#OnTheBigScreen: The music of Bruce Springsteen, Playmobil and a female-driven mob drama

Blinded By The Light

The heart-warming and truly inspirational comedy-drama Blinded By The Light’s journey to the screen began in earnest back in 2010 when visionary writer-director-producer Gurinder Chadha and author-journalist Sarfraz Manzoor attended the BFI premiere of The Promise, a film charting the making of the 1978 Bruce Springsteen album Darkness on the Edge of Town.

This joyous coming-of-age story tells of a teenager who learns to live life, understand his family and find his own voice through the words and music of Bruce Springsteen. Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a 16-year-old British Pakistani boy growing up in the boring, industrial city of Luton. It’s 1987, unemployment and the National Front are on the rise and Javed feels trapped, all he dreams of is escaping.

He wants what all teenagers want – a girlfriend, the freedom to go to parties – but, most of all, he wants to be a writer. Springsteen’s lyrics encourage Javed to find his own writing voice, talk to the girl he’s always fancied and challenge his Dad’s strict rule over the house.

Javed has to navigate his new confidence with keeping his family happy and he manages to juggle it all until the day of his sister’s wedding. Unfortunately, it falls on the same day as the Springsteen concert tickets go on sale and the National Front is marching through Luton.

Ultimately, Javed has to discover for himself how to balance all the things that are most important in his life: his writing, his family, his friends and his dreams. Springsteen’s music helps show Javed and his Father the light – how words can become a bridge between worlds and how we all need to keep our dreams and our family with us as we discover our journey in life.

Read more here

The Kitchen

A high-impact drama with a strong, female-driven cast and women in key roles behind the scenes, it takes full ownership of a genre not known for putting women at the top. Defying expectations across the board, it turns the classic mob drama upside down like never before – lending a contemporary tone to the distinctive style and vibe of the era and serving up plenty of action, attitude and shocking turns.

The gritty, female-driven mob drama is set in New York City, 1978. The 20 blocks of pawnshops, porn palaces and dive bars between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River owned by the Irish mafia and known as Hell’s Kitchen was never the easiest place to live. Or the safest.

But for mob wives Kathy, Ruby and Claire – played by Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss – things are about to take a radical, dramatic turn. When their husbands are sent to prison by the FBI, the women take business into their own hands, running the rackets and taking out the competition – literally.

Now they own the neighbourhood.

Written and directed by Andrea Berloff, whose screenplay was based on the comic book series created for DC Vertigo by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle.

Read more here.

Playmobil: The Movie

The first-ever feature film inspired by the beloved, award-winning Playmobil role-play toys.

The heart-warming tale tells of a young boy who unexpectedly disappears into the magical, animated universe of Playmobil. His sister embarks on a thrilling journey to bring him home.

It was directed by Lino DiSalvo, an American animator, film director, writer and voice actor, who spent almost 17 years at Disney and served as head of animation on Frozen; supervising animator onTangled and Bolt; and animator on Meet the Robinsons, Chicken Little and 102 Dalmatians.

NT Live’s The Lehman Trilogy

The next screening from National Theatre Live, bringing the best of British theatre to your local cinema, is The Lehman Trilogy – the story of a family and a company that changed the world.

On a cold September morning in 1844, a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside.

Dreaming of a new life in the new world, he is joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy and triggers the largest financial crisis in history.

Academy Award-winner Sam Mendes (Skyfall, King Lear) direct Simon Russell Beale (King Lear, The Tragedy of King Richard the Second), Adam Godley (Suits, Breaking Bad) and Ben Miles (The Crown) in Ben Power's English version of Stefano Massini’s vast and poetic play.

It is showing at Cinema Nouveau cinemas and Gateway Commercial KwaZulu-Natal on 24, 25, 28 and 29 August 2019.  

Read more about the latest and upcoming film releases: writingstudio.co.za/lets-go-to-the-movies