Cinema: Meet me at the Movies

Audrey Hepburn

Being looking for an opportunity to kick-start something on the movies and along comes an 11-film package from Dendy Portside running two sessions each Monday at 10am and 6pm.

The cinema, were the cruise ships dock, is calling its June, July and August line-up Winter Wonderland, and covering a period from the Oscar winning drama Citizen Kane (1941) to Bob Fosse’s 1972 pre-war Berlin musical Cabaret starring Liza Minnelli.

I recall in the dim dark past mum hauling me along to the cinema as a kid, growing up in the 1950s, as she reckoned it was the only place she could get some rest from my antics.

The other boys and girls would be running all over the shop, but I was glued to the big screen watching anything from Gregory Peck in The Big Country to Norman Wisdom in one of those classic British comedies such as The Square Peg.

The movie didn’t have to be a classic, and it didn’t have to be Hollywood, in fact I remember seeing a British comedy, Very Important Person, with a swag of home-grown comics, Eric Sykes, James Robinson Justice, Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips, somewhere between 17 and 20 times in one week!

Nowadays, I have quite an extensive DVD collection and access to TV movies, but there’s something about seeing a movie on the big screen’s that is different to any other movie experience.

The big screen season opens with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) on Monday, June 4, and continues with:

My Fair Lady (1964) (June 18), Citizen Kane (1941) (June 25), Cabaret (1972)  (July 2), To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) (July 9), Dr Zhivago (1965) (July 16), It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) (July 23), Calamity Jane(1953) (July 30), The African Queen (1951) (August 6), Meet In St Louis (1944) (August 13) and (1959)Ben Hur (August 20).

I’ll be there……