License to Wed posterStrange things are afoot concerning the release of the film License to Wed (the trailer for which has been torturing audiences for weeks). The radio preview was at Readings tonight, they have been trailering it heavily and it’s got a start date of Thursday on their web site. But they don’t have any sessions listed for Courtenay Central.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Readings have dropped a film at the last minute as a bargaining position (they have been known to throw their weight around with distributors) or maybe they just wanted to give The Simpsons Movie triple the usual number of sessions (which they have done).

Then again, they might have seen the film and exercised some critical judgement. No, of course not, how stupid of me.

License to Wed is therefore only playing at the Empire in Island Bay so to experience it at the multiplex you’ll have to trek out to the aircraft hangar at Queensgate.

[Because I Said So and Catch a Fire after the jump.]

Also opening this week is a film that looks so much like last week’s Georgia Rule that it might even be deliberate, Because I Said So. This week the matriarch is venerable Diane Keaton and the ingenue is Mandy Moore. Because I Said So gets a wider release at Readings, Empire, Regent-on-Manners and Sky City Queensgate.

Returning from a few well-regarded screenings at the World Cinema Showcase is the big-budget political thriller Catch a Fire, set in South Africa during the anti-apartheid insurrections. Starring Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) and Tim Robbins the film is directed by Philip Noyce (Rabbit-proof Fence) and written by Shawn Slovo whose parents were leading anti-apartheid campaigners. Rialto only.