Film Events in May
With Ghostface back haunting cinema in Scream 4, it's appropriate to ask the question: do you like scary movies? If so, May is chock-full of films for you. The Filmhouse in Edinburgh is hosting Dead by Dawn, Scotland's International Horror Film Festival, from 5-8 May. Featuring UK premieres, including The Afflicted, a twisted tale of maternal instincts gone wrong, and The Death of Alice Blue, a contemporary vampire tale from Canada, the festival boasts guest appearances, short films, and a Shit Film Amnesty, which sees attendees bring their most embarrassing DVD from their home collection, for a chance to win everyone else's rubbish movies. Check the Filmhouse website for more details.
The DCA in Dundee is also showing a series of horror films in May. As well as Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, a Daphne du Maurier adaptation starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and Italian zombie classic The Beyond (1 May), Les Diaboliques is screening on 8-9 May after being suggested for their monthly wild card slot. The latter was director Clouzot's attempt to out-do Hitchcock – you can decide whether or not he succeeded.
It's not all scares and shocks this month. For those with a gentler disposition, the Filmhouse has a special sing-along screening of Calamity Jane on 28 May. Starring Doris Day as the no-nonsense tomboy title character and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickock, her friendly foe, it is a highly entertaining Western comedy-musical romp, and a chance to unleash your inner country star.
Staying on a music theme, May marks the 70th birthday of one Robert Allen Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan. To celebrate, the GFT have programmed Dylan at the Movies, a season of five films exploring Dylan’s relationship to cinema. Kicking off on 3 May with Todd Haynes’ dazzling pseudo-biopic I’m Not There and concluding 29 May with Renaldo and Clara, a rarely seen oddity that Dylan wrote, directed and starred in while headlining the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour, the season also includes Sam Peckinpah’s haunting Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, D.A. Pennebaker’s rockumentary Don’t Look Back and Fellini’s La Strada, the film that inspired Dylan to write Mr Tambourine Man.
The newly restored The Last Picture Show, widely considered to be critic-turned-filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich's finest film, is screening at the DCA on 2-5 May. The 1971 film stars Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd and a young Jeff Bridges (who gained his first Oscar nod for the performance) as 1950s high school students growing up in a dead-end small town in Texas. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Bridges', winning two, and showcases Bogdanovich's appreciation for other filmmakers, particularly John Ford. [Becky Bartlett]