and man's pride. The type of film that stirs the blood."
See also: factbites: English Channel
Great Expectations
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "A nostalgic trip. Seen in 1949."
"Evocative."
"Anything with Sir John is fine by me. Of its time & a great story."
See also: Project Gutenberg
Sideways
Rating: 8
Comments from the audience: "Great comedy."
"A cheeky little film. Easy on the palate."
"Very good if predictable."
See also: Wine 101
Best in Show
Rating: 9
Comments from the audience: "Good for a laugh on a wet Friday."
"Hilarious."
"Christopher Guest is a comic genius."
See also: Crufts Dog Show
The Straight Story
Rating:9
Comments from the audience: "Excellent"
"Wonderful film."
See also: Roadside America

2005 Season

Ae Fond Kiss
Rating: 8
Bad Santa
Rating: Not available
Control Room, The
Rating: 7
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Rating: 6
Etre et Avoir
Rating: 10
Finding Neverland
Rating: 8
Goodbye Lenin
Rating: 8
Incredibles, The
Rating: not rated
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Rating: 9
Motorcycle Diaries
Rating: 9
Supersize Me
Rating: 6
Zatoichi
Rating: 8

2004 Season

Calendar Girls
Chicago
City of God
Frida
Master and Commander
Morvern Callar
Pirates of the Caribbean
Talk To Her
The Battle of Algiers
The Man on the Train
Whale Rider

2008 Programme

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:33:05 CST

Welcome to the Programme for the 2008 Season of the Dunbar Film Society.

25 January	Little Miss Sunshine
29 February	The Lives of Others
28 March	It Happened One Night
25 April	The Chorus
30 May	Half Nelson
27 June	Into The West
29 August	Pan's Labyrinth
26 September	United 93
31 October	Little Fish
28 November	The Taking of Pelham 123

Half Nelson

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 08:58:57 CST

Director: Ryan Fleck
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Jeff Lima, Shareeka Epps, Nathan Corbett, Tyra Kwao-Vovo, Rosemary Ledee
Rating: 15
Length: 106 minutes
Country: USA

“Secrets don't let go.”

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is an eighth-grade history teacher in an inner-city school deep in the heart of Brooklyn. He eschews the provided curriculum in favor of off-the-cuff, but deeply heartfelt lectures about the importance of understanding history, rather than just memorizing it. He speaks primarily of dialectics, the tensions between two opposing forces. He is torn between his desire to change the world and his increasingly desperate realization that he can't, at least not in the grand, awe-inspiring ways that he envisioned as an eager, idealistic college student. He started using drugs as a way to escape the pain of life, and it has turned into a crutch that bears increasingly heavy loads of psychological weight. In his classroom, which is populated almost entirely by black and Hispanic students, Dan lectures about how the world is structured into opposing forces, illustrating it at one point by arm-wrestling one of his students. His unorthodox approach inspires them during class, but interestingly enough we don't see its effects outside the classroom. The film focuses on Dan and his relationship with Drey (Shareeka Epps), a 13-year-old student of his who catches him in the bathroom smoking crack after school one day. Drey understands Dan's frustrations with life; she is the child of an overworked single mother whom she barely sees, and spending so much time on her own has made her self-reliant, but also hard on the edges.

The Chorus

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 07:59:55 CST

Director: Christophe Barratier
Cast: Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Jacques Perrin, Kad Merad, Marie Bunel, Philippe Du Janerand, and Jean-Paul Bonnaire
Rating: 12
Length: 93 minutes
Country: France

On 15 January 1949, the former music teacher Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) arrives in "Fond de l' Etang" ("Bottom of the Well"), a boarding school for orphans and problematic boys, to work as an inspector. The place is administrated with iron fist by the cruel director Rachin (François Berléand), and most of the boys have severe punishments for their faults. Clément decides to teach the boys to sing in a choir in their spare time, and identify the musical potential of the rebel Pierre Morhange (Jean-Baptiste Maunier), the son of a beautiful single mother for whom he feels a crush. He also has a special feeling for the young Pépinot (Maxence Perrin), a boy that expects the visit of his father every Saturday near the gate, but indeed lost his parents in the war. With his methods, Clément changes the lives of the boys, of the other employees and his own.

It Happened One Night

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 06:56:31 CST

Director: Frank Capra
Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns
Rating: U
Length: 105 minutes
Country: USA

“Two great lovers of the screen in the grandest of romantic comedies!”

Screwball cynicism is the order of the day in It Happened One Night, Capra's romantic comedy about a rascally reporter (Clark Gable) who falls in love with runaway heiress Claudette Colbert during an eventful bus trip. Like much in Capra's oeuvre, Night is about people who live their lives in screaming newspaper headlines, and it pops with speed and manic energy.

The Lives of Others

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 06:45:43 CST

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, and Thomas Thieme
Rating: 15
Length: 137 minutes
Country: Germany

“Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's Secret Police Listened to Your Secrets.”

The horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman and his longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland, a popular actress, are big intellectual stars in the socialist state, although they secretly don't always think loyal to the party line. One day, the Minister of Culture becomes interested in Christa, so the secret service agent Wiesler is instructed to observe and sound out the couple, but their life fascinates him more and more...

Little Miss Sunshine

dunbarfilm — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 06:30:35 CST

Directors: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell
Rating: 15
Length: 101 minutes
Country: USA

“A family on the verge of a breakdown”

Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Olive's uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive's grandfather is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.

Audience feedback

dunbarfilm — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:37:21 CDT

Crash (screened Jan '07)

and some of the comments.................

"very good, on edge all the time"
"very powerful"
"one of the best yet"
"very moving and thought provoking"

The Consequences of Love (screened Feb '07)

and some of the comments............

"excellent a wonderful experience"
"strange rather slow story, beautifully filmed, superb music"
"Tedious and contrived"
"A waste of time"
"Interseting"
"difficult"
"Boring"
"Fantastic more films like that"
"Strange"

which just goes to show you can't please all of the people all of the time

02. The Consequences of Love

dunbarfilm — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:33:55 CDT

23 February 2007 see audience feedback for this film
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Bardem, Luis Tosar, Celso Bugallo, Nieve de Medina, Enrique Villón
Rating: 15
Length: 104 minutes
Country: Italy

In a Swiss hotel, an Italian businessman named Titta Di Girolamo sits silently, alone in the window of the café as he's done every day for eight years. So what, exactly, is he doing? The glittering, must-see Consequences Of Love stars Toni Servillo as the mysterious 50-year-old resident. He sits apart, impeccable and impenetrable; he smokes and he waits. And so do we - but not for long as Signore Girolamo has secrets everywhere.

In the style of director Paolo Sorrentino's film, the plot will have to remain in the dark - it unfolds itself with such elegance that it would be a crime to give anything away. Even the genre remains a mystery for almost an hour - and then plays out with a brilliant flair for the unexpected.

01. Crash

dunbarfilm — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:28:19 CDT

26 January 2007 See audience feedback of this film
Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito, Terrence Howard, Brendan Fraser
Rating: 15
Length: 113 minutes
Country: USA

“Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other.”

A Brentwood housewife and her District Attorney. husband. A Persian store owner. Two police detectives who are also lovers. An African-American television director and his wife. A Mexican locksmith. Two car-jackers. A rookie cop. A middle-aged Korean couple. They all live in Los Angeles andduring the next 36 hours, they will all collide…….

Writer/director Paul Haggis (who scripted Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winner Million Dollar Baby) sets out to address difficult issues: why middle-class whites are afraid of working-class blacks, why being racist doesn't necessarily mean being inhuman, and how politics confuses the truth.

2007 Programme

dunbarfilm — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:24:12 CDT

Welcome to the Programme for the 2007 Season of the Dunbar Film Society.

26 January	Crash (see audience feedback for this film)
23 February	The Consequences of Love (see audience feedback for this film)
30 March	The 3 Burials of Melquiades Estrada
27 April	Ignorant Fairies
25 May	Capote
29 June	Central Station
31 August	Volver
28 September	Fateless
26 October	Pierrepoint
30 November	The World's Fastest Indian

10. The World's Fastest Indian

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:36:11 CST

20 November 2007
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Diane Ladd, Paul Rodriguez, Chris Lawford, Chris Williams, Aaron Murphy
Rating: 12A
Length: 127 minutes
Country: USA/New Zealand

Anthony Hopkins stars as Burt Munro, in a true story of a man who never let the dreams of youth fade.

After a lifetime of perfecting his classic Indian motorcycle, Burt set off from the bottom of the world with all the odds against him, to test his bike at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

09. Pierrepoint

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:35:53 CST

26 October 2007
Director: Adrian Shergold
Cast: Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson, Eddie Marsan, Cavan Clerkin, Christopher Fulford
Rating: 15
Length: 95 minutes
Country: UK

Pierrepoint is the gripping and dramatic true-life story of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's most notorious hangman. Following in the footsteps of his father and uncle before him, Albert joins the 'family business' in 1934.

Living a secret life as a master hangman, as well as a humble grocery deliveryman and loyal husband, Pierrepoint's reputation as the most highly regarded executioner in the land results in him executing some of Britain's most infamous murderers including Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, and also the Nazi war criminals convicted at the Nuremberg Trails. But the media coverage from these shatters Pierrepoint's closely guarded anonymity turning him into a minor celebrity.

As his two lives collide, and public opinion turns against capital punishment, Pierrepoint troubled by his notoriety is ready to give it all up, but fate has other plans in store for him.

08. Fateless

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:35:32 CST

28 September 2007
Director: Lajos Koltai
Cast: Marcell Nagy, Áron Dimény, Béla Dóra, Péter Vida, Zsolt Dér, Daniel Craig
Rating: 12a
Length: 134 minutes
Country: Hungary, Germany, UK

Fiercely unsentimental and surprisingly beautiful, Hungarian drama Fateless does the seemingly impossible: it succeeds in portraying the subject of the Holocaust in a new and devastating light. Based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertész, it's the story of 14-year-old Hungarian Jew György Köves, whose unremarkable arrest on a bus in Budapest leads to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and near death in a smaller German labour camp. It's a handsome and large-scale production but don't go expecting another Schindler's List. Lajos Koltai's film is far more ambiguous, disturbing and, ultimately, uplifting.

07. Volver

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:35:05 CST

31 August 2007
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo
Rating: 15
Length: 121 minutes
Country: Spain

Three generations of women survive the east wind, fire, insanity, superstition and even death by means of goodness, lies and boundless vitality.

They are Raimunda (Pénelope Cruz), who is married to an unemployed labourer and has a teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo); Sole (Lola Dueñas), her sister, who makes a living as a hairdresser; and the mother of both (Carmen Maura), who died in a fire along with her husband. This character appears first to her sister (Chus Lampreave) and then to Sole, although the people with whom she has some unresolved matters are Raimunda and her neighbour in the village, Agustina (Blanca Portillo).

Pedro Almodóvar gets back in touch with his feminine side in Volver, the Spanish helmer's most femme fable since 1999's All About My Mother. One of that film's stars, Penélope Cruz, here takes centre stage as a domestic drudge caught up in family strife - including the return of her supposedly dead mother (Almodóvar veteran Carmen Maura). Despite dwelling on death, there's plenty of life in this mix of tears and laughter.

06. Central Station

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:34:45 CST

29 June 2007
Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira, Marilia Pera, Soia Lira Rating: 15
Length: 113min
Country: Brazil / France

Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is a former school teacher who makes a living by writing letters for illiterate people passing through Rio de Janeiro’s main train station, Central do Brasil. Among her clients are Ana (Sôia Lira) and her nine-year-old son Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira), who has a fierce desire to meet his father, whom he has never seen.

But Dora’s life is about to change dramatically. The next day, soon after Ana returns to Central do Brasil with Josué and dictates a second letter to the boy’s father, she is hit by a bus after leaving the station and dies. Left alone with no relatives in Rio, Josué wanders aimlessly around the station.

Swayed by a curiously maternal compassion, Dora resists her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child and commits to returning Josué to his father in Brazil’s remote Northeast. As buses and trucks carry the motley pair through the increasingly unfamiliar terrain, they defy their initial aversion to each other, journeying closer together and deeper inside themselves. The journey becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy’s search for his father; one woman’s search for her heart; a nation’s yearning for its roots.

05. Capote

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:34:22 CST

25 May 2007
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr, Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood
Rating: 15
Length: 115 minutes
Country: USA

In 1959, Truman Capote, a popular writer for The New Yorker, learns about the horrific and senseless murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Inspired by the story material, Capote and his partner, Harper Lee, travel to the town to research for an article. However, as Capote digs deeper into the story, he is inspired to expand the project into what would be his greatest work, In Cold Blood. To that end, he arranges extensive interviews with the prisoners, especially with Perry Smith, a quiet and articulate man with a troubled history. As he works on his book, Capote feels some compassion for Perry which in part prompts him to help the prisoners to some degree. However, that feeling deeply conflicts with his need for closure for his book which only an execution can provide. That conflict and the mixed motives for both interviewer and subject make for a troubling experience that would produce a literary account that would redefine modern non-fiction.

04. Ignorant Fairies

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:34:03 CST

27 April 2007
Director: Ferzan Ozpetek
Cast: Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi, Serra Yilmaz, Andrea Renzi, Gabriel Garko
Rating : 15
Length: 109 minutes
Country: France/Italy

Antonia (Margherita Buy) seems to have the perfect life with husband Massimo (Andrea Renzi). Healthy, wealthy, and happy, they live in a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Rome and share everything together. Well, almost everything.

After Massimo is killed in a road accident, Antonia discovers her doting husband was having an affair. Worse still, the widow realises that her rival isn't a she, but a he.

03. The 3 Burials of Melquades Estrada

dunbarfilm — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:33:46 CST

30 March 2007
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, January Jones
Rating: 15
Length: 121 minutes
Country: USA/France

Tommy Lee Jones turns director for The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, a thoughtful modern Western exploring death, delusion and friendship. He's Pete Perkins, a rancher stricken by grief when his Mexican employee and friend Mel (Julio Cedillo) is killed. Enraged by official indifference at the death of this illegal immigrant, he sets out to fulfil a promise by taking the corpse home to Mexico - with an unwilling prisoner, Border Patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), in tow.

The film is filled with affection for the land - it was shot partly on Jones' own West Texas ranch - and a clear-eyed view of the relationship between America and Mexico; the affluent bully exploiting its poor neighbour (although even on an allegorical level it retains a pleasing ambiguity). There is also a terrific sense for small lives filled with frustration and the inherent First World racism that says life only really matters if it is White. The notoriously gruff Jones would no doubt dismiss such talk as guff and maybe he would be right. Whatever: this gripping film about real people is well-worth excavating.

Guillermo Arriaga's dramatic and poetic script weaves past and present as it gradually reveals a great friendship, the lonely subterfuge of an illegal migrant's life, the cost of a promise made and kept, and culminates in the redemption of a callous if accidental killer. The US/Mexico border has long been plagued with violence and racism, and many of the events that unfold in The three burials of Melquiades Estrada are accurate depictions of the ongoing abuse of human rights in the region. But the film offers, in its conclusion, a pure form of contrition for wrongs committed, and a striking note of empathy for the lives so changed.

Dunbar Film Society - Recently Updated Pages

Home

Call for Volunteers

Film Vault

2006 season

2005 Season

2004 Season

2008 Programme

Half Nelson

See also:

The Chorus

See also:

It Happened One Night

See also:

The Lives of Others

See also:

Little Miss Sunshine

See also:"the film accomplishes a remarkable feat of creative alchemy by breathing life and depth into characters that, in lesser hands, could easily have come across as grating caricatures." The Onion AV Club

Audience feedback

02. The Consequences of Love

See also:

01. Crash

See also:

2007 Programme

10. The World's Fastest Indian

See also

09. Pierrepoint

See also

08. Fateless

See also

07. Volver

See also

06. Central Station

See also:

05. Capote

See also:

04. Ignorant Fairies

See also:

03. The 3 Burials of Melquades Estrada

See also:

See also:

"the film accomplishes a remarkable feat of creative alchemy by breathing life and depth into characters that, in lesser hands, could easily have come across as grating caricatures."
The Onion AV Club