Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Strange 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.