Film / News
Danny Boyle comes to Bath for screenings of Trainspotting and his rarest film
Director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge are in Bath this weekend for a pair of pay-what-you-can screenings at the FilmBath festival. Both events take place at the Bath Odeon on Saturday 28 October.
The main event is a screening of the nineties classic Trainspotting at 8:20pm, followed by a Q&A. Go here for tickets.
Before that, at 5:30pm, you can see the duo’s rather less successful 1997 follow-up, A Life Less Ordinary. Up in a heaven that resembles a bleached US cop show set, angels Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter are dispatched to pair off spoilt rich bitch Cameron Diaz and hopeless loser Ewan McGregor, who works as a “hygiene operative” at the HQ of the giant corporation owned by Diaz’s dad Ian Holm. After an altercation, McGregor ineptly kidnaps Diaz and the angels pose as hitpersons, reasoning that jeopardy will promote romance. At the film’s core is a perfectly serviceable action-romance lifted well above the ordinary by the confident, believable performances of McGregor and Diaz. Once again, John Hodge’s dialogue is spot-on, expertly walking the tightrope between wit and smugness during such memorable scenes as McGregor’s hopelessly polite ransom demands. But where the film goes horribly wrong is in all the unnecessary Capra-esque framing nonsense, which dilutes the plot and confuses the tone. Incidentally, this one gave rise to one of the all-time great local newspaper misprints on release, when it was advertised in Bristol as A Lifeless Ordinary.
The real attraction of this event, however, is an ultra-rare screening of Boyle and Hodge’s 30 minute comedy science fiction short film Alien Love Triangle, which has only been shown once in public since its 2008 premiere. Originally conceived as part of a trilogy of short films, this stars Kenneth Branagh as a boffin who invents a teleportation device. He races home to break the news to his wife Courteney Cox, who springs a surprise of her own: she’s a male alien disguised as a human female. Further strangeness ensues.
Go here for tickets.
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