#OnTheBigScreen: The retelling and reshowing of classics

Pinocchio

Pinocchio is a homage to the magic of Walt Disney’s original 1940 animated classic.

Robert Zemeckis directs the live-action retelling of the beloved tale of a wooden puppet who embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy. Tom Hanks stars as Geppetto, the wood carver who builds and treats Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as if he were his own son. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Jiminy Cricket, who serves as Pinocchio’s guide as well as his “conscience”.

“Walt Disney was really clever. He always looked for stories to make movies of that were pretty much impossible to do as live-action movies,” says Zemeckis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Christ Weitz. “They could be done very wonderfully as animation because he was able to do animated stories about talking animals and puppets, fairies and dwarves and things that would be impossible to do in live action. Pinocchio is one of the most, if not the most beautiful, animated features that was ever made.”

Watch Pinocchio on Disney+

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Jaws

For the first time, audiences will be able to experience two classic, culture-defining Steven Spielberg films—E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Jaws—on Imax screens nationwide. Both films will be released exclusively on Imax screens from 9 September to celebrate E.T.’s 40th Anniversary and Jaws’ 47th Anniversary.

In E.T, a troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape from Earth and return to his home planet. In Jaws, a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, forcing a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.

Almost five decades after its first release, Jaws has become inexorable from global film culture, has inspired multiple generations of filmmakers and remains one of the most thrilling, terrifying and unforgettable films of all time.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, originally released in the summer of 1982, not only soared to become the highest-grossing film of the year, capturing four Oscars, but it also captured the hearts of audiences around the globe. Four decades later, it still ignites the joy, wonder, discovery, magic, and heartbreak of childhood.

“Universal is honoured to have been a part of so many extraordinary, unforgettable Steven Spielberg films over the past 47 years, including Jaws in 1975, E.T. in 1982 and Jurassic Park in 1993,” said Jim Orr, president of domestic theatrical distribution for Universal Pictures. “No filmmaker, it’s fair to say, has had a greater or more enduring impact on American cinema or has created more indelible cinematic memories for tens of billions of people worldwide. We couldn’t think of a more perfect way to celebrate the anniversary of E.T. and the first Universal-Spielberg summer blockbuster, Jaws, than to allow audiences to experience these films in a way they’ve never been able to before.”

In Imax cinemas from 9 September.

Fall

For best friends Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), life is all about conquering fears and pushing limits in Fall. But after they climb 2,000 feet to the top of a remote, abandoned radio tower, they find themselves stranded with no way down. Now Becky and Hunter’s expert climbing skills will be put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies, and vertigo-inducing heights in this adrenaline-fueled thriller.

Fall began life as a short film idea hatched by British-born, L.A.-based writer-director Scott Mann (Heist) and his regular co-writer Jonathan Frank, who was excited about “the idea of the fear of falling and the horror of heights.”

“There’s a psychological fear I think we all go through at heights. Even a lot of climbing videos on the internet tap into that well. It’s the reaction, the ‘Oh my God, oh my God’ that influenced how Fall would eventually play out. From an experiential point of view, you’ve got to put yourself through the eyes of the character, be with them, and then climb it with them. So, you’ve done it together. What we wanted to get was a feeling of being raw and real at height and very human. So that was the backbone of it all,” he said.

In cinemas from 9 September.

Straight Line Crazy

Broadcast live from the Bridge Theatre in London, Nicholas Hytner directs David Hare’s exhilarating new play Straight Line Crazy.

Ralph Fiennes leads the cast in Hare’s blazing account of the most powerful man in New York, a master manipulator whose legacy changed the city forever. For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses exploited those in office through a mix of charm and intimidation.

Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City’s workers, he created parks, bridges and 627 miles of the expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. Faced with resistance by protest groups campaigning for a very different idea of what the city should become, will the weakness of democracy be exposed in the face of his charismatic conviction?

In Cinema Nouveau Cinemas on 10, 11, 14 and 15 September.

Read more about the latest and upcoming films here.