Axis Cinema

Axis Cinema on Ballymun Main Street is home to The Pictures, which started as a monthly film club and has grown to become a great social network for the over 55s in Ballymun. The Pictures will be presenting a season of ‘book to film’ screenings, including The Commitments, in partnership with access>Cinema and, for the first time, Ballymun Library; who will be making copies of the books available to borrow the month before the film.

Dracula (with short film Suansceal)

Presented by Dublin City Council Arts Office and axis in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 21st Oct 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members / €4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

October’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is, very appropriately, Hammer Horror’s Dracula starring an enigmatically terse Christopher Lee as Bram Stoker’s vampiric Count and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Van Helsing. Few actors have ever inhabited those parts to such indelible effect, and this is a rare opportunity to see Hammer’s lurid blood-soaked vision on a big screen. This screening will be preceded by Irish short Suanscéal, a visually beautiful, delicately told, tale of a young boy’s need for companionship and an old man’s need to leave his legacy. Director Colm Ó Foghlú will be in attendance on the day to introduce the short as part of Borradh Buan, axis’ Irish language festival; celebrating its 10^th anniversary.

 

A Scare Before Bedtime: Axis Horror Screening

Presented by axis in association with access>Cinema

Date: 30th Oct 9pm

Tickets: €2

This is a chance for audiences to feel the fear at a secret screening of a favourite horror movie! As Halloween approaches, axis will be asking the people of Ballymun to vote for their favourite horror film to show on the big screen. I’d vote for Scream, but with the new Carrie coming out soon that could be a contender. What will win? All will be revealed on the night!

 

The Commitments

Presented by Dublin City Council Arts Office and axis in association with access>Cinema

Date: 25th Nov 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members / €4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

November’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is British director Alan Parker’s celebrated 1991 adaptation of The Commitments, Roddy Doyle’s 1980s novel of recessionary north side Dublin. Only the music scene is rich in this landscape, and so Jimmy Rabbitte envisions combining the raw talent of musicians, including Glen Hansard, Bronagh Gallagher and Maria Doyle Kennedy, with soul music to shake the Hibernian metropolis.

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Presented by axis & Dublin City Council Arts Office in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 16th Dec 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members/€4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

December’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is Blake Edwards’ 1961 toned-down adaptation of Truman Capote’s scandalous novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn’s most iconic poses, costumes and (dubbed) singing are modelled against a fantasy NYC as Holly Golightly’s naive eccentricity bedazzles George Peppard’s struggling writer when he moves into her apartment building. Try to ignore Mickey Rooney’s outrageously racist Japanese character…

 

Anna Karenina

Presented by axis& Dublin City Council Arts Office in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 27th Jan 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members/€4 Non-Members Membership: €3

January’s ‘Book to Screen’ screening is Joe Wright’s 2012 film of Anna Karenina. Anna (an on-form Keira Knightley) falls uncontrollably in love with Count Vronsky (a callow Aaron Johnson), with tragic consequences when she leaves husband (a surprisingly empathetic Jude Law). Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of doomed love is adapted by the great Tom Stoppard as a determinedly theatrical tour-de-force; to hit-and-miss effect.

 

axis: Ballymun is a creative hub of stage, galleries, workshop spaces and a recording studio. More information at http://axis-ballymun.ie/, and do follow @axisBallymun on Twitter.

Albert Nobbs

Glenn Close realises a lifetime’s ambition and finally turns her one-woman off-Broadway show based on George Moore’s novella into a feature film.

Close plays Albert Nobbs, a conscientious but taciturn waiter at the Morrison Hotel in Dublin in the year, well, oddly it’s never really specified, just sometime after 1898. Albert’s great secret is that he is really a woman. This is the moment at which suspension of disbelief needs a crane because the make-up job just makes Close look a bit odd, not like a man. The accent is a cannier choice, a soft London accent that doesn’t draw attention to the lightness of its timbre. But if ever a film was based around a make-up job it’s this movie, and the over-worked crane for suspending disbelief quite simply buckles early on when there is a shocking revelation that another male character is also a woman in disguise; a shock that is only if you haven’t immediately thought on seeing the character that it’s a woman.

John Banville co-wrote the script with Close and Gabriella Prekop and perhaps that’s the reason for the lack of driving plot. Nobbs is encouraged by her confidante Janet McTeer, who has set up house with Bronagh Gallagher, to use her substantial savings to open her own tobacconist’s shop. At this point Nobbs begins to think of enticing fellow Morrison servant Helen Dawes (Mia Wasikowska) to join her in the enterprise, oblivious to the fact that Helen is only walking out with her to scrounge money for the fare to America. That plan is the brainchild of roguish Joe (Aaron Johnson), who via some delightful percussive maintenance on the Morrison’s misbehaving boiler has insinuated himself into the staff and then between Helen’s sheets. If that sounds half-interesting beware, this film’s deadly dull and never resolves the contradiction between its Shakespearean-obvious cross-dressing and its otherwise realistic universe.

Director Rodrigo Garcia coaxes good performances from his cast but McTeer, Johnson and Wasikowska come undone by virtue of their ropey accents far too frequently; even though McTeer outshines Close by virtue of having a more assertive character. I don’t know why Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is in the film as a debauched Wildean lord, except to pinpoint the class-based moral hypocrisy of Pauline Collins’ hotel owner, but such lack of purpose or context is everywhere. Are McTeer and Gallagher a lesbian couple or not? Does Nobbs think Helen will live with her as a companion or as a lover? These vital questions are never clearly answered until it’s far too late. Even more baffling is the politically de-contextualised Dublin setting. Why not just set it in London and eliminate the ropey accents, if not the unbelievable cross-dressing disguises?

If you really want to see Close on great form in a late career sparkler I suggest you look at a DVD box-set of Damages.

2/5