Regretfully, we are forced to announce the cancellation of our planned Christmas event, The Sound of Music.

As a volunteer organisation we do not have the resources of both time and money required to tackle a point of legal debate surrounding the licensing of the movie for such an event. Despite clearing the film licence with the pertinent authority, another group that organises sing-along style events in London has taken issue with our intention to host a sing-along event for our small local audience.

Anybody who purchased tickets online will shortly receive a full refund.

In order to fill the void in our schedule we have brought forward our planned January movie “The Sapphires” to December 9th, and we are planning on releasing an updated Winter/Spring schedule within the next week.

If you’d like to see The Sound of Music as a sing-along event, regular events are hosted in London by this company. Their contact details are on that page should you have any queries. Their phone number for bookings  is 01483 488000. Return tickets on the train to London are available from here, here or here among other places.

For lovers of classical French cinema, and I am one, this earthy throwback is a whiff of lavender borne by the bracing winds of the mistral.

Daniel Auteuil stars and makes a very competent directing debut with this handsome, old-fashioned film, adapted from the novel by Marcel Pagnol. It’s a bucolic tale, set around the second world war, which must surely remind his fans of the movies that made his name in the UK: the 1986 dramas Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Auteuil plays Pascal, a digger and cleaner of wells: he is a greying widower and the father of a number of daughters. The most beautiful of these is the 18-year-old Patricia who is being by Pascal’s heartbreakingly humble, middle-aged mate Félipe.  But she, like Hardy’s Tess, is to be romanced and ruined by a handsome, unreliable young man from wealthier stock. This is Jacques, whose parents are the upwardly mobile bourgeois owners of the local store. You will need a slightly sweet tooth for this movie, as the ending is a little saccharine – but it is well made and well acted throughout. Auteuil’s own performance, taking Pascal from fatherly indulgence to dignity in the face of adversity, and then to cold anger, is very well managed, as are the interactions of Jacques parents Patricia and Jacques.

One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is regarded as one of the best 10 films ever made. It definitely made Jack Nicholson into a Superstar. The film released in 1975, swept the board at the Oscars. Winning Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Film and Best Screenplay.
Based on the bestselling novel by Ken Kesey, it’s about a prisoner Randle Patrick McMurphy who is serving prison time for Statutory rape. He is then transferred to a mental institution. Mac uses this opportunity at the mental hospital to escape going back to prison. He hopes that he will be able to serve the rest of his sentence in the mental hospital. The mental hospital is not the pleasant environment that Mac thought it would be.
The ward is run by an unbending rule nurse Mildred Ratched. She pushes her patients to the limits with mental stress and unwanted medical treatments. The patients are afraid of Ratched and are more focused on her than their treatment plan. Mac immediately defines himself as a leader and gathers a group of other patients (Billy Bibbit, Charlie Cheswick, Martini, Dale Harding, Max Taber, Jim Sefelt, and Chief Bromden), encouraging their rebellion.

Just as a foot note. Michael Douglas (producer) originally wanted his father Kirk to play the role of McMurphy, but because of the length of time it took to bring it to the big screen. It was felt that he was too old to play the character.