Westgarth (book of) Revelations

Watts In Westgarth?
Last night, dear friend, Richard took me along to the opening of Ana Kokkinos' The Book of Revelation at the re-opening of the redeveloped Westgarth Cinema.

I won't say too much about the film, since I am covering it for FilmExposed (though I'm not sure when they will plan to run it because it will be a while before the UK release), but I will say that my reaction, along with the majority of the audience was somewhere between meh and urgh. I really wanted to like the film because I loved Kokkinos' work on Head On but, no, meh, urgh!

On any other night I would have been stabbing myself with a rusty fork for wasting my time and money on such a work but last night I wasn't worried in the slightest because it was a red carpet shin-dig with free red, tasty morsels and people to watch, all in the luxurious environs of the redeveloped cinema.

As the new carpet smell wafted between us, we listened to the platitudes fly and watched the flashes glare at the stars and their dangerously sharp cheekbones. Watching the media types scramble for the stars is highly amusing; watching the stars try to get some time to themselves is even more amusing. I loved the banality of the whole affair. And I loved the cinema.

The only other film I had seen at the Westgarth was a screening of John Carpenter's The Ghosts of Mars, the film that plundered the world's precious supply of neon zinc cream, where the "ghosts" looked like they'd been attacked by Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever. Back then it was grubby and had wonderfully unstable seats. Now it's all dolled up. The original fitting are all still there, the seats have been comfified and the balcony has been enclosed and split into two new cinemas. It is a truly classy venue and one I'll be heading back to very soon to see a good film.

Thanks, Richard!

Tags: film, architecture, cinema